"Misrepresent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... liable, among others to the cruelties of a savage foe; they grew by your neglect of them. As soon as you began to care for them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them, to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon them; men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice, some who, to my knowledge, were glad, by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... such special development of hair in this region. We thus see that all the external and more conspicuous portions of the sexual sphere in woman—the mons veneris, the labia majora, and the hair—represent not so much an animal inheritance, such as we commonly misrepresent them to be, but a higher and genuinely human development. As none of these structures subserve any clear practical use, it would appear that they must have developed by sexual selection to satisfy the aesthetic ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... you ever misrepresent the character, acts, motives and intentions of the man that he murdered—never mind the purpose and effect ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Illinois at an early age and lived there until his death; he had attained the age of a little more than eighty years before he died. He was purely a lawyer. I think I never knew another lawyer who could so everlastingly ruin a man who undertook to misrepresent the truth. He seemed to understand intuitively whether a man was trying to tell the truth or was lying; if the latter, his words would so effectually be torn to pieces that they could be of no earthly value. ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... cost of living is so insignificant compared with our own country, to judge accurately of the condition of the laboring classes. The empire is so vast and so diverse in all its features that a statement which may accurately apply to one province will misrepresent another. But, taking one consideration with another, as the song says, and drawing an average, it is plainly evident that the peasant population of India is slowly improving in condition. The scales of wages have undoubtedly risen; there has been an improvement in the housing and the ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... Portuguese, as compared with those realized on the goods of the Sangley traders. The Portuguese are making enormous profits, and this is ruining the citizens of the islands; moreover, they buy their goods from the Chinese at sufficient prices to satisfy the latter, and they misrepresent the condition and actions of the Spaniards, so that the Chinese are prevented from coming to Manila. The Portuguese will make no fair agreement as to prices, and some of them remain in Manila to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... inclined to revise its collective memory or established usages—I mean the Catholic church. Even after this church was constituted by the fusion of many influences and by the gradual exclusion of those heresies—some of them older than explicit orthodoxy—which seemed to misrepresent its implications or spirit, there still remained an inevitable propensity among Catholics to share the moods of their respective ages and countries, and to reconcile them if possible with their professed faith. Often these cross influences were so strong that the profession of faith was changed ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... still a few people who openly ridicule both total abstinence and its advocates, and some, who are wicked enough to endeavor to misrepresent those who labor in this cause. These persons do not always succeed, however, as the following incident will show: Horace Greeley was once met at a railway depot by a red-faced individual, who shook him warmly by the hand. "I don't recognize you," said Mr. Greeley. "Why, yes, you must remember ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... confidence and steady going, in fact of the orthodox and expected, the party should profit by the swing of the pendulum toward novelty and tentative, rather than bring forward a candidate who would represent, possibly misrepresent, the same beliefs and intentions on a lower personal level. As there was no first-rate man of the same sort to succeed Farquharson, Cruickshank suggested the undesirability of a second-rate man; and he did it so adroitly that the old fellow found himself in a ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... purposed to misrepresent this boy in any way, for what little indignation he excited in me soon passed and left nothing behind it but compassion. One cannot keep up a grudge against a vacuum. I have tried to repeat this lad's very words; if I have failed anywhere I have at least not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... question a demand that out of the great international assembly at Paris there should come some common agency devoted to the prevention of war. To ignore this all-prevalent sentiment would have been to misrepresent the peoples of the civilized world and would have aroused almost universal condemnation and protest. The President was, therefore, entirely right in giving prominence to the idea of an international ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... reading lasted more than one hour, I asked after its close, that it should be decided, whether those who open the meeting, should be bound by the adopted rule of twenty minutes, or be permitted to speak or read as long as they would be pleased also when they misrepresent the history in such an absurd manner as the speaker did. No regard was taken of what I said, and they proceeded in ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... make their position and the influence attached to it subservient either to their interests or to their vanity? Descend, gentlemen reviewers, from the heights on which you have perched yourselves; lay aside your airs and your tricks, your pretences and affectations! Have the honesty not to misrepresent your author, the decency not to abuse him, the patience to read, and if possible to understand him! Point out his blemishes, correct his blunders, castigate his faults; it is your duty,—he himself will have reason to thank ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... advance and the growth of scientific abstaining principles—which they cannot avoid recognizing—with positive dread. The extremists on this side are indeed extreme in their fanaticism. They shut their eyes to the most obvious facts, and do not hesitate in their blindness to misrepresent the most obvious truths. They affirm that under the influence of total abstinence and, by inference, because of total abstinence, the yearly decreasing death-rate of the population is accompanied by reduction of vitality; that ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... whence designing men may endeavour to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You can not shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations: they tend to render alien to each other ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the opening altogether. It was equally apparent that she had no intention of mentioning Jimmy Stiles, and he was half inclined to regret the lead he had given her in this connection. Why had she been so eager to misrepresent the situation? Why had Stiles disappeared so suddenly? What was the meaning of the attack by these two ruffians? Was robbery really the motive, or was she lying about that, too? He had seen no sign of a purse. Why had she and young Stiles met by appointment at that ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... Whoever seeks, therefore, by the production of Shakespearean drama chiefly to please the spectator's eye shows scant respect both for the dramatist and for the spectator. However unwittingly, he tends to misrepresent the one, and to mislead the other, in a particular of first-rate importance. Indeed, excess in scenic display does worse than restrict opportunities of witnessing Shakespeare's plays on the stage in London and other large cities of England and America. It is to be feared that such excess either ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... now carefully refutes the notion that the doctrine of justification by faith encourages Antinomianism. Liberty does not mean licence. St. Paul was quite alive to the fact that skilful opponents and brainless admirers would misrepresent his doctrine, which was also Christ's. He therefore takes great pains to show that the connection between the righteousness of Christ and the righteousness of a Christian is not arbitrary or fictitious. His argument throughout implies ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... and ardour to their proceedings. He set forth clearly the principles of the "Society people;" and in a number of able and logical papers, clearly defined their plans of action. He rendered it, in a great measure, impossible for enemies to misrepresent and accuse them falsely to the Government. He was their Secretary in their correspondence with foreign churches; and he did much to evoke the prayerful sympathy of Protestants in other lands in behalf of the victims of persecution in Scotland. The presence and influence ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... this, these same unprincipled agents, with their hired accomplices and subsidised press, in order to hide the enormity of their crimes, and to divert attention from themselves and their crookedness, systematically and incessantly misrepresent and ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... jurisconsults, judges, barristers, officers for the crown, bailiffs, attorneys, clerks of the court, procurators, solicitors, and agents of various kinds, represent or misrepresent Justice. The "lawyer" and the bailiff's men (commonly called "the brokers") are the two lowest rungs of the ladder. Now, the bailiff's man is an outsider, an adventitious minister of justice, appearing ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and maintain that story with circumstantial detail as to times, places, persons, and particular circumstances and under as merciless a cross-examination as was ever given a witness in an American court unless the witness thus testifying was speaking truthfully and without any attempt either to misrepresent or conceal.... It is my opinion, after a careful examination of this case in all its details, that this defendant and the crimes which he committed were only the natural product and outcome of the system which he represented and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... "Between those who misrepresent a nation so calm and loyal, and we, who with a deep conviction deposit in your bosom the complaints of an entire people, jealous of the esteem and confidence of their King, let the exalted wisdom of your Majesty decide! Your royal prerogatives have placed in your ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Burtis, with a careless laugh. "Len shall bring home the little chick, and put her under his wife's wing. I should probably misrepresent the family, and make a bad first impression; and as for Webb, you might as well send the undertaker ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... if anything, to justify the numerous calls which it makes upon the people for support. On the other hand, there is sad need for a journal representative of our best thought, which will be readable and which will represent rather than misrepresent us. ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... in the old humanistic courses, and therefore, he argued, the other courses should be fostered. There was never perhaps a more extraordinary syllogism since the argal of Shakespeare's gravedigger. I quote from memory, and may slightly misrepresent the actual statement of the influential "educationalist," but the spirit of his words, as indeed of his practice, is surely as I give it. And the working of this spirit is one of the main causes of the curious fact that scarcely any other class of men in social intercourse feel themselves, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... a story,—a versatile woman. This talk has done me much good. I know the affection that exists between you and John, and I am confident that you would not misrepresent anything. I shall sleep ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... to have found in him the man after their own heart. That cesspool of all infamies, the New York Herald, became the mouthpiece of all the like hypocrites. They and the Herald were the first to pervert and to misrepresent the indignation evoked by the do-nothing or nobody-hurt strategy, and to call it the abolition outcry against ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... he dared to breathe a syllable of what he thought—'hoped' would misrepresent him, for Thomas in this matter had always stifled hope. Indeed, hope would have been irrational. In the course of her teens Alma grew tall and well proportioned; not beautiful of feature, but pleasing; not brilliant in personality, but good-natured; ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... singular character has, I believe, been fairly transmitted to us. The reign of his immediate successor was short and busy; and the historians who wrote before the elevation of the family of Constantine could not have the most remote interest to misrepresent the character ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... secondary one; my will will always be impeded, my arm will be paralyzed forever. You know it. You know that I am constantly surrounded by secret spies and eavesdroppers, who watch me with lynx-eyed mistrust and misrepresent every step I take. It was always so, and will remain so until I die or become a decrepit old man, whose arm is no longer able to wield the sword or even the pen. That I am young, that I have a heart for the sufferings of my country, a heart not only for the honor of Austria, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent. We simply do not attempt to unite with Reality. But now and then that symbolic character is suddenly brought home to us. Some great emotion, some devastating visitation of beauty, love, or pain, lifts us to another level of consciousness; and we are aware for a moment of the difference ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... press has always been ready to misrepresent and malign executive officers who have refused to acknowledge any higher authority than the law, the expressed public will and their own conception of duty. This abuse has even been carried so far that the editorial ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... bargain-counters, and who eat chocolate meringue for lunch, and then stop in at a continuous performance, go shopping. It must be the comic-paper sort of wives who go about matching shades and buying hooks and eyes. Yes, I must have made Miss Delamar's understudy misrepresent her. I beg your pardon, my dear," he said aloud to the Picture. "You did not go shopping this morning. You probably went to a woman's luncheon somewhere. ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... of the dissenting Nobility were about Twenty six, whereof Five did at last comply with their List, as they thought, being in publick Commands, supposing it might give a Handle to their Enemies, to misrepresent them to their Soveraign; but they nevertheless, upon all Occasions, testified their Dislike and Abhorrence of the Method, and of the Conduct of those ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... Queen—into which the waiter had in his lonely revolutions trodden so many massive soot-flakes and drops of overflowing beer that the glowing looms of Smyrna would certainly not have recognised it. To say that I ordered my dinner of this archaic type would be altogether to misrepresent the process owing to which, having dreamed of lamb and spinach and a salade de saison, I sat down in penitence to a mutton-chop and a rice pudding. Bracing my feet against the cross-beam of my little oaken table, I opposed to the mahogany partition behind me the vigorous dorsal resistance that ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... between truth and its execution, justice and its judgment, crime and punishment. Lawyers in the main were intellectual mercenaries to be bought and sold in any cause. It amused him to hear the ethical and emotional platitudes of lawyers, to see how readily they would lie, steal, prevaricate, misrepresent in almost any cause and for any purpose. Great lawyers were merely great unscrupulous subtleties, like himself, sitting back in dark, close-woven lairs like spiders and awaiting the approach of unwary human flies. Life was at best a dark, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... to disown it. I can only explain my strange conduct by asking you to help me at the outset. Will you carry your memory back to the day of the medical consultation on my case? I want you to correct me, if I inadvertently misrepresent my advisers. Two of them were physicians. The third, and last, was a surgeon, a personal friend of yours; and he, as well as I recollect, told you how ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... most common, and withal, what was most profitable, most pernicious, most strong, and most easy. Did he resolve and answer every one of these questions? He did, quoth Niloxenus, and do you judge of his answers and the soundness thereof: and it is my Prince's purpose not to misrepresent his responses and condemn unjustly what he saith well, so, where he finds him under a mistake, not to suffer that to pass without correction. His answers to the foresaid questions I will read to you.—What is most ancient? Time. What is greatest? The ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... not what he once was. His life, once comedy, glad or wild with laughter according to the day, is now tragedy, with white face and bleeding wounds, and voice a moan, like autumn winds. Alas! great prince, thy tragedy is come! Tragedy; but God did not commission it. This drama does not misrepresent God, as many a poem and many a sufferer do. Satan—this drama says—Satan sent this ruin. God has not seared this man's flesh with the white heats of lightning, nor brought him into penury nor suspicion, nor made his ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... along been insisting: hence it will be seen that mine are no new-fangled notions. His remarks refer to the young of every age, but chiefly to early infancy and childhood. It will be found necessary, in some instances, to abridge, but I shall endeavor not to misrepresent the Doctor's views. ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... deprived of the rights, immunities, and privileges of American citizens? Is the rod of oppression held over us by the General Government? Has that Government manifested its care towards us by sending persons to 'spy out our liberties, misrepresent our character, prey upon us, and eat out our substance?' It is not pretended that there is a murmur of the kind. We are in possession of the most enlarged liberty and the most liberal favors. Then why urge this measure, uncalled for by the people, unwarranted by the condition ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... of original authors, some we shall find careless and injudicious, and many write under the bias of party prejudice, which strangely perverts the judgment. By this, James Basnage could, in his History of the Jews, (b. 6,) notoriously mistake and misrepresent, by wholesale, the clearest authorities, to gratify his prepossession against an incontestable miracle, as the most learned Mr. Warburton hath demonstrated in his Julian, (b. 2, ch. 4.) Some write history as they would a tragedy or a romance; and, seeking at any ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... think that Milton is an Independent, and he knows at least that Mr. Gorting and other Independents have broached a milder form of the same heresy. In his Notes (pp. 144,145) he quotes sentences to the amount of a page from Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce to prove that he does not misrepresent him.—The "Gorting" here mentioned by Baillie is the "Samuel Gorton" who had been such a sore trouble to the New Englanders, and even to Roger Williams at Providence, by his anarchical opinions and conduct (Vol. II. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... because of their false modesty, give proper instruction to their children. Yes, parents fearfully misrepresent conditions to their boys and girls, even resorting to absolute falsehood. Of course the children soon learn the facts, and instead of the parents and children making confidants of each other, both practise deception. When girls find out these things, ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... upon by my friends to do the same in many. An invidious and inquisitorial scrutiny into the personal dispositions of public officers will creep through the whole Union, and the most selfish and sordid passions will be kindled into activity to distort the conduct and misrepresent the feelings of men whose places may become the prize of ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... annoyance to our publisher than it has proved already. Never had poor mortal been compelled to drink, at one time, a greater quantity of that celestial beverage, which the Reverend Mr. Pierpont insists is the only liquor drunk at the hotels of heaven. We should be sorry to misrepresent that very gentle gentleman, but we believe that this is substantially his idea. It was unfortunate for Stevens that, previously to this, he had never been accustomed to drink much of this beverage in its original strength anywhere. He had been too much in the habit of diluting it; and being ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... honorable age. The son, as soon as he was appointed to this commission, was awed by and dreaded the consequences. He knew to what temptation he should be exposed, from the known character of Debi Sing, to suppress or to misrepresent facts. He therefore took out a letter he had from his father, which letter was the preservation of his character and destruction of his fortune. This letter he always resorted to in all trying exigencies of his life. He laid the letter before him, and there was enjoined such a line of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "by substituting the concrete, God, for the abstract, Absolute;" i.e., by substituting God for something which Hamilton defines as contradictory to the nature of God. Can the force of confusion go further? Is it possible for perverse criticism more utterly, we do not say to misrepresent, but literally to ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... even of misery, which menaces, without ceasing, the most numerous and active class of our societies.' (To save time and long quotations, I shall here give the substance of some of Mr Condorcet's sentiments, and hope I shall not misrepresent them. But I refer the reader to the work itself, which will amuse, if it does not convince him.) The difficulty is just and well stated, and I am afraid that the mode by which he proposes it should be removed will be found inefficacious. By the application of calculations ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... pamphlet, and says he cannot be the author for this reason: the pamphlet reasserts something about Melbourne which he had asserted in one of his articles in the 'Edinburgh Review.' Melbourne, when he read that article, wrote to Brougham, and told him that as he was sure he did not wish to misrepresent him, he informed him that he had never entertained the opinions nor given the vote there ascribed to him. Brougham replied, admitting his error, and promising to correct it, offering to do so at Melbourne's option in another number of the 'Edinburgh Review,' or in some other ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... strange perversity is the best become the most abused,—either as a quality or as an entity? Mortals misrepresent and miscall affection; they make it what [5] it is not, and doubt what it is. The so-called affection pursuing its victim is a butcher fattening the lamb to slay it. What the lower propensities express, should be repressed by the sentiments. No word is more mis- construed; no sentiment ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... Pythagoreans, Epicureans, and other schools, will let that pass? or will they laugh out loud and say, What remarkable methods your friend has, Lycinus! he accepts our adversaries' character of us, and gathers our doctrines from the description of people who do not know, or deliberately misrepresent them. If he were to see an athlete getting his muscles in trim by kicking high, or hitting out at empty space as though he were getting a real blow home, would he (in the capacity of umpire) at once proclaim him victor, because he could not help winning? No; he would ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... have had power to alienate them from the Spanish cause—could never have been looked for; except indeed by those who saw, in the party spirit on this question, a promise that more than ordinary pains would be taken to misrepresent their contents and to abuse the public judgment. But however it was at any rate to have been expected—both from the place which Sir J. Moore held in the Nation's esteem previously to his Spanish campaign, and also especially from that which (by his death in battle) he had so lately taken in its ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... private affair," he replied, looking rather uncomfortable; but there was that in Louis's eye, as he said this, that made Isabel distrust him; something that made her determined to put it out of his power to misrepresent and make mischief. True, he had said how changed he was, and spoken of the reformation his trials had made. Certainly he had been more calm under disappointment than had been his wont. But still she doubted him. She had seen that ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... could not deprive his nephews, on that foundation, without bastardizing their sisters too, no wonder, the historians, who wrote under the Lancastrian domination, have used all their art and industry to misrepresent the fact. If the marriage of Edward the Fourth with the widow Grey was bigamy, and consequently null, what became of the title of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry the Seventh? What became of it? Why a bastard branch of Lancaster, matched with a bastard of York, ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... declaring that she would listen to no compromise which involved a disavowal of her obligations to one whom she justly considered as her liberator. "Moreover, Messieurs," she said proudly, "even were I capable of such an act of treachery, I am unable so to misrepresent the conduct of the gallant Duke, who holds in his possession not only the letter of the King, wherein he gives me full authority to leave Blois, and to proceed whithersoever I may see fit in the interest ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... your indulgence? No, sir; they grew by your neglect! As soon as you began to indulge them, that boasted indulgence was to send them hungry packs of your own creatures to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon their substance! Yes, sir; you sent them men, whose behavior has often caused the blood of those Sons of Liberty to recoil within them—men promoted by you to the highest seats of justice ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... "free day," in accordance with the recommendation of the Government. This design, a suggestion of Jerrold's, affords an excellent example of the warm-hearted, wrong-headed sympathy with the poor which led him so often cruelly to misjudge and misrepresent the acts and lives of persons in authority whose views were not, like his own, spontaneously, kindly, and impulsively unpractical. The series of six cartoons was directed against abuses, the last, dealing with the subject of duelling, being entitled "The ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... such conceptions, the false tendency of which was originally based on passion, gradually assume the subjective character of certainty. Cool-headed people, or those whose affective state directs them to contrary conceptions, then see in such individuals a deliberate intention to misrepresent the facts. This is the reason why people so often hurl mutual insults at each others heads, calling each other liars and calumniators, owing to ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... individuality, carried into the medium, the expression, is a feature in all men of genius, as Buffon teaches ... 'Le style, c'est l'homme.' But if the whole man were style, if all Carlyleism were manner—why there would be no man, no Carlyle worth talking of. I wonder that Mr. Kenyon should misrepresent me so. Euphuisms there may be to the end of the world—affected parlances—just as a fop at heart may go without shoestrings to mimic the distractions of some great wandering soul—although that is a bad comparison, seeing that what is called Carlyle's mannerism, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... who went to scoff when the Great Preacher spoke, remained to pray. No man could speak as eloquently to empty seats, or to a dummy audience, as to a hall filled with intelligent people, yet Thoreau's ropes and hogsheads and pulling and pushing truckmen absurdly misrepresent the true relation that exists between a speaker and his hearers. Of course a speaker finds it uphill work if his audience is not with him, but that it is not with him is usually his ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... vote." The hesitating voter is told, with considerable truth, that a vote given for Mr. Sanity is a vote given for Wurstberg. At any price the constituency does not want Wurstberg. So at the eleventh hour Mr. Sanity is induced to withdraw, and Mr. Goldbug goes into Parliament to misrepresent this constituency. And so with most constituencies, and the result is a legislative body consisting largely of men of unknown character and obscure aims, whose only credential is the wearing of a party label. They come into parliament ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... credulous people in the universe, were made drunk with their own ignorance and folly. Mr. Paine had now written and published his wonderful book, his "Rights of Man," and to put down, to prevent the people from reading, to prejudice the public feeling, and to misrepresent and to vilify the author and his work, the whole power of this powerful government was put in motion. I was myself at this time too young to take any active part in the proceedings; I knew nothing of politics; I loved my ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... nothing to defend herself. The very improvement in Henry's circumstances held her back. She could not write to him and say, "Now I know you are Mr. Raby's nephew, that makes all the difference." That would only give him fresh offense, and misrepresent herself; for in truth she had repented her letter long ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... the best policy," is a maxim which merchants and tradesmen will find as true as it is trite, and no tradesman who wishes to retain his customers and his reputation will knowingly misrepresent the quality of his goods. It is not good policy for a merchant or clerk, in selling goods, to tell the customer what they cost, as, in a majority of cases, he ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... the dishonest man or even the tricky man cannot prosper long. A sales manager of a prominent institution said lately that the chief difficulty that he had with his men was to make them always tell the truth. For the sake of making an important sale they were often inclined to misrepresent his goods. "But nothing," he added, "will so surely kill all business as misrepresentation." Even a gambling book-maker on the race tracks in New York, before such work was forbidden by law, is said to have proudly ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... they used the means with which their power and their courage furnished them; and, 'attacked upon all sides, they carried everywhere their defensive arms' (vide M. Talleyrand's note). I do not wish to misrepresent the learned gentleman, but I understood him to speak of this sentiment with approbation: the sentiment itself is this, that if a nation is unjustly attacked in any one quarter by others, she cannot stop to consider by whom, but must find means of strength in other quarters, no matter where; ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... of the profession who are ignorant or unscrupulous or both, and who for the most part have no higher incentive in their profession than the pursuit of the dollar. The teaching of these men is in most cases more an expression of their own vicious habits than of real conviction. Both wholly misrepresent the teaching and attitude of the great majority of physicians who constitute the reputable ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... distorted, but our language rounded and made whole. Rhymes answer each other as the sexes in flowers and in humanity answer each other. Men do not speak so, it is true. Even when they are inspired or in love they talk inanities. But the poetic comedy does not misrepresent the speech one half so much as the speech misrepresents the soul. Monsieur Rostand showed even more than his usual insight when he called "Cyrano de Bergerac" a comedy, despite the fact that, strictly speaking, it ends with disappointment and death. The essence of tragedy is a spiritual breakdown ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... has so often been most unfairly attributed to it, namely, an attempt to show that a charge of plagiarism might be justly urged against Tennyson. No honest critic, who had even cursorily inspected the book, could so utterly misrepresent ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... that his heart was in the work of his chair, and that with a dual position of pastor and professor, he had the widest scope for the exercise of his best powers, and the fullest opportunity for the realization of his highest ambitions. I think I do not misrepresent him when I say it. But when the pulpit of this church became vacant, the eyes of the congregation turned to him. Occupying a foremost place in the denomination to which it belongs, it called for a strong man who could administer with great ability ...
— Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn • George Tybout Purves
... is a true picture of themselves, and the picture is not pleasant to look upon, so they turn away their faces and will have nothing to do with it except to vilify and condemn it. They deliberately misrepresent it and write falsehoods about it; they satirize and ridicule it, using all sorts of weapons and all sorts of methods to combat it, and for only the one reason—that its truth pricks them in their consciences and they can by no other means ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... been customary, when examining the writings of authors of preceding ages, upon subjects as to which they were less enlightened than ourselves, and which they were very liable to misrepresent, to exercise some little discretion; to discriminate, in some measure, between writers deserving confidence and those not entitled to it. But there is not the least appearance of any such delicacy ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... baron. The present baron's life was recounted in full; and an adventurous life it had been, if the reporter was to be relied upon. The interview appeared in a London journal, with the single comment—"How those American reporters misrepresent things!" ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... names, to the adoption of the character of agent, and various other contrivances, to keep the little earnings of the day from the reach of his creditors. Fathers act in the name of their sons, sons act in the name of their fathers; all constantly exposed to the greatest temptation to misrepresent facts and to evade the law, if creditors should strike. All this is evil, unmixed evil. And what is it all for? Of what benefit to anybody? Who likes it? Who wishes it? What class of creditors desire it? What consideration of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... misunderstand and grossly misrepresent this doctrine, who charge upon it the absurdities and mischiefs which any "levelling system" can not but produce. In all its bearings, tendencies, and effects, it is directly contrary and powerfully hostile to any such system. EQUALITY OF RIGHTS, the doctrine ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... freedom of movement everywhere on the ground of his profession, and was doing the city the greatest mischief, was managing and directing your communications with Philip in Philip's own interest: and I came forward and informed you; and that, not to gratify any private dislike or desire to misrepresent him, as subsequent events have made plain. {7} And in this case I shall not, as before, throw the blame on any speakers or defenders of Neoptolemus—indeed, he had no defenders; it is yourselves that I blame. For had you been watching ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... &c. 481; paralogize[obs3]. take on faith, take as a given; assume (supposition) 514. pervert, quibble; equivocate, mystify, evade, elude; gloss over, varnish; misteach &c. 538[obs3]; mislead &c. (error) 495; cavil, refine, subtilize[obs3], split hairs; misrepresent &c. (lie) 544. beg the question, reason in a circle, reason in circles, assume the conclusion. cut blocks with a razor, beat about the bush, play fast and loose, play fast and loose with the facts, blow hot and cold, prove that black is white and white black, travel out of the record, parler ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... drawingroom, the arms of Cardinal Richelieu, just as they were during the lifetime of his father, which the cardinal desired to leave there, because they comprise a collar of the Holy Ghost, in order to prove to those who are wont to misrepresent the origin of favorites that he was born a gentleman of a good house. In this point, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... are conceived to be the product of brain-structure; these can change only as brain structure changes. Brain is held to determine civilization, rather than civilization brain. Hampered by this defective view, popular writers inevitably describe Japan to the West in terms that necessarily misrepresent her, and that at the same time pander to Occidental pride ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... integrity of Jean. "For the young lady herself, I shall answer for her. Had she been right principled she would never in despyt of her mother and relations made choyse of a persecutor, as they call me. So, whoever think to misrepresent me on that head will find themselves mistaken; for both the king and the church's interest, dryve as fast as they think fit, they will ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... papers cite as a proof of my depravity, the episode of the Turkish woman, which they misrepresent, naturally; and Sarcey compares me to Marquis de Sade, whom he confesses he has ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... verses may tend to misrepresent your character as a gay and rapturous one, when it ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... religion means sequestration from temptation we need to pray to be delivered from it. There is as much danger of a man's losing his character, selling his soul, in the church as in the market. The temptation to the merchant to misrepresent his goods for a larger profit is not greater than that which comes to the minister to magnify his abilities for an ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... people think it worth their while to trouble themselves on the subject. Dr. Fleming, in his letter to Mr. Kennedy (Appendix to the first Rep., 1825), seems to doubt that Salmon enter rivers for any other purpose than of propagation, but lest I should misrepresent his opinions, I will quote what he has said on the subject:—"In the evidence taken before the Select Committee during the last season of Parliament, and appearing in the report, there are several statements of a somewhat imposing kind, which, as they appear ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... are not obscured by the Ignorance, Prejudice or Envy of their Beholders? Some Men cannot discern between a noble and a mean Action. Others are apt to attribute them to some false End or Intention; and others purposely misrepresent or put a wrong Interpretation on them. But the more to enforce this Consideration, we may observe that those are generally most unsuccessful in their Pursuit after Fame, who are most desirous of obtaining it. It is Sallust's Remark upon Cato, that the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... is alone sufficient to prove that Mr Bentham has not taken the trouble to read our article from beginning to end. We are quite sure that he would not stoop to misrepresent it. And, if he had read it with any attention, he would have perceived that all this coquetry, this hesitation, this Yes and No, this saying and not saying, is simply an exercise of the undeniable right which in controversy belongs to the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... many husbands disposed to abandon their wives to you; but there is not a single son who will abandon his mother. Certain people who are hit by the views which you put forth will suspect your morals and will misrepresent your intentions. In a word, in order to handle social sores, one ought to be a king, or a first ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... the newspapers which she had patronized declared against her, and were throughout the struggle the bitterest and most abusive of her opponents. The Voluntaries, too, joined with redoubled vehemence in the cry raised to drown her voice, and misinterpret and misrepresent her claims. The general current of opinion ran strongly against her. My minister, warmly interested in the success of the Non-Intrusion principle, has told me, that for many months past I was the only man in his parish that seemed thoroughly to sympathize with him; ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... recently, the early history of the Loyalists of America has never been written, except to blacken their character and misrepresent their actions; they were represented as a set of idle office-seekers—an imputation which has been amply refuted by their braving the forests of northern countries, and converting them into fruitful fields, developing trade and commerce, and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... to be denied, and Sir John was sent home as empty-handed as he went to Court. D'ye marvel that he hates me? Knowing him for what he is, d'ye marvel that he dubs me pirate and worse? 'Tis natural enough so to misrepresent my doings upon the sea, since it is those doings have afforded me the power to hurt his profit. He has chosen the weapons of calumny for this combat, but those weapons are not mine, as I shall show him this very day. If you do ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... unqualified terms, that he did not like to employ any one in his work who got into quarrels at night in the public streets. Forester's former favour with his master, his industry and talents, were not considered without envy by the rest of the journeymen printers; and they took advantage of his absence to misrepresent him to the bookseller: however, when Forester came to relate his own story, his master was convinced that he was not to blame; that he had worked extremely hard the preceding day; and that, far from having been concerned ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... those who oppose Calvinism" in still stronger terms: "If, then, the doctrines of grace [Calvinism] are plainly taught in the Scriptures, if they accord with the experience of Christians, and enter largely into their prayers, then it must be exceedingly sinful to oppose and misrepresent them. Those who do this will eventually be found fighting against God. We have recently heard of persons praying publicly against the election of grace, and we wonder that their tongues did not cleave to the roof of their mouth in giving utterance to the horrid imprecation." (p. 178.) Ah! ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... do not understand, Senator Stevens, and I must say I am ashamed to speak of you by the honorable title of Senator, sir. I will not listen to any person enriching himself at the Government's expense, and I am your enemy, you, Peabody, and you, Stevens, beyond recall. You both know you misrepresent me." ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... Master, but where He leads, they can follow in a faith that shall sustain them and give them triumph in every path of duty. Opposition may meet them. Difficulties may lie in the path. Evil men may oppose them, and good men, misinterpreting their motives and misunderstanding their work, may misrepresent them. But what matters it? Conscious in the strength that they are doing right, they will work on unhindered and undisturbed. Christian virtue finds in its own development all the reward necessary to stimulate ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... by the sitting of the chamber of peers, in spite of the pains taken to misrepresent it, roused the attention of the Duke of Otranto, and of the Anti-Napoleon faction, of which he was become the director and ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... but a few hours before—almost a woman now, but retaining still the same fair, open brow, and sunny smile which had characterized her as a child. And this was the girl whom Eugenia would trample down—would misrepresent to the fond old uncle, far away. "But it shall never be," he said aloud; "I will remove her Iron them by force if need be." But "where would she go?" he asked. Then as he remembered Ella's wish that he should care for ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... of legislatures and the hypocrisy of the dominant parties were all that politics had to offer. The Lawrence strike touched the most impervious: story after story came to our ears of hardened reporters who suddenly refused to misrepresent the strikers, of politicians aroused to action, of social workers become revolutionary. Daily conversation was shocked into some contact with realities—the newspapers actually printed facts about the situation of a working ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... which was running from them at the wharf as an evidence that she was leaking badly. {40} The crowd of natives was enormous, and the foreigners were there in hundreds. She was loading with oranges and green bananas up to the last moment,—those tasteless bananas which, out of the tropics, misrepresent this most delicious and ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird |
