"Underestimate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when he is hounded out of life despite himself, when he is a little embezzler of a clerk who rushes from the music hall to the Thames and thinks of the unfinished glass with his last breath. No, I do not underestimate the tragedy of the paradox. Yet I say that if love were accountable for it (which it is not), it would still be folly to forswear love. Do you ask why? Because its dangers are the dangers common to all life, and we are so made that we cannot be frightened away from our portion ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... this Strait-jacket. One must not underrate the magnificence of this long-headed idea, one must not underestimate its giant possibilities in the matter of trooping the Church solidly together and keeping it so. It squelches independent inquiry, and makes such a thing impossible, profane, criminal, it authoritatively settles every dispute ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sense for rhythm and music, both Unamuno and Wordsworth seem to be limited to the most vigorous and masculine gaits. This feature is particularly pronounced in Unamuno, for while Wordsworth is painstaking, all-observant, and too good a "teacher" to underestimate the importance of pleasure in man's progress, Unamuno knows no compromise. His aim is not to please but to strike, and he deliberately seeks the naked, the forceful, even the brutal word for truth. There is in him, however, a cause of formlessness from which Wordsworth ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... Ban, or reserve, much inferior in armament to the first line, brought the strength up to about 280,000 men. But this figure is probably an underestimate. Volunteers were enrolled in immense numbers. Some of them were men who had been exempted in the first conscription; others were Serbs from Austrian territory. The United States sent back thousands of Austrian and Macedonian Serbs who had emigrated there. It is probable, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... wells would have saved them. But how were they to know that? Properly equipped it is possible to go safely across that ghastly sink, yet every year it takes its toll of death, and yet men find there sun-dried mummies, of whom no trace or recollection is preserved. To underestimate one's thirst, to pass a given landmark to the right or left, to find a dry spring where one looked for running water—there is no help for any ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... "Never underestimate a genius, Bill," he said kindly. "I refer modestly to myself. In two weeks your patient—I'll guarantee it—will be acclaimed the hope, the blessing, the greatest man in all the history of humanity! It'll be phoney, of course, but we'll have Marilyn Winters—Little Aphrodite ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... definite effort toward the building of complete school systems in the South. Normal schools and colleges were founded for the freedmen, and teachers trained there to man the public schools. There was the inevitable tendency of war to underestimate the prejudice of the master and the ignorance of the slave, and all seemed clear sailing out of the wreckage of the storm. Meantime, starting in this decade yet especially developing from 1885 to 1895, began the industrial ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... than optimism, and the influence of the revolutionary propaganda was never greater than it is at present. Do not hope to conciliate the Magyars by half concessions, and, above all things, do not underestimate the movement, which is being organized openly, in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... On the other hand, Livingstone himself had to be dealt with, and that he would remain quiescent under the circumstances was unlikely. The motor to the main line seemed to be the best thing. True, he would have first to get Livingstone to agree to go. That done, and he did not underestimate its difficulty, there was the question of getting him out of the hotel, now that the alarm ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... mighty God. Is it any wonder that in this man, possessed of such a wealthy consciousness of multiplied resources, the spirit of a cheery optimism should be enthroned? With what stout confidence he goes into the fight! He never mentions the enemy timidly. He never seeks to underestimate his strength. Nay, again and again he catalogs all possible antagonisms in a spirit of buoyant and exuberant triumph. However numerous the enemy, however subtle and aggressive his devices, however towering and well-established the iniquity, however black the gathering clouds, so sensitive is the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... fact is now beyond question that Thomas made all those elaborate preparations to attack an enemy of less than half his own strength, under the belief that his adversary was at least equal in strength to himself. That Hood then knew his own exact strength is a matter of course, and that he did not underestimate the strength of his adversary is almost equally certain. During the two weeks in which his army lay in front of Nashville, if not before, he must have ascertained very closely the strength of the Union forces in his front. Hence Hood's "siege" of ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield |
