"Inaccurate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of more technical or abstruse writings, collections of documents, and so forth. The titles of but few historical novels are given. Useful as the best of these are, works of this class are often inaccurate and misleading; so that a living master in historical authorship has said even of Walter Scott, who is so strong when he stands on Scottish soil, that in his Ivanhoe "there is a mistake in every line." With regard, however, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... that Southern people may not go into territory which shall be subject to the Ordinance of 1787. The only restraint is, that they shall not carry slaves thither, and continue that relation. They say this shuts them altogether out. Why, Sir, there can be nothing more inaccurate in point of fact than this statement. I understand that one half the people who settled Illinois are people, or descendants of people, who came from the Southern States. And I suppose that one third of the people of Ohio are those, or descendants of those, who emigrated from the South; and ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Kirkcaldy, will not surprise any person who is acquainted with the writings of the Prelatists of that period, who seem not to have been able to write the truth when relating the most common and well-known facts. But one is somewhat surprised to find statements equally inaccurate made respecting George Gillespie, by reverend and learned historians. In Dr Cook's History of the Church of Scotland, we find in one passage George Gillespie's character and conduct completely misunderstood and misrepresented, (vol. iii. pages 160-162), ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... of thing. Things that must be done and quickly. Perhaps it sounds nothing much—a mere bit of a map. But maps are like lamps to men in the dark. And they must be accurate. To me, therefore, the most inaccurate, absent-minded mortal before the war that ever breathed, it is all a ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... severity had aroused. To the widows of deceased clergymen in his diocese he was a veritable guardian, to their children a father, to his peasantry a friend, adviser, and monitor. He was an expert at detecting errors in ecclesiastical balance-sheets; and woe to the cleric who dared present to him inaccurate accounts of income and expenditures. By sheer dint of his personal superiority and that quality of soul which George Eliot calls dynamic, he impressed himself strongly upon all with whom he came in contact; and though he was feared, he was also beloved as few. A very delightful instance of the ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... movement of the sun. But, as I have elsewhere remarked, propositions which are to bear any deductive strain that may be put upon them must run the risk of [157] seeming pedantic, rather than that of being inaccurate. And the statement that land, in the sense of cultivable soil, is a producer, or even one of the essentials of economic production, is anything but accurate. The process of water-culture, in which a ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... but the statement is inaccurate. I doubt whether the narrative be correct in stating that Sterne married after an acquaintance of one month; for he tells us in his Memoirs that he courted his wife for two years; he, however, married in 1741. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... of interest because our present methods of distinguishing between and estimating digestible and indigestible fiber is most rough, and probably inaccurate, and may not in the least represent the power of an animal—say a cow—to digest these various substances; and most of us know that when a new method of analysis becomes a necessity, a new method is generally discovered. Lastly, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... This verse has often been accused of violating sense; but, however artificial the expression may be, neither the sense is obscure, nor the way of expressing it inaccurate. It is evidently only another way of saying "in the little they had of constancy they resembled me as they ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... and when he was obliged to point out that the system of morality which he stood for was antiquated and needed revision, apologised for the criticism he could not avoid. It is sometimes said that Homer was the Bible of the Greeks; while this statement is probably inaccurate—for no theological system was built on him nor did he claim any divine revelation—yet it is certain that authors of all ages searched the text for all kinds of purposes, antiquarian, ethical, social, as well as religious. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... I should." Mr. Hazlewood had the air of one making a considerable concession. "The very title is inaccurate. The Prison Walls must Cast no Shadow." He repeated the sentence with a certain unction. "The rhythm is perhaps not amiss but the metaphor is untrue. My son pointed it out to me. As he says, all walls ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... From the roaring skerry and the wet thwart of the tossing boat, he passes to the stool and desk, and with a memory full of ships and seas and perilous headlands and shining pharos, he must apply his long-sighted eyes to the pretty niceties of drawing or measure his inaccurate mind with several ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... is the earliest dated Arabic manuscript of the surgical treatise known to exist. The surgical illustrations therein add weight to the belief that the Arabic manuscripts show more originality in the drawings than do the later copied versions, which often were inaccurate and possibly distorted. About ten other illustrations from the Arabic manuscript in Istanbul indexed as "Topkapi MS. No. 1990" (which contains 215 beautifully illustrated figures) were presented by A. ...
— Drawings and Pharmacy in Al-Zahrawi's 10th-Century Surgical Treatise • Sami Hamarneh
... Court and the Dutch capital proper meet. Legally, by the way, it is inaccurate to indicate even Amsterdam as the capital of Holland; no statute mentions a capital of the kingdom, but by common consent Amsterdam, being the largest and most important town, is always accorded that title, ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... heat, a boiler might be designated as one having a definite horse power, dependent upon the amount of engine horse power its steam would develop. Such a statement of the rating of boilers, though it would still be inaccurate, if the term is considered in its mechanical sense, could, through custom, be interpreted to indicate that a boiler was of the exact capacity required to generate the steam necessary to develop a definite amount of horse power in an engine. Such a ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... Testament does not impart a knowledge of immortality, without which religion were worthless. The notions derived from the gospels are vague, disgusting, inaccurate, and difficult to believe." ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... HENRIETTA,—I wish to know how you are. I shall shortly send a cheque for thirteen pounds, which I believe will settle the interest account up to Michaelmas. If you see anything inaccurate pray inform me. I am at present tolerably well, but of late have been very much troubled with respect to my people. Since I saw you I have been three times over to Mattishall, but with very little profit. The ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... she would never wish to get rid of him; but coerced by Louis, might she not have grown to entertain views of its expediency? Events made such a supposition on St. Cleeve's part as natural as it was inaccurate, and, conjoined with his own excitement at the thought of seeing a new heaven overhead, influenced him to write but the briefest and most hurried final note to her, in which he fully obeyed her sensitive request that he would omit all reference to his plans. These ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... once to strike a bee-line for Kalabas bridge—to reck for nothing, only to get there. But we have neither guides nor maps that can give one any idea of the true lie of the country. I could only furnish him with the direction and the ordinary inaccurate sheet-map." ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... every scrap of scandalous gossip that reached him, however alien to his avowed task. The authenticity of this scandalmongering chronicle has been questioned; but, even assuming it to be authentic, it is so wildly inaccurate when dealing with matters happening beyond the walls of Perugia as ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... and the plunging value of the Zimbabwean dollar makes Zimbabwe's GDP at the official exchange rate a highly inaccurate statistic (2007 est.) ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... easily be seen that while it is feasible to count the stamens even when converted into pistils, it is not possible when groups of them are more or less intimately united into single bodies. This combination makes all enumeration difficult and inaccurate and often wholly unreliable. In such cases the observation is limited to a computation of the degree of the change, rather than to a strict numerical inquiry. Happily the responses to the experimental influences are so marked and ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... the information about the country is as sketchy and inaccurate as can be," I protested. "No one knows anything about it really. Here's the file of the 'United Services' Institute.' ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... across the border now and then. It was therefore impossible to keep track of the number of Japanese who entered the country in this way, more especially as the official emigration figures issued at Tokio were purposely inaccurate, so as to confuse the statistics ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... has been freakish and bizarre. Some years ago when I published certain poems in the broken English spoken by Germans, an American philologist, named Haldemann, demonstrated to his own satisfaction that the language which I had put into Hans Breitmann's mouth was inaccurate, because I had not reduced it to an uniform dialect, making the same word the same in spelling and pronunciation on all occasions, when the most accurate observation had convinced me, as it must any one, that those who have only partially learned a language continually vary their methods ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... affirmed. As time goes on, however, the rule against hearsay evidence, instead of losing its force, is demonstrating its usefulness. The error and injustice that are committed in the public press by inaccurate, garbled and sometimes false statements of facts are increased in their injurious effect by the wider publication that newspapers have today, and the requirement that when a fact is to be proven in court it should ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... normal; errors are usual; information is seldom complete, often inaccurate, and frequently misleading. Success is won, not by personnel and materiel in prime condition, but by the debris of an organization worn by the strain of campaign and shaken by the shock of battle. The objective is attained, in war, under conditions which often impose extreme disadvantages. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... with all respect, for he was well worthy translation, and it is out of Hebrew that the version is made. Pope says he makes God the Father reason "like a school divine." The criticism is witty, but inaccurate. He makes Deity a mouthpiece for his present theology, and had the poem been written a few years later, the Almighty would have become more heterodox. Since Dante, no one had stood on these ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... he wrote, no definite news concerning Ramblethorne, otherwise von Hauptwald. The local police had taken up the case, and, assisted by the military, were still scouring the country. As usual, there were inaccurate and misleading reports from various parts of the country. It was generally accepted that the spy was being hidden by some of his compatriots who, by indulgence of the British Government, were still at large in the country, or else that he had ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... feelings, and interests of the time, we make an appeal to the interest of the pupil that is almost irresistible. The objection is sometimes urged against the reading of standard historical tales and novels, that these are somewhat exaggerated in sentiment and inaccurate in facts. Even if this be so, it may be said that they give in outline a fair picture of the period described, that the interest in history aroused by such tales begets a liking for history itself, and that such exaggerations and inaccuracies are soon corrected ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... for Persian statistics, unwise is the man who attaches any importance to them. Much as I would like to quote statistics, I cannot refrain from thinking that no statistics are a hundredfold better than slip-shod, haphazard, inaccurate ones. And this rule I must certainly apply to the export of rice from Ghilan to Europe, principally Russia, during 1900, and will ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... very tired for, as I have said, the day was extremely hot and dull; and in order to refresh myself I took a cold bath in the afternoon. About half past four I went up to the railway station to get an evening paper, for the morning papers had contained only a very inaccurate description of the killing of Stent, Henderson, Ogilvy, and the others. But there was little I didn't know. The Martians did not show an inch of themselves. They seemed busy in their pit, and there was a sound of hammering and an almost continuous streamer of ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... out on this day is shewn by his letter to Mrs. Thrale. Piozzi Letters, ii. 103. The following anecdote in the Memoir of Goldsmith, prefixed to his Misc. Works (i. 110), is therefore inaccurate:—'I was dining at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, August 7, 1773, where were the Archbishop of Tuam and Mr. (now Lord) Eliot, when the latter making use of some sarcastical reflections on Goldsmith, Johnson broke out warmly in his defence, and in the course of a spirited eulogium said, "Is there ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the Mahratta side of the affair, but now the whole movement was to be from the other side, and we cannot do better than trust the Pandit. Dow, the only other contemporary author of importance if we except Gholam Hosain, who wrote at a very remote place is most irremediably inaccurate and vague about all these transactions. The Pandit, then, informs us that, during those earlier hours of the conflict, the Shah had watched the fortunes of the battle from his tent, guarded by ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... more or less inaccurate, and too many, or rather the majority, remain boys all their lives. When, for instance, I hear speakers at public meetings declaiming about "large and enlightened views," or about "freedom of conscience," ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... 1789, he became the originator and chief author of a periodical paper called The Loiterer, modelled on The Spectator and its successors. It existed for more than a twelvemonth, and in the last number the whole was offered to the world as a 'rough, but not entirely inaccurate Sketch of the Character, the Manners, and the Amusements of Oxford, at the close of the eighteenth century.' In after life, we are told, he used to speak very slightingly of this early work, 'which he had the better right to do, as, whatever may ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... to say on the subject. The anonymous Compleat History of the Turks (London, 1719), which Byron quotes as an authority, is meagre and inaccurate. Hammer-Purgstall (Histoire de l'Empire Ottoman, 1839, xiii. 269), who gives as his authorities Girolamo Ferrari and Raschid, dismisses the siege in a few lines; and it was not till the publication of Finlay's History of Greece (vol. v., a.d. 1453-1821), ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... began at the beginning, with the glass case nearest the door; and in a moment I discovered that I knew far more about its contents than our pallid guide. He had some enthusiasm, but the most inaccurate smattering of his subject. He mixed up the first murderer with quite the wrong murder, and capped his mistake in the next breath with an intolerable libel on the very pearl of our ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... manifestation that is the vital feature of the situation. The governing idea is that puberty marks the direct association of the individual with a spiritual world to the influence of which the functional changes are due. As more accurate conceptions are formed, the older and inaccurate one is not altogether discarded. It has become incarnate in ceremonies, it is part of the traditional psychic life of the people, and the change is one of transformation rather than of eradication. In later cultural stages the physiological ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... What follows it, we know by experience; but could not know it a priori. It must, however, be confessed, that the animal nisus, which we experience, though it can afford no accurate precise idea of power, enters very much into that vulgar, inaccurate idea, which is formed ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... than twenty students can be properly superintended by one Demonstrator. If we take the working day at six hours, that is less than twenty minutes apiece—not a very large allowance of time for helping a dull man, for correcting an inaccurate one, or even for making an intelligent student clearly apprehend what he is about. And, no doubt, the supplying of a proper amount of this tutorial, practical teaching, is a difficulty in the way of giving proper ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... grows, and blossoms with all the freedom of a child in his cradle or a fallow deer in the forest. Made as she was, she had no difficulty in dressing well; the simplest costumes fitted her person with an elegant precision that caused the Baroness de Pers to say in her inaccurate though expressive language: ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... critique upon Schmerling's figures, I find that the side view given by the latter is really about 3/10ths of an inch shorter than the original, and that the front view is diminished to about the same extent. Otherwise the representation is not, in any way, inaccurate, but corresponds very well with the cast ...
— On Some Fossil Remains of Man • Thomas H. Huxley
... many others that dotted the grass plains of the Territory. The interminable miles that separated Stafford from the nearest, did not prevent him from referring to that particular owner as "neighbor", for distances were thus determined—and distances thus determined were nearly always inaccurate. The traveler inquiring for his destination was expected to discover it somewhere in the ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... unfair on Mr. Skratdj's part," Mrs. Skratdj would chirp, with a smile quite as affable and as general as her husband's. "I'm sure he's quite as forgetful and inaccurate as I am. And I don't think my memory is at all ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... motives he was determined on these important occasions, will find them such as his pride will scarcely suffer him to confess; some sudden ardour of desire, some uncertain glimpse of advantage, some petty competition, some inaccurate conclusion, or some example implicitly reverenced. Such are often the first causes of our resolves; for it is necessary to act, but impossible to know the consequences of action, or to discuss all the reasons which offer ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... work of Morris, than from frigid scholarship, however extensive. Not that the poet's impressions or renderings of things are wholly true, but their truth is vital, not formal. They are like sketches from the life by Reynolds or Gainsborough, which may be demonstrably inaccurate or imaginary in many traits, and indistinct in others, yet will be in the deepest sense like, and true; while the work of historical analysis is too often weak with loss, through the very labor of its miniature touches, or useless in clumsy and ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... Langdon are misleading. Nor should he have drawn any lines at the bottom of columns 1-3 as though the tablet were complete. Besides in very many cases the space indications of what is missing within a line are inaccurate. Dr. Langdon also omitted to copy the statement on the edge: 4 s-si, i.e., "240 lines;" and in the colophon he mistranslates s-tu-ur, "written," as though from satru, "write," whereas the form is the permansive ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... he never did. He never had time, or rather he never took time, preferring invariably quantity to quality. What work of his has survived till to-day is read, not for its style, but in spite of its style. His syntax is loose and unscholarly; his vocabulary is copious, but often inaccurate; many of his sentences ramble on interminably, lacking unity, precision, and balance. Figures of speech he seldom abuses because he seldom uses; his imagination, as noticed before, being extremely limited in range. That Defoe, in spite of these defects, should ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... still on duty with him, availed himself of his flask and his cigars; but, irreverent by nature, he delighted in contradicting him, disparaging the somewhat inaccurate style of the decrees; and decrying the conferences at the Luxembourg, the women known as the "Vesuviennes," the political section bearing the name of "Tyroliens"; everything, in fact, down to the Car of Agriculture, drawn by horses to the ox-market, and escorted by ill-favoured ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... How unfortunately inaccurate, how entirely unjustifiable, such a declaration is, may be seen from the study of the words for love in two of the Algonkian dialects,—Cree and Chippeway,—which Dr. Brinton has made in one of his essays, The Conception of Love in some American Languages. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... arose. For example, the desire to provide users with a searchable text is affected by the question of acceptable level of accuracy. One hundred percent accuracy is tremendously expensive. On the other hand, the output of optical character recognition (OCR) can be tremendously inaccurate. Although AM has attempted to find a middle ground, uncertainty persists as to whether or not it has discovered the ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... those who distrust comprehensive thinking, without having any clear notion why or where it ought to be distrusted. We have avoided the use of these expressions purposely, because we deem them superficial and inaccurate. The error, when there is error, does not arise from generalizing too extensively; that is, from including too wide a range of particular cases in a single proposition. Doubtless, a man often asserts ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... the interview came to an end, and my visitors withdrew. The actual conversation had lasted more than an hour, but the dialogue above is not an inaccurate summary. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... every conceivable form of punishment to make a constant grind at obligatory subjects less disagreeable than the consequences of idleness. These are the simple arts by means of which unwilling boys are driven, like cattle, along the highway of what is termed, by an inaccurate application of the ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... which the writer was styled "Muiegervile", instead of Aungerville), which have been repeated by Mansi, should be corrected. Dr. James, the first Bodleian librarian, fell into a strange mistake when he imagined that his inaccurate reprint at Oxford, in 1599, was the second edition of this treatise. It was in reality the fourth, having been preceded by the impressions, Colon. 1473; Spirae, 1483; and Paris, 1500. So far as I remember, the editio princeps has not been specified by Gough. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... often observed, dear Julia, that an inaccurate use of words produces such a strange confusion in all reasoning, that in the heat of debate, the combatants, unable to distinguish their friends from their foes, fall promiscuously on both. A skilful disputant knows well how to take advantage of this confusion, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... elsewhere as the grand scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of the time (Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must now prefer for Carlo a notorious character named Charles Chester, of whom gossipy and inaccurate Aubrey relates that he was "a bold impertinent fellow...a perpetual talker and made a noise like a drum in a room. So one time at a tavern Sir Walter Raleigh beats him and seals up his mouth (that is his upper and nether beard) with hard wax. From him Ben Jonson takes his Carlo Buffone ['i.e.', ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Walter of Coventry, gives us a contemporary account of the period from 1201 to 1225. We possess another contemporary annalist for the same period in Roger of Wendover, the first of the published chroniclers of St. Albans, whose work extends to 1235. Though full of detail Roger is inaccurate, and he has strong royal and ecclesiastical sympathies; but his chronicle was subsequently revised in a more patriotic sense by another monk of the same abbey, Matthew Paris, and continued in the "Greater Chronicle" of ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... about nine hundred years, the Stoic philosophy formed the characters of some of the best and greatest men. Finally it became extinct, and we hear no more of it till the revival of letters in Italy. Angelo Poliziano met with two very inaccurate and incomplete manuscripts of Epictetus' Enchiridion, which he translated into Latin and dedicated to his great patron Lorenzo de' Medici, in whose collection he had found the book. Poliziano's version was printed in the first ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... alarm us. When the entrance door opens, a red light shows above my bed. Unfortunately, the moment you came in I happened to be in an adjoining room at work. I had to go into my bedroom to get a paper, when I saw the light. So, though I am perhaps inaccurate in saying that I have been keeping you under observation from the moment you arrived, there was little you did which was not witnessed. I will show you, if you will be good enough to accompany ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... In addition, most overseas development assistance ceased after the junta suppressed the democracy movement in 1988 and subsequently ignored the results of the 1990 election. Burma is data poor, and official statistics are often dated and inaccurate. Published estimates of Burma's foreign trade are greatly understated because of the size of the black market and border trade - often estimated to be one to two times ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... of all this is, doubtless, to impart valuable information. But while such slipshod writing is singularly uninteresting, it may also be censured as inaccurate. Mr. Abbott seems to think all polygons necessarily regular. Any child can make a heptagon at once, notwithstanding Mr. Abbott calls it so difficult. A regular heptagon, indeed, is another matter. Then what does he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... necessary counterpart. In its nature it is intimately allied to the old Catholic church, which was in fact its child. As a matter of taste it may be objectionable to speak of the Jewish church, but as a matter of history it is not inaccurate, and the name is perhaps preferable to that of theocracy, which shelters such confusion ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... the big multiplication-table, doing so easily and quickly. She was at first slightly inaccurate in the higher numbers, for rapping out the "hundreds" with the right paw and the "tens" with the left—and then again the "ones" with the right gave her some trouble in the beginning. Yet such questions as: 3 14, 2 17, 4 20, were given without hesitation, since ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... neat but drunken father (Signorina MALVINA CAVALAZZI) appearing on the scene, the good man informs him that his wife and child are dead, "driven to an untimely grave by his (the intemperate but natty artisan's) desertion and cruelty." The effect of this inaccurate statement is startling. To quote once more from the argument, "incontinently the now penitent ruffian falls fainting to the ground." But he is brought back to himself, his better self, by his child whispering "Father!" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... existence of such a tract; and so at times with other facts which he recalled after the lapse of seventy years, and which he had learned from his father or from Mr. Wythe. On the other hand, when his earlier recollections were clearly proved to be inaccurate as to matter of fact, as in the case of what he thought had happened at the session of the House of Burgesses of 1765, when Henry's resolutions against the stamp act were passed, and I placed under his eye the discrepancy between his statement ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... July 1888. Wildly inaccurate about everything; never thinks for two consecutive moments to judge by his work: plenty of ability, perhaps in ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... already admitted, that the motion can only be objected to as superfluous, and, therefore, all farther debate is mere waste of time, without any prospect of advantage; nor is any thing now necessary, but to review the motion, and correct such expressions as may be thought inaccurate or improper. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... present themselves to my mind," he said, "but all are doubtless inaccurate. I have no morbid curiosity concerning your affairs, but this thing would involve me almost as much as ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... that Bobby could not bring himself to give it up until a full two hours past noonday, and even then he would not have done so had not a rising northeast wind created a chop which made shooting from the skiff so difficult and inaccurate that ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... spiteful and inaccurate and all those things you said; but that isn't all they are. The women I see, the wives of my poor drunkards are so wonderful, so patient. They are mothers and wage-earners and sick nurses, too; they're not the sort of women ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... Don Quixote at this; "on that point of the bells Master Pedro is very inaccurate, for bells are not in use among the Moors; only kettledrums, and a kind of small trumpet somewhat like our clarion; to ring bells this way in Sansuena is unquestionably a ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... show him to be either careless or inaccurate. On the contrary, they bear witness to his watchfulness, to his methodical habits, and to his attention to details; although at the same time they are full of speculations, and of the thoughts which followed each other so rapidly in his imaginative brain. It was, indeed, the combination ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... composing, lest one should get bad habits of doing it in a slovenly manner.' JOHNSON. 'Why, sir, you are confounding DOING inaccurately with the NECESSITY of doing inaccurately. A man knows when his composition is inaccurate, and when he thinks fit he'll correct it. But, if a man is accustomed to compose slowly, and with difficulty, upon all occasions, there is danger that he may not compose at all, as we do not like to do that which is not done easily; and, at any rate, more time is consumed in a small matter ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... were drawing up a state paper, my letters might be a great deal wiser, but would not be such letters as I should wish to receive from those whom I loved. Perfect love, we are told, casteth out fear. If I say, as I know I do, a thousand wild and inaccurate things, and employ exaggerated expressions about persons or events in writing to you or to my mother, it is not, I believe, that I want power to systematise my ideas or to measure my expressions, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... told, won't stand any nonsense when they have their sacred writings copied, always destroying every inaccurate MS. the moment an error is spotted in it. Dave and Dolly were not the Jews, but they were as intolerant of variation in the text of this almost sacred legend of the Sweep. "S'ow me how you punched him, wiv Dave's head," Dolly would say; and ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... less isolated, less gigantic. I do not wish, and I shall not try, to deface Borrow's portrait of himself; I can only hope that I shall not do it by accident. There may be a sense in which that portrait can be called inaccurate. It may even be true that "lies—damned lies" {1} helped to make it. But nobody else knows anything like as much about the truth, and a peddling biographer's mouldy fragment of plain fact may be far more dangerous than the manly lying of one who ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... of the High Court, was sitting chuckling inwardly at the prospect of refuting these inaccurate statements, when the ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Peking by the physician to the French Embassy there. Whatever may be the worth of the meteorological and hygienic details in that paper, I am bound to say that the historical and topographical part is so inaccurate as to be of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the earth's movement, have, however, plainly nothing to say to any real movements on the part of the stars themselves. The old idea was that the stars were absolutely fixed; hence arose the term "fixed stars"—a term which, though inaccurate, has not yet been entirely banished from the astronomical vocabulary. But careful observations extending over a number of years have shown slight changes of position among these bodies; and such alterations cannot be ascribed to the revolution of the earth ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... country's 20 private banks and disrupted the economy. As of 2006, the largest private banks operate under tight restrictions limiting the private sector's access to formal credit. Official statistics are inaccurate. Published statistics on foreign trade are greatly understated because of the size of the black market and unofficial border trade - often estimated to be as large as the official economy. Burma's trade with Thailand, China, and India is rising. Though the Burmese government ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... his authorities during the Saxon period, when stripped of the bombast and inaccurate style of the monkish historians, is, that the Scots had sometimes been defeated by the English, had received peace on disadvantageous terms, had made submissions to the English monarch, and had even perhaps fallen into some dependence on a power which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... lofty gifts were unaccompanied with the faculty of expression, or any of that earthly machinery by which ethereal endowments must be manifested to mankind. All these, therefore, are melancholy laughing-stocks. Next, here are honest and well intentioned persons, who by a want of tact—by inaccurate perceptions—by a distorting imagination—have been kept continually at cross purposes with the world and bewildered upon the path of life. Let us see if they can confine themselves within the line of our procession. In this class, likewise, we must assign places to those who have encountered ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cattle, great and rapid as has been its past declension, must annually experience a still further diminution. Of what will be their probable value in ten years more, it may enable us to form no very inaccurate estimate, by referring to what it was ten years back. In 1808, a cow and calf were sold by public auction for L105, and the price of middling cattle was from L80 to L100. A breeding mare was at the same period worth ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... ever guessed at, his "rule" was always handy in a special pocket, but in cases where a rough guess was sufficient he would hazard it by what he called "scowl of brow" (intently regarding it). The agricultural labourer is inclined, both with weights and measures, to be inaccurate, "reckoning it's near enough." I found soon after I came to Aldington that the weighing machine which had been in use throughout the whole of my predecessor's time, and had weighed up hundreds of pounds of wool at 2s. and 2s. 6d. a pound, cheese at 8d., and thousands ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... memory verbatim, or nearly so. This too belongs to the same tradition regarding Demosthenes, and is probably as inaccurate as the other. Certainly the eight copyings would not suffice for having the whole by heart. Excepting a professional rhapsodist, or some one gifted with extraordinary powers of memory that would hardly be compatible with a great understanding, nobody would ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... novelty of composition, realism of character, and great liberty in the choice of subjects. From this point of view Rops himself, in spite of his symbolist tendencies, could not be classed with any other group if it were not that any kind of classification in art is useless and inaccurate. However that may be, Louis Legrand has signed some volumes with the most ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... right in that surmise also," answered Miss Jennie. "Still, if I may say so, there was nothing inaccurate in my article about the German Emperor. My compilation was from thoroughly authentic sources, so I maintain it was as truthfully exact as anything that has ever appeared ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... statement in Theopompus' forty-fourth book, to which Harpocration (s.v. [Greek: dekadarchia]) refers. Harpocration states that Philip did not establish a decadarchy in Thessaly; and if he is right, then either (a) Demosthenes purposely used an inaccurate word, in order to suggest to the Messenians the idea of a government like that of the Councils of Ten established some sixty years before by Sparta in the towns subject to her; or (b) the text is wrong, and [Greek: dekadarchian] is a ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... the windows, too, have scraps of poetry engraved on them with diamonds, taken from the writings of the fair Mrs. Philips, the once celebrated Orinda. Some of these seem to have been inscribed by lovers; and others, in a delicate and unsteady hand, and a little inaccurate in the spelling, have evidently been written by the young ladies themselves, or by female friends, who have been on visits to the Hall. Mrs. Philips seems to have been their favourite author, and they have distributed the names of her heroes and heroines among their circle of intimacy. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... on the map as eight miles this side of Ana. We were to endeavor to secure this before the Turks could destroy it, and cross over to bivouac on the far side. The road was in fair shape. Many of the small bridges were of recent construction. We soon found that our map was exceedingly inaccurate. Our aeroplanes were doing a lot of damage to the fleeing Turks, and as we began to catch up with larger groups we had some sharp engagements. The desert Arabs hovered like vultures in the distance waiting for nightfall to cover them in ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... of the English translation of Jagor (London, 1875) with the original text reveals the fact that the translation is inaccurate in many places, and that it was done in a careless and slovenly manner. Consequently, it has been necessary to translate this matter directly ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... hardly necessary for us to say that this is an excellent book excellently translated. The original work of Professor Ranke is known and esteemed wherever German literature is studied, and has been found interesting even in a most inaccurate and dishonest French version. It is, indeed, the work of a mind fitted both for minute researches and for large speculations. It is written also in an admirable spirit, equally remote from levity and bigotry, serious and earnest, yet tolerant ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... left hand of the mountaineer, which had barely possessed steadiness to light a match, was far too inaccurate to handle a fork; and Bull saw his uncle stuffing his mouth with his fingers and daring ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... of the cloud that hangs around the vague inceptions of revolutions, a startling incident will sometimes flash like lightning, to show that the warring elements have begun their work. The scenes that attended the birth of American nationality formed a not inaccurate type of those that have opened the crusade for its perpetuation. The consolidation of public sentiment which followed the magnificent defeat at Bunker's Hill, in which the spirit of indignant resistance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Parliamentary proceedings. When they read about "stormy sittings" of the Reichstag and "bitter criticism" of the Chancellor, they judge such things as they judge similar events in the House of Commons or the American House of Representatives. Nothing could be more inaccurate. Governments do not fall in Germany in consequence of adverse Reichstag votes, as they do in England. They are not the peopled Governments, but merely the Kaisers creatures. They rise and fall ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... applied in each detail to this proposition. It fits. So does the autopsy, so do the depositions of the witnesses. Everything fits. There have indeed been difficulties, but they have been set aside, they are attributed to inaccurate observation and the like,—the point is,—that the evidence is against A. Now, suppose that soon after B confesses the crime; this event is so significant that it sets aside at once all the earlier reasons for suspecting A, and the theory of the crime involves B. Naturally ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... taken up to secure Marion and which held me now in spite of our intimate separation—and snatching odd week-ends and nights for Orpington, and all the while I struggled with these obstinate interrogations. I used to fall into musing in the trains, I became even a little inaccurate and forgetful about business things. I have the clearest memory of myself sitting thoughtful in the evening sunlight on a grassy hillside that looked toward Seven Oaks and commanded a wide sweep of country, and that I was thinking out my destiny. I could almost write ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... and quite prepared himself for the character of Henry V. in miniature, as he walked about his park, and rode about his farms, and talked with the wealthier farmers on hunting mornings. He had a full conception of his own dignity, and some not altogether inaccurate idea of the manner in which it would become him to sustain it. He was, perhaps, a little too self-conscious, and over-inclined to suppose that people were regarding his conduct because he was Newton of Newton;—Newton of Newton with no blot on his shield, by right of his birth, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... BLACKBOROUGH. I'm inaccurate, for I'm not one of the family circle myself. My money gets me here and any skill I've used in making it. It wouldn't keep me at a pinch. And Trebell ... [He speaks through his teeth.] ... do you think your accession to power in the party ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... value, but would at any rate establish a strong general probability. But primitive man could not have given it in this form, because he had no memory and could not count. Even now comparatively advanced tribes like the Gonds have a hopelessly inaccurate memory for ordinary incidents; and, as suggested subsequently, the faculty of memory was probably acquired very slowly with the development of language. And since he could not count, the continuous recurrence of natural ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... theories and formulas for beams and slabs. Formulas are commonly given with 25 or 30 constants and variables to be estimated and guessed at, and are based on assumptions which are inaccurate and untrue. One of these assumptions is that the concrete is initially unstressed. This is quite out of reason, for the shrinkage of the concrete on hardening puts stress in both concrete and steel. One of the coefficients of the formulas is that of the elasticity of the concrete. No ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... left their places of concealment. Instantly the serpent was down again, persistent if inaccurate. It struck the place of their first concealment ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... The present is to be explained by its ancestry. Laws, governments, customs are not truths absolute and universal, but relative to the time of their origin and the country from which they derive. It would be inaccurate, with Rousseau on the threshold, to say that his influence demolished the systems of political abstraction which, at their logical best, and in the most complete unreality, are to be found in Godwin's Political Justice; but it is not beyond the mark to affirm ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... swelled head should secretly slaughter the nephew and appropriate the umbrella of one of the most loyal and devoted Ritualists that ever sent a substitute to battle? In the mighty metropolis, too, the Great Dailies—those ponderous engines of varied and inaccurate intelligence—published detailed and mistaken reports of the whole affair, and had subtle editorial theories as to the nature of the crime. The Sun, after giving a cut of an old-fashioned parlor-grate as a diagram of Mr. BUMSTEAD'S house, and a portrait of Mr. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... sufficient to illustrate the pioneer character of his work and influence. Inaccurate he may have been in his "History of the American Theatre," but the atmosphere is there, and he never failed to recognize merit, and to give touches of character to the actors, without which our impression of the early theatre in this country would be the poorer. The name ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... be practiced successfully under exceptional conditions only. In view of the fact that such bomb-dropping is exceedingly inaccurate, and that the charges carried are relatively small, this form of attack ordinarily would not be very dangerous for the submersible. Surface craft have also employed large charges of high explosives, ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... of Absia is so inaccurate, that I should not have recognised it, had not the Lithotrya Nicobarica, in a bottle in the British ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... story, and suggested that it could not possibly be true because of some marvellous or absurd incident which was supposed to have occurred, his natural and immediate impulse was to look upon that special circumstance as conclusive proof of its credibility and truth. His extraordinarily wide, if inaccurate, recollections of historical facts and fictions would supply him with a hundred illustrations to show that what seemed to you ridiculous, or, at any rate, inexplicable, was the simplest and most reasonable thing in the world. This leaning toward the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... present scene. We need therefore consider only stylistic qualities. As the two demons wear only short skirts reaching from the waist to the knees, their bodies are more exposed than those of men usually are. We note the inaccurate anatomy of breast, abdomen, and back, in dealing with which the sculptor had little experience to guide him. A marked difference is made between the outer and the inner view of the leg, the former being treated in the same style ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... from time immemorial in the manufacture of soap and glass, two chemical productions which employ and keep in circulation an immense amount of capital. The quantity of soap consumed by a nation would be no inaccurate measure whereby to estimate its wealth and civilisation. Of two countries, with an equal amount of population, the wealthiest and most highly civilised will consume the greatest weight of soap. This consumption ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... emphasize it, and let the other go without saying, by force of association. There is no fear of its being lost sight of; association is one of the few really liberal things in nature; by liberal, I mean precipitate and inaccurate; the power of words, as of pictures, and indeed the power to carry on life at all, vests in the fact that association does not stick to the letter of its bond, but will take the half for the whole without even looking closely at the coin given to make sure ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... always a particular respect. It was his custom to have it always on his study table, particularly during these last months; and you well know how familiar it was to him, since he sometimes knew how to correct your inaccurate citations. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... that the tax-list of the town furnish no other data of reliable value, or even of suggestion, being obviously inaccurate and uneven in their reports of the values of land, and of the ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... personal appearance (of which he draws no very lovely picture) as about anything else that he says. So pray do not take up the cudgels on my behalf; especially as I perceive that your recollections are rather inaccurate. For instance, it was Park Benjamin, not Goodrich, who cut up the 'Storyteller.' As for Goodrich, I have rather a kindly feeling towards him, and he himself is a not unkindly man, in spite of his propensity to feed and fatten himself on better brains ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... Government, in declining to advise the Royal assent being given to a Bill, passed by a majority of one, for investing the power of disposing of the reserves in the Imperial Parliament, admitted that from its inaccurate information as to the wants and general opinions of society (in which the Imperial Parliament was unavoidably deficient), the question would be more satisfactorily settled by the Provincial Legislature; that ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... motion, as it moves through the air. Metals have not the same density on all sides and this is particularly true of molded balls. As a result, when projected from the gun, the heaviest side has a tendency to divert the ball and make it more or less erratic in its motion, and, therefore, inaccurate. The spiral motion has the effect of minimizing this difficulty. The cavity formed at the rear of the projectile was devised particularly to cause the thin lip of the bullet to be driven into the grooves formed in the gun barrel, and by that means the boring motion was ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... kind of interest in witnessing and aiding in the various operations, and was in a fair way to become a good practical surgeon, when I was discharged, and found myself a poor sailor, friendless, penniless, and lame. But the surgical knowledge, inaccurate and desultory as it was, which I acquired in the Liverpool Infirmary, and the power to preserve coolness and presence of mind, and minister relief in cases of wounds and dangerous diseases, when no medical adviser could be applied to, has often since been of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... some on memory, some on reasoning. The ground for this general conviction is the notorious fact that with children every one of these acts, is performed in a faulty and superficial manner. The observations of children are very careless and unreliable. Even adults are extremely negligent and inaccurate in their observations of natural objects, persons, and phenomena. But the mental powers brought to bear in observation are simple and elementary. The exercise of higher mental powers, such as analysis, comparison, judgment, ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... Inquiry. He had relieved them of such money as was in their pockets, and then had caused them to write sumptuous cheques on their banks, payable to bearer. These he had cashed in the very teeth of the law, and actually paused in the street to read a description of himself posted on a telegraph-pole. "Inaccurate, quite inaccurate," he said to a by-stander as he drew his riding-whip slowly along it, and then, mounting his horse, rode leisurely away into the plains. Had he been followed it would have been seen that he directed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... satisfied with any plan for the pacification and settlement of Greece, which did not secure to that state the means of independence by sea and land, and leave the Greeks free to have their own Constitution. His information was most inaccurate. Yet on this he founded his distrust of the Government. Notwithstanding this distrust he was neither with them nor against them, nor did he wish to turn them out. He made an indifferent speech. Aberdeen a fair one ill delivered. The Duke spoke admirably. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... his death been gone over by another explorer." It would be marvellous, however, if in the course of twenty years of exploration he had not made some blunders. His map of Lake Bangweolo, for example, was very inaccurate. The Lokinga Mountains, which he mapped to the south of the lake, have not been found by later explorers. These imperfections resulted from the fact that his map of Bangweolo and its neighborhood was largely ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... ragged; and how fast their numbers were thinned. Each had in his memoirs accounts illustrating the blundering ignorance of the commanders! I was violently attacked when the 'Debacle' appeared. Everything was criticised as usual, and many details declared inaccurate. But I ask you whether it is always possible to be as absolutely accurate in small details in a novel as ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the significance of various I Q's holds only for the I Q's secured by the use of the Stanford revision. As we have shown elsewhere (p. 62 ff.) the I Q yielded by other versions of the Binet tests are often so inaccurate as to be misleading. ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... been engaged in unbroken civil war for a quarter of a century. It is, however, inaccurate to designate this great struggle with tyranny as a civil war. It was a war for independence, maintained by almost the whole population of the United Provinces against a foreigner, a despot, alien to their blood, ignorant of their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dramatic, but, alas! so inaccurate," Mr. Fentolin sighed. "Is this a fit of the heroics, boy, or what has come over you? Have you ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Greek of Erasmus's New Testament, which, as the author confessed, "was rather tumbled headlong into the world than edited." And he told me how the edition of Erasmus itself was hastily prepared from careless copies of inaccurate transcriptions of yet further copies of divers manuscripts of which the oldest dates no further back than the fourth century, and is in turn, most probably, just a liberal paraphrase, as all the others are, of still ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... begin the study of brain development in men and animals guided by a correct system without being delighted with the uniform accuracy of the science; for even the incomplete and inaccurate science of Gall and Spurzheim, marred in its application by misconceptions of anatomy, has proved sufficiently correct and instructive to maintain its hold upon the minds of all students of nature, by giving them more truth than error, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... was only repeating an inaccurate rumour, for there is no evidence that Steele was arrested. His gambling scheme was withdrawn directly an information was laid under the new Act of Parliament against gambling (Aitken's ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift |
