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Misleading   Listen
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Misleading  adj.  Leading astray; delusive.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Misleading" Quotes from Famous Books



... ghastly grin of filed teeth, and that the solution of all problems is found in the barrel of a revolver or on the point of an assegai. And yet it is not so. But the erring magistrate may plead in excuse the misleading nature of ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... leke, NA% of GNP (1993); note - conversion of defense expenditures into US dollars using the current exchange rate could produce misleading results ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... remarks Walter Lippmann, "whether the use of God's name is not misleading when it is applied by modernists to ideas so remote from the God men have worshipped. Plainly the modernist churchman does not believe in the God of Genesis who walked in the garden in the cool of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... told that "gastronomically and chemically considered the flesh of the mushroom has been proven to be almost identical with meat, and possesses the same nourishing properties." We frequently hear them referred to as "vegetable beefsteak," "manna of the poor," and other equally extravagant and misleading terms. On the other hand, we see vast quantities of the most delicious food rotting in the fields and woods because they are regarded by the vast majority of the people as "toadstools" and as such ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... Young Officers, Philadelphia, 1778. This title is misleading, the book being a collection of military orders. General Orders in Wolfe's Army (Quebec Historical Society). This collection is much more full than the foregoing, so far as concerns the campaign of 1759. Letters of Wolfe (in Wright's Wolfe), ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... Flossie rose to her feet would be a misleading description of her method. She held on to the edge of a bookshelf by the tips of her fingers and drew herself up from the floor, slowly, as it were by some mysterious unfolding process, not ungraceful. She turned on him the wide ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... world, or, rather, one of the saints who matter. Yet never was there a less saintly saint. He was a man you could talk to rationally on any subject. I, who really knew him, would not have called him a man of the world, because it would have been in essence misleading; but I should have quite understood someone else saying it and should have known exactly what he meant. Not only had he not the temper of the zealot or the fanatic, but he was a kindly man, with no fierceness about him. Yet somehow, and this was the miracle, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... sent to England to protest against the Annexation, but Lord Carnarvon told them that he would only be misleading them if he held out any hope of restitution. Gladstone afterwards endorsed this by saying that he could not advise the Queen to withdraw her Sovereignty from ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz

... degree by the traditions of classical scholarship. The historical courses given by most classical teachers are based upon the translation and discussion of the works of certain ancient authors, whose accounts are not only false and misleading in many respects, but characteristically omit those factors in the ancient life which are the most significant and interesting to the modern world. Such courses begin by implanting false impressions which no amount of explanation can eradicate. ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... tendencies are represented by holes in his cranium, and yet I cannot be sure that he will not be as disagreeable as if phrenology had not been invented. I feel sometimes that phrenology is the refuge of mediocrity. Its charts are almost as misleading concerning character as photographs. And photography may be described as the art which enables commonplace mediocrity to look like genius. The heavy-jowled man with shallow cerebrum has only to incline his head so that the lying instrument can select ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... on mythology speak habitually of the religion of the Greeks. In thus speaking, they are really using a misleading expression, and should speak rather of religions; each race and class of Greeks—the Dorians, the people of the coast, the fishers—having had a religion of its own, conceived of the objects that came nearest to it and were most in its thoughts, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... looks very scientific and orderly, but is really misleading and badly named. The truth is that one ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... wealthy members of the church. We may yet live to see the day when a new scale shall come in vogue, and some Croesus who now stands in an enviable light, shall then pass into his true position, and become an object of pity. Mere dollars and cents are a misleading ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... was passing the building of the supreme court in New York City, on Madison Avenue, I read an inscription on one of the marble statues representing a judge with a book on either side of the door: "Every law not based on wisdom is a menace to the state." This is a false, misleading sentence for all law is wisdom. It might have read: "All statutes not based on wisdom, are a menace to the state." Then at the base of the statue of a soldier, on the other side of the entrance, ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... Lord Byron did not make false statements on this subject it was certainly an exception to his usual course. He certainly did make such on a great variety of other subjects. By his own showing, he had a peculiar pleasure in falsifying language, and in misleading ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... there is everywhere the uncertainty of a 'prentice hand. Spenser shows himself already a master, at least in verse, and we can trace the studies of Milton, a yet greater master, in the "Shepherd's Calendar" as well as in the "Faery Queen." We have seen that Spenser, under the misleading influence of Sidney[282] and Harvey, tried his hand at English hexameters. But his great glory is that he taught his own language to sing and move to measures harmonious and noble. Chaucer had done much to vocalize it, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... moreover, the epithet 'independent,' to qualify an entertaining and significant exhibition, misleading. For many of the items could only be so classified in the sense that they were independent of Messrs. Agnew and the Royal Academy. Mr. Tonks and Professor Brown are official instructors at the Slade School in London; Mr. C. J. Holmes is Keeper of the National Portrait Gallery. Mr. Gerard ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... indicate for a time the proportions in which the qualities should be blended, which is the essential, and whether any one of them can be omitted; but the inferences thus drawn from one war will probably be found misleading in the next war. ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... or even until a few weeks ago no one who looked at me would have believed me capable of plotting against young and innocent girls, annexing aunts on the hire system, or deluding uncles-in-law with misleading statements. Yet these things I have done, and worse; for I have kept my ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... neatness. She was studying her Sunday School lesson, and her white gown and her bright head bent over the open Bible on her lap, made her look not unlike a young saint at her meditations; which was an entirely misleading picture, for Christina's mind was rioting joyously across the University campus, far away from Orchard Glen and Sabbath calm, even though her eyes were reading words such as never ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... ever been produced. This eagerness to convince the world by substituting a mere disappearance, or the lack of evidence, for positive proof of the Royal assassination raises very naturally the presumption that certain circles are more interested in misleading than in ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... the equally sensational title in the Sunday magazine section. All that has been said concerning unwholesome subject-matter for special feature stories applies to sensational titles. So, too, exaggerated, misleading headlines on news and advertisements are matched by exaggerated, misleading titles on special articles. To state more than the facts warrant, to promise more than can be given, to arouse expectations that cannot be satisfied—all are departures ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... Dominican railroad is also misleading, it being called the Central Dominican Railway, though only extending from Puerto Plata, on the north coast, to Santiago de los Caballeros, a distance of 41 miles, with an extension to Moca, 16 miles, a total of 57 miles. Its name is due to the fact, that it was ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... it interesting to trace the life and speculations of Paracelsus, but to those who are not well grounded in science and philosophy, who have an easy credulity, such writings have a misleading tendency. Paracelsus was a great reformer, both in medicine and religion, and had very remarkable success as a physician. The sensation he produced, the profound admiration of his friends and hostility of his enemies show him to have been an extraordinary man. The present volume is well written and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various

... It's these damned novels. All this torrent of misleading, spurious stuff that pours from the press. These sham ideals and advanced notions. Women who Dids, and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... misleading portrait Signor Salvini has drawn of himself. I worked with him, and I found him a gentleman of modest, even retiring, disposition and most courtly manners. He was remarkably patient at the long rehearsals which were so ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris

... phenomena which are classed together agree, he calls in his technical phraseology, unfolding the general conception in virtue of which they are so classed. Making allowance for what appears to me the darkening and misleading tendency of this mode of expression, several of his remarks are so much to the purpose, that I shall take the liberty of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... that theoretical deductions have frequently been based upon a generalization that "streams of water must enter the buckets of a turbine without shock, and leave them without velocity." Both these assumed conditions are misleading, and it is now well known that in every good turbine both are carefully disobeyed. So-called practical writers, as a rule, fail to give much useful information, and their task seems rather in praise of one description of turbine above another. But generally, it is of no consequence whatever ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... the child went home he prattled of his uncle's transgressions, and Joseph hurried down, storming at this misleading of his boy, and this breach of promise to the synagogue. Uriel retorted angrily with that native candor of his which made it impossible for him long ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... this—that prayers are answered—and these millions have prayed to different gods. Were they all wrong or all right? Would a tentative prayer be listened to? Admitting that the Bibles, and Korans, and Vedas, are misleading and unreliable, may there not be an unseen, unknown Being, who knows my heart—who is watching me now? If so, this Being gave me my reason, which doubts Him, and on Him is the responsibility. And would this being, if he exists, overlook a defect for which I am ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... the terms which at the present moment confuse public judgment, none is more vague and misleading than the word "Coercion" when applied to every stringent attempt to enforce in Ireland obedience to the law of ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... Cuba as they vary in the United States, in France, England, Japan, or Mexico. The selection of an individual home, or of several, as a basis for description, in Cuba or anywhere else, can only result in a picture badly out of drawing and quite misleading. ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... remained absorbed in their earlier skittles. If the famous magician, who, with several others, is winning the war by suggestion, and that true soldier, General FitzChutney, and that earnest and eloquent publicist, Mr. Blufflerlow, had been persuaded to stick to marbles, what misleading excitement and unprofitable anxiety would have been spared to the commonweal! Boys should be warned against and protected from Great Careers. Better still if embryologists could discover something which would enable midwives unfailingly to recognize Strong ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... human in their way, as what else should they be, children of men and women as they are? Just as with human friends so with book friends, first impressions are often misleading; good literary coin sometimes seems to ring untrue, but the untruth is in the ear of the reader, not of the writer. For instance, Trollope has many odd and irritating tricks which are apt to scare off those who lack perseverance and who fail to ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... results secured at the University of Illinois Experiment Station, and described in its Bulletin No. 29, is somewhat misleading. It is true that the wording of the original reference states in two places that "stirrups do not come into action, at least not to any great extent, until a diagonal crack has formed," but, in connection with this statement, the ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey

... that what was intended for the strength and help of those who want helping and strengthening, (I am thinking particularly of what has been offered on the subject of Inspiration,) may not prove misleading or perplexing ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... Biddulph," she responded in a curious, strained voice, "passion may be perilously misleading. Ask yourself if you are not injudicious in making this ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux

... perfectly understands. Through their mouths he utters his truest sayings, and they make his books always worth reading. It should be added that this one has nothing to do with present warfare; it is antedated by a reign and a half. In this the title is misleading, for there are so many recruits about nowadays and all ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various

... his tongue. "All right," he said. "Okay. But what's all this about misleading us—and why didn't she tell ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett

... observing the work of pianoforte teachers and students around me. I found that most of the technical work which was being done with infinite pains and a vast expenditure of time was not only non-productive of expressive sounds, but actually harmful and misleading as regards the development of the musical sense. I could see no object in practicing evenness in scales, considering that a perfectly even scale is essentially devoid of emotional (musical) significance. I could see no reason for limiting tone production to a certain kind of sound that was ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... off, but slowly, trying to locate the trail which had brought him astray, and trying at the same time, by the rising sun, to determine the direction in which his brothers and Jack Wumble had passed. But, as before, his efforts were misleading, and by the middle of the forenoon he found himself on a barren hilltop with no chance of leaving it excepting by the ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield

... than I could help, I can assure you. But naturally my answers were—well, 'inaccurate,' to say the least. I had to word them very carefully, though, or the fellow would have caught me out. He suspected that I might be misleading him, I think, for once or twice he put questions which might have unmasked me if I had not been on my guard when answering them. Really we pitted our brains and cunning against each other's all the ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux

... the Cartoon, which is not only unsuccessful but perfectly unfounded, is to be seen in the lithograph by Bergeret, published in Charles Blanc's "Vies des peintres" and reprinted in "The great Artists. L. da Vinci", p. 80. This misleading pasticcio may ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... pie wedges before being wrapped in cellophane is apt to be the real thing—if it has the rind on. The wedge shape is used, however, without any rind, to make processed pastes pass for "natural" even without that identifying word, and with misleading labels such as old, sharp Cheddar and "aged nine months." That's long enough to make a baby, but not a "natural" ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... was always called by the name of Doctor Harmar, though he took no higher degree than M.A. But in 1632 he supplicated for the degree of M.B., and Dr. Grosart's note—"Herrick, no doubt, playfully transmuted 'Doctor' into 'Physician'"—is misleading. He may have cared for the minds and bodies of the Westminster boys at one ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... up in favour of indefinite variations; and this last is now the view of all Darwinians, and even of many Lamarckians. I therefore always now assume this as admitted. Weismann's view as to "possible variations" and "impossible variations" on p. 1 of "Germinal Selection" is misleading, because it can only refer to "sports" or to "cumulative results," not to "individual variations" such as are the material Natural Selection acts on. Variation, as I understand it, can only be a slight modification in the offspring of that ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... not value,' said Tocqueville, 'Lord John's inferences from anything that he heard or saw in his audiences. All Louis Napoleon's words and looks, are, whether intentionally or not, misleading. Now that his having direct issue seems out of the question, and that the deeper and deeper discredit into which the heir presumptive is falling, seems to put him out of the question too, we are ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... followed, and had led to nothing; but Nevill persuaded Stephen to hope something from the ball. If any caids of the south knew that Roumis had a secret reason for questioning them, they would pretend to know nothing, or give misleading answers; but if they were drawn on to describe their own part of the country, and the facilities for travelling through it, news of those who had lately passed that way might ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... an arrow. And the bootprint was made purposely by the man who went up to her to recover the weapon and to fix the thread of yellow worsted to her claw, just as he afterwards fixed the thread on the splinter of window glass, as an intentionally misleading clue. As to the cigarettes and tobacco, there need have been no hesitation. The cigarettes were taken in preference by a man who never smokes a pipe, but is peculiarly ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each twenty-four hours, not only ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy

... whereas, as a matter of fact, he knew very little about them till after he had been for years at work. To write, as Samuel Butler did, "Buffon planted, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck watered, but it was Mr Darwin who said 'That fruit is ripe,' and shook it into his lap"... seems to us a quite misleading version of the facts of the case. The second fallacy which the historical citation is a little apt to suggest is that the filiation of ideas is a simple problem. On the contrary, the history of an idea, like the pedigree of an organism, is ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... authors, Catholic and Protestant, admit, that when a just cause is present, there is some kind or other of verbal misleading, which is not sin. Even silence is in certain cases virtually such a misleading, according to the Proverb, "Silence gives consent." Again, silence is absolutely forbidden to a Catholic, as a mortal sin, under certain circumstances, e.g. to keep ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... facts, between the crook who starts out deliberately to get one's money and the fellow who starts out in ignorance and makes great promises of returns that he knows nothing about. Both succeed in getting one's money and both succeed in misleading those who have a desire to lay aside something for their old days. We naturally feel more charity for him who has good intentions, but who fails, than for him who starts out with bad intentions. But, after ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... baker's dozen of winters. My heart went out to that British Father as he disputed with the Commissaires at the doorway, and called the attention of the Representative of "the Control" to the fact that his billet was misleading. "You are an Englishman," said the Representative of the Control, "and the English observe the law." "Yes," returned the angry Father; "but in England the Law would support one in obtaining that for which one had paid. My son has paid for admission to the Kursaal and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various

... thing, and to while away his hours of enforced idleness, he is collecting facts for a book to be entitled "Customs of the Arabs," as exemplified by the life of Gafsa. The idea came to him quite suddenly, after reading some descriptions which he considered sadly misleading. Customs of the Arabs! To tease him, I quote the authority of Bordereau, who says that there are practically no Arabs in Gafsa; that the customs of this town are one thing and those of the Arabs another, unless he applies ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... medicine many sayings which pass for truisms, which are, after all, misleading. We say, for instance, keep the feet warm and the head cool; this will not always either keep you comfortable or well, as we know that in neuralgias it is absolutely necessary, either for comfort or to get well, to keep the head warm. While ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... hidden within her. Many other sincere and good men were shocked at such disobedience to what they had once respected; and unhappily, almost all the Italian clergy and cardinals were so food of the riches and power in which they were maintained by misleading the people, that they dreaded nothing so much as having ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... faire; she was only eighteen. Now she was going home to her dear father, a widower, under the care of her aunt. Hearing her always referred to in conversation as "Dolores," her surname was a revelation when I heard it properly pronounced. St. Nivel's idea of foreign names was exceedingly hazy and misleading. As soon as she told me she was going home to Aquazilia, I became very alert and began ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties

... French from the Latin, so it is ridiculous to deny that Chinese moral terms, adopted into the Japanese tongue more than a thousand years ago are Japanese to-day. The statement, like a majority of missionary statements on these subjects, is otherwise misleading; for the reader is left to infer the absence of an adjective as well as a noun,—and the purely Japanese adjectives signifying chaste are numerous. The word most commonly used applies to both sexes,—and has the old Japanese ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... details, the more we might add such special psychological demands which result from the fundamental principles of the new art. But it would be misleading if we were also to raise demands concerning a point which has often played the chief role in the discussion, namely, the selection of suitable topics. Writers who have the unlimited possibilities ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... ultra montane government counselor, an arch bishop and others who were reputed to be unprejudiced. His reply, "I will show to my dear people that I value their confidence and love above everything," proves that they finally succeeded in misleading even the greatest impartiality. The king himself requested the artist to leave Munich for some time and gave him an annuity of 15,000 marks. When this had been done, a public declaration of the principal party in Bavaria showed that the so-called "displeasure ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... as an attraction to the more highly specialized, aesthetic insects, not required by the spiraeas, our meadow-sweet has none, in spite of its misleading name. Small bees, flies, and beetles, among other visitors, come in great numbers, seeking the accessible pollen, and, in this case, nectar also, secreted in a ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... different types, but that important variations in form occur in leaves of the same species, and in leaves growing on a single tree or plant. The tea plant is subject to the same vagaries, and any description by comparison will be misleading. The reader must be content with the typical forms of tea leaves shown in our engravings on the following page, for which we are indebted to the kindness of Mr. Joseph M. Walsh, importer ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.

... Though he had served in his youth in India, he had none of the Anglo-Indian's sun-scorched sallowness. His complexion was fresh and sanguine. He looked as if he had just stepped out of a cold tub,—a misleading impression, for Uncle Chris detested cold water and always took his morning bath as hot as he ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... a position of trust," went on the priest, "began to give the enemy information because it was false information. Suppose he even thought he was saving his country by misleading the foreigner. Suppose this brought him into spy circles, and little loans were made to him, and little ties tied on to him. Suppose he kept up his contradictory position in a confused way by never telling the foreign spies the truth, but letting it more and more be guessed. ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... to these lectures ought, like all titles, to have been as definite, as plain, and as significant as possible; now, however, I observe that owing to a certain excess of precision, in its present form it is too short and consequently misleading. My first duty therefore will be to explain the title, together with the object of these lectures, to you, and to apologise for being obliged to do this. When I promised to speak to you concerning the ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... which were hers inherently,—will, intelligence, inflexible perseverance, tenacity of purpose, unscrupulousness, cruelty; hence, to say "She is the victim rather than the inspiration of the corruption of her time" is misleading, to say the least. If, upon her arrival at court, "she at once pleased every one by her grace and affability, modest air, and, above all, by her extreme gentleness," she could not have changed, say her defenders, into the perfidious, wicked, and cruel creature she ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... indeed, for Mr. Crewe to say any more than that—no need for the admirable discussion of railroad finance from an expert's standpoint which followed to controvert Mr. Ridout's misleading statements. The reading of the words on the slip of paper of which he had so mysteriously got possession (through Mr. Hamilton Tooting) was sufficient to bring about a disorder that for a full minute—Mr. Speaker Doby found it impossible to quell. The ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... and have been in general use so long that those who are called upon to deal with them are upon their guard and not likely to be led astray by them, but the class of pet names, now, for a few years in use, will necessarily be more misleading because they are new, and in many cases very blind; in many instances the same nickname being used to represent perhaps a dozen different proper names, so that it is impossible to tell, from the nickname, what the real name is. Among ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... and generous, and it is possible enough that the elegy was a reflection of his feelings, though it suggested an imaginary state of facts. If this be so, the reference to the lady in his posthumous note contained some relation to the truth, though if taken too literally it would be misleading. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... car, He sat triumphant in his pure white gown A Roman knight, and heard the Senate's cheer. Perhaps, as ills drew near, his anxious soul, Shunning the future wooed the happy past; Or, as is wont, prophetic slumber showed That which was not to be, by doubtful forms Misleading; or as envious Fate forbade Return to Italy, this glimpse of Rome Kind Fortune gave. Break not his latest sleep, Ye sentinels; let not the trumpet call Strike on his ear: for on the morrow's night Shapes of the battle lost, of death and war Shall crowd his rest with terrors. Whence shalt ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... It is unrealistic and misleading to hold out the hope that the Federal Government can move into every neighborhood and clean up crime. Under the Constitution, the greatest responsibility for curbing crime lies with State and local authorities. They are the frontline fighters in ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Gerald R. Ford • Gerald R. Ford

... article on the "Evolution of Theology" ("Collected Essays" 4 287) which appeared in the March and April numbers of the "Nineteenth Century." It was a positive statement of the views he had arrived at, which underlay the very partial—and therefore misleading—exposition of them possible in controversy. He dealt with the subject, not with reference to the truth or falsehood of the notions under review, but purely as a question of anthropology,] "a department of biology to which I have at ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... the misleading way in which words are used is supplied by Sir Oliver Lodge, who for a man of science shows an amazing capacity for making use of unscientific language. In his "Man and the Universe," discussing the attributes of deity, ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... blood-money; and what had she bought with it? Nothing, nothing. To spend it, only, she had wrecked her sex and her soul; to spend it for such trifles as children want—candy and common ornaments, a dance and a treat, a gift for some boor or forester or even negro she was misleading, or to establish a silly reputation for generosity: generous at the expense of human happiness, and of robbing people of liberty and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... portraits, Giorgione nearly always does so; and finally we have the mysterious VV which is found on the Berlin portrait, and (half-obliterated) on the Buda-Pesth "Young Man." In short, no one would naturally think of Titian were it not for the misleading signature, and I venture to hope competent judges will agree with me that the proofs positive of Giorgione's authorship are of greater weight than a signature which—for reasons ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... members of the Clearing-House at this time. Their weekly reports of condition were awaited every Saturday as an index of the state of the money-market and the exchanges; but this index was incomplete and sometimes misleading, because regular weekly reports were not made by trust companies. It was announced early in 1908 by the state superintendent of banking that he would exercise a power vested in him by law to require weekly reports in future from trust ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... said McHale, "that's a right hard question. You might find him one place, and then again you mightn't. I reckon I wouldn't be misleading you none if I was to tell you you'd ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... Bada dodge," said Andover promptly. "Now I wonder if Marker trusted too much to these gentry, and they have done us the excellent service of misleading him. They hate us like hell, and they'd sell their souls any day for a dozen cartridges; so it can't have been done on purpose. Seems to me there has been a slip in his ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... societies relative to the laws and administration of the government, proceedings in our apprehension, founded in political error, calculated, if not intended, to disorganize our government, and which, by inspiring delusive hopes of support, have been instrumental in misleading our fellow-citizens in ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... Dryden and Pope. We differ so much upon this subject that we must proceed by agreeing to differ, and end, perhaps, by finding it agreeable to differ; there can be no possible use in an argument. Only you must be upright in justice, and find Wordsworth innocent of misleading me. So far from having read him more within these three years, I have read him less, and have taken no new review, I do assure you, of his position and character as a poet, and these facts are testified unto by the other fact ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... that it's Sunday," the quick-witted Miriam said and Helen replied with the gravity which was more misleading than a lie: ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... effect of simple jollity. In a word, I thought I beheld Religion mixing in the dance: —but, as I had never seen her so engaged, I should have look'd upon it now as one of the illusions of an imagination which is eternally misleading me, had not the old man, as soon as the dance ended, said, that this was their constant way; and that all his life long he had made it a rule, after supper was over, to call out his family to dance and rejoice; believing, he said, that a cheerful and contented mind was the best sort ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... he is giving their real meaning, even as the philosopher, but his interpretation is false. He is like a man who, by an ingenious system of cross-lights and reflections, creates a wraithlike image of himself in the mirror, and alleges that it is his soul, though it is really only a misleading and ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... speculations of the Greeks. But though it is undeniable that the divine unity of all Being was an almost necessary issue of earliest human thought upon the many and the one, yet the above method of treating Pantheism is to some extent misleading; and therefore caution is needed in using it. For the revival of Pantheism at the present day is much more a tangible resultant of action and reaction between Science and Religion than a ghost conjured up by speculation. Thus, ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton

... of 'Stonewall' Jackson, and, during twelve years, was President of Washington College, Lexington, Va. In May, 1861, he left that institution and came North. Rebellion had entered the fair precincts of learning, misleading alike young and old, and prompting to acts incompatible with the president's high sense of duty and loyalty. No course was left him but to resign. His book is a clear and upright examination into the so-called 'right ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... time he had not been quite sure that he had not to do with one of those wolves dressed in fleece whose appearance is as misleading as that of sheep disguised as wolves: now his opinion ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... valley; the very last slope of the Jura, the last parallel ridge, lay straight before me all solemn, dark, and wooded, and making a high feathery line against the noon. To cross this there was but a vague path rather misleading, and the name of the ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... his friend mildly; "you must admit yourself that your attire is misleading. My book on social etiquette says nothing as to when it is correct to wear a pink silk robe over blue and white striped pajamas. However, there's no denying your presence, and what can't be denied must be supplied, so what will ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... of Medford, that these heroic men are mustered into the service,"—a statement which astonished a good many. [Footnote: The statement made by Governor Andrew's private secretary concerning the colored regiments in his memoir of the Governor would seem to have been intentionally misleading.] ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... the standard of virtue was to be raised, and how to discern what was illusory or misleading. The Master's answer was, "Give a foremost place to honesty and faithfulness, and tread the path of righteousness, and you will raise the standard of virtue. As to discerning what is illusory, here is an example of an illusion:—Whom you love you wish to live; whom you hate ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... and I trust you will not esteem them unreasonable. My brother admires her greatly already; he will have frequent opportunity now of seeing her on the most intimate footing; her relations all wish the connection as much as his own; and a sister's partiality is not misleading me, I think, when I call Charles most capable of engaging any woman's heart. With all these circumstances to favour an attachment, and nothing to prevent it, am I wrong, my dearest Jane, in indulging the hope of an event which will secure ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... himself that he had escaped, and, as he thought, without telling a lie. He told none with his lips, but his manner was such as to assure the teacher that the affair in the grove had been nothing but friendly sport. Deception, or wilfully misleading another, for the accomplishment of a purpose, is, in our opinion, just as culpable a falsehood as gaining the same end by a lie expressed in words. But Richard had not come up to ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic

... presentable. If any man has the right to write upon this "Negro Question," it is Mr. Cable. If I had to prepare a liturgy for the Congregational churches, I would put in it the following petition: "From the superficial views and misleading statements of tourists through the South, or those who reside in a single locality, good Lord, deliver us!" Mr. Cable is not of either of these classes. He speaks from an intimate acquaintance with, and a long residence in, the South; better than this, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various

... to think things out clearly and coldly. But it is hardest of all in the crisis of a great war, when men's minds are blurred by passionate emotions of sorrow, anxiety, and indignation. Hence a time of war is the heyday of fallacies and delusions, of misleading hopes and premature disillusionments: men tend to live in an unreal world of phrases and catchwords. Yet never is it more necessary than at such a period, in the old Greek phrase, "to follow the argument whithersoe'er it leads," to look facts squarely in the face, and, particularly, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... providential, that he was wonderfully clever in fevers, and that Bulstrode was in the right to bring him forward. Many people believed that Lydgate's coming to the town at all was really due to Bulstrode; and Mrs. Taft, who was always counting stitches and gathered her information in misleading fragments caught between the rows of her knitting, had got it into her head that Mr. Lydgate was a natural son of Bulstrode's, a fact which seemed to justify her suspicions ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... Kentucky militia, imputing to them cowardly conduct, on the part of some of the highest officials of the army, aroused a spirit of indignant protest that echoed far and wide, and would not down. Had it not been for the misleading report of General Morgan, followed by that of Commodore Patterson, and prompting that of General Jackson to the Secretary of War, saying that "the Kentuckians ingloriously fled," and imputing blame to no other party, the incident ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith

... one star differeth from another in glory, and the same conception applies to noses. To insist that one type of face is ugly because it differs from that of the Venus of Milo is to look at it entirely in a misleading light. It is strange that we should resent people differing from ourselves; we should resent much more violently their resembling ourselves. This principle has made a sufficient hash of literary criticism, in which it is always the custom to complain of ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... the variety known as demantoid, from its diamond-like properties, and which is usually sold under the misleading name "olivine" in the trade, comes from the western ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade

... subject to the same restrictions, as the Clergy, but were at liberty to quit the profession and marry, if they chose.—I have been more particular in describing this class of men, because they have every where taken an active and successful part in perverting and misleading the people: they are in the clubs, or the municipalities, in the Convention, and in all elective administrations, and have been in most places remarkable ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... to have audience. We can not understand how God can vouchsafe to us such tremendous effects as He asserts shall follow prayer. We can not defend prayer philosophically; but either "he that asketh receiveth," or the Bible is misleading ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees

... so young a man to such an office seems remarkable until one knows what Tennessee was like at that time, and what duties a solicitor was expected to discharge. The term Tennessee is, in fact, misleading. The region to which Jackson went still belonged to North Carolina, though its inhabitants had but a little while before made an attempt to set up a separate State under the name of Franklin. But of those who made ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown

... two more days of June. Since the talk with Sylvia I have called twice more upon the elder Miss Cobb. Upon reflection, it is misleading to refer to this young lady in terms so dry, stiff, and denuded; and I shall drop into Sylvia's form, and call her simply Georgiana. That looks better—Georgiana! It sounds ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen

... an opposite road from that which Wamba had recommended, for the purpose of misleading them. The path soon led deeper into the woodland, and crossed more than one brook, the approach to which was rendered perilous by the marshes through which it flowed; but the stranger seemed to know, as if by instinct, the soundest ground and the safest points of passage; and by dint of caution ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... States of Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, and the solid front of the South, the compact pro-Southern Senate, and the moral effect of the Dred Scott decision discouraged them. Moreover, the Republican victories of 1854-55 proved misleading, for in 1856 and 1858 the party failed to win a majority in the House of Representatives. All that the ardent protestants and idealists could do was to block extreme measures in Congress and enact laws in the Republican States to harass the "enemy." Seward yielded the struggle to ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... century, but Athelstan may at any rate have done something to give rise to the tradition, though it is impossible to tell exactly what. The story of his having given the manor to the see of York is doubtless misleading. The territorial sway of the Archbishop at Ripon must be of earlier origin, and it may even have arisen out of the grant of the monastery with its thirty or forty hides of land to Wilfrid and his retention of them after his elevation ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett

... his passports on February 5, 1917, while the release of the Yarrowdale prisoners was pending. Meantime dispatches which came to Berlin from Washington via London were blamed for misleading the German Government into thinking that the United States was detaining Count von Bernstorff, and had seized the German ships, with their crews, lying in American ports. Until it received assurances regarding the "fate" of the ex-ambassador and learned what treatment ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... literary references to the water-clocks in medieval literature. In fact most of these are from quotations which have often been produced erroneously in the history of the mechanical clock, thereby providing many misleading starts for that history, as noted previously in the discussion of the horologium. There are however enough mentions to make it certain that water clocks of some sort were in use, especially for ecclesiastic purposes, from the end of the 12th century onwards. Thus, Jocelin of Brakelond ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price

... stability, is a source of bewilderment to the reader of his sayings and doings, till it dawns upon him that, through pride, policy, and the usual shrinking of the sensitive from casting their pearls before swine, Balzac was a confirmed poseur, so that what he tells us is often more misleading than his silence. Leon Gozlan's books are a striking instance of the fact that, with all Balzac's jollity, his camaraderie, and his flow of words, he did not readily reveal himself, except to those whom he could thoroughly trust to understand ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... of Stephen Crane, a haphazard and undiscriminating gathering of his earlier tales and sketches appeared in London under the misleading title, "Last Words." From this volume, now rarely met with, a number of characteristic minor works have been selected, and these will be new to Crane's American admirers; as follows: "The Reluctant Voyagers," "The End of the Battle," "The Upturned ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... effected by Linnaeus was in the matter of scientific terminology. Technical terms are absolutely necessary to scientific progress, and particularly so in botany, where obscurity, ambiguity, or prolixity in descriptions are fatally misleading. Linnaeus's work contains something like a thousand terms, whose meanings and uses are carefully explained. Such an array seems at first glance arbitrary and unnecessary, but the fact that it has remained ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... showed amaze, and something more. They fell straightway to gambling, sharper and fiercer than before, actuated now by the flaming spirit of this son of Belllounds. Luck, misleading and alluring, favored Jack for a while, transforming him until he was radiant, boastful, exultant. Then it changed, as did his ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... deception apparent there. This creek that we are looking at is undoubtedly the one shown on your map, and there is King Olomba's town, precisely in the position indicated on the sketch; the assumption therefore is that the man who drew the map for you was dealing quite honestly with you. The misleading information, consequently must, it appears to me, have come from the others; as indeed is the case, seeing that they led you to believe that you would find at least three or four large ships in the creek, whereas ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... evade a plain answer to the supreme question of the Divinity of Christ. You will expect me perhaps to say something about that question. I would first observe that the popular term 'divinity of Christ' is apt to give a somewhat misleading impression of what the orthodox teaching on the subject really is. For one thing, it is apt to suggest the idea of a pre-existent human consciousness of Jesus, which would be contrary to Catholic teaching. The Logos—the eternal ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall

... of Kolno, near Przasnysz and south of Mlawa, our troops have achieved some local successes." The Russian report referring to the beginning of the same action was equally noncommittal, though possibly more misleading. This states: "Considerable enemy forces between the Orczy and the Lidynja adopted the offensive and the Russians declining a decisive engagement retreated during the night of the 13th to the second line of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... at least to some extent, from the great finger-print obsession, which has possessed the legal mind ever since Galton published his epoch-making monograph. In that work I remember he states that a finger-print affords evidence requiring no corroboration—a most dangerous and misleading statement which has been fastened upon eagerly by the police, who have naturally been delighted at obtaining a sort of magic touchstone by which they are saved the labour of investigation. But there is no such thing as a single fact that 'affords evidence requiring no corroboration.' As well ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... he replied, "a sane witness would have testified that I was in the street—one of those partial and material truths which are so misleading." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... who form the ring must look toward the center, and are not allowed to turn their heads as the runner passes them. The one who runs around with the handkerchief will resort to various devices for misleading the others as to where he drops it. For instance, he may sometimes quicken his pace suddenly after dropping the handkerchief, or at other times maintain a steady pace which ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... has a most mellifluous and pleasing botanical name, Liriodendron Tulipifera—is not that euphonious? Just plain "liriodendron"—how much better that sounds as a designation for one of the noblest of American forest trees than the misleading "common" names! "Tulip-tree," for a resemblance of the form only of its extraordinary blooms; "yellow poplar," probably because it is not yellow, and is in no way related to the poplars; and "whitewood," the Western name, because its wood is whiter than that ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... in identifying fragments of fossils of any class. But it has its limitations, and it goes without saying that the more complete the fossil skeleton of a vertebrate, or the remains of an arthropod, the more complete will be our conception of the form of the extinct organism. It may be misleading in the numerous cases of convergence and of generalized forms which now abound in our palaeontological collections. We can well understand how guarded one must be in working out the restorations of dinosaurs and fossil birds, of the Permian and Triassic theromorphs, and ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... Even now speech is still growing; poor folks cannot understand the talk of educated people. Perhaps reading and writing will indeed one day come by nature. Analogy points in this direction, and though analogy is often misleading, it is the ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... dares not use blue glass, for blue light would decompose his chemicals. And yet the waves of red light, measured by the amount of energy which they carry, are immensely more powerful than the waves of blue. The blue rays are usually called chemical rays—a misleading term; for, as Draper and others have taught us, the rays that produce the grandest chemical effects in nature, by decomposing the carbonic acid and water which form the nutriment of plants, are not the blue ones. In regard, however, to the salts ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... Avesta among the Parsis, yet I would not deny altogether that in a certain sense the mythology of the Greeks belonged to their religion. We must only be on our guard, here as everywhere else, against the misleading influence of words. The word Religion has, like most words, had its history; it has grown and changed with each century, and it cannot, therefore, have meant with the Greeks and Brahmans what it means with us. Religions have sometimes been divided into ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... their fingers into their ears to hear after my fashion, and were quite astonished that the plan did not succeed."[260] This was an odd and whimsical way of acting on a conviction which lay deep in Diderot's mind, namely, that language is a very poor, misleading, and utterly inadequate instrument for representing what it professes, and what we stupidly suppose it, to represent. Rousseau had expressed the same kind of feeling when he said that definitions might be good things, if only we did not ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... religion is God's glory, not man's enjoyment. See how this puts feelings down into their right, and subordinate, place. They are sometimes very delightful, sometimes very depressing, but always liable to be misleading. A great saint of old used to say:—"If God never gave me another moment of sensible devotion in prayer, I would go on praying, because ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter

... this paper is a little misleading. In the nut contests the word "propagated" is restricted to those nuts which any nurseryman lists in his catalog and of which he is prepared to furnish grafted, budded or otherwise asexually multiplied trees. There are few hickories ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... occurrence. This friend said: "You don't know what a feeling of exhilaration and well-being a little good champagne will give you. Try it once; don't associate it with common alcoholic stimulants." Those last words, well-meant but, to me, misleading, caused me to make a spectacle of myself for a short period of time. While I partook of this fizzing beverage lightly, the reader will understand how readily the stuff affected my susceptible system and how quickly it went to my head. And then it seemed to have staying qualities. ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs

... on the trail, which led north, and back towards the Beaver Creek, which stream it crossed within a few miles of the spot where we had first discovered the Indians, they having made nearly a complete circle, in hopes of misleading us. Late in the afternoon, we again saw them going over a hill far ahead of us, and towards evening the main body of warriors came back and fought us once more; but we continued to drive them until darkness set in, when we camped ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody

... situation. But it is typical of the security problems of the world today. Powerful and aggressive forces are constantly probing, now here, now there, to see whether the free world is weakening. In the face of this there are no easy choices available. It is misleading for anyone to imply ...
— The Communist Threat in the Taiwan Area • John Foster Dulles and Dwight D. Eisenhower

... far-fetched, and often morbid production of nations of crusaders and theologians, burning heretics, worshipping ladies, seeing visions, and periodically joining hands in a vertiginous death-reel, whose figures were danced from country to country. This new explanation, while undoubtedly less misleading than the other one, had the disadvantage of straining the characteristics of a civilisation or of an art in order to tally with its product or producer; it forgot that Antiquity was not wholly represented by the frieze of the Parthenon, and that the Gothic cathedrals and the frescoes of Giotto ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... the Venetian country, for the splendour of female loveliness unveiled, for the piquant contrast of female loveliness clothed and sumptuously adorned, has conquered. He has presented the Romanised legend of the fair Colchian sorceress in such a delightfully misleading fashion that it has taken all these centuries to decipher its true import. What Giorgione and Titian in these exquisite idylls—for so we may still dare to call them—have consciously or unconsciously achieved, is the indissoluble union of humanity outwardly quiescent, ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips

... But see how misleading and false all these analogies are. The windfalls which people with artistic gifts are able from time to time to derive from the sale of a picture—from a Vandyke or a Holbein—may here and there be very considerable. But pictures do not get in anybody's way. They do not lay a toll on anybody's ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... has been found with the misleading names of many birds, it is pleasant to record the fact that the name of the chimney swift is everything it ought to be. No other birds can surpass and few can equal it in its powerful flight, sometimes covering a thousand miles in twenty-four hours, it is said, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... but she COULD know them, and know thereby into what crannies her reckoning had to penetrate. It was one of them for instance that if he was often most silent when most primed with matter, so when he had nothing to say he was always silent too—a peculiarity misleading, until mastered, for a lady who could have allowed in the latter case for almost any variety of remark. "What do you think," he said at last, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... desire to preserve the attitude of "nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri," and I cannot but believe that his estimate of America, while including much that is subtle, clear-sighted, and tonic, is in certain respects inadequate and misleading. He unfortunately committed the mistake of writing on the United States before visiting the country, and had made up his mind in advance that it was almost exclusively peopled by, and entirely run in the interests of, the British ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... The theory that in the child-voice the breaks occur at higher fixed pitches than in the adult is shown to be untenable. The fact would seem to be that comparisons between the registers of the child and the adult voice are misleading, since the adult voice has fixed points of change in the vocal mechanism, which can be transcended only with great difficulty, while the child-voice has no fixed points of change in its vocal registers. This point must not be overlooked. ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard

... where was the best ford on the river. "O! ghaolaich," she answered, "is aon ath an abhuinn; ged tha i dubh, cha 'n eil i domhain," (Oh! dear, the river is all one ford together; though it looks black, it is not deep). In their pitiful plight, and on the strength of this misleading information, they rushed into the water in hundreds, and were immediately carried away by the stream, many of them clutching at the shrubs and bushes which overhung the banks of the river, and crying loudly for assistance. This amazon and a number of her sex who were near at hand ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... I would be a German Bolshevik with instructions to shoot the Kaiser on sight, I should go gunning for a short, stout man with a tooth-brush mustache and a holy horror of wearing uniforms, because it's my opinion that all them so-called portraits of the Kaiser was issued for the purpose of misleading anarchists to shoot at a thin man in a heavily embroidered uniform with ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass

... voice. I wouldn't go so far as to say I could give you his character, for I never made it out; yet I'd say he was given to sentiment, and to turning out poetry like a corn-shucker, and singing it to misfit and uneducated tunes, and given to joyfulness and depression by turns, and to misleading his fellow-man when he was joyful, and suffering remorse for it afterward pretty regular, taking turns, like fever and chills; which qualities, when you take them apart, don't seem likely to fit together again, and I'm not saying they did fit in Sadler. They appeared to me to project over ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... declared, "I am certain that this is the right spot, and the chief would have had no interest in deceiving or misleading us." ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... it. He had come in too late, or too early, on several schemes that had made money. He brought with him from all his wanderings a good deal of information (more or less correct in itself, but unrelated, and therefore misleading), a high standard of personal honor, a sentimental veneration for all women, bad as well as good, and a bitter hatred of Englishmen. Thea often thought that the nicest thing about Ray was his love for Mexico and the Mexicans, who ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... with much ardour. Captain Pendle had placed two chairs near a quick-set hedge, beyond the hearing of other guests, and on these he and Mab were seated as closely as was possible without attracting the eyes of onlookers. Their attitude and actions were guarded and indifferent for the misleading of the company, but their conversation, not being likely to be overheard, was confidential and lover-like enough. No spectator from casual observation could have ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... take the greatest pains to conceal their dealings. Orders are given in cipher. Certificates are registered in the names of clerks. Large blocks of stock are bought, and sold, and "crossed," for the mere purpose of misleading. A wink or a shrug is accepted as more significant than the most positive assertion. The disposition to "copper a point" is so general that the late Mr. Gould used to say he always told the truth, because nobody ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... do to set many by; but, on the other hand, one that goes wrong may be the means of misleading a whole neighborhood. The same may be said of the example we individually set to those ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... I've a right to give my opinion, on occasion; I spent three years at Dorpat... all these, so-called general propositions, hypotheses, these systems—excuse me, I am a provincial, I speak the truth bluntly—are absolutely worthless. All that's only theorising—only good for misleading people. Give us facts, sir, and ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... Jerusalem, where he had the interview with Nicodemus. After that he went into the country districts of Judea, where John was baptizing in Aenon, and then the writer adds, as if his eye were on the condensed and misleading narrative of the common tradition, 'For John was not yet cast into prison.' The two great teachers, the Forerunner, and the Greater-than-he, were actually baptizing side by side, and it was because Jesus saw his reputation overshadowing John's that he voluntarily withdrew into Galilee, passing ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... though it were all on one side and the foulest of the foul not on yours. You will only retard the business of the court. You are indicted with extortion and sharp practice in all your dealings, with cheating and misleading your customers, attempting to cheat and betray your friends, and breaking all the rules of civilised crime. You are not invited to plead either way, because this court would not attach the slightest value to your plea; but presently you will get ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... fix it on the tenth of April 1583. The President Bouhier pretends they place it a year too late; and that he was born on the tenth of April 1582. To prevent the authority of such a learned man, which has already seduced several writers, from misleading others, we shall shew that by departing from the general opinion he has fallen into an error. Grotius writes to Vossius on Easter Sunday 1615[9], that on that day he reckoned thirty-two years: He dates another letter[10] to Vossius the twenty-fifth of March 1617; Easter-eve, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... organizations, political parties, communities, and states are frequently swayed by this emotion to the extent of deliberately perverting the truth. The evidence found in newspapers and other publications is often false, or at least misleading, because it has been tampered with by those who put their selfish interests before all else. The owner of an industry protected by a high tariff would scarcely be considered a reliable witness in matters affecting tariff ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... so misleading as generalisation, specially on the subject of the Greeks. Again and again when we think we have laid hold of their characteristic view we are confronted with some new aspect of their life which we cannot fit into harmony with our scheme. There ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... tumults she has excited in it; that so I may be able to present to her a husband as worthy as I can be of her acceptance; or, if she reject me, be in a capacity to resume my usual gaiety of heart, and show others of the misleading sex, that I am not discouraged, by the difficulties I have met with from this sweet individual of it, from endeavouring to make myself as acceptable to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... verses more carefully, after that experience, avoiding all e'ers and ne'ers and other misleading abbreviations. ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Mr. President, this term "winter-killing" is a little bit misleading, and it has been a matter of discussion in the National Nut Growers' Association for several years and a great loss to many Southern pecan growers. A very common statement that one hears down there is "Why, our trees don't winter-kill. We don't have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various

... chosen from a multitude sensibly fixed; and that the proportion of stationary to traveling stars rises rapidly with descent down the scale of magnitude. Hence a mean struck in disregard of the zeros is totally misleading; while the account is no sooner made exhaustive than its anomalous character becomes largely modified. Yet it does not wholly disappear. There is some warrant for it in nature. And its warrant may perhaps consist in a preponderance, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various

... conflict was on, and Jesus freely spoke his mind concerning their whole life of piety without godliness. Never have sharper words of reproach fallen from human lips than these which Jesus directed against the scribes and Pharisees; they are burdened with indignation for the misleading of the people, with rebuke for the misrepresentation of God's truth, and with scorn for their hollow pretence of righteousness. Through it all breathes a note of sorrow for the city whose house was now left to her desolate. The change of scene which introduces the widow ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... salutary influence, but permanent converts are seldom made through fear of punishment alone. She was trying by imitation and suggestion to grope her way upward, but the light she climbed by was a borrowed light which swung far above her head and threw strange, misleading shadows across her path. The law that allowed a man to sell her fire-crackers and then punished her for firing them off, that allowed any passer-by to kick her stone off the hop-scotch square and punished her for hurling; the stone ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... distinctions and admissions be made, the tendency to produce, in the long run, the greatest amount of happiness or misery, pleasure or pain, may be taken as the test of the goodness or badness of an action, the phraseology is so misleading, and so liable to frustrate the practical objects of the moralist, that it is desirable, if possible, to find terms not equally lending themselves to misinterpretation and perversion. Let us now, then, consider whether we are ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler

... I tell them that, after all, Mr. Gladstone is of opinion that the "Mosaic record" was meant to give moral, and not scientific, instruction to those for whom it was written, they may be disposed to think that I must be misleading them. But let them listen further to what Mr. Gladstone says in a compendious but not exactly correct statement respecting ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... nearing The Dalles Station, the stream for two and a half miles narrows down between walls of basaltic rock 130 feet across. In the flood-tides of the spring the water in this chasm has risen 126 feet. The word "Dalles" is rather misleading. The word is French, "dalle," and means, variously, "a plate," "a flagstone," "a slab," alluding to the oval or square shaped stones which abound in the river bed and the valley above. But the early French hunters and trappers called a chasm or a defile ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax

... to make love for seven years, at the same time to be as sincere as ever creature was, and yet never to compromise myself by overtures that might have been foolish as regarded my own interests, or misleading as regarded hers. Most truly I loved this beautiful and ingenuous girl; and had it not been for the Bath and Bristol mail, heaven only knows what might have come of it. People talk of being over head ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... his only home production which feared competition,—the home-bred slave. I have heard Mr. Spence's book called the most successful lie in history. Very successful it certainly was, and its influence in misleading England ought not to be overlooked. It was written with great skill, and it came out just at the right time, before people had formed their opinions, and when they were glad to have a theory presented to their minds. But ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... "man's complex vision" I am trying to indicate the elaborate and intricate character of the organ of research which we have to use. All subsequent discoveries are rendered misleading if the total activity, at least in its general movement, of our instrument of research is not brought into focus. This instrument of research which I have named "man's complex vision" implies his ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... was first published[33] in the Gesellschafter, March 26, 1824. Commentators refer to the verse, "Ein MAerchen aus alten Zeiten," as a bit of fiction, adding that it is not a title of olden times, but one invented by Brentano about 1800. The statement is true but misleading, for we naturally infer that Heine derived his initial inspiration from Brentano's ballad. Concerning this matter there are three points of view: Some editors and historians point out Brentano's priority and list his successors ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield



Words linked to "Misleading" :   shoddy, deceptive, dishonest



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