"Distort" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Russ reached for the power controls. A sudden roar of thunderous fury and the beams leaped at the sphere ... but this time the sphere did not materialize again. Again the wrench shuddered through the laboratory, a wrench that seemed to distort space and time. ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... told of late visits; of strolls in the dusk of evenings on unfrequented streets; of little suppers after the opera; of all the small things that deviltry can suggest and malignity distort. Wickersham cared little for having his name associated with that of any one, and he was certainly not going to be more careful for another's name than for his own. He had grown more reckless since his return, but it had not injured him with his set. It flattered his pride to be ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... containing such fishes: the double refractions of the glass and water represent them, when moving, in a shifting and changeable variety of dimensions, shades, and colours; while the two mediums, assisted by the concavo-convex shape of the vessel, magnify and distort them vastly; not to mention that the introduction of another element and its inhabitants into our parlours engages the fancy in a ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... purpose, abjure it for so much as a casual purpose. The acts of Csar speak also the same language; and as these are less susceptible of a false coloring than the features of a general character, we find this poet of liberty, in the midst of one continuous effort to distort the truth, and to dress up two scenical heroes, forced by the mere necessities of history into a reluctant homage to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... of the youth, for it can develop in him only that which exists in him as a possibility. It can lead and assist, but it has no power to create. What nature has denied to a man education cannot give him, any more than it can on the other hand annihilate his original gifts, though it may suppress, distort, and measurably destroy them. And yet it is impossible to decide what is the real essence of a man's individuality until he has left behind him the years of growth, because it is not till then that he fully attains conscious ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... seen again and again how he expresses himself in terms of somewhat exaggerated admiration when writing of a painter whom he appreciates, or a picture that he loves. To us this enthusiasm is an attractive characteristic. It has never been permitted to distort the vision or cloud the critical faculty; and we follow the teaching of the Master all the more closely because we feel his fervor, and know how completely he becomes possessed with a subject which appeals to his imagination or ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... theoretical instinct itself, and to define the real in those very terms which disciplined thought learns to neglect. In the early history of thought the nature of the thinker himself is recognized as that which is likely to distort truth rather than that which conditions it. When the wise man, the devotee of truth, first makes his appearance, his authority is acknowledged because he has renounced himself. As witness of the universal being he purges himself ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... a good deal for one short life. I've seen industry revolutionized—leaving the homes of the people, and herding into the great factories. I've seen steam revolutionize the daily habits of men, and distort their thoughts; one man can't run a steam engine; it takes more than one man to own one. So have I seen capital rise in the world until it is greater than kings, greater than courts, greater than governments—greater ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... will prevent its being restored. Thus in the common impediment of speech, when the association of the motions of the muscles of enunciation with the idea of the word to be spoken is disordered, the great voluntary efforts, which distort the countenance, prevent the rejoining of the broken associations. See No. II. 10. of this Section. It is thus likewise observable in some inflammations of the bowels, the too strong efforts made by the muscles to carry forwards the offending material ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... again mounted his invisible rostrum. "Do you mean to intimate that we are to falsify the record?" he declaimed. "To try to make liars out of hundreds of eyewitnesses? You ask us to distort the ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... seated herself on his knee and put an arm about his neck. Before she had spoken another word, Tarrant understood; the smile on his face lost its spontaneity; a bitter taste seemed to distort his lips. ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... perhaps two or three years older. He was of Cope's own height, but slightly heavier, with a possible tendency to plumpness. The best of the photographs made him dark, with black, wavy hair; and in some cases (where sunlight did not distort his expression) he indulged a determined sort of smile. He figured once, all by himself, in choir vestments; again, all by himself, in rowing toggery; a third time, still by himself, in a costume whose vague inaccuracy suggested a character ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... not so much hide as distort the truth. The enemy are seldom altogether hidden from view, the trouble is rather to tell whether one is observing a cavalry patrol or an infantry regiment, or if the object moving forward is not in reality a sandhill or a bunch of reeds. The mirage ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... whatever is brought under the frequent observation of the young must have its influence upon their susceptible natures for good or evil. Shabby school-houses induce slovenly habits. Ill-constructed benches may not only distort the body, but, by reflex influence, the mind as well. Conditions like these seldom fail to disgust the learner with his school, and neutralize the best efforts of his teachers. On the other hand, neat, ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... since, or perhaps ever shall laugh so heartily as at these troglodyte dramas. Their acting was assuredly the most diverting beyond all comparison, or example, I ever saw. They would cut so many negroish capers in tragedy, grin and distort their countenances in such a variety of inhuman expressions, while they kept their bodies either stiff as so many stakes, or in a monkeyish wriggle, and ever and anon such a baboon stare at Desdemona, whose face, neck and hands, were covered with chalk and red paint, to make ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... perhaps upon our words, let us control our fancies and distinguish realities from fictions. There hangs over every great struggle, and especially over every civil war, a hot and hazy atmosphere of excited feeling which is too apt to distort all objects to the view. In the French Revolution, men were suspected of being objects of suspicion, and sent to the guillotine for that offence. The same feverish and delirious fancies prevailed as to the conduct of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... deliberate purpose of making the case against her as black as she could. In reality her evidence was strongly in the prisoner's favour, as I shall point out to you. But she, too, was instructed, or was taught by her own evil nature, to so distort the facts as to make them bear an appearance against the unhappy girl who is ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... work in the turning-lathe, one of the most important points to attend to is, that while they are held with sufficient firmness in order to be turned to the required form, they should be free from any strain which might in any way distort them. In strong and ponderous objects this can be easily accomplished by due care on the part of an intelligent workman. It is in operating by the lathe on delicate and flexible objects that the utmost care is requisite in the process of chucking, as they are easily ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... mere prose, written out into the form of verse, he is persuaded that its melody is more obvious and perceptible than that of our vulgar measures. "One advantage," says Mr. Southey, "this metre assuredly possesses; the dullest reader cannot distort it into discord: he may read it with a prose mouth, but its flow and fall will still be perceptible." We are afraid, there are duller readers in the world than Mr. Southey ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Shutruk-nakhunta is the Susian form of the name; the Assyrian texts distort it into Shutur-nankhundi, and the Babylonian Chronicle of Pinches, into Ishtar-khundu, owing to a faint resemblance in the sound of the name of the goddess Ishtar with the form Shutur, Sthur, itself derived from Shutruk, with which the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Grecian civilization was preeminently the ferment of African blood. Take all the archeological facts of the last fifty years and read them up or down, across or diagonally, inside and out, and this fact rises into your mind like a Banquo that will not down. Historians may distort truth and rob the African race of its historical position, but facts are everywhere throwing open the secret closets of nations and exposing ethnic skeletons that laugh and jest at our racial vanities. The Aryan savages ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... speaking terms. Blake, too, had arrived, a little cross and crabbed for him, as his wounds were painful, consisting mainly of bruises where his wounded horse had fallen and rolled with him. But he could limp about and swear, and distort the poetry of the old masters and be savage and cynical. He hated Gleason, ridiculed him in public, and hailed him as ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... imbue, tint, tincture, variegate; falsify, pervert, garble, palliate, gloss, distort; blush, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... pensively around the room at those stretched in their berths. For a few seconds she is quiet; then, contorting her face into a deep scowl, she gives vent to the most violent bursts of passion,—holds her long black hair above her head, assumes a tragic attitude, threatens to distort it from the scalp. "That one's lost her mind-she's fitty; but I think the devil has something to do with her fits. And, though you wouldn't think it, she's just as harmless as can be," Mr. Praiseworthy coolly remarks, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... "us men and our salvation"? Then we may be sure that, whatever is meant by the "made Himself void," heauton ekenosen, which describes His Incarnation here, one thing it could never possibly mean—-a "Kenosis" which could hurt or distort His absolute fitness to guide and bless us whom He came to save. That awful and benignant "Exinanition" placed Him indeed on the creaturely level in regard of the reality of human experience of growth, and human capacity for ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... unnecessary. And side by side with the invention of inferior cheap substitutes for existing words and phrases, and infinitely more serious than that invention, goes on a perpetual misuse and distortion of those that are insufficiently known. These are processes not of growth but of decay—they distort, they render obsolete, and they destroy. The obsolescence and destruction of words and phrases cuts us off from the nobility of our past, from the severed masses of our race overseas, far more effectually than any growth of neologisms. A language may grow—our language ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... in the net, and a species of burbot. This last is one of the most voracious of the finny tribe, and preys upon all others that it is able to swallow. It devours whole quantities of cray-fish, until its stomach becomes crammed to such a degree as to distort the shape of its whole body. When this kind was drawn out, it was treated very rudely by the boys—because its flesh was known to be extremely unsavoury, and none of them cared to eat it. Marengo, however, had no such scruples, and he was wont to make ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... steel is necessary to aid, by its stiffness, in preventing the very ductile iron from giving back to such an extent as to distort the steel face and thus tear or separate the parts of the plate. The ductile iron gives a very low resisting power, its duty being to hold the steel face up to its work. If now we substitute a soft steel plate in the place of the ductile iron, we will get greater resisting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... place us down beneath, where numbing cold Locks up Cocytus. Force not that we crave Or Tityus' help or Typhon's. Here is one Can give what in this realm ye covet. Stoop Therefore, nor scornfully distort thy lip. He in the upper world can yet bestow Renown on thee, for he doth live, and looks For life yet longer, if before the time Grace call him not unto herself." Thus spake The teacher. He in haste forth stretch'd his hands, And caught my guide. Alcides whilom felt That grapple straighten'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... lengthens, until early in March, the sun, a flaming disk of fiery crimson, shows his distorted image above the horizon. This distorted shape is due to the mirage caused by the cold, just as heat-waves above the rails on a railroad-track distort the shape ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... powers to excite vivid visions and distort the imagination, and, therefore, employed in the magical rites, were the thiuimeezque, in Michoacan, and ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... if any powerful emotion seizes him, his brain under the irritation begins to disengage energy at a tremendous rate. He has to use all his available force of control in keeping the energy in. Some of it will leak away into the nerves of his face and distort his features, some may set his tear-glands at work, some may travel down his vagus nerve and inhibit his heart's action so that he faints, or upset the blood-vessels in his head and give him a stroke. Or if he pens it up, without its reaching any of these vents, it may ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... seems to say, there is still the individual, who, perhaps all the more because of the rigid decorums forced upon him, may adventure with secret desires through pathless space. Only, the pressure of too many inhibitions can distort human spirits into grotesque forms. The inhabitants of Winesburg tend toward the grotesque, now this organ of the soul enlarged beyond all symmetry, now that wasted away in a desperate disuse. They see visions which in some wider world might become wholesome ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... sinking spirits now supplies With cordials in her hands and eyes, Now with a soft and silent tread Unheard she moves about my bed. I see her taste each nauseous draught And so obligingly am caught, I bless the hand from whence they came, Nor dare distort my face ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... boy more closely than Doug at all realized, was deeply troubled by what he felt might permanently distort ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... not mean, or filled the picture with descriptions, situations or emotions, incongruous or inappropriate. And if in so reading they seem clear and connected, fanciful and far-drawn interpretations will not be adopted. We should not distort or modify their meaning in order to infer that they are imitations of Petrarch, or that the genius of the poet, cribbed and confined by the fashion of the time, forgot to soar, and limped and waddled in the footsteps of the inconspicuous sonneteers ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... very last words are ominous and suggestive of another possibility (xi.). Job, with a sarcastic compliment to the wisdom of his friends, claims the right to an independent judgment and challenges the whole moral order of the world. Better be honest—God needs no man to distort the facts for Him. Job longs for a meeting, in which God will either speak to him or listen to him. But, as no answer comes, he laments again the pathos of life, which ends ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... and remain hard as flint to a beast, is possible only to humanity. The cat, following her predatory instincts, is at once more logical and less ruthless, because the question of property does not distort her vision. She has none of the ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... boiled linseed oil. Both compounds are then mixed together. Copal resin may be substituted for the amber, but it is not so durable. Oil varnish made from amber is highly elastic. If it is used to protect tin-plate printing, when the plates after stoving have been subsequently rolled so as to distort the letters, the varnish has in no way suffered, ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown
... merely shrugged his shoulders and remained silent. When it finally appeared that he was not going to ask anything more, his wife added: "If you could listen, like any one else, and not interrupt with remarks that distort all one's ideas"—Then, as he persisted in his silence, she relented still further. "Why, of course, as you say, you will have to know it in the end. But I can tell you, to begin with, Owen, that it's nothing you can do anything ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... with all his tendency to shed his privileges, still clings to this one. It is possible to imagine that a novel might be as bare of all background as a play of Racine; there might be a story in which any hint of continuous life, proceeding behind the action, would simply confuse and distort the right effect. One thinks of the story of the Princesse de Cleves, floating serenely in the void, without a sign of any visible support from a furnished world; and there, no doubt, nothing would be gained by bringing the lucid action to ground and fixing it in its setting. It is a drama ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... crookedness &c. (obliquity) 217; grimace; deformity; malformation, malconformation[obs3]; harelip; monstrosity, misproportion[obs3], want of symmetry, anamorphosis[obs3]; ugliness &c. 846; talipes[obs3]; teratology. asymmetry; irregularity. V. distort, contort, twist, warp, wrest, writhe, make faces, deform, misshape. Adj. distorted &c. v.; out of shape, irregular, asymmetric, unsymmetric[obs3], awry, wry, askew, crooked; not true, not straight; on one side, crump[obs3], deformed; harelipped; misshapen, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... comfortless, high horse-hair-seated chairs, and a sofa of the same uncomfortable material, cold and slippery, on which it was impossible to rest. The carpet was nearly threadbare, and the curtains of dark-red moreen were very dingy; the mirror over the chimney-piece seemed to have been made purposely to distort my features, and produce in me a feeling of depression. My bedroom, which communicated with this agreeable sitting-room by folding-doors, was still smaller and gloomier; and opened upon a dismal back-yard, where a dog in a kennel howled dejectedly from time to time, and ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... the issuance by this government on May 29 of a statement regarding the nationalist aspirations for freedom of the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugoslavs, German and Austrian officials have sought to misinterpret and distort its manifest interpretation. In order, therefore, that there may be no misunderstanding concerning the meaning of this statement, the Secretary of State to-day further announces the position of the United States Government to be that all branches of the Slav race ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... their children should grow up high-minded and affectionate. One of the darkest shadows of my present condition is the fear that any revelation of my own weakness and emptiness may discourage and distort my children's characters; and the watchfulness which this requires increases the strain under which I suffer, because it is a hard fact that an example set for a noble and an unselfish motive is not nearly so potent as an example set naturally, sweetly, and generously, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... as Bergson calls it, though practically useful, has, according to him, two grave drawbacks from the point of view of speculation. By focussing our attention upon anything less than the whole fact, and so isolating a part from the rest, he says we distort what we knew originally: furthermore just in so far as we make a selection among the facts, attending to some and passing over others, we limit the field of direct knowledge which we might otherwise have enjoyed. For these two reasons Bergson insists ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... human sacrifice as represented by the Spanish chroniclers, also by the letters and despatches of Cortez, we do not credit, though undoubtedly they had some foundation in truth. It is the characteristic of all these records to persistently distort facts so as to further the purposes of the writers, and as to correctness where figures are concerned, they are scarcely ever to be relied upon. Though forced to admit this want of veracity, Prescott has ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... which very nearly approaches to madness; they speak many things at an abrupt and incoherent rate, as if they were actuated by some possessing demon; they make an inarticulate noise, without any distinguishable sense or meaning; they sometimes screw and distort their faces to uncouth and antic looks; at one time beyond measure cheerful, then as immoderately sullen; now sobbing, then laughing, and soon after sighing, as if they were perfectly distracted, and out of their senses. If they have any sober intervals of coming to themselves again, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... what they contained. Say, good M'Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within - or sometimes only maim him and distort him! ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... posture, long continued, will distort and disfigure the limbs; so the mind likewise is crippled and contracted by perpetual application to the same set of ideas. It is easy to guess the trade of an artizan by his knees, his fingers, or his shoulders: and there are few among men of the more liberal professions, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the man whose amorous lips incline, Full with young Eros' osculative sign, To the lorn maiden whose lact-albic hands, Drew albu-lactic wealth from lacteal glands Of that immortal bovine, by whose horn Distort, to realm ethereal was borne The beast catulean, vexer of that sly Ulysses quadrupedal, who made die The old mordacious Rat, that dared devour Antecedaneous Ale, ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... an hour passed away before we were aware by a slight rustle that Mr Francis was back, looming up out of the darkness like some giant, so strangely did the obscurity distort everything near ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... aid of Hanuman, King of the Monkeys, and his hosts.[361] Is there any kernel of history in this story? An examination of Hindu legends suggests that they usually preserve names and genealogies correctly but distort facts, and fantastically combine independent narratives. Rama was a semi-divine hero in the tales of ancient Oudh, based on a real personality, and Ceylon was colonized by Indians of Aryan speech.[362] But can we assume that a king of Oudh really ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... of excellence, a mean delight in recognizing inferiority in others, a meaner delight in refusing to recognize the superiority of others, all the honest and all the base forms of self-assertion, cloud and distort the vision when one mind directs its glance at another. For one person who is mentally conscientious there are thousands who are morally honest. The result is a vast massacre of character, which would move the observer's compassion were it not that the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... tend to arouse suspicions as to the questioner's motives. Such information is obtained more readily by cultivating the friendship of boys than by consulting the older folks. This tendency to disguise or to distort the truth, though it has its natural basis in a desire for self-protection, gives the Manbos a reputation for lack of that straightforwardness and frankness that is so noticeable among the Mandyas, even after very ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... of foreign lands for matter relating to Holland, it was impossible for a man of his temperament, convictions, and purpose to write a calm, dispassionate history. He is not the cool judge, but the earnest advocate, and yet he does not distort facts. He is just and can be coldly critical, even of his heroes, but he is always on one side, the side of liberty and justice, pleading their cause. His temperament gives warmth, eloquence, and dramatic passion to his style. Individual incidents ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... bridge leading to the picket line, no sapper was required to show them how to throw a suspension bridge above the flood from tree to cliff. It was characteristic of the Regiment that they carried out in war their peace training, never allowing the atmosphere of excitement to distort their actions. ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... reflect one another and we ourselves do not become conscious of our powers until the day of the supreme love, as if, till then, we had only seen ourselves in pocket-mirrors which never reflect more than a morsel of our lives, a movement, a gesture ... and which always distort it!" ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... rear-guard, and otherwise roughly handled the Turkish troops. Upon this, Omer Pacha put him in chains, and would have shot him, as he richly deserved, had he not known that his enemies at Constantinople would not fail to distort the true features of the case. He therefore sent him to Constantinople, where he was shortly afterwards released, and employed his gold to such good purpose, that he was actually sent down as Civil Governor to Travnik, which he had so recently ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... expression is somewhat vague. In order to reconcile the facts with this hypothesis, Navarrete is compelled to reject, as a chirographical blunder, a passage in a letter of the admiral, placing his birth in 1456, and to distort another passage in his book of "Prophecies," which, if literally taken, would seem to establish his birth near the time assigned by Munoz. Incidental allusions in some other authorities, speaking of Columbus's old age at or near the time of his death, strongly ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... Shakespeare; who could enact a brother man's biography, see with the brother man's eyes at all points of his course what things he saw; in short, know his course and him, as few "Historians" are like to do. Half or more of all the thick-piled perversions which distort our image of Cromwell, will disappear, if we honestly so much as try to represent them so; in sequence, as they were; not in the lump, as they ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... his manly features flicker and quiver like the mist; strange spasms distort them; he bows his head in anguish, and with every tear from her eyes mingle the bitter drops only shed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is independent of the velocity of either source or receiver. However, that relationship fails at velocities far below that of fifth-order rays. At only a very small fraction of that speed the tracers I am following are so badly distorted that they disappear altogether, and I have to distort them backwards. That wouldn't be too bad, but when I get up to about one per cent of the velocity I want to use, I can't calculate a force that will operate to distort them back into recognizable wave-forms. That's another problem for ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... enduring torment under the hands of the hair-dresser, who was doing his best to spoil her hair, and distort her head with a mass of curls, braids, frizzles, and puffs; for though I discreetly refrain from any particular description, still, judging from the present fashions, I think one may venture to predict that six years hence they ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... cried wrathfully and irritably, crimson with confusion, "to distort my words in this way! Excuse me, allow me to assure you that the report which has reached you, or rather, let me say, has been conveyed to you, has no foundation in truth, and I... suspect who... in a word... this arrow... in a word, your mamma... She seemed to me in ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the religious phenomena of the world may be summed up as follows: The first and second theories we have rejected as utterly false. Instead of being faithful to and adequately explaining the facts, they pervert, and maltreat, and distort the facts of religious history. The last three each contain a precious element of truth which must not be undervalued, and which can not be omitted in an explanation which can be pronounced complete. Each theory, taken by itself, is incomplete and inadequate. The third hypothesis overrates feeling; ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... my Lord Bacon, 'think to govern words by their own reason: but it also happens that words throw back their force upon the understanding;' and thus, we may justly add, often distort our thoughts, and lead us to very ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the most admirable of moral principles. How many are the crimes of which they have made virtues merely by dowering them with the word "national"? They distort even truth itself. For the truth which is eternally the same they substitute each their national truth. So many nations, so many truths; and thus they falsify and ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... from the grave to prove thine innocence, Francisco!' said a deep, hollow voice, which startled the whole court, and most of all Hawkhurst and the prisoners at the bar. Still more did fear and horror distort their countenances when into the witness-box stalked the giant ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... babe is still on the bottle. Such being the case, I sent for you. They are inseparable. They have put off falling in love so long that, when they do, it will prove a catastrophe for one of them. Take him away for a while. Distort ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... now, there must be a fact," I said. "There is some bit of history concealed there. The common people never invent: they distort." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... they pleased, although the strictest inquisition followed all that was allowed to pass outside the walls, lest reports adverse to His Majesty's health should reach the party of the Princes, his sons, who caught eagerly at any facts they might distort in a way to gain the Regency for the dissolute Prince of Wales, and cast the Queen completely into his power. It so happened that one day I was seated to my knotting behind the Japan screen in the parlour apportioned by the Prince to Her Majesty ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... alone and by a single stroke, he completely reversed the judgment of the English nation about their greatest man. The whole weight of Church, monarchy, aristocracy, fashion, literature, and wit had for two centuries combined to falsify history and distort the character of the noblest of English statesmen. And a simple man of letters, by one book, at once and for ever reversed this sentence, silenced the allied forces of calumny and rancour, and placed Oliver for all future time as ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... terror and anger distort men's countenances, but never have I seen aught to compare with the disorder of Chatellerault at that moment. He stamped and raved and fumed. He poured forth a thousand ordures of speech in his frenzy; he heaped insults ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... opium-eating. Different races also seem to be differently affected by its use. It seldom, perhaps never, intoxicates the European; it seems habitually to intoxicate the Oriental. It does not generally distort the person of the English or American opium-eater; in the East it is represented as frequently producing ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... must spring, but they do not answer all questions about all the subordinate provinces of life. The arts in their narrow sense, philosophy, even pleasure, they pass by. Man will not neglect the one or distort the other if he has really breathed the spirit of Christ, but at times the urgency of his Master's business will seem to shut them out ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... Theresa Tattle knew, had usually a great effect, even at thirteen; but she had not observed that it had much power upon Sophy; nor were her remarks concerning grace and manners much attended to. Her mother had taught Sophy that it was best to let herself alone, and not to distort either her person or her mind in acquiring grimace, which nothing but the fashion of the moment can support, and which is always detected and despised by people of ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... cum Tryphonte, p. 143, 144. See Le Clerc, Hist. Eccles. p. 615. Bull and his editor Grabe (Judicium Eccles. Cathol. c. 7, and Appendix) attempt to distort either the sentiments or the words of Justin; but their violent correction of the text is rejected even by the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... These facts are related in the true spirit of Jerome Cardan, Paracelsus, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Sir Thomas Browne. Cellini doubtless believed in them; but they warn us to be cautious in accepting what he says about his exploits, since imagination and self-conceit could so far distort his judgment. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... alone in the universe. To be alone, to be oneself, not to be driven or violated into something which is not oneself, surely it is better than anything. He thought of Lottie, and knew how much more truly herself she was when she was alone, with no man to distort her. And he was thankful for the division between them. Such scenes as the last ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... his child; even the dues of that darling of our current law, the landlord, will stand second to that. This conception of the responsibility of the parents and the State to the child and the future runs quite counter to the general ideas of to-day. These general ideas distort grim realities. Under the most pious and amiable professions, all the Christian states of to-day are, as a matter of fact, engaged in slave-breeding. The chief result, though of course it is not the intention, of the activities of priest and moralist to-day in these matters, is to lure a vast ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Greenland, and we must all learn to tell our saga in the same words, for that is the only way in which truth can be handed down to future generations, seeing that when men are careless in learning the truth they are apt to distort it so that honest men are led into telling lies unwittingly. They say that the nations of the south have invented a process whereby with a sharp-pointed tool they fashion marks on skins to represent words, so that once put down in this way a saga never changes. Would that we ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... Free culture, free occasion, Higher responsibility, will make A higher type of femininity, Ay, of maternal femininity,— Not derogate from that which now we have, And which, through laws and limitations old, Is artificial, morbid, and distort, Except where Nature works in spite of all. 'Woman is but the complement of man!' Granted. But why stop there? And why not add, Man, too, is but the complement of woman? And both are free! And Nature never meant, For either, harder rule than that of Love, Intelligent, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... daie, Onne Algars sheelde the arrowe dyd assaie, 285 There throghe dyd peerse, and stycke into his groine; In grypynge torments on the feelde he laie, Tille welcome dethe came in and clos'd his eyne; Distort with peyne he laie upon the borne, Lyke sturdie elms by stormes ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... more true and natural, if it conveys the impression which the object under the influence of passion makes on the mind. Let an object, for instance, be presented to the senses in a state of agitation or fear— and the imagination will distort or magnify the object, and convert it into the likeness of whatever is most proper to encourage the fear. "Our eyes are made the fools" of our other faculties. This is the universal law ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... passive: the homo tantum et audacia which may with perfect justice be applied to such men as Elijah, Amos, and Isaiah, is with them equivalent to deus tantum et servitus. But their creed is not to be found in any book. It is barbarism, in dealing with such a phenomenon, to distort its ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... Human Knowledge, which occupies a portion of his treatise "On the Advancement of Learning." Imperfect and erroneous as his scheme may be allowed to be, D'Alembert and his coadjutors in the last century were able to do no more than to copy and distort it. In his "Novum Organum" he undertakes to supply certain deficiencies of the Aristotelian system of logic, and expounds his mode of philosophizing; he was the first to unfold the inductive method, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... and he has given the divergent views it was certain to create, as constituting a part of its history. He reminds us that two sets of persons equally acquainted with the facts, equally free from any wish to distort them, might be led into opposite judgments through the mere action of some impalpable bias in one direction or the other, which third, more critical or more indifferent, would adopt a compromise between the two; and he closes his introductory chapter ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... without apparent intention of falsehood, seem incapable of speaking the truth. If they relate a circumstance that has passed under their own observation, or describe anything that they have seen, they add here and diminish there, distort this and give a new color to that, in such a manner that the hearer receives an impression of nothing as it really is. If there seem to be no malicious or evil design in all this, such persons are commonly called very imaginative; they should be called persons ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... insane individual has lost all relationship with his natural, instinctive and reasoning mind. He is disassociated. Reason, instinct, emotion and intuition are all in conflict within him. The emotional and intuitional faculties overfunctioning distort his common understanding. His idea centers are not able to distinguish between the real and the unreal in thoughts. He becomes possessed and obsessed by ideas born of emotion and intuition that have no foundation in fact, and as time goes on, he loses ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... imperfection in another, both appealed equally to his artistic and thoughtful mind. At one moment it would appear before him with an ideal loveliness such as had never blessed the eye of his fancy even; but while he yet looked the features would distort themselves into the vivid expression of some contemptible trait, so like what he had seen in reality, during the evening, that, in uncontrollable irritation, he would start ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... medicines." Here Lucy made a wry face. "Nay, but they are not to take in a decoction or in nauseous form, so you need not snub that so charming nose, or I shall point out to my friend Arthur what woes he may have to endure in seeing so much beauty that he so loves so much distort. Aha, my pretty miss, that bring the so nice nose all straight again. This is medicinal, but you do not know how. I put him in your window, I make pretty wreath, and hang him round your neck, so you sleep well. Oh, yes! They, like the lotus flower, make your trouble forgotten. ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... do but see these eyes— Yes, see the eyes, the body, neck, and form! God made them verily with master hand; 'Twas she herself the image did distort. Let us revere in her, then, God's own work, And not destroy what he so ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... bulged. What were they? Spawned neither of God nor Satan—what could they be? Black-skinned—or was it skin?—like rubber, with round bodies, like black basket balls inflated to triple size; bodies that seemed to ripple, distort, swell and contract with life ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... text to make full acknowledgments in footnotes. For the same reason, there has been almost no attempt made to show, by means of the conventional devices, the re-arrangements and abridgements that have been made. Every care has been taken not to distort in any way the meaning of the text. And that is all that is important in ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... being her sole wealth, it was, perhaps, from economy of her charms that she hid the ankle in such flowing sables, that she bound the black locks straightly under a little widow's-cap, seldom parted the fine lips above the treasured pearls beneath, disdained to distort the classic features, and graved no wrinkles on the smooth, rich skin with any lavish smiling. She went about the house, a self-contained, silent, unpleasant little vial of wrath, and there was ever between her and Eloise a tacit feud, waiting, perhaps, only for occasion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... are selected who step into the ring, and holding up the recently taken scalps, begin a low chant. The braves circle round, brandishing weapons of various kinds, whilst they distort their faces and bodies into the most horrid shapes. Simultaneously jumping into the air, they come down on both feet with a blow and thrust of their weapons, while it would appear as if they were indulging in ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... "I suppose that no lie becomes prevalent in the world for evil without some fault on the part of somebody. Even though it may not have been expressed in exact terms, some false person has intentionally spread it abroad. And then a man in his wrath, when he hears the lie will distort it, and twist it, and aggravate it,—to his own wrong and ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... work might have achieved a triumph of industry and skill, valuable as well as interesting to general readers and professional writers: but the political opinions, with the partial feelings they engender, continually distort the view and influence the estimate of this positive yet pleasant historian; while his almost wilful blunders, like the errors of Lord Mahon in regard to the American War, have been repeatedly demonstrated. Mackintosh philosophized about ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... latter is Mengino himself, and Sempronio, not recognizing the two, bids them sit down. He dictates the marriage contract, in which Grilletta is said to marry Sempronio by her own free will besides making over her whole fortune to him. This scene, in which the two false notaries distort every word of old Sempronio's, and put each his own name instead of the guardian's, is overwhelmingly comical. When the contract is written, Sempronio takes one copy, Grilletta the other and the whole fraud is discovered.—Volpino vanishes, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... vast horizons and solemn heights, of scholastic divinity. A dogmatic system is hard in hard hands, and shallow in shallow minds, and barren in dull ones, and unreal and empty to preoccupied and unsympathising ones; we dwarf and distort ideas that we do not like, and when we have put them in our own shapes and in our own connection, we call them unmeaning or impossible. Dogmas are but expedients, common to all great departments of human thought, and felt in all to be necessary, for representing what ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... forced by the needs of her nature to poach for diversion, cook for kindness, and clean, and fight, and pray, and lie, and love, in her brave struggle against the hard and stupid conditions of her life—conditions which were not only retarding the development, but threatening utterly to distort, if not actually to destroy, all that was best, most beautiful, and ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... assembled. In election returns and official utterances generally the Demijohn District bore a number like every district in the land, but the singular shape lent it by the last gerrymander had settled its popular title till another political overturn should distort ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... by the noble Lord at the head of the Government, or by the Secretary of State for India, letters or despatches of his from which passages have been cut out, and into which passages have been inserted, in which words have been so twisted as wholly to divert and distort his meaning, and to give to him a meaning, it may be, utterly the contrary to that which his original despatch intended to convey. I cannot conceive any anticipation more painful or more bitter, more likely to eat into the heart of any man engaged in the ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... I have an idea that the ultraviolet light—the actinic rays beyond the violet end of the spectrum, you know—will penetrate fog to a great distance, and in spite of its higher refractive power, which would distort and magnify an object, it is better ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... slumbering, so I did not speak. I stood for some minutes watching his youthful countenance. It was almost feminine in its beauty—so clear, so fair, so free from the effects of the evil passions which distort and disfigure so often the features of those of older years. His long light-brown hair had fallen off his clear broad forehead, and his lips were parted, and moved slightly, as if he were speaking to himself. A sickly gleam of light from the ship's lanthorn, which hung from a beam above, fell ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... intrudes upon intellectual operations only to vitiate them; its part is to fill up the gaps of memory by conjecture, to magnify and attenuate realities, and to confuse them with the products of pure invention. Most children distort everything by inexactitude of this kind, and it is only after a hard struggle that they ever attain to a scrupulous accuracy—that is, learn to master their imagination. Many men remain children, in this respect, the whole ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... was the objective existence of matter per se—matter minus perception. Now, matter per se, or minus perception, is a thing which no belief will countenance. Reid, however, could not admit this. Having appealed to the belief, he was compelled to distort its evidence in his own favour, and to force it, in spite of itself, to bear testimony to the fact which he wished it to establish. Thus Dr Reid's appeal not only came to naught, but being premature, it drove him, as has been said and shown, to falsify the primitive convictions of our nature. Scepticism ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... attention was shown me by all. Another officer told me that before I came the officers of the garrison assembled to consider whether or not they should recognize me. The unanimous vote was "yes." Was all this official? No. It is the white people, the disappointed tyrants of Georgia, who try to distort social courtesies in official ones. The "many white" people were some half-dozen newspaper reporters, whose articles doubtless were partly written when they came. "Old Si" in his spectacles was prominently ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... destruction Tango, tactum touch intangible, tact Tempus, temporis time temporize, contemporary Tendo, tensum stretch distend, intense Teneo, tentuin hold tenure, detention *Tendo try tentative, attempt Terminus end, boundary terminal, exterminate Terra earth territory, inter Torqueo, tortum twist distort, tortuous Traho, tractum draw extract, subtraction Tumeo, tumidum swell tumor, contumacy Turba tumult, crowd turbulent, disturb *Unus one unify, triune, onion *Urbs city urbane, suburban Vado, vasum go pervade, invasion Valeo, validum be strong prevail, invalid ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... or that vulgarian (men began to say) exercise (and boast of!) the power to keep the people ignorant upon matters vital to us all? To distort, to lie? The sheer necessity of getting certain truths told, which these powerful but hidden fellows refused to tell, was a force working at high potential and almost compelling the production of Free Papers side by side with the ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... the case, all medical men admit. Thus, the mind may often be used as a therapeutic agent, and clever physicians never fail to employ this kind of Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy is therefore no more the discoverer of the "malade imaginaire" than Moliere. When you' distort this truth and write books proclaiming the fact that all ills are of this sort, then you have Eddyism up to date. Mrs. Eddy gathers her skirts in her hand and leaps over the abyss between "some ills" and "all ills" with the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... topsy-turvy?—he, too, was listening to every word uttered by Wilibald Pirckheimer and Dr. Peutinger as if it were a revelation. The gray-haired leech and antiquary, Hartmann Schedel, whom Herr Wilibald,—spite of the gout which sometimes forced a slight grimace to distort his smooth-shaven, clever, almost over-plump face,—led by the arm like a careful son, resembled, with his long, silver locks, a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... whether these Indians had any amusements of music or dancing, prevailed with two of them to give a specimen of their dancing. One of them began to distort his features and turn up his eyes. He then proceeded to execute, in succession, a variety of strange gestures and attitudes, accompanied by hideous distortions of countenance. His body was generally in a stooping posture; ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... them no ambition but that of avarice," replied Almamen; "and as the plant will crook and distort its trunk, to raise its head through every obstacle to the sun, so the mind of man twists and perverts itself, if legitimate openings are denied it, to find its natural element in the gale of power, or the sunshine of esteem. These Hebrews were not traffickers and misers in ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... I answered slowly, "they do just wring and distort them and deform them for life. But I intend to see that Nell's has no such torturous operation performed on it if I can appeal to you ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... on each other as he drew it out. He put his arm about the dying man, who repulsed him, feebly, and dropped upon the turf. Raising himself upon his hands, he gazed at him for an instant, with scorn and hatred in his look; but, seeming to remember, even then, that this expression would distort his features after death, he tried to smile, and, faintly moving his right hand, as if to hide his bloody linen in his vest, fell back dead—the phantom ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... then said the priest, solemnly extending his hands. "When for some holy and sublime purpose man may need you, God will in his wisdom draw you from the bosom of the waves. Meanwhile, there you will not work woe, you will not distort justice, you will not ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... might as well call him "a marquis," or "a privy councillor"—that he is simply naming a rank or class, not a phrase for a good man. And this perennial temptation to a shameful admiration, must, and, I think, does, constantly come in and distort and poison our ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... mankind becomes softer, and consequently less bloodthirsty and less fitted for warfare. Logically it does seem to follow from his arguments. But man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic. I take this example because it is the most glaring instance of it. Only look about you: blood is being spilt in streams, and in the merriest way, as though it were champagne. Take the whole ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... of the truth, who, incapable of submitting their reason to Holy Scripture, distort at will the meaning of the Holy Scriptures, pretend that these words mean matter. For it is matter, they say, which from its nature is without form and invisible—being by the conditions of its existence without quality ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... how to give as to receive severe thrusts. As an illustration of the method of the discussion, we mention the title of a book written in favor of Cocceius: "Satan's Defense of himself, on being questioned why he had instigated some persons to distort and vilify the orthodox, wise, and edifying Writings of the Blessed Professor Cocceius, &c., &c." In this work Satan, on being questioned whom he fears most, replies that "no one has done more harm to the power of darkness ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... diaphragm vibrate towards and away from the magnet. The distances through which the diaphragm moves have been measured, and found not to exceed in some cases more than 1/10,000,000 of an inch! Its movements distort the shape of the "lines of force" (see p. 118) emanating from the magnet, and these, cutting through the turns of the coil, induce a current in the line circuit. As the diaphragm approaches the magnet a circuit is sent in one direction; as ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... "unwritten" "laws" of nature, | more on the model of Pasteur than of | Newton. | | Any treatment that tries to interpret | Bacon's Logic Machine in the light of what | classical physics called "science" will | distort Bacon's meaning and achievement. | | Note: if a scholar's interpretation of | Bacon's Science does not square with the | detailed description of the application of | Bacon's science in "Salomon's House" ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... that is the first, the greatest gift of love. We can not deny, however, that love is a mystery, inexplicable, profound. With all the chains, with all the pains, and I may even say, with all the disgust with which the world has surrounded it, buried as it is under a mountain of prejudices which distort and deprave it, in spite of all the ordure through which it has been dragged, love, eternal and fatal love, is none the less a celestial law as powerful and as incomprehensible as that which suspends the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the mere fact of being married, are always entitled to certain consideration, put—par exemple—into a bed-room, a little larger than a dog kennel, and accommodated with a looking-glass, that does not distort one's features like a paralytic stroke. But we single men suffer a plurality of evils and hard-ships, in entrusting ourselves to the casualties of rural hospitality. We are thrust up into any attic repository—exposed to the mercy of rats, and the incursions of swallows. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... caught a phrase or two," was the answer, spoken gravely but quite calmly. "I would not speak words of which I am ashamed; at the same time, it is well in these perilous days to use all caution, for an enemy can well distort and magnify the words he hears, till they sound like rank heresy. For myself I have no fear. I prize not my life greatly, though to die as a heretic, cut off from the Church of Christ, is a fearful ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... instance of many in reply to the injustice done to the memory of him who harmonised our poetical language. The attorneys clerks, and other self-educated genii, found it easier to distort themselves to the new models than to toil after the symmetry of him who had enchanted their fathers. They were besides smitten by being told that the new school were to revive the language of Queen Elizabeth, the true English; as every body in the reign of Queen Anne wrote no better than French, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... work, and to work efficaciously and morally, there is no need of either of these two conflicting certainties, either that of faith or that of reason, and how still less is there any need—this never under any circumstances—to shirk the problem of the immortality of the soul, or to distort it idealistically—that is to say, hypocritically. The reader will see how this uncertainty, with the suffering that accompanies it, and the fruitless struggle to escape from it, may be and is a ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... youth, and he is assured that he may never have any doubts about them, under penalty of thereby forfeiting eternal salvation; propositions, I mean, which affect the foundation of all our other knowledge and accordingly determine for ever, and, if they are false, distort for ever, the point of view from which our knowledge starts; and as, further, the corollaries of these propositions touch the entire system of our intellectual attainments at every point, the whole of human knowledge is thoroughly adulterated by them. Evidence ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... review his entire life within seconds. Psychologists know this is possible, because your subconscious mind contains a complete record of everything that has happened to you since birth. Therefore, in moments of extreme distress your subconscious has the ability to distort and ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... fit to shift and break. It is that distant years which did not take Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow, Have forced my swimming brain to undergo Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake Thy purity of likeness and distort Thy worthiest love to a worthless counterfeit: As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port, His guardian sea-god to commemorate, Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort And vibrant tail, within ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... was able to reflect upon its great truths with higher relish than I had ever before done. This, in me, did not give rise to the least tendency to moroseness or superstition, nothing being more apt than misdirected devotion to weaken and distort the mind. With the love of God and mankind, it inspired me also with a veneration for justice, and an abhorrence of wickedness, along with a desire of pardoning the wicked. Christianity, instead of militating against anything good, which I had derived from Philosophy, strengthened it ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... justify itself verbally. Metempsychosis, heaven and hell, Christ's suffering for every sinner, are notions by which charity has often been guided and warmed. Like myth everywhere, these notions express judgments which they do not originate, although they may strengthen or distort them in giving them expression. The same myths, in cruel hands, become goads to fanaticism. That natural sensitiveness in which charity consists has many degrees and many inequalities; the spirit bloweth where it listeth. Incidental circumstances determine its phases and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... original method of arriving at the truth, by intimate conversations with Mormon husbands and wives, as well as with the most intelligent of the "Gentiles." She discarded from her mind pre-conceptions and all prejudices which discolor and distort objects which should be rigidly investigated, and looked at the mass of facts before her in what Bacon calls "dry light." Cornelius Vanderbilt, the elder, was accustomed to account for the failures and ruin of the brilliant young brokers who tried to corner the stocks in which he had an ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... be judged thus? Is not a full indulgence of its natural tendencies essential to a people's greatness? Force the manners, dress, language, and constitution of Russia, or Italy, or Norway, or America, and you instantly stunt and distort the ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... think that people ought always to speak the truth, and to be especially careful not to distort ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... next, and spoke this speech: "Go bid Vasishtha'a sons appear, And all the saints be gathered here. And what they one and all reply When summoned by this mandate high, To me with faithful care report, Omit no word and none distort." ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... considerable swelling. The ridges become broader and are more distinct. An inked impression in such an instance may show a pattern larger in area than a print made from the same finger when the person was alive. Also, if the skin is on the finger but is loose, inking and rolling could distort the impression so that some of the ridge formations would seem to be in a different alignment from corresponding details in a print made during life. When decomposition commences, what are really solid ridges may be broken, giving rise to the possibility ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced." Can what Bacon says of the fallacies of the mind be also said of its proper cognitions? Does the mind, by its own action, in any way distort the appearance of the things presented to it; and if so, how far does the distortion extend, and in what manner is it to be rectified? To trace the course of this inquiry, from the day when Plato compared the objects perceived by the senses to the shadows thrown ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... find his Master." They are well aware also that only under such guidance can a man develop his latent powers in safety and with certainty, since they know how fatally easy it is for the untrained clairvoyant to deceive himself as to the meaning and value of what he sees, or even absolutely to distort his vision completely in bringing it down into ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... Else will that life go out. All earthly goods By the Great Spirit meant for common use Must so be held. Red shall not marry white, To lop our parent stems; and never more Must vile, habitual cups of deadliness Distort their noble natures, and unseat The purpose of their souls. They must return To ancient customs; live on game and maize; Clothe them with skins, and love both wife and child, Nor lift a hand ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... they created. They had no hostility to truth, as such; they only doubted whether it could be reached in the realm of psychological inquiries, and sought to apply knowledge to their own purposes, or rather to distort it in order to gain a case. They are not a class of men whom I admire, as I do the old sages they ridiculed, but they were not without their use in the development of philosophy. The Sophists also rendered a service to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... follow you in your estimate of Hubert Price. I don't see him either mentally or physically as you do. It seems to me that you distort the facts to make them fit in with your theory. He is tall and thin, but I do not think that his nature is hard and dry. I should, on the contrary, say that he was of a soft rather than a hard nature. The expression of his face is mild ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore |
