"Construe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... physical growth of these years is often accompanied by awkwardness, due to the fact that the muscles are developing faster than the bones, making delicate adjustment impossible. There is painful sensitiveness over this, especially with boys, as hands and feet must be in the open, and they will easily construe any criticism or ridicule into a desire to be rid of ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... objections of British traders, Mich. Pioneer Colls., XVI., 76 ff. The Northwest Company tried to induce the British government to construe the treaty so as to prevent the United States from erecting the forts, urging that a fort at Prairie du Chien would "deprive the Indians of their 'rights and privileges'", ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... you suppose that the knowledge which men of your disposition can extract from evil, was all the experience which I wished you to derive from a captivity protracted by adverse circumstances, far, very far, beyond my wishes! Let me embrace the generous man who knows so well how to construe the purpose of a perplexed, but ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... these new dicta, which Mr. Warrington delivered with a puff of tobacco-smoke: to which Mr. Honeyman blandly assented and Clive listened with pleasure? Such opinions were not of the Colonel's time. He tried in vain to construe Oenone, and to make sense of Lamia. Ulysses he could understand; but what were these prodigious laudations bestowed on it? And that reverence for Mr. Wordsworth, what did it mean? Had he not written Peter Bell, and been turned into deserved ridicule by all the reviews? Was ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... period of his boyhood, no genuine effort is made to develop his powers of independent thought and so to enable him to revise his inherited opinions. A certain stimulus no doubt is given to his mental activity by setting him mathematical problems to solve and passages in the classical authors to construe; but his thought on political and social questions remains a thing apart, unstirred, atrophied. What else is this but political propaganda? And when it is reinforced by a thousand subtle hints in and out of the classroom, hints suggesting that, of course, ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... ta panta pollous vious eis doxan agagonta ton archegon tes sotepias auton dia pethematon teleiosai. The English translators take agagonta as referring to the same person as auto, but it seems grammatically preferable to construe it as a ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... reinforcements, and not to fight Hood at Pulaski, as he (Thomas) had at first ordered. I simply submitted to him the plain record, with the best possible construction I could put upon it, and that only so far as it was necessary for me to construe it to give the general basis of my action. If any official duty remained to be done in that regard, that duty devolved on General Thomas, ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... in Dick the Scholar," cried Captain Westbury, laughing; and he called to a trooper out of the window—"Ho, Dick, come in here and construe." ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... without continued endeavor. In order to deliverance from the original sin of inertness and its train, cowardice and falsity, men stand in need of examples, such as have been given them in the founders of religions, to construe for them the riddle of freedom. The necessary enlightenment concerning moral conviction is given by the Church, whose symbols are not to be looked upon as dogmatic propositions, but only as means ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... And he was acutely conscious of a pair of violet eyes that would have drawn Saint Pyrites from his iron pillar—or whatever the allusion is—and of the lady's smile and look—a little frightened, but a look that, with the ever coward hears of a true lover, he could not yet construe. They were asking his name and bestowing upon him wellbred thanks for his heroic deed, and the Scotch cap was especially babbling and insistent. But the eloquent appeal was in the eyes ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... spoken of the war powers of the President; I study, and study, and cannot find them as absolute as the Lincolnites construe them. All that I read in the Constitution are the real war powers in the Congress, and the President is only the executor of those powers. The President must have permission for every thing, almost ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... idols so mercilessly broken is salutary. It throws him back on his own resources; it makes him honest to himself. If he thinks the criticism thus passed on Aristotle unfair, he will begin to read his works with new eyes. He will not only construe his words, but try to reconstruct in his own mind the thoughts so carefully elaborated by that ancient philosopher. He will judge of their truth without being swayed by the authority of a great name, and probably in the end value what is valuable in Aristotle, or Plato, or ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... letter from Sir John Harrington to Prince Henry (brother of Charles I.) about Dr John Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1592, says that no one "could be admitted to primam tonsuram, except he could first bene le bene con bene can, as they called it, which is to read well, to conster [construe] well, and to sing well, in which last he hath good judgment." [The three bene's are of course ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... more happy for the revelling in brilliant pranks and conceits of a modern vein of composition. And in the elusive humor of the subject is not the least charm and fitness. Too much stress has been laid on the graphic purpose. There is always a tendency to construe too literally. While we must be in full sympathy with the poetic story, there is small need to look for each precise event. We are tempted to go further, almost in defiance, and say that music need not be definite, even despite the composer's intent. In other words, if the tonal poet designs ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... "it is not for thee to instruct tender professors, or to construe Covenant obligations. For the rest, you have acknowledged enough of sin and sorrowful defection, to draw down defeat on a host, were it as numerous as the sands on the sea-shore. And it is our judgment, that we are not free to let you pass from us safe and in life, since ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... "to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces, or the particular and specific power to regulate commerce;" "to establish an uniform rule of naturalization;" "to coin money and regulate the value thereof." And to construe the words of which we are speaking as a general and unlimited grant of sovereignty over territories which the Government might afterward acquire, is to use them in a sense and for a purpose for which they were not used in any other part of the instrument. But if ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... fog. From where he stood on slightly higher ground he looked down at her curiously, for in more than one sense she was a puzzle to him. There was a certain indefiniteness in her manner toward him which he felt a passionate desire to construe. She seemed at once merciful and merciless, sympathetic and hard. Then, as he looked at her, he almost forgot all this wilderness of suffering and doubt. All his intense love for physical beauty, ministered to by the whole manner of his life, seemed rekindled in ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... councillor, Fujiwara no Matate, and to the privy councillors, Fujiwara no Yoshitsugu, Fujiwara no Momokawa, and Fujiwara no Uwona. It was with the Fujiwara families that the responsibility rested chiefly, and the general conduct of the Fujiwara at that period of history forbids us to construe their apparent indifference in a wholly bad sense. Probably the simplest explanation is the true one: Koken herself was ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... surely no appearance," said Lord George, whispering in his secretary's ear, "of being deranged. We must not construe any trifling peculiarity into madness. You desire to make one of this body?" he added, addressing Barnaby. "And intended to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... I remained a poor man, I had felt no jealousy; for I trusted in the promise we had exchanged and relied on your honesty in keeping your word. But, when I had perceived your new intention, something went wrong inside my brain, so that I began to construe all your former good as bad. I thought that from the first you had never intended to keep your word, and had brought me into the Klondike to get me out of the way, so that, possessed of the secret information which I had given you, you might steal a march on me, and set out for El Dorado ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Ascension was given to the Eleven. Nor will he, for lack of human credentials, spare to deliver the glorious message with which he is charged by the true Head of the Church. For a man thus minded, there is within the pale of the establishment no place. He has been at no college; he cannot construe a Greek author or write a Latin theme; and he is told that, if he remains in the communion of the Church, he must do so as a hearer, and that, if he is resolved to be a teacher, he must begin by being a schismatic. His choice ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his own stock of ignorance. Philosophers have said:—A prudent man will not obtrude his answer till he has the question stated to him in form. Notwithstanding the proposition may have its right demonstration, the cavil of the fastidious will construe it wrong. ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... can frame a possible, or analyze a given sentence. To translate an English sentence into Latin is to frame a sentence, and is the best test whether or not a student knows the difference of Latin from English construction; to construe and parse is to analyze a sentence, and is an evidence of the easier attainment of knowing what Latin construction is in itself. And this is the sense of the word "Grammar" which our inaccurate student detests, and this is the sense of the word which every ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... eyes, but with the atoms," he said. "When your conviction of a truth is not merely in your brain but in your being, you may diffidently vouch for its meaning." He discouraged any tendency a student might have to construe book-knowledge as a ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... interfering with Slavery where it exists, I know that it is unwarranted by anything I have ever intended, and as I believe, by anything I have ever said. If, by any means, I have ever used language which could fairly be so construe (as, however, I believe I never have) I now correct it. So much, then, for the inference that Judge Douglas draws, that I am in favor of setting the Sections at ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... it has been attempted to construe these declarations concerning the right of the people to reassume their delegations of power—especially in the terms employed by Virginia, "people of the United States"—as having reference to the idea of one people, in mass, or "in the aggregate." ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... her last Saturday. She desires me to say that, though she has a very great regard for you as her clergyman and friend, she cannot be your wife, and she regrets exceedingly if she has in any way led you to construe the interest she has always manifested in ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... Melmotte would come and be smiled upon by herself, be flattered as she thought that she could flatter him, be told that he was a god, and have that passage about the divinity of joining ocean to ocean construed to him as she could construe it, would not the great man become plastic under her hands? And if, while this was a-doing, Felix would run away with Marie, could not forgiveness be made easy? And her creative mind ranged still farther. Mr Broune might help, and even Mr Booker. To such a one as Melmotte, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... school, under Mr. Evans, than I did at Andover in the two years and a half that I existed there. I remained nearly three years at Salisbury, at the end of which time I was become a pretty good latin scholar, and could construe Virgil and Horace with considerable ease to myself. I was an excellent penman, and a pretty good mathematician, as well as a complete master of mensuration. I had for many years been a pupil of the celebrated ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... interpretations which it was sought to give to his thoughts. "Does it follow," he inquires, "that because a man is desirous of reform, he must surrender the study of the past? And if there be new laws to construe, how could his evil genius deter him from the necessary knowledge of ancient laws? Is there a single jurisconsult, who, in the hope of a better future, despises the meaning and spirit of that which still ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... strongest light. Lord Ilchester (Fox's cousin) had lost thirteen thousand pounds at one sitting to Lord Carlisle, who offered to take three thousand pounds down. Nothing was paid. But ten years afterwards, when Lord Carlisle pressed for his money, he complained that an attempt was made to construe the offer into a remission of the ten thousand pounds:—'The only way, in honour, that Lord Ilchester could have accepted my offer, would have been by taking some steps to pay the L3000. I remained ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... as freely as ever; no watch on her movements; she should eat, sleep, rise up and sit down with them, as before; there should be not a word, or act, that Felipe's sympathetic sensitiveness could construe into any provocation to Ramona to run away. Nevertheless, Ramona should be made to feel, every moment of every hour, that she was in disgrace; that she was with them, but not of them; that she had chosen ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Before I was sixteen I had exhausted all that could be learned in English of the Arabs and Persians, the Tartars and Turks, and the same ardour urged me to guess at the French of D'Herbelot and to construe the barbarous Latin of Pocock's Abulfaragius." Here is in rough outline a large portion at least of the Decline and Fall already surveyed. The fact shows how deep was the sympathy that Gibbon had for his subject, and that there was a sort of pre-established harmony between ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... desired; but they showed no such desire, and laws were enacted securing freedom of worship to all professing to believe in Jesus Christ; with the important limitation, however, of severe penalties for alleged blasphemy. This limitation clearly made it possible for magistrates to construe an honest expression of religious opinion as blasphemy, and to inflict the cruel punishments provided for that offence. It should be noticed that the Toleration Act of Maryland, passed in 1649, was the work of a General Assembly composed of sixteen Protestants and eight Roman Catholics, the ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... in the character of a younger brother of a good house, and I was in my youth sent to school; but learning was now at so low an ebb, that my master himself could hardly construe a sentence of Latin; and as for Greek, he could not read it. With very little knowledge therefore, and with altogether as little virtue, I was set apart for the church, and at the proper age commenced monk. I lived many years retired in a cell, a life very agreeable to ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... the matter, which was not so easy, Saurin being hardly able to restrain his excitement, and Crawley being flushed about the forehead, where the other's fist had struck him; otherwise he was no more discomposed than usual, and, being put on to construe soon after entering the school, acquitted himself very well and with the most perfect sang froid. Fortunately Saurin was not subjected to the same ordeal or he would have been considerably flustered, if not totally unable to fix his mind on the subject; and ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... inaudible steps. Having secured the outer doors, I returned with less circumspection. He heard me not when I descended; but my returning steps were easily distinguished. Now he thought was the guilty interview at an end. In what other way was it possible for him to construe ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... public sentiment was the Constitution formed. No person at all versed in constitutional or legal interpretation—with his judgment unaffected by interest or any of the prejudices to which the existing controversy has given birth—could, it is thought, construe the Constitution, in its letter, as intending to perpetuate slavery. To come to such a conclusion with a full knowledge of what was the mind of this nation in regard to slavery, when that instrument was made, demonstrates a moral or intellectual ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... conceiving master-mason, some mediaeval Vilars or other unknown to fame, were for a few minutes flashed down through the centuries to an unappreciative age. Giles saw their eloquent look on this day of transparency, but could not construe it. He turned into ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... unsigned, but appeared to have been compiled by at least four or five persons—McAllen among them; his writing style was not difficult to recognize. Leaving out much that was incomprehensible or nearly so, Barney could still construe a fairly specific picture of the association project of which he was now an unscheduled and unwilling part. Selected plants and animals had been moved from Earth through the McAllen Tube to a world consisting ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... beyond all doubt. The senate now made an attempt to open up to Gracchus a tolerable retreat; two consulars challenged him to discuss the matter further in the senate house, and the tribune entered into the scheme with zeal. He sought to construe this proposal as implying that the senate had conceded the principle of distributing the domain-land; but neither was this implied in it, nor was the senate at all disposed to yield in the matter; the discussions ended without any result. Constitutional means ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... rid of the odor of the pumpkin business; but all to no purpose. Do what he would, go where he would, contribute to what he would, mix with what society he would, be as generous as he would, people were heard to whisper 'pumpkins;' and to construe his motives as prompted by the same spirit which induced him to make a business of cultivating that vegetable. A similar odor, arising from his connection with Pierce, Smooth found clinging to his garments. The world in general viewed him as a dangerous man, for the simple reason that ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... employment. The expectation of Coleridge not a little unhinges me, and, still more, the number of visitors we have had; but winter is approaching, and I have good hopes. I mentioned Michael Angelo's poetry some time ago; it is the most difficult to construe I ever met with, but just what you would expect from such a man, shewing abundantly how conversant his soul was with great things. There is a mistake in the world concerning the Italian language; the poetry of Dante and Michael Angelo proves, that if there be little ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... capsule and the attributes of the valves and seeds are usually considered to furnish the characteristics of genera, and this point has been elucidated at some length by Solms-Laubach. There is, however, no sufficient reason to construe a new genus on the ground of Heeger's globular fruited shepherd's purse; but as a true elementary species, and even as a good systematic species it has proved itself, and as such it is described by Solms-Laubach, who named it ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... boy can construe Homer, if he understands Horace, and can taste Virgil; but how seldom does he ask, or examine, or think whether he can restrain his passions,—whether he is grateful, generous, humane, compassionate, ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... O'Moy bade her with his heavy sneer. "You interrupt him. He is about to construe those facts so that they shall wear an innocent appearance. He is about to prove himself worthy of the great sacrifice you made to save his life. Well?" And ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... the Peace, especially in the country, surpasses all description, and it is so much the order of the day that all cases which are not too utterly flagrant are quietly reported by the newspapers, without comment. Nor is anything else to be expected. For on the one hand, these Dogberries do merely construe the law according to the intent of the farmers, and, on the other, they are themselves bourgeois, who see the foundation of all true order in the interests of their class. And the conduct of the police ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... cannot therefore be fairly construed, as some critics construe it, into a petty-minded protest against the honour paid to the ancient Greeks and to the form and sentiment of their literature by more learned dramatists of the day, like Ben Jonson and Chapman. Although Shakespeare knew the Homeric version of the ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... monarch, George IV) must have cost him no little study and correspondence. Walter Scott was called in council, and offered one miscorrection which still blots the page. In spite of all this pondering and filing, there remain pages not easy to construe, and inconsistencies not easy to explain away. I have sought to make these disappear, and to lighten a little the baggage with which my grandfather marches; here and there I have rejointed and rearranged a sentence, always with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Constantinople in 1453, and the council in 1438 for the reconciliation of the Greek and Latin Churches, had brought to Florence many a needy Greek scholar. And now the work was completed, the door of the mystical temple lay open to all who could construe Latin, and the [37] scholar rested from his labour; when there was introduced into his study, where a lamp burned continually before the bust of Plato, as other men burned lamps before their favourite ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... you deny it?—men attain high places by means which the law would construe as criminal, were they not intelligent enough ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... or the ready way to the Latin Tongue, containing most plain demonstrations for the regular Translating of English into Latin, with instructions how to construe and parse Authors, fitted for such as would attain to the Latin Tongue, ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... herself has mentioned, Miss Sage is our school-teacher; but her modest cheek would be suffused with blushes were I to tell you how much more she is to us—how broadly her generous nature prompts her to construe her duties as the instructress of innocent youth. Only a moment ago you had an opportunity for observing that her word is our law paramount. I am within bounds in saying, sir, that in ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... practised those very arts which they affected so much to decry. For after all, it must be allowed, that nothing could be justly urged against the English government, with respect to France, except the omission of a mere form, which other nations might interpret into an irregularity, but could not construe into perfidious dealing, as the French had previously violated the peace by their insolence ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of commendatory verses for the Laureate's "Sejanus." These appear in the folio edition of Jonson's works. Probably this sonnet—it has fourteen lines—is one of the most cryptic things in the whole of Elizabethan literature. No member of our family or any other family has ever been able to construe it. Yet it is a pleasure to me to gather from the concluding couplet that the author had sound ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Street. But the big hotels were all full to overflowing; and at the only little one he tried the boy lost his temper like a man on being requested to deposit six shillings before proceeding to his room. Pocket had not got it to deposit, and the galling reflection caused him to construe the demand as a deliberate reflection upon his outward respectability—as if he could not have borrowed the money from Dr. Bompas in ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... to be a courtier of popular favor he did not conceal from himself or from others the chagrin which he would feel if there should be a manifestation of popular disfavor. Before the popular election he stated that if it should go against him he should construe it as the verdict of the people that they were dissatisfied with his services as a public man, and he should then retire to private life, no longer expecting or accepting public functions. He did not regard politics as ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... which she was at liberty to construe as she wished, there had of late been an insidious vein of ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... They had done all this for a race of men who had been uniformly harsh and unjust to the Kafirs, who had brought their own Republic to bankruptcy and chaos by misgovernment, who were and would remain foes of the British empire, who were incapable of appreciating magnanimity, and would construe forbearance as cowardice. They had destroyed the prestige of British power in Africa among whites and blacks, and thereby sowed for themselves and their successors a ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... succeeded in having the proprietary lands taxed equally with the lands of the colonists. But the proprietors attempted to construe this provision so that their best lands were taxed at the rate paid by the people on their worst. This obvious quibble of course raised such a storm of opposition that the Quakers, joined by classes ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... an early occasion to make a speech at this capital indorseing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... other. Hamilton regarded the federal constitution as inadequate in strength to perform its required functions, and believed that weakness to be its greatest defect; and it was his sincere desire, and his uniform practice, so to construe its provisions as to give the greatest strength to the executive in the administration of public affairs. Jefferson, on the other hand, contemplated all executive power with distrust, and desired to impair its vitality and restrain its operations, believing with Paine that a weak government and ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... lessons, and do their exercises, in their own rooms, going into school to say or construe them. One school-time occupies about three-quarters ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... proposition but the senator perceived in it all the opportunity their two modest accomplices of the boiler deck asked. That pair and their adherents—not followers—you wouldn't catch them leading—they and their gathering adherents would construe the landing of the players as an attempt to deliver them out of their hands and would undertake to seize and maltreat the actor, at least, the moment he should be off the boat. That they were likely to fail was little to the senator; there would be a tumult, so managed as to bring Hugh to the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... construe the words mentioned above, "Call on Me, and I will deliver thee," in a different sense from what I had ever done before; for then I had no notion of anything being called DELIVERANCE, but my being delivered from the captivity I was in; for though ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... than he ought to have been in civil company, caught up the phrase and repeated it:—"Misunderstanding, sir—Misunderstanding, sir?—I do not know how I am to construe that, sir; but to judge from the information of these scratches on your honourable visnomy, I should augur that you had been of late at misunderstanding with ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... we must construe its nomenclature into, the language of the present day. What, then, is the modern synonym for the "ideas," "representations," "phantasms," and "species," which the theory in question declares to be vicarious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... consist of distinct faculties, but that what we choose to call so are only different activities of the same power. Each one is just as essential as the other, on which account Education must grant to each faculty its claim to the same fostering care. If we would construe correctly the axiom a potiori fit denominatio to mean that man is distinguished from animals by thought, and that mediated will is not the same as thought, we must not forget that feeling and representing are not ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... considered an authoritative statement of the meaning and intention of the instrument which it explains, and that consequently foreign Governments and Courts, and no doubt also the International Prize Court, will construe and interpret the provisions of the Declaration by the light of the Commentary given in the Report." (Miscell. 1909, No. ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... tell us that he would rather "choose a virgin of mean fortunes honestly bred"? Mr. Masson forthwith breaks forth in a paroxysm of what we suppose to be picturesqueness in this wise: "What have we here? Surely nothing less, if we choose so to construe it, than a marriage advertisement! Ho, all ye virgins of England (widows need not apply), here is an opportunity such as seldom occurs: a bachelor, unattached; age, thirty-three years and three or four months; height [Milton, by the way, would have said highth] middle or a little less; ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... done at that little age, and it comprised this: "He got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and vice versa, construe and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, and many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in Comenius's 'Janua,' and had ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... Talleyrand. "What are the eastern bounds of Louisiana?" asked Livingston rather naively. "I do not know," replied Talleyrand; "you must take it as we received it." "But what did you mean to take?" Livingston insisted. "I do not know," was the reply. "Then you mean that we shall construe it our own way?" "I can give you no direction," replied the astute Frenchman. "You have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and I suppose you will make the most ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... Why not to him in part, and to vs all, That feele the bruizes of the dayes before, And suffer the Condition of these Times To lay a heauie and vnequall Hand vpon our Honors? West. O my good Lord Mowbray, Construe the Times to their Necessities, And you shall say (indeede) it is the Time, And not the King, that doth you iniuries. Yet for your part, it not appeares to me, Either from the King, or in the present ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... giving evidence, and there she remained to the close, agreeably occupied in a mental debate. What would they make out from her admission regarding her sojourn in London and the morning calls? How would that precious West Lynne construe it? She did not much care; she would brave it out, and assail them with towering indignation, did any dare to cast a stone ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... words, they too are subject to illusion; the enemy can form and counterfeit them. Or if they come from a good angel (for God Himself never speaks thus) we may mistake and misapprehend them. They are spoken in a divine manner, but we construe them in a ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... thing to do! Yes, Sir, ungentlemanly!" He crumpled up my verses and tossed them into the waste-paper basket. "We had better get on with our Tacitus." And "Offensive!" I heard him muttering once more, as he picked up the book and found his place. I began to construe. His outburst had disconcerted me, and no doubt I performed discreditably: but glancing up in some apprehension after a piece of guess-work which even to me carried no conviction, I saw that again he was not attending. After this, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... stupidity for years; his sudden insurrections in which he thrashed bullies at school; his fear that he should be sent home in disgrace for bad scholarship; and how at last, after seven years of dulness, at the age of fourteen, "the mental fog broke away suddenly, and before the term ended I could construe the Latin in less time than it took to recite it, and the demonstrations of Euclid were as plain and clear as a fairy story. My memory came back so distinctly that I could recite long poems after a single reading, and no member ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... lection, construction, version. equivalent, equivalent meaning &c. 516; synonym; paraphrase, metaphrase[obs3]; convertible terms, apposition; dictionary &c. 562; polyglot. V. interpret, explain, define, construe, translate, render; do into, turn into; transfuse the sense of. find out &c. 480a the meaning &c. 516 of; read; spell out, make out; decipher, unravel, disentangle; find the key of, enucleate, resolve, solve; read between the lines. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... I remember I said at the time, 'you must not construe this that I was any way connected with the rattening.' But some are deaf to ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... will always have opportunity to labor at this task.[288] We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions. Even in soliloquizing with ourselves, we construe our feelings intellectually. Both our personal ideals and our religious and mystical experiences must be interpreted congruously with the kind of scenery which our thinking mind inhabits. The philosophic climate of our time inevitably forces its own clothing ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... "Let them construe that who can," answered Whitaker; "the fellow who drove them was a west-country man, and only said they came from a friend to help to furnish out your ladyship's entertainment; the man would not stay to drink—I ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... sorrows past: And so most beautiful their colours show As none (so little) like them; her sad brow A sable velvet feather covers quite, Even like the forehead-cloth that, in the night, Or when they sorrow, ladies use to wear: Their wings, blue, red, and yellow, mix'd appear; Colours that, as we construe colours, paint Their states to life;—the yellow shows their saint, The dainty Venus, left them; blue, their truth; The red and black, ensigns of death and ruth. And this true honour from their love-death sprung,— They were the first that ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... speech denoting, if not wording, a recognition of his unswerving loyalty would have accorded better with the estimate I had otherwise formed of her character. The absence of any tone or word that even one so devoted as I could construe to her advantage was ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... to be my tutor, and finding I was not yet fixed in that particular, I was requested to construe one of the easiest passages in the AEneid; my next task was to read a few paragraphs of monkish Latin from a little white book, which I found contained the university statutes: having acquitted myself in this to the apparent satisfaction of the doctor, he next proceeded ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... who hated it, brought her boy to the camp at Rochelle, where he was received as the chief of the Huguenots. His culture was not extensive. He had learned to speak the truth, to ride, to shoot, to do with little sleep and less food. He could also construe a little Latin, and had read a few military treatises; but the mighty hours of an eventful life were now to take him by the hand, and to teach him much good and much evil, as they bore him onward. He now saw military treatises expounded practically by professors, like his uncle Condo, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sympathy are so strong and so sincere. The Queen would certainly under other circumstances have instantly written to the King. On the other hand, her first letter to her cousin (the King's daughter) may be sufficient, as it conveys a direct message; and there may be people who will construe this into a political act, but the Queen thinks that this risk should rather be run than that she should appear unfeeling and forgetful of former ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... the whole thing would be soon over, they desired this might be construed indulgently, and accordingly many ships were suffered to pass (with goods more or less perishing) under that order. Now that the King of Holland continues obstinate they want to squeeze him, and to construe the order strictly. There have been many consultations what to do, whether they should make another order rescinding the last or execute the former more strictly. Both are liable to objections. The first will appear like a cruel proceeding and evidence of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... the classical lecture in the Hall, I could not bear Meeke's superiority, and I tried to sit as far from him as I could, that I might not hear him construe." ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... tongue. We see the general advance in two passages from writers of Edward's and Richard's reigns. "Children in school," says Higden, a writer of the first period, "against the usage and manner of all other nations be compelled for to leave their own language and for to construe their lessons and their things in French, and so they have since the Normans first came into England. Also gentlemen's children be taught for to speak French from the time that they be rocked in their cradle, and know how to speak and play ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... construe it so, and, if my notion of serially visiting the piazzas of Rome was not prompted by my chance glimpse of the Campo di Fiori, it was certainly not relinquished because of any mischance in my meditated vision of it. I ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... years ago, and his gray hairs seemed fewer than those that had then strayed into his youthful head. He talked a wonderful quantity in a little time, and told us—among other things that we should never have dreamed of—that Italian people will not cheat you, if you construe them generously, and put them ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... than true— That cloudy weather can construe Unto our thoughts a gloomy view, That all ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... of the legislator as evidenced by—what I should like to call—the history of the clause. They look for the intention of the draftsman, they search the Parliamentary proceedings concerning the clause, and they interpret and construe the clause with regard to the intention of the draftsman as well as ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... withdrawn in consequence of the impressive warnings their commanding officer had received from the Department of War. It is hoped and believed that his Government will take a more dispassionate and just view of this subject, and not be disposed to construe a measure of justifiable precaution, made necessary by its known inability in execution of the stipulations of our treaty to act upon the frontier, into an encroachment upon its rights or a stain ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury,'' etc. A similar language again occurs in article ninth. Construe either of these articles by the rules which would justify the construction put on the new Constitution, and they vest in the existing Congress a power to legislate in all cases whatsoever. But ...
— The Federalist Papers
... even to defend the city against their attacks, yet clung to the vain hope that the British Government might be induced to regard them as pirates and so interfere in accordance with the terms of the treaty, or that the Raja of Sarawak would construe some old agreement made with Sir JAMES BROOKE as necessitating his ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... pearl of price in your estimation? That too may be purchased by steady application, and long, solitary hours of study and reflection. "But," says the man of letters, "what a hardship is it that many an illiterate fellow, who cannot construe the motto on his coach, shall raise a fortune, and make a figure, while I possess merely the common conveniences of life." Was it for fortune, then, that you grew pale over the midnight lamp, and gave the sprightly years of youth to study and reflection? ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... came out of the garden, and had been some time in the school, he was called out to construe. Before he left his form, he pulled out his handkerchief to blow his nose, when three or four plumstones fell on the ground. After he was gone I picked them up, for I love the bitter ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... young workmen use the lathe too much, and seem to depend on a fine looking lathe and handsome tools, and spend too much time in using the lathe and in decorating their bench with a fine display. But don't construe this as meaning that one can do nice work with a jack knife and handsaw, for I most certainly believe in a good and substantial set of tools, or I would not have taken so much space in speaking of them. Next, one must have a good bench, wide ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... from His Majesty. Dick was a lubber and, I believed then, though I had afterwards proof to the contrary, a coward; and matching myself against him I knew I would do the king's navy more credit than he. But I kept my thought to myself—and next day made a sad bungle, I remember, of my construe of Thucydides' account of the sea fight ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... a mere modern could produce,—had they not lived and died in respectable allegiance to the Homeric personality? To say nothing of a mystical admiration of the Greek hexameters which he could not construe, Colonel Prowley was a diligent reader of Pope's sonorous travesty. He felt like some simple believer in the divine right of kings, when the mob have broken into the palace, and stand in no awe of the stucco and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... frankness I say I do not know. Indeed, I am not fully advised in all this matter. It was imperative to get you out of Washington, and if so, it is equally imperative to keep you out of Washington. At least for a time I am obliged to construe my carte blanche in that way, my dear lady. And as I say, my conscience is ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... to find you there residing, as is your duty, upon my arrival, I shall be able to construe the reasons for your absence, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... can alone construe such an inestimable treasure, which brings peace of conscience and heavenly consolation, into "making the priest the keeper of a man's conscience, and the destroyer of man's spiritual liberty and of his responsibility to ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel
... Burgesses in 1688 entered a vigorous protest. "A Law," they declared, "may as well Receive its beginning by proclamation as such revivall.... Some Governor may be sent to Govern us who under the pretense of the liberty he hath to construe prerogative and stretch it as far as he pleaseth may by proclamation Revive all the Lawes that for their great Inconveniences to the Country have been Repeal'd ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... against our Translation are these. First, What real Use or Advantage can this Translation be to the Publick? As for school-Boys and Learners, Bernard's and Hool's Translations, the great number of Notes, a School-Master, or their own Industry will well enough teach 'em to construe it. Men of Sense and Learning, they read it wholly for the Latin sake; therefore a Translation is of no use to them. Lastly, They won't fit our Stage; and consequently they are impertinent at best. To these we answer; First, As to School-Boys and Learners; Bernard's and Hool's Translations ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... is so rich has been another way. Now, suppose a mind of the latter of our two classes, whose imagination is pent in consequently, and who takes its {41} facts 'hard;' suppose it, moreover, to feel strongly the craving for communion, and yet to realize how desperately difficult it is to construe the scientific order of nature either theologically or poetically,—and what result can there be but inner discord and contradiction? Now, this inner discord (merely as discord) can be relieved in either of two ways: The longing ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... from Edgar Caswall asking if he might come to tea on the following afternoon, her heart sank within her. If it was only for her father's sake, she must not refuse him or show any disinclination which he might construe into incivility. She missed Mimi more than she could say or even dared to think. Hitherto, she had always looked to her cousin for sympathy, for understanding, for loyal support. Now she and all these things, and a thousand others—gentle, assuring, supporting—were gone. And ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... Nellie!—Flirtation's the leaven of life; It lightens its doughy compactness. Don't always—the world with deception is rife— Construe what men say with exactness! I pity the girl, In society's whirl, Who's ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... wailing for children, furnished heartrending sights, but no victim bore such physical marks as the most vivid imagination could construe into an atrocity. ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... his little world, have in them the same sweetness as the reverberation of ages. Heaven would show him his capacity for those things to which he aspires by giving him an early and representative realization of them. It is a happy confidence. Reality is tyrannous. Let him construe everything in the poet's mood. He shall dream, and the day will have more significance. Youth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... almost all cultivated languages, on almost all subjects and sciences; farther, as man is ever the prime object to man, already it was my favorite employment to read character in speculation, and from the Writing to construe the Writer. A certain groundplan of Human Nature and Life began to fashion itself in me; wondrous enough, now when I look back on it; for my whole Universe, physical and spiritual, was as yet a Machine! However, such a conscious, recognized groundplan, the truest ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... I am translating the 'Oberon' of Wieland; it is a difficult language, and I can translate at least as fast as I can construe. I have made also a very considerable proficiency in the French language, and study it daily, and daily study the German; so that I am not, and ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... potential adventuring of youth. Twenty and maidenhood lies at the opposite pole from twenty-four and matrimony. Stella subscribed to that. She took for her guiding-star—theoretically—the twin concepts of morality and duty as she had been taught to construe them. So she saw no loophole, and seeing none, felt cheated of something infinitely precious. Marriage and motherhood had not come to her as the fruits of love, as the passionately eager fulfilling of her destiny. It had been thrust upon her. She ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Captain, snapping his fingers. "I know what young men are. A gay dashing lad, I suppose, whose hot blood and youthful frolics old maiden ladies construe into the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... began to smile again. Now he understood. He understood that Nekhludoff's mind was not entirely sound, and he immediately tried to find a way of profiting by Nekhludoff's project, and endeavored to so construe it that he might turn ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... repeat to you that I cannot engage in an affair of honour with a thief. I knocked him down this morning, but that was in the heat of righteous anger. For fear that your report to him may lead Mr. Lapelle to construe my refusal to meet him day after to-morrow morning as cowardice on my part, permit me to make this request of you. Please say to him that I shall arm myself with a pistol as soon as I have reached my house, and that ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... the Witch of Endor!" I cried, "if you can construe all that from his appearance you are dealing in nothing ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... to construe, is it? and yet, having come to the end, and found that it conveyed no glimmering of an idea to my mind, I ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... warm reception should they endeavour to approach to closer hostilities. We endeavoured to make them understand that our intentions were friendly, and that we wished them to be peaceable; but they seemed to construe our signals to make them comprehend this, into indications of fear on our part; this increased their courage, and strengthened their determination to drive us away if possible, although they would not come within ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... while Boyle complains of these sprinklings of ink, he himself contributes to Bentley's "Collection of Asinine Proverbs," and "throws him in one out of Aristophanes," of "an ass carrying mysteries:" "a proverb," says Erasmus, (as 'the Bees' construe him.) "applied to those who were preferred to some place they did not deserve, as when a dunce ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... a loss how to construe the manner of the other, perceived at once a good deal of plain English in this request, and he dislodged one of Colonel Howard's dusty bottles, with a dexterity that denoted the earnestness of his purpose. Borroughcliffe ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... toward religion was in his earlier work one of more pronounced antagonism or, at least, of more complete agnosticism than in later days he found requisite to the maintenance of his scientific freedom and conscientiousness. Both of these men represent the effort to construe the world, including man, from the point of view of the natural and also of the social sciences, and to define the place of religion in that view of the world which is thus set forth. The fact that there had been no such philosophical readjustment in Great Britain as in Germany, made the acceptance ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... fraternities, so much to the prejudice of both bodies, as all separations must be, according to the old adage, Vis unita fortior; which to be sure there are not wanting some of one or of the other fraternity who are able to construe. What a blow was this to me, who unite both in my own person!" "Well, by whatever name you please to be called," continued Jones, "you certainly are one of the oddest, most comical fellows I ever met with, and must have something very surprizing in your story, which you must confess I have a ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... defer to the opinion of the Court of Appeals, which held that it would give it that construction if the case called for it. In view of the language above quoted it would be unbecoming for us to say that the Court of Appeals would not construe the law as applicable to domestic commerce alone, and if it did, the case would fall directly within the Mississippi Case.[43] We, therefore, feel compelled to give it that construction ourselves and so construe it that there can be no doubt as ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... volatile to his nose, lectures on strength. Fellows who faint at the veriest trifle criticise the tactics of Hannibal; whimpering boys store themselves with phrases out of the slaughter at Canna; and blubber over the victories of Scipio, because they are obliged to construe them. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Another thing he pointed out to them, the Arabs were a singularly inquisitive people and if they came upon a ship in the desert they would probably talk about it; and the world having a wickedly malicious tongue would never construe in its proper light their difference with the English and Spanish fleets, but would merely side with the strong ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... some old-fashioned pedagogue, who no more dreamed of the scientific fame of his pupil than did Trebonius of the approaching celebrity of young Master Martin. Copernicus would there learn to read, to write, to construe Latin, and to commit to memory hymns, prayers, and catechisms. Whether as a lad he studied Greek is uncertain; but, as his parents seem to have been wealthy, he would enjoy greater advantages than his still more illustrious contemporary; hence at an early period he was sent to Cracow, where ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... etc.—what we here call Modifications—to form, find themselves within bounds which they continually overleap. They define number, for instance, as a form, or inflection, and yet speak of nouns "plural in form but singular in sense," or "singular in form but plural in sense;" that is, if you construe them rigorously, plural or singular in form but singular or plural form in sense. They tell you that case is a form, and yet insist that nouns have three cases, though only two forms; and speak of ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... concluded all the particular observations which I had to address you upon this paper; and having shown you that by the least liberal construction, no criminality of intention can be imputed to the author, how can I doubt of your acquittal? For it is your duty to construe the author's words so as to give them an innocent meaning if they will bear it, and not come to a conclusion of guilt from them unless you shall be convinced that they will not possibly admit of any other than a criminal sense. That he had no criminal design, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... passed after the voice had entirely ceased, and yet no summons was given to the expecting family, nor did any sound proceed from the inner room, which the respectful son was emboldened to construe into an evidence that he might presume to enter. At length, apprehension began to mingle with conjectures, and then the husband and wife communed apart, in whispers. The misgivings and doubt of the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... the world; but Philip de Commines was the King's justice in Amboise, and against Jean Saxe's accusation her denial would carry no weight—no weight at all. But, though the gesture was one of helplessness, Villon chose to construe it into consent. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... piece though written by a professed republican, I dared not declare myself the panegyrist of a nation, whose maxims were exactly the reverse of my own. More grieved at the misfortunes of France than the French themselves I was afraid the public would construe into flattery and mean complaisance the marks of a sincere attachment, of which in my first part I have mentioned the date and the cause, and which I was ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau |
