"Underrate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he had even yet encouraged himself to underrate the true importance of the feeling which Emily had awakened in him. There was an end to all self-deception now. After what Francine had said to him, this shallow and frivolous man no longer resisted the all-absorbing influence ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... business man like yourself. As for poor me I feel that I am a child in business matters. I can invent and perfect the invention, and demonstrate its uses and practicability, but 'further the deponent saith not.' Perhaps I underrate myself in this case, but that is not a usual fault ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... did not sufficiently discourage them. Ah, Florence, never underrate the pangs of hope crushed, of ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... advantage of an admission contained in a speech of Sir James Graham, that during the last twelve months pauperism had diminished, and trade and commerce had improved in the country because the price of wheat was low, Mr. Ward said that he was not going to underrate the benefit produced by an abundant harvest, but he believed that still greater benefit had been effected by the the liberal policy of government. The idea that there were any peculiar burdens on the land, was a fallacy peculiar to English gentlemen ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... must rouse to a sense of its noble duties and exalted powers. We underrate the Church. We are looking elsewhere for our highest ideals, instead of claiming from the Church that spiritual guidance and inspiration which should be its right to give. One of the things that is a monumental astonishment to ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... third, and a good third, to these two fine and subtle studies of modern English life. It is one of those poems which, because they seem simple and superficial, and can be galloped off the tongue in a racing jingle, we are apt to underrate or overlook. Yet it would be difficult to find a more vivid bit of genre painting than the three-panelled picture in this ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... "Don't underrate van Heerden. You have no conception of his nerve. There isn't a man of us here," he said, "whose insurance rate wouldn't go up to ninety per cent. if van Heerden decided to get him. I don't profess that I can help you to explain his strange conduct to-day. I can only outline the psychology ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... be the last to underrate the part which the self-assertion of the individual has played in the evolution of mankind. However, this subject requires, I believe, a much deeper treatment than the one it has hitherto received. In the history of mankind, individual self-assertion ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... their small way, just to make a beginning; but they do not lay much stress upon any thing they can accomplish with the use of their own method in this field. It serves, however, a very convenient purpose with them; neither do they at all underrate its intrinsic importance. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... than to send them back what they are supposed to send to us? Make the venture. Begin the fight in India, in foreign countries, in the departments. Macassar Oil has been thoroughly advertised; we must not underrate its power, it has been pushed everywhere, the ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... indifferently; "I care nothing about him." She rose and stood in front of him and leaned her elbows on his shoulders. "You may underrate yourself, if you like," she went on, "but I know that you are capable of accomplishing anything you wish, and of distinguishing yourself. I recall the conversations I have had with you in your serious ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... to a minority. The public was, indeed, inclined rather to overrate than to underrate the benefits which might be derived by England from the Indian trade. What was the most effectual mode of extending that trade was a question which excited general interest, and which was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth." The defects in Sprengel's work were, after all, not actual defects. The error lay simply in his interpretation of his carefully noted facts. As Hermann ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... more valuable than ever before in the history of the race. I do not agree with the pessimists who think that a democratic civilization is necessarily an enemy to fine writing for the public. Such critics underrate the challenge which these millions of minds to be reached and souls to be touched must possess for the courageous author; they forget that writers, like actors, are inspired by a crowded house. But the thought and the labor and the pain that lie behind good writing are doubly difficult ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... the sister, and it was quite reasonable, therefore, to believe that Talbot was a man not likely to be easily duped. The principals in this crime were evidently well aware of the trust reposed in the Assistant Under-Secretary, and they, again, would not underrate his intelligence. Hence there was a good cause for Talbot to accept the explanations, whatever they were, given him during the conclave in the dining-room; the effect of which, in Inspector Sharpe's words, had been ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... life and character as he knew them. He had no intention to deceive any one by a eulogy. He indulged in no illusions about Pierce, nor about any of his other friends. He was, in fact, an unsparing critic of men's characters, and he had a trait, not rare in New England,—a willingness to underrate men and minimize them. His fellow-citizens are not natural hero-worshipers; to them "a man is a man, for a' that," with an accent that levels down as well as up. Hawthorne had to the full this democratic, familiar, derogatory temper. Pierce was to him a politician, just as Cilley ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... some other contribution from each individual, besides the particular duties of his profession. And, if no such liberal intercourse be established, it is the common failing of human nature, to be engrossed with petty views and interests, to underrate the importance of all in which we are not concerned, and to carry our partial notions into cases where they are inapplicable, to act, in short, as so many unconnected units, displacing and ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... calfdom and whelpage that you smile at I would have you throb with. You underrate the firstlings of the heart, the rose and white blossoming, the call upon the senses and the readiness to respond and to fulfil, to give and to take, to be and make happy—the great pride and utter abandon which is young love. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... position from which we might magnetise Europe. But suppose the Turks, through Lesser Asia, conquer Lebanon, while we are overrunning the Babylonian and Assyrian monarchies? That will never do. I see your strength here with your own people and the Druses, and I do not underrate their qualities: but who is to garrison the north of Syria? Who is to keep the passes of the North? What population have you to depend on between Tripoli and Antioch, or between Aleppo and Adanah? Of all this I ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... I underrate my strength of mind and the influence of habit, which makes easy to us every path; but I will not ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... Olivia, the impression they had made on him grew stronger. He was too good a judge of men not to perceive that the budding dramatist had the intelligent imagination which makes for real shrewdness, and he was not disposed to underrate the value of the imagination in forming judgments of men and women. Probably Colonel Grey was a man of less intensity of emotion than Mr. Manley had declared, and Lady Loudwater less subtile and intelligent. But, ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... matter of modest scruples! You underrate yourself, Everett. You are the very man for a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... don't for a moment imagine I underrate the function of the preacher. There's nothing better than a good sermon,—one that puts new life into you. But what of a sermon that takes life out of you? instead of a spiritual fountain, a spiritual ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... people who live snugly at home, surrounded by springs, and wells, and streams, with cisterns, and reservoirs, and pipes, and hydrants, and jets, and fountains, playing at all times around them, are prone to underrate these sufferings; in fact, too prone, might I not say, to discredit everything that does not come under the sphere of their own observation? They will readily believe that their cat can open a door-latch, and their ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... in so bad a way as this, we may be sure. Raleigh, who did nothing by halves, was not accustomed to underrate his own misfortunes. His health was uncertain, indeed, and it was still worse in 1606; but his condition otherwise was not so deplorable as this letter would tend to prove. Poor Lady Raleigh soon recovered her equanimity, and the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir George Harvey, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... be so affected by any calamity as to neglect his duty. It is, indeed, friendly in you, Fannius, to tell me that better things are said of me than I feel worthy of or desire to have said; but it seems to me that you underrate Cato. For either there never was a wise man (and so I am inclined to think), or if there has been such a man, Cato deserves the name. To omit other things, how nobly did he bear his son's death! I remembered Paulus, [Footnote: Paulus Aemilius, who ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... concealed under Latin names, but still aliens, not citizens of his own State, aliens with whom he had little or nothing in common, who had no home in his patriotic feeling, no place in his religious experience.[593] As I said at the beginning of the last lecture, we must not underrate the religiousness of the Roman character, which was never entirely lost; but the secret of its comparative uselessness lies in this—that the natural desire to be right with the Power manifesting itself in the universe, and to know more of that Power, became weakened and ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... it, no doubt, justified itself in others. Who can say what that weekly gathering meant to women who otherwise would not move outside their little treadmill of household labour, what uplifting, if seemingly futile grasps at the great outside of life? Let no one underrate the Women's Club until the years ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... cunning, or Shylock of race-hatred; and he contrives to preserve all the characteristics of an ideal type amid surroundings of intensely prosaic realism, with which he himself, moreover, considered as an individual character in a specific story, is in complete, accord. If any one be disposed to underrate the creative and dramatic power to which this testifies, let him consider how it has commonly fared with those writers of prose fiction who have attempted to personify a virtue in a man. Take the work of another famous English humourist ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... laughing—"if I see it, thanks must be Wholly to your Lordship's candor. Not that—in a common case— When a bully caught at cheating thrusts a pistol in one's face, I should underrate, believe me, such a trial to the nerve! 'Tis no joke, at one-and-twenty, for a youth to stand nor swerve. Fear I naturally look for—unless, of all men alive, I am forced to make exception when I come to Robert Clive. Since at Arcot, Plassy, elsewhere, he and death—the whole world knows— ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... "We mustn't underrate Chambers, however," he declared. "The man made one mistake. He underrated us. We can't repeat his mistake. He is dangerous all the time. He will stop at nothing. ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... prophetic. The political philosopher may trace in their errors, trials, and successes, the lessons afforded by experience for the instruction of nations. The rapid advance of modern colonisation tends to underrate the first efforts of our predecessors. The first colonial boat-builder founded a great commercial navy; the first shepherd held in his slender flock ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... a fashion she did not wholly comprehend. "My dear Lady Carfax! You underrate friendship when you say a thing like that. Sit down, won't you? And let me tell you what ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... old man with a persuasive voice, "mind that such imprudence would save our enemies, but would not save your father. Pray consider and answer me. Do you really think that your arguments would be stronger than Sarah Brandon's? You cannot so far underrate the diabolical cunning of your enemy. Why, she has no doubt taken all possible measures to keep your father's faith in her unshaken, and to let him die as he has lived, completely deceived by her, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... his proper station in society, to make him wise and happy, an honest man, a virtuous citizen, and a good patriot, by furnishing him with a comfortable school-house, suitable class-books, competent teachers, and, if he is poor, paying his quarter bills, while they greatly underrate, if they do not entirely overlook, that high moral training, without which knowledge is the power of doing evil rather than good. It may possibly nurture up a race of intellectual giants, but, like the sons of Anak, they ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... not for one who has rowed fifty races with pleasure to underrate, far less to disparage, mere rowing; but still we maintain that for the encouragement of pure manliness, and the varied capacities useful in a sailor's life, one punt chase is far better than ten of ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... then, let's see, let's see,' I reached it out to him. He stretched down over the banisters, and took it; holding out his palm hollowed, as if 'twas some little paltry stone that might otherwise fall and be lost. It nettled me to have him thus underrate our treasure, even though he had never seen it, and so I plumped it down into his hand as if it were as big as a pumpkin. Now the hall was a dim place, being lit only by a half-circle of glass over the door, and so I could not see very well; yet in reaching down he brought his ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... was to Lady Susan Condit that they owed this inestimable benefit; an advantage ranking in Miss Pinsent's opinion above even the lawn tennis courts and the resident chaplain. It was the fact of Lady Susan's annual visit that made the hotel what it was. Miss Pinsent was certainly the last to underrate such a privilege:—"It's so important, my dear, forming as we do a little family, that there should be some one to give the tone; and no one could do it better than Lady Susan—an earl's daughter and a person of such determination. Dear Mrs. Ainger ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... hour of emergency finds a hero calm and strong, and strong because calm and clear-sighted; he sees what can be done, and does it. This is often a thing of great simplicity, so that we marvel others did not see it. Now it has been done, and proved successful, many underrate its value, thinking that they also would have done precisely the same thing. The world is more just. It refuses to men unassailed by the difficulties of a situation the glory they have not earned. The world knows how easy most things appear when they ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... Pasha had also received reports that led him to underrate the strength of the Christian armada, and so induced him to put out to sea in search of it. Twice he had reconnoitred the allied fleet. Before Don Juan arrived at Messina, Ulugh Ali had sent one of his corsairs, Kara Khodja, to cruise ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... genius; although he possessed, in an eminent degree, the power of appropriating and embellishing the works of others, that his style was graceful, his allusions happy, and his wit keen and spontaneous. If any one assert that this is to underrate Le Sage, and that he is entitled to the credit of an inventor, let him cite any single work written by Le Sage, except Gil Blas, in proof of his assertion. Of course Gil Blas is out of the question. Nothing could be more circular than an argument that Le Sage, because he possessed an inventive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... moments when we feel that but little artistic pleasure is to be gained from the study of the modern realistic school. Its works are powerful but they are painful, and after a time we tire of their harshness, their violence and their crudity. They exaggerate the importance of facts and underrate the importance of fiction. Such, at any rate, is the mood—and what is criticism itself but a mood?—produced in us by a perusal of Mr. Coleridge's Demetrius. It is the story of a young lad of unknown parentage who is brought up in the household of ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... hardly be supposed that I underrate the horrors of war. I have imagination enough and sympathy enough to follow almost as if I beheld it with my eyes, the great tragedy which has been unfolded in South Africa. The spirit of Jingoism is an epidemic of which I await the passing away more earnestly than we do that of any other plague. ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... the popular heart—he was very close to the common people. He had slept on the ground with his soldiers, fared at table with the swineherd's family, tilled the soil with the farmer folk. His heart went out to humanity. He did not overrate the average mind, nor did he underrate it. He had faith in mankind, and knew that at the last power was with the people. He did not say, "Vox populi, vox Dei," but he thought it. Therefore he set himself to educating the plain people. He prophesied a day when all grown men would be able to read and write, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... her courage. There are the lesser courages and the greater. There are many who dare face danger and undertake hard tasks, and face ridicule and failure. It is a fine and a true courage and I do not underrate it. Helen Trounstine had it and had it to the full. She tackled hard tasks; she faced some men whose interests she opposed. She fought out her fights against all comers, and never flinched. She would go into the court or into the saloon ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... must be careful not to underrate the real value of the Peruvian system; nor to suppose that the quipus were as awkward an instrument, in the hand of a practised native, as they would be in ours. We know the effect of habit in all mechanical operations, and the Spaniards ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... great fault of our age to underrate parental dignity. In the easy-going world, preference is given to profligate celibacy over honorable wedlock; marriage itself is degraded to the level of a purely natural contract, its bond has lost its character of indissolubility and its obligations are ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... been selected for publication in these volumes possess a value, as examples of the art of public speaking, which no person will be likely to underrate. Those who may differ from Mr. Bright's theory of the public good will have no difficulty in acknowledging the clearness of his diction, the skill with which he arranges his arguments, the vigour of his style, the persuasiveness of ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... Do you underrate the good sense of yours, if, in far more than half the things appertaining to daily life, the wisest men say, 'Better leave them to the women'? But you're forgetting the figure, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are mistaken," he added after a moment's reflection. "You don't realize how little I've talked to the child about books—or anything else, for that matter. It does chance that her taste is mine in very many cases; but you underrate our protege when you speak of her as ignorant and uncultured. She knows a good deal more about some things than either of us. It is her fund of nature lore that makes Thoreau and White of Selborne appeal to her. Now I ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... been ennobled for nearly three centuries; they bore a knightly name before their elevation. They have mainly and materially assisted in making England what it is. They have shed their blood in many battles; I have had two ancestors killed in the command of our fleets. You will not underrate such services, even if you do not appreciate their conduct as statesmen, though that has often been laborious, and sometimes distinguished. The finest trees in England were planted by my family; they raised several of your most beautiful churches; they have built bridges, made roads, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... custodian, with Bentley, of Hal Willett's unconscious confidences—compelled to see a young girl's rapturous love lavished upon a man so saturated with the incense of feminine idolatry as to be more than apt to underrate the priceless boon of a pure ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... no wish to deny or underrate the additions made to the evil by the intervention of causes, whose operation admits of being traced in some measure distinctly from the effect of this grand one. They may be traced in an operation which is distinguishable; ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... outrival his barbarian brother. He succeeds, not simply because of the superior address and sagacity which education gives him, though that, no doubt, has much to do with it; not altogether because his habits of life are better, though we would not underrate their value; but equally because the culture of the brain gives a finer life to every red drop in his arteries, and greater hardihood to every fibre which is woven into his flesh. If it is not so, how do you explain the fact that our colored soldier, fighting in his native climate, with the same ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... condition unsettled her resolution. Tales enough of his bloodthirstiness, his merciless efficiency, his ever-ready craft and consummate duplicity were familiar to her—most of them made so within the last three days—for no one in her circle any longer professed to underrate the ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made our England ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... made up, as it too generally is, of shreds and patches—bits of gold and bits of tinsel—things written in a hurry to be read in a hurry, and never thought of afterward—suggestive rather than reflective, at the best; and we must plead guilty to a too great proneness to underrate what our fathers ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... at the ford, has corrupted all who came to her; she has been the paralysis of Islam. But the Islam of the Turk is a different thing from the Islam of the Arab. That was one of the great progressive impulses in the world of men. It is our custom to underrate the Arab's contribution to civilisation quite absurdly in comparison with our debt to the Hebrew and Greek. It is to the initiatives of Islamic culture, for example, that we owe our numerals, the bulk of modern mathematics, and the science of chemistry. ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... be supposed that I would underrate the possibility of a deeper unity, but if we would find it we must carry our analysis further back. The progress of science is in truth not a cause but a result, not an ultimate fact but the symptom of a state of mind. It springs from that which was brought into Europe consciously at the ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... sake of an inferior class of readers, though they may sometimes decline a good thing because for one reason or another they believe it would not be liked. Still, even this does not often happen; they would rather chance the good thing they doubted of than underrate their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... your Western friends, I think, underrate this speech. It has produced a greater effect here than any other single speech. It is the real platform in the Eastern States, and must carry the conservative element in New York, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... agent could reach it. I fitted out a small armed brig to intercept it, but again I was unfortunate. Like all great organizers I was, however, prepared for failure, and had a series of alternatives prepared, one or the other of which must succeed. You must not underrate the difficulties of my undertaking, or imagine that a mere commonplace assassination would meet the case. We must destroy not only Monsieur Caratal, but Monsieur Caratal's documents, and Monsieur ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... struggle, fired at in front, sniped at from behind—and no one who saw what he had to do after he came home from Europe in meeting the great new problems which grew out of the war—will for a moment belittle the immensity of his task, or underrate his extraordinary ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... the main paragraph above, that it is a common error of our prosodists, to underrate, by one foot, the measure of all trochaic lines, when they terminate with single rhyme; an error into which they are led by an other as gross, that of taking for hypermeter, or mere surplus, the whole rhyme itself, the sound or syllable ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' We who live in a great commercial community and know how solid comfort and hope and gladness are all contingent, in millions of humble homes, upon the manufacturing industry of these districts, shall never be likely to underrate the enormous expansion in national industry, and the consequent enormous increase in national wealth, which belongs to this last half century. I ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... is a command, and Elizabeth would have felt bound to obey this summons, but she was sick when it came. At least she was not well, and she was not much disposed to underrate her sickness for the sake of being able to travel on this occasion. The officers of her household made out a formal certificate to the effect that Elizabeth was not able ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... unexplained veering of the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day's sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew; but no doctoring of the social log-book ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... lost your little ones," Mrs. Hare resumed. "That is grief—great grief; I would not underrate it; but, believe me, it is as nothing compared to the awful fate, should it ever fall upon you, of finding your children grow up and become that which makes you wish they had died in their infancy. There are times when I am tempted to regret that all my treasures are not in that other world; ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of maturity. The mind in its reaches toward strength and completeness creates a heart-sympathy—which in its turn craves fulness. There is a vanity too about the first steps of manly education, which is disposed to underrate the innocence and unripened judgment of the other sex. Men see the mistake as they grow older; for the judgment of a woman, in all matters of the affections, ripens by ten years faster ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... sailed from Peiraeus, he urged the necessity of taking prompt measures for placing the city in a thorough state of defence. He had no fear, he said, of the ultimate triumph of Syracuse in the approaching struggle: only let them be on their guard, and not underrate the power of the enemy whom they would have to face. The words of Hermocrates, who enjoyed a high reputation for valour, patriotism, and sagacity, were not without their effect, and it was resolved that the generals should at once set about organizing the military resources of Syracuse, and providing ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... fall into the error of writers who underrate their readers' curiosity and intelligence, and so deluge them with comments and explanations, we will now simply relate what Wylie did, leaving you to glean his motives as ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... "I think you underrate us all," said Aneta. Then she came close to Maggie and took one of her hands. "I want to tell you ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... but I say, Maurice, you must not underrate Lilias. She has gone through a good deal with Dolores, and I believe she has been the making of her. You've had to leave the poor child a good deal to herself and Fraulein, and, as you see by this affair, she had some ways ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... experiments, a discontented underrating of past traditions, than a meek acquiescence in their supremacy. What is our present condition? We have few poets of the first rank, few essayists or reflective writers, few dramatists, few biographers. I do not at all wish to underrate the immense vitality of our imaginative faculties, which shows itself in our vast output of fiction; but even here we have few masters, and our critics know and care little for style; they are entirely preoccupied with plot and incident and situation. What we lack is true originality, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "how gladly would I sacrifice myself to attack this wrong or that iniquity." We need offer no opinion about the moral quality of such a position; enough to say that it is idle to ignore, or even to underrate, the ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... school-masters, and all the teaching, and all the books, the ignorance of the unscientific world is enormous; they are ignorant both ways—they underrate the scientific people and they overrate them. There is, on the one hand, the Irish woman who is disappointed because you cannot tell fortunes, and, on the other hand, the cultivated woman who supposes that ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... literary ideas, and do the best I can, very gladly," said Van Berg. "But you greatly underrate yourself and overrate my ability. I am still but on the edge of this wilderness of knowledge myself, and in crossing ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... on thus for rather more than a year, when Richard Calmady married. Julius was perhaps inclined, beforehand, to underrate the importance of that event. He was singularly innocent, so far, of the whole question of woman. He had no sisters. At Oxford he had lived exclusively among men, while the Tractarian Movement had offered a sufficient outlet to all his emotion. The severe and exquisite verses of the "Lyra ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... fortunate enough to possess, makes us forget the limitations of these documents. We tend thus to exaggerate that which must be only incidental, as, for example, the Jewish element, in the teaching of Jesus. We thus underrate phases of Jesus' teaching which, no doubt, a man like Paul would have apprehended better than did the evangelists themselves. In truth, in Harnack's own delineation of the teaching of Jesus, those elements of it which found their way to expression in Paul, or again in the fourth Gospel, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... knowing not only that the earth is round, but knowing exactly where it is flat. Christian doctrine detected the oddities of life. It not only discovered the law, but it foresaw the exceptions. Those underrate Christianity who say that it discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy. In fact every one did. But to discover a plan for being merciful and also severe— THAT was to anticipate a strange need of human nature. For ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... earth I should be the last to underrate the advantages of wealth,—I who have been reared in the gutter, which is Poverty's cradle. Yet I would fain Charlotte's fortune had come to her in any other fashion than as the result of my work in the character of ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the temporary wretchedness of a whole community,—I do not deny to be in some sort natural; because, when people see a political object which they ardently desire but in one point of view, they are apt extremely to palliate or underrate the evils which may arise in obtaining it. This is no reflection on the humanity of those persons. Their good-nature I am the last man in the world to dispute. It only shows that they are not sufficiently informed or sufficiently ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... uttering the monstrous proposition, which was enough to shake the Latin Quarter to the dust, with entire simplicity. "It's all experience, besides," he continued; "and it seems to me there's a tendency to underrate experience, both as net profit and investment. Never mind. That's done with. But it took courage for you to say what you did, and I'll never forget it. Here's my hand, Mr. Dodd. I'm not your equal in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by no means intended to underrate technical proficiency. No one can be a satisfactory exponent of music whose technique is deficient, however profound may be his musicianly understanding and feeling. At the same time, with every tone, every measure, mechanically correct, a performance may fail to move the listener, ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... are drunkards. Doubtless there are. Then I stand here as a woman to entreat, to beseech, to pray against this sin. For the sake of these drunken woman, I ask the ballot to drag them back from the rum-shops and shut their doors [applause]. God forbid that I should underrate the power of love; that I should discard tenderness. Let us have entreaty, let us have prayers, and let us have the ballot, to eradicate this evil. Mr. Collier says he is full of sympathy, and intimates that women should stand here and elevate love above law. So ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... not underrate the magnitude of the problem presented to the people of America by the immense volume of immigration from alien races, and chiefly from the most undesirable strata in those races, of the last few years. On the other hand, I have no shadow of doubt of the ability of the people to cope with the problem ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... archaeology is only really delightful when transfused into some form of art. I have no desire to underrate the services of laborious scholars, but I feel that the use Keats made of Lempriere's Dictionary is of far more value to us than Professor Max Muller's treatment of the same mythology as a disease of ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... Strait-jacket. One must not underrate the magnificence of this long-headed idea, one must not underestimate its giant possibilities in the matter of trooping the Church solidly together and keeping it so. It squelches independent inquiry, and makes such a thing impossible, profane, criminal, it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sleep. For every man there must be certain stated intervals of repose—of recreation in the original sense of the word. My views on the worthlessness of classical education are perhaps pretty well known to you, but I don't underrate the great service that my friend Professor Ezra K. Higgins has rendered by his discovery[5] that the word recreation originally signified a re-creating—i.e.,[6] a time for the nerve-tissues to renew themselves in. The problem before us is how to secure for the human units in the Dawn—these ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... slipping past Rowley's blockade, much to that enterprising officer's annoyance. The situation was temporarily relieved, but the assistance thus afforded was no better than a plaster on a large wound. Here again we find Flinders accurately and fully informed: Decaen did not underrate his "dangerous" potentialities. "The ordinary sources of revenue and emolument were nearly dried up, and to have recourse to the merchants for a loan was impossible, the former bills upon the French treasury, drawn it was said for three millions ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... of the war, and before the distinction was thus partially effaced, the comparison involved very different elements. In our general military inexperience, the majority were not disposed to underrate the value of specific professional training. Education holds in this country much of the prestige held by hereditary rank in Europe, modified only by the condition that the possessor shall take no undue airs upon himself. Even then the penalty consists ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... not be thought to underrate the services which, by sound precept and invaluable example, Mr. Lang has rendered to all of us who use the English tongue. Conservatism and liberalism are as inevitable, nay, indispensable, in the world of words ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... his services can avowedly be best utilized. This statement is true of Chamberlain. He was, as the Times put it, "the Carnot of the moment, the organizer of Liberal victory." [Footnote: Neither Sir Charles Dilke nor Mr. Chamberlain would, however, have desired to underrate the great share in organizing the victory of Mr. Adam, the principal Liberal Whip in the House of Commons, whose services were generally considered to have been very insufficiently recognized by Mr. Gladstone.] Moreover, the confidence and friendship which led to constant ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... man for their gallantry and fidelity. Now for the first time (and that he could have remained ignorant of it so long speaks for the passionate unanimity with which the Gauls had risen) he learnt from prisoners the fate of Sabinus. He did not underrate the greatness of the catastrophe. The soldiers in the army he treated always as friends and comrades in arms, and the loss of so many of them was as personally grievous to him as the effects of it might be politically mischievous. He made it the subject of a second ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... their nearly useless batteries to be dismembered and blown to pieces by the incessant fire of the enemy's long guns. Nor, by thus continuing to fight, did this American frigate, one iota, promote the true interests of her country. I seek not to underrate any reputation which the American Captain may have gained by this battle. He was a brave man; that no sailor will deny. But the whole world is made up of brave men. Yet I would not be at all understood as impugning his special good name. Nevertheless, it is not to be doubted, that if there ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... others, of which accounts have already been published, will be found mentioned in the Irish Annals. The inscriptions, however, fully identify the MS. and the box, and show that antiquaries, from the execution of the workmanship and figures on these interesting reliques, often underrate their antiquity—a fault which the world are little inclined to give them credit for, and which they fall into from an anxiety to err on what they consider the side which is least likely to produce the smile of contempt or the sneer of incredulity, forgetting that it is the sole business ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... of integrity, morality, and honour. The Queen is afraid that the diplomatic intrigues and counter intrigues at Madrid have made us lose daily more of that advantageous position without any compensation on the other side. The Queen entreats Lord John Russell not to underrate the importance of keeping our foreign policy beyond reproach. Public opinion is recognised as a ruling power in our domestic affairs; it is not of less importance in the society of Europe with reference to the conduct of an individual ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... Tyrconnell, broken down with physical suffering and mental anxiety, feebly concurred in his opinion. They accordingly departed for Galway, leaving the city to its fate, and, happily for the national reputation, to bolder counsels than their own. De Boisseleau did not underrate the character of the Irish levies, who had retreated before twice their numbers at the Boyne; he declared himself willing to remain, and, sustained by Sarsfield, he was chosen as commandant. More than ten thousand foot had gathered ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... as is believed, presented with entire fairness a summary of the more important aspects in which the constitutional objections mentioned have been urged. I would not underrate by a hair's breadth the authority of these great names, the weight of these continuous reassertions of principle, the sanction even of the precedent and general practice through a century. And yet I venture to think that no candid and competent ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... John's message indicated that the Baptist had no full understanding of what the spiritual kingdom of God comprized. After the envoys had departed, Jesus addressed Himself to the people who had witnessed the interview. He would not have them underrate the importance of the Baptist's service.[572] He reminded them of the time of John's popularity, when some of those then present, and multitudes of others, had gone into the wilderness to hear the prophet's stern admonition; and they had found him to be ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Red Jacket's mind, was self esteem, which led him to be quite tenacious of his own opinion. He probably did not underrate his own ability. He felt conscious of possessing talents, which would enable him to act with dignity and propriety, in any emergency calling for their exercise. He never appeared to be intimidated or embarrassed at the thought of meeting with great men, but seemed always to be at home ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... whom Caesar came earliest in collision, each as the representative of his party on vital points of difference. Our historian's estimate of the life, labors, purposes, and character of Pompeius is singularly correct, when we consider the temptation that he has to underrate the man with whom Caesar has stood in direct opposition for nineteen centuries. There are few more emphatic passages in the historical literature of our language than the account which is given in Vol. II. ch. 18, of the last days ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... "You underrate yourself, young man," he said drily, "or your college professors have wandered from the truth. Still, your surprise is natural, I admit. I will explain a little further. Our choice is more limited than you might think. At least fifty names were proposed, all of them of ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Flammock, "and underrate his value. Sound judgment is like to the graduated measuring-wand, which, though usually applied only to coarser cloths, will give with equal truth the dimensions of Indian silk, or of cloth ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... classes of literature than fiction, is that in the Scotch Universities there are what we have not in England—well-attended chairs of literature, systematically and methodically studied. Do not let it be supposed that I at all underrate the value of fiction. On the contrary, when a man has done a hard day's work, what can he do better than fall to and read the novels of Walter Scott, or the Brontes, or Mrs. Gaskell, or some of our living writers. I am rather ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... this hypothesis of identity in race has given rise to a tendency to underrate the development of the ancient people of Mexico and Central America, and to lower the estimate of their attainments sufficiently to bring them within reach of close relationship to the wild Indians. The difficulty being reduced in this way, there follows an attempt ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... visibly stumbled over the right of impressment. Even while claiming that its abandonment would have been "vitally dangerous if not fatal" to England's security, he added that he "would be the last man in the world to underrate the inconvenience which the Americans sustained in consequence of our assertion of the right of search." The embarrassment became still plainer when he narrowed the question to one of statistics, and showed that the whole contest ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... be trifled with, like a Mingo's conscience. No, no; off hands, or we shall see which can make the stoutest battle; you and your men of the 55th, or the Sarpent here, and Killdeer, with Jasper and his crew. You overrate your force, Lieutenant Muir, as much as you underrate Eau-douce's truth." ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... the worthiest design. But no worthy design can need a false apology; and it is worse than idle to prevaricate. That is but a spurious modesty, which prompts a man to disclaim in one way what he assumes in an other—or to underrate the duties of his office, that he may boast of having "done all that could reasonably be expected." Whoever professes to have improved the science of English grammar, must claim to know more of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... they can deal with our present system in this piecemeal way very much underrate the strength of the tremendous organization under which we live, and which appoints to each of us his place, and if we do not chance to fit it, grinds us down till we do. Nothing but a tremendous force can deal with this force; it will not suffer itself ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... in many minds an impression that he is more a thinker than a poet: that his poems not only are each inspired by some leading idea, but have grown up in subservience to it; and those who hold this view both do him injustice as a poet, and underrate, however unconsciously, the intellectual value of what his work conveys. For in a poet's imagination, the thought and the thing—the idea and its image—grow up at the same time; each being a different aspect of the other.[86] ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... is danger that the Southern whites will, as a rule, misinterpret the meaning of the exodus. Many are inclined to underrate its importance, and those who appreciate its significance are apt to look for temporary and superficial remedies. The vague promises made at the Vicksburg convention, which was controlled by the whites, and called to consider the emigration movement, have had no influence with the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an individual's verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the way for its infliction upon the world: I said that the great public was the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort, and therefore it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... supposed, however, because I speak of these differences as not fundamental, that I wish to underrate their value. They are important enough in their way, the structure of the foot being in strict correlation with that of the rest of the organism in each case. Nor can it be doubted that the greater ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... connection with Bill 709. I had got over that. And when I entered the court room (the tribunal having graciously granted a rehearing on the ground that it had committed an error in the law!) my feelings were of lively curiosity and zest. I had no disposition to underrate his abilities, but I was fortified by the consciousness of a series of triumphs behind me, by a sense of association with prevailing forces against which he was helpless. I could afford to take a superior attitude in regard to one who was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... social habits of man are of paramount importance to him, we must not underrate the importance of his bodily structure, to which subject the remainder of this chapter will be devoted; the development of the intellectual and social or moral faculties being discussed ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... probable that these as much underrate the vigor and effect of the attack, as Sickles may overstate it. It is not impossible that some portion of the Eleventh Corps position was actually reached by these columns. The road down which the movement was made strikes the plank road but a short distance east of the position ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... was (Jemima was not the person to underrate her abilities), somehow it put new heart into Kate, made her realize that she had at hand a staff to lean upon, a counselor who, despite her youth, possessed a certain wisdom that her mother ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... underestimation; depreciation &c (detraction) 934; pessimism, pessimist; undervaluing &c v.; modesty &c 881. V. underrate, underestimate, undervalue, underreckon^; depreciate; disparage &c (detract) 934; not do justice to; misprize, disprize; ridicule &c 856; slight &c (despise) 930; neglect &c 460; slur over. make light of, make little of, make nothing of, make no account of; belittle; minimize, think nothing of; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... need not exaggerate its importance, unless the British Empire were involved in serious complications elsewhere which might encourage the seditious elements in India to break out into open rebellion. We are too often, in fact, inclined to underrate the strength of the foundations upon which our rule rests. For it alone lends—and can within any measurable time lend—substantial reality to the mere geographical expression which India is. A few Indians may dream of a united India under Indian rule, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... echoed, turning to Endymion, with a twinkle of malice in his eye. "But when Mr. Westcote releases us, it will be en masse; and then, believe me, I shall come with an army, since I underrate neither the strength of the fortress nor ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of state, whence go abroad the statutes he has framed, shall read again his earlier works, now rescued from the past to teach the young. Reporters on his words shall hang, from every window shall his sapient visage smile, and even the London Times shall think it worth the while to underrate him. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... fellow," interposed George quickly, "you underrate Professor Keredec's shrewdness. His plans are not so simple as you think. He knows that my cousin Louise never obtained a ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... this was an important election. Yes, the effect upon his Majesty's Government and upon the Liberal Party for good or ill from this election cannot fail to be far-reaching. There are strong forces against us. Do not underrate the growing strength of the Tory reaction now in progress in many of the constituencies in England. I say it earnestly to those who are members of the Labour Party here to-day—do not underrate the storm which is gathering over your heads as well as ours. I am not afraid of the forces which ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... me. Do not think I am decrying a classical education; and, as the daughter of a great mathematician, it is not likely that I should underrate mathematics as a mental discipline. I am only urging that they should be subordinated to higher ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... old partisan and religious sectarian parasites he will find men who will obey him with the fanatical alacrity of those who followed Peter the Hermit in the first Crusade. We repeat again, let us not underrate Brownlow." ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... the government of Rome. The veteran leader professed a great contempt for his young adversary, "I should whip the boy," he said, "if I were not afraid of the old woman" (meaning Pompey's colleague). But he took good care not to underrate him in practice, and put forth all his skill in dealing with him. Pompey's first campaign against him was disastrous; the successes of the second were checkered by some serious defeats. For five years the struggle continued, and seemed little likely to come to an end, when Sertorius was assassinated ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... yet determined what to do. Should she go on at once to San Francisco, or telegraph to her father and await him at San Jose? In either case a new fear of the precipitancy of her action and the inadequacy of her reasons had sprung up in her mind. Would her father understand her? Would he underrate the cause and be mortified at the insult she had given the family of his old friend, or, more dreadful still, would he exaggerate her wrongs and seek a personal quarrel with the major. He was a man of quick temper, and had the Western ideas of redress. Perhaps even now she ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... accorded with his intellectual impotence and with the nullity of his legislative conceptions." Once he has rattled his revolutionary pedantry off, he no longer knows what to say.—As to financial matters and military art, he knows nothing and risks nothing, except to underrate or calumniate Carnot and Cambon who did know and who took risks.[3184]—In relation to a foreign policy his speech on the state of Europe is the amplification of a schoolboy; on exposing the plans of the English minister he reaches the pinnacle of chimerical nonsense;[3185] eliminate the rhetorical ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... wise be accomplished—it was this which caused Him so sharply and suddenly to rebuke Peter. Peter's words penetrated to what was lurking near at hand as His normal temptation. We may very readily underrate the trial and temptation of Christ, and thus have only a formal, not a real, esteem for His manhood. We always underrate it when we do not fully apprehend His human nature, and believe that He was tempted in all points as we are. But, on the other hand, we underrate ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... well-proportioned, and even almost voluptuous figure, inspired the idea of strength of mind, rather than of body. There was a simplicity sometimes indeed in her manner, which bordered on infantine ingenuousness, that led people of common discernment to underrate her talents, and smile at the flights of her imagination. But those who could not comprehend the delicacy of her sentiments, were attached by her unfailing sympathy, so that she was very generally beloved by ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... wish to underrate the great service you have rendered me," she said coldly, "and I shall always be your debtor for it; but I can not help asking how you came to be standing under the cedars at ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... circumstances of the case. It does not explain why some of the very passages in Corneille and Racine, which to us appear dull and prosaic, are to the Frenchman's apprehension instinct with poetic fervour. It does not explain the undoubted fact that we, who speak English, are prone to underrate French poetry, while we are equally disposed to render to German poetry even more than its due share of merit. The reason is to be sought in the verbal associations established in our minds by the peculiar composition of the English language. Our vocabulary is chiefly made ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... by any chance they have found out that we are crossing with important papers, agreements, and chemicals, they will be on the lookout for us and we will have a good chase if we manage to escape. I don't say this to scare you boys; but you are here, and I don't want you to underrate the present danger. I will be good and glad to get across myself. Not a word of this ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine |
