"Misuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so permeated by fraud that the Indians refused to let it stand [Dole to Smith, January 15, 1862]. At this time, 1863, Superintendent Branch, against whom charges of gambling, drunkenness, licentiousness, and misuse of annuity funds had been preferred by Agent Ross [Indian Office General Files, Pottawatomie, R 21 and 143 of 1863], was endeavoring to persuade Father De Smet to establish a Roman Catholic Mission on their Reserve. ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... remarkable technique and skill. Another young lady sang very badly. Filipinos have natural good taste in music, have quick musical ears, and a natural sense of time, but they have voices of small range and compass, and what voice they have they misuse shamefully. They also undertake to sing music altogether too ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... the habit of constantly, and, as it were instinctively postponing self to the public interest, and this whether arising from moral choice or from the constraint imposed by public opinion; these are the balancing qualities which prevent the misuse ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... text of the quarto versions are correctly called 'the British party', appear in the folio version as 'the English party'. Perhaps the quartos contain Shakespeare's own correction of his own inadvertence; but those of us, and we are many, who have been blamed by northern patriots for the misuse of the word English may claim Shakespeare as a ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... arched firmament with all its suspended lamps of light. O, let not the 'simplex et nuda' of Gregory be perverted to the Socinian, 'plain and easy for the meanest understandings!' The truth in Christ, like the peace of Christ, passeth all understanding. If ever there was a mischievous misuse of words, the confusion of the terms, 'reason' and 'understanding,' 'ideas' and 'notions,' or 'conceptions,' is most mischievous; a Surinam toad with a swarm of toadlings sprouting out of ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... body in the larch-wood; he was determined not to take what she would not give him gladly; and now, by her own act, she had changed his striving love into desire—desire to hurt, to feel her struggling in his arms, hating his kisses, paying a bitter price for her misuse of him. He had a vicious pleasure in waiting for the hour when he should feel her body straining away from his, and each night, as he sat drinking, he lived through that ecstasy; each day, as he went about his work, he kept an eye on the comings and goings of the Canipers, waiting ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... course followed them. Mary's mind was so fully made up, at this moment, that she almost wished that her companion might ask the question. She had been told that she was misusing him; and she would misuse him no longer. She had a firm No, as it were, within her grasp, and a resolution that she would not be driven from it. But he walked on beside her talking of the water, and of the danger, and of the ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... artist engaged in the war of Lombardy,—roused the people; and they went to the Pope, to demand that he should declare war against the Austrians. The Pope summoned a consistory, and then declared in his speech that he had only intended local reforms; that he regretted the misuse that had been made of his name; and wound up by lamenting the war as offensive to the spirit of religion. A momentary stupefaction, followed by a passion of indignation, in which the words traitor and imbecile were heard, received this astounding speech. The Pope was besieged ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... who disobeys that command must suffer. Let us see how it works. Bishop Vincent says: 'Sunday is ill-spent if it sends us back to our weekly work irritated, weary and reluctant'—and Sunday will never do that for us unless we misuse the day which God has given us. If we spend the day in worrying about our everyday affairs, if we spend it in chasing around after senseless amusements which weary the body without enlightening the heart and the mind, if we allow ourselves to follow paths which lead away from truth ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... me of something we want buried and forgotten," interrupted Stetson. "Too much chance for misuse of that formula." ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... an early riser. Dr. Lambert had always inculcated this useful and healthy habit in his children. He would inveigh bitterly against the self-indulgence of the young people of the present day, and against the modern misuse of time. "Look at the pallid, sickly complexions of some of the girls you see," he would say. "Do they look fit to be the future mothers of Englishmen? Poor, feeble creatures, with no backbone to mention, leading unhealthy, frivolous existences. If my girls are not handsome, they shall ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... lessening the independence of the judges and making them more subservient to the inconstant majority seems to be that otherwise the judges will misuse their power and impede the operation of statutes they do not themselves approve of. The argument has little or no foundation in fact. Perhaps among the hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of holding a statute unconstitutional a few may seem to have been so decided because the judges thought ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... prune and clear away from the line of vision these weeds of errant fancy. For the record must of all things be honest and comprehensive; rather than shapely, effective, or literary. To be sure the pundits would say that this is to misuse and play with words; to perpetrate a contradiction in terms. Well, we shall see. Whatever the critics might say, your author by profession would understand me well enough when I ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... court said that "when an association is formed for purposes actually innocent, and afterwards its powers are abused by those who have the control and management of it to purposes of oppression and injustice, it will be criminal in those who misuse it, or give consent thereto, but not in other members of the association." This doctrine that workingmen may lawfully organize trade unions has since Commonwealth v. Hunt been adopted in ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... for Miss Bronte; she was numbed to all petty annoyances by the grand severity of Death. Otherwise she might have felt more keenly than they deserved the criticisms which, while striving to be severe, failed in logic, owing to the misuse of prepositions; and have smarted under conjectures as to the authorship of "Jane Eyre," which, intended to be acute, were merely flippant. But flippancy takes a graver name when directed against an author by an anonymous writer. We ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and presence of mind bore him out. "What mean ye, my masters?" he said; "if that be your friend's body, I have just now cut him down, in pure charity, and you will do better to try to recover his life, than to misuse an innocent stranger to whom he ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... what of her? Does her mother, the victim of misinformation and no information, of misuse and self-mutilation, in the sweet privacy of this home, which is called the cradle of peace and the nestling place of purity, save her by taking warning of her own ruined life and giving her the benefit of such little knowledge as she has ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... we sorrow to think, to misuse the Divine gift of artistic inspiration. The poet may devote his genius to animalism, like Byron, or to teach immoral license, like Swinburne; the painter may crowd his canvas with degrading ideas and vulgar representations, and the artificer ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... oppressors on earth, for while it has not the terrible force of the other, it will penetrate any protective screen which the science of Jupiter can erect. Use it only against the Jovians and when you have finished with it, destroy it that it may not fall into the hands of those who would misuse it. The other may be left intact to repel other Jovian attacks but I think you need fear none. Once they learn you have it, they will be content with their conquests of Venus and Mercury and give you a wide berth. ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... called Love. But there is no word in any spoken language that covers so wide a field. Every day and all day we call many things love which are not love. The real thing is as rare as genius, but we usually fail to recognize its rarity. We misuse the word, for we fail to draw the necessary distinctions. We fail to recognize the plain and simple truth that many of us are not able to love—just as there are many who are not able to play the piano ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... myself— such as you, if your soul were enlightened, would envy on your bended knees. It is the least defect of such a method of portraiture that it makes the path easy for the devil's advocate, and leaves for the misuse of the slanderer a considerable field of truth. For the truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy. The world, in your despite, may perhaps owe you something, if your letter be the means of substituting once for all a credible likeness for a wax abstraction. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... DYCE DUCKWORTH, in a letter written to a Vegetarian Correspondent, says, "I believe in the value of animal food and alcoholic drinks for the best interests of man. The abuse or misuse of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... attacking such vessels. If neutral vessels have come to grief through the German submarine war during the past few months by mistake, it is a question of isolated and exceptional cases which are traceable to the misuse of flags by the British Government in connection with carelessness or suspicious actions on the part of the captains of the vessels. In all cases where a neutral vessel through no fault of its own has come to grief through the German submarines or flyers ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... containing two or three hundred people. The Saint, when describing it in a letter home, said it was "a big, wooden barn with a floor to it." However, we voted this statement to be libellous, and cautioned the Saint on the misuse of terms. The Pahi Town Hall is not to be rashly designated with opprobrious epithets. Such as it is, it serves us well, by turns as chapel, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... was, That the Noble Mortimer, Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight Against the irregular and wilde Glendower, Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken, And a thousand of his people butchered: Vpon whose dead corpes there was such misuse, Such beastly, shamelesse transformation, By those Welshwomen done, as may not be (Without much shame) re-told ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... large variety of serious subjects, before it is possible for anything short of supreme genius to use it well for comic purposes. Much indeed of this comic use turns on the existence and degradation of recognised serious writing. There was little or no opportunity for any such use or misuse in the infant vernaculars; there was abundant opportunity in literary Latin. Accordingly we find, and should expect to find, very early parodies of the offices and documents of the Church,—things not unnaturally shocking to piety, but not perhaps to be justly set down to any profane, much ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... of production," meaning the cost to them of getting their product, and that it affects their profits. This, then, will show that there is no objection to be urged, in its true sense, against the phrase cost of production, arising from its misuse in the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... things. Neither does it explain the bulk of the facts of the "new zoopsychology." Neither do I forget that in this field also (as in every field of psychological experiments) there may be an interfering although subconscious misuse of spurious factors, such as signs (not intentional or perceptible) by the experimenter to the subject experimented with; a certain amount of falsification in interpretation of results on the part of the experimenters, etc.... But the irreducible residue of the facts is, in my opinion, ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... endowed with such a brain as Hugh Miller—huge, active, concentrated, keen to fierceness; and therefore few men need fear, even if they misuse and overtask theirs as he did, that it will turn, as it did with him, and rend its master. But as assuredly as there is a certain weight, which a bar of iron will bear and no more, so is there a certain weight of work which the organ by which we act, by which we think, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... it may be copied freely without permission of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The official seal of the CIA, however, may NOT be copied without permission as required by the CIA Act of 1949 (50 U.S.C. section 403m). Misuse of the official seal of the CIA could result in civil and ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... contemporaries—that is to say, have just as long an ancestry as ourselves; and in the course of the last 100,000 years or so our stock has seen so many changes, that their stocks may possibly have seen a few also. Yet the real remedy, I take it, against the misuse of analogy is that the student should make himself sufficiently at home in both branches of anthropology to know each of the two things he compares for what ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... then, as the scholar is nothing without the historic sense, he will be apt to restore not really obsolete or really worn-out words, but the finer edge of words still in use: ascertain, communicate, discover—words like these it has been part of our "business" to misuse. And still, as language was made for man, he will be no authority for correctnesses which, limiting freedom of utterance, were yet but accidents in their origin; as if one vowed not to say "its," which ought to have been in Shakespeare; "his" "hers," for inanimate ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... idols of the. Ta-pa-Shan range. Taprobana, mistakes about. Tarakai. Tarantula. Tarcasci. Tarem, or Tarum. Tares of the parable. Tarikh-i-Rashidi. Tarmabala, Kublai's grandson. Tarok, Burmese name for Chinese. Tarok Man and Tarok Myo. Tartar language, on Tartar, its correct form; misuse by Ramusio. Tartars, different characters used by; identified with Gog and Magog; ladies; their first city; original country, tributary to Prester John; revolt and migration; earliest mention of the word; make Chinghiz their king; his successors; their customs and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... faith, preserved him from mistakes. With the household virtues of cleanliness, order, simplicity, and economy she united large-hearted compassion toward those needing help of any kind, yet knowing withal how, with virile sense and energy, to prevent the misuse of ministering love. She became a model for the deaconesses, as well as a mother to them, and her name deserves to be mentioned with honor, as one who had an important part in the Protestant renewal of the ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... Superior; that she would listen to her friends; that she would do anything, in fact, which would cause her to reconsider this step, which condemned me to misery and her to a life for which she was totally unfitted,—a career in her case of such sad misuse of every attribute of mind and body that it wrung my heart to think of it. But she stood so quiet, so determined, and with an air of such gentle firmness that words seemed useless. In truth, they would not come to me. ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... an abuse of power by officers clothed with its authority and wearing its uniform; and on the same ground, if a feeble but friendly state is in danger of being robbed of its independence and its sovereignty by a misuse of the name and power of the United States, the United States can not fail to vindicate its honor and its sense of justice by an earnest effort to ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... that electric wiring fuses are in good order. Pennies behind burned-out fuses are a misuse of good money ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... be regarded as a being whose opinions, and most frequently whose interests are opposed to those of another being, which is styled a minority. If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their characters by agglomerating; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... are hard of Digestion. Case of Alexis St. Martin. Why highly-concentrated Nourishment is not good for Health. Beneficial Effects of using Unbolted Flour. Scarcity of Wheat under William Pitt's Administration, and its Effects. Causes of a Debilitated Constitution from the Misuse ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... the doting fondness of weak women; it was the appreciative and discriminating love by which a higher nature recognised god-like capabilities under all the dust and defilement of misuse and passion: and she never doubted that the love which in her was so strong, that no injury or insult could shake it, was yet stronger in the God who made her capable of such a devotion, and that in ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... their private store to mitigate the pangs of the sufferers, no gratitude was entertained to the British public or to the government. Starving Ireland armed to strike down her benefactors with weapons procured by the misuse of the boon whicli these benefactors had extended. However painful it may be to relate the story of such turpitude, truth constrains it: the Irish peasant begged, that he might arm against the charitable hand that succoured him. Persons actually perished leaving some, money, with which surviving ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that if he appropriate to his use any of the common property of which books are made up, and so misuse his privilege as to impose upon his readers the payment of too heavy a tax, other persons may use the same facts and ideas, and enter into competition with him. In no other case, however, than in those of the owners of patents and copyrights, where the public recognizes the existence ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... the capital of the Champagne. A bronze statue rises in the centre of the Place which from its Roman costume and martial bearing might be taken for some hero of antiquity did not the inscription on the pedestal apprise us that it is intended for the "wise, virtuous, and magnanimous Louis XV.," a misuse of terms which has caused a transatlantic Republican to characterise the monument as a brazen lie. Leading out of the Place Royale is the Rue de Crs, in which there is a modernised 16th-century house claiming ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... him & me, meaning the sea, which is hard to passe with an army of reuenge. The Embassadour was commanded away & no more hard by the Emperor, til by some other means afterward the grief was either pacified or forgotten, & all this inconuenience grew by misuse of one word, which being otherwise spoken & in some sort qualified, had easily holpen all, & yet th'Embassadour might sufficiently haue satisfied his commission & much better aduaunced his purpose, as to haue said for this word [ye are ingrate,] ye haue not vsed such gratitude ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... petty spite—with shame I say it. And with greater shame I say, you will find their Eves are spiteful, too; probably more spiteful than the Adams; for Eve, you know, is generally smart enough and ambitious enough to outdo Adam in any line of endeavor—especially in the use or misuse of the tongue. ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... are said to have been favoured by Fortune and be slighted; although the fools did the same in their line as the wise man in his; they adapted the appropriate means to the desired end, and so succeeded. In this sense the proverb is current by a misuse, or a catachresis at least, of both ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... she was that she was doing well. And yet she knew that there was a risk. He who was now everything to her might die; nay, it was possible that he might be other than she thought him to be; that he might neglect her, desert her, or misuse her. But she had resolved to trust in everything, and, having so trusted, she would not provide for herself any possibility of retreat. Her ship should go out into the middle ocean, beyond all ken of the secure port from which it had sailed; ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... outside manufacturer's authorized Service Stations in any way so as in the judgment of the manufacturer to affect its stability, or on parts not made or authorized by the manufacturer have been used for replacement or other purposes, nor which has been subject to misuse, negligence, or accident." ...
— Delco Manuals: Radio Model 633, Delcotron Generator - Delco Radio Owner's Manual Model 633, Delcotron Generator Installation • Delco-Remy Division
... as a matter of fact, it is hardly ever abused—hardly ever even used. {176} Why is it hardly ever used? For the good reason that all men know it is existing, and can be used should the need arise. Even were it to be misused, the misuse would happen under responsible ministers, who could be challenged to answer for it, and who would have to make good their defence. But if the House of Lords were made supreme over the House of Commons in every instance, by abolishing the unlimited prerogative which alone keeps ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... tempting their statesmen to degrade the presidency of a free confederacy into a dominion of Athens over Greece, and tempting the Athenian proletariat, and the proletariat in the confederate states, to misuse democracy for the exploitation of the rich by the poor. Envy and covetousness begat injustice, and injustice disloyalty. The city-states, in their rivalry for dominion or their resentment against the domineering of one state over another, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... change of thought; in particular it may lead many to imagine that the persons who use the name of God in one or other of these extended senses retain theological opinions which they may in fact have long abandoned. Thus the misuse of the name of God may resemble the stratagem in war of putting up dummies to make an enemy imagine that a fort is still held long after it has been abandoned by the garrison. (The Belief in Immortality; pp. ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... determination to resist, cried out "Do with your elixir what you will, only leave me the child in peace! Little Zeno speaks the truth without any of your mixtures. A child's mind is a holy thing, so his mother who is now an angel would tell you, and I—I will not permit you to misuse it, in order to try your ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is an epithet in very common misuse. It is often brought into play, especially in its plaintive sense, in situations, where, poor thing, it scarcely knows itself, and where there is not the slightest provocation to account for the use of it. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... rule. And why then do we not seek the rule and discover it, and afterwards use it without varying from it, not even stretching out the finger without it? For this, I think, is that which when it is discovered cures of their madness those who use mere "seeming" as a measure, and misuse it; so that for the future proceeding from certain things (principles) known and made clear we may use in the case of particular things the preconceptions which are ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... possess voice-mechanism, and possibly there is no other physical apparatus that is misused so much. Americans misuse it even in speech; yet what a valuable possession is an agreeable and pleasant speaking-voice. This abuse of the vocal organs by the great majority of Americans makes the establishment of a correct method of voice-production in this country all the more desirable. ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... children, and so it will be to the end. In those old Greeks, and in us also, all strength and virtue come from God. But if men grow proud and self-willed, and misuse God's fair gifts, He lets them go their own ways, and fall pitifully, that the glory may be His alone. God help us all, and give us wisdom, and courage to do noble deeds! but God keep pride from us when we have done them, lest we fall, and ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... will be of two kinds. The temptations which ordinarily assail the young and the intellectual are two: those which are directed against their virtue, and those which are directed against their faith. All divine gifts are exposed to misuse and perversion; youth and intellect are both of them goods, and involve in them certain duties respectively, and can be used to the glory of the Giver; but, as youth becomes the occasion of excess and sensuality, so does intellect give accidental opportunity to religious ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the first point usually comes about through misuse of the idea of heredity. It is assumed that heredity means that past life has somehow predetermined the main traits of an individual, and that they are so fixed that little serious change can be introduced into them. Thus taken, the influence of heredity is opposed to that ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... knowledge that to be entirely frank means to lay down a great price for that costly attainment, a perfectly honourable and fearless life. [1—"A woman, if it be once known that she is deficient in truth, has no resource. Have, by a misuse of language, injured or lost her only means of persuasion, nothing can preserve her from falling into contempt of nonentity. When she is no longer to be believed no on will take the trouble to listen ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... necessary to know the difference between the two tenses, since the misuse of tenses leads to a ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... determined, despotic. Unhampered by modern conceptions of public duty, undeterred by the hostility of powerful opponents, with eyes fixed upon the combination and control of a great transportation system, Vanderbilt entered courageously upon bitter struggles for supremacy which involved the misuse of the courts, the control of the New York state legislature and a thousand charges of corrupt influence and bribery, but he welded railroads together, replaced wood and iron with steel, and constructed tracks and ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... off a sudden storm of tears; then threw her arms round my neck and pressed me close to her bosom. She kissed me a thousand times, eagerly and warmly. "I love you, my lord, I love you, my saviour and king. If you are kind to me, I shall die. Beat me, misuse me, neglect me, be unfaithful—it is your right— and I shall serve you the better for it. But if you love me I cannot bear it. I shall suffocate with joy—my heart will crack. O Francis, Francis, wilt thou never understand thy poor girl?" ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... matter wherein the venereal act is consummated may be discordant with right reason in relation to other persons; and this in two ways. First, with regard to the woman, with whom a man has connection, by reason of due honor not being paid to her; and thus there is incest, which consists in the misuse of a woman who is related by consanguinity or affinity. Secondly, with regard to the person under whose authority the woman is placed: and if she be under the authority of a husband, it is adultery, if under the authority ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... security of the Lower Mississippi as are those who dwell on its very banks in Louisiana; and now that the nation has recovered its possession, this generation of men will make a fearful mistake if they again commit its charge to a people liable to misuse their position, and assert, as was recently done, that, because they dwelt on the banks of this mighty stream, they had a right to control ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... a great number of comic slip-slops, of the first Lord Baltimore, who made a constant misuse of one word for another: for instance, "I have been," says he, "upon a little excoriation to see a ship lanced; and there is not a finer going vessel upon the face of God's earth: you've no idiom how ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... to tobacco! Not I. Singular, the way you women misuse nouns. I am, rather, a chosen acolyte in the temple of Nicotiana. Daily, aye, thrice daily—well, call it six, then—do I make burnt offering. Now some use censers of clay, others employ censers of rare white earth finely carved and decked with silver and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... "horrid," etc., to indicate (for they can not be said to express) almost any shade of certain approved or objectionable qualities, shows a limited vocabulary, a poverty of language, which it is of the first importance to correct. Many who are not given to such gross misuse would yet be surprised to learn how often they employ a very limited number of words in the attempt to give utterance to thoughts and feelings so unlike, that what is the right word on one occasion must of necessity be the wrong word at many other times. Such persons are ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... safeguards against unorganized selfishness in the community,—against thieves, robbers, murderers, traitors, and the like; against the organized selfishness which gets into places of delegated power, and would misuse the Form of law so as to prevent the People from attaining the ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... of the expedition, and I again have Mr. Gladstone's notes for his reply to Sir Wilfrid Lawson, in which he again asserted that the supporters of Arabi Pasha were not only rebels, but criminals as well, accusing them of misuse of a flag of truce, and of deliberately setting fire to ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... my home—if I may so misuse a word so charged with bitterness to me. Not a day passed but my thoughts went in sickness of spirit to my home, to my wife and little one; and it was when I was thinking of them that I thought I ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... worse than thy dog—they are too bloody. Were the Church king, it would be otherwise. Poor beast! poor beast! set him down. I will bind up his wounds with my napkin. Give him a bone, give him a bone! Who misuses a dog would misuse a child—they cannot speak for themselves. Past help! his paws are past help. God ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Hang him, dishonest varlet! we cannot misuse him enough. We'll leave a proof, by that which we will do, Wives may be merry and yet honest too. We do not act that often jest and laugh; 'Tis old but true: 'Still swine eats all ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... know actually two persons, no chickens, who are always very ill if they have no annual cough. You may imagine that I have made observations in plenty on the gout: yes, yes, I know its ways and its jesuitic evasions. I beg its pardon, it is a better soul than it appears to be; it is we that misuse it: if it does not appear with all its credentials, we take it for something else, and attempt to cure it. Being a remedy, and not a disease, it will not be cured; and it is better to let it have its way. If it is content to act the personage of a cough, pray humour it: it will prolong your ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... never! Just the same I don't want to be shut up in this old boat—not after it stops thundering and lightering," declared Dot, who, as Tess was not present, felt free to misuse the English ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... streets, our suburban "white niggers," with a thousand a year and the conceit of Imperial destinies. They live in our mother-tongue as some half-civilized invaders might live in a gigantic and splendidly equipped palace. They misuse this, they waste that, they leave whole corridors and wings unexplored, to fall into disuse and decay. I doubt if the ordinary member of the prosperous classes in England has much more than a third of the English language in use, and more than a half in knowledge, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... companions.' That's a pleasant account for a father to read! Here am I, sending you to an expensive school, furnishing you with great natural capacity and excellent abilities, and—and—every other school requisite, and all you do is to misuse them! It's disgraceful! And misleading your companions, too! Why, at your age, they ought to mislead you—No, I don't mean that—but what I may tell you is that I've written a very strong letter to Dr. Grimstone, saying what pain it gave me to ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... Socialists have declared war against the Christian religion and the Christian Churches, they freely quote the Scriptures and the Fathers if it suits their purpose, and shamelessly misuse the name of Christ. In support of their maxim "Property is theft," they quote St. Jerome's saying: "Opulence is always the result of theft: if not by the actual possessor, then by his predecessors."[1008] They quote Christ in support ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... from the tribunal, conscious that he had attained no mean privilege and had secured a safeguard, like that, by the declaration of which the Apostle of the Gentiles stayed the uplifted hands of his persecutors, and caused them to tremble at the thought of misuse or degradation inflicted upon a Roman citizen. Now, I believe, whatever is left of the ceremony upon such occasions is slurred over in a clerk's office, or the part performed in court scarcely attracts the attention of the magistrate upon the bench. The moral ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... on capital are essential; but misuse of the powers of capital or selfish suspension of the employment of capital must be ended, or the capitalistic system will destroy itself ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... said Joshua, rejecting all consolation; 'HE do anything gently!—no, he will gallop Solomon—he will misuse the sober patience of the poor animal who has borne me so long! Yes, I was given over to my own devices when I ever let him touch the bridle, for such a little miscreant there never was before him ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... among a band of Alaskan natives about the middle of the last century, and they formed a strong mutual attachment. The friendship of these simple people was not misplaced, and Mr. Duncan did not misuse it for his own advantage, as is too apt to be the case with a white man. He adapted himself to their temperament and sense of natural justice, but gradually led them to prefer civilized habits and industries, and finally to accept the character ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... in England. The design employed tulips and other flowers, foliage, birds, etc., all in gay colours; ivory and mother-of-pearl were used occasionally for salient points, such as eyes. Examples of the use and misuse of these materials may be seen in the Victoria and ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... that we find such declarations as that in Ezek. xviii., 22, which tells that if we forsake our evil ways our past transgressions shall never again be mentioned to us. We are dealing with the great principles of our subjective being, and our misuse of them in the past can never make them change their inherent law of action. If our method of using them in the past has brought us sorrow, fear and trouble, we have only to fall back on the law that if we reverse the cause ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... of his thought on their practical theory of life, upon their ideals of existence, upon the courage, faith, and hope which enable them to work and live, feeling that life is worth while. We must, however, guard against misuse of Bergson, particularly such misuse of him as that made in another sphere, by the Syndicalists. We find that in France he has been welcomed by the Modernists of the Roman Catholic Church as an ally, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... wert altogether deaf to an Angel's whisper! Things of the earth earthly gained dominion over thee ... by them thou wert led astray, deceived, and at last forsaken, ... the genius God gave thee thou didst misuse and indolently waste, ... thy brief life came, as thou hast seen, to sudden-piteous end,—and the proud City of thy dwelling was destroyed by fire! Not a trace of it was left to mark the spot where once it stood. The foundations of Babylon ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... on another matter connected with this. Among the calumnies perpetually thrown out at me, is one which I cannot pass in silence, because it charges me with ingratitude to the United States, saying that I misuse the generosity of your country, which granted me protection and an asylum, upon my accepting the condition not to meddle any more with politics, but to abandon the cause to which I have devoted my life—to retire from public ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... of the region have a high moral standard, crime is almost unknown; the jail itself is an evidence of primeval simplicity. The great incident in the old jailer's life had been the rescue of a well-known citizen who was confined on a charge of misuse of public money. The keeper showed me a place in the outer wall of the front cell, where an attempt had been made to batter a hole through. The Highland clan and kinsfolk of the alleged defaulter came ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dishonest Varlet, We cannot misuse enough: We'll leaue a proofe by that which we will doo, Wiues may be merry, and yet honest too: We do not acte that often, iest, and laugh, 'Tis old, but true, Still Swine ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... mail in long hand, and the only times he allowed himself to be out of reach of the telephone were during Holy Week and possibly on Saturdays. Everyone who came to the office was able to see him without any formality. I remember showing him an article in a church paper on the misuse of the title "Reverend," and suggesting that it might be well to print it in the Sunday leaflet. He was amused and only said, "What does it matter what we are called as long as they call us." This intense desire to give of himself lay back of his disappointment ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... People misuse this word "faith." Doubt applies to all questions of fact that may be investigated, to all questions of history, to all questions open to the exercise of the critical faculty. For example, if I am told ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... Never had the efficiency of the Union Cavalry been at such a low ebb; but it was low-water mark, indeed, and matters were destined to mend after a history of nearly two years of neglect, disorganisation, and misuse. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... than all the evil we can do. When we, acknowledging our own vileness, desire to return into His grace, He remembers our ingratitude no more,—no, not even the graces He has given us, for the purpose of chastising us, because of our misuse of them; yea, rather, they help to procure our pardon the sooner, as of persons who have been members of His household, and who, as they say, have eaten ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... I am not one of the feeble lambs whom you have beguiled by the misuse of your gifts and advantages; and who then are eager to kiss your hands. I am the daughter of Thomas; and another woman's betrothed, who craves my embraces on the way to his wedding, will learn to his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Antecedents.—Then there is a use of the pronoun with an unclear antecedent buried somewhere in the sentence, so that the pronoun seems to refer to an intervening word. Such a misuse really is a matter of clearness rather than of grammar, and should come under the next section of this chapter, but it will be discussed here for the sake of including all misuses of the pronoun at once. The ambiguous use of pronouns is the most ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... light of reason for natural things and for the direction of the will to moral virtue the light of grace for things supernatural, and for the direction of the will to spiritual virtue. Sin was the opposite of virtue, the choice by the will of false objects of love; it involved the misuse of reason, and the absence of grace. As the end of virtue was blessedness, so the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... importance of righteousness by faith for the whole moral life is revealed in such a heart-refreshing manner. Luther's appeal in this treatise to kings, princes, the nobility, municipalities and communities, to declare against the misuse of spiritual powers and to abolish various abuses in civil life, marks this treatise as a forerunner of the great Reformation writings, which appeared in the same year (1520), while, on the other hand, his espousal of the rights of the "poor man"—to be met with here for the first time—shows ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... least remain and will attempt to fashion what can never be completed, and will caress that which will not respond to the caress. Your eyes, which are now so principally filled with innocence that that bright quality drowns all the rest, will look upon so much of deadly suffering and of misuse in men, that they will very early change themselves in kind; and all your face, which now vaguely remembers nothing but the early vision from which childhood proceeds, will grow drawn and self-guarded, and will suffer some agonies, a few despairs, innumerable fatigues, until ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... claimed her attention first. Young—a very young thirty-five, Esther decided—blonde with delicate transparency, and lovely; her natural beauty was accentuated by careful make-up and clothes so exquisite that they could be called "elegant" without a misuse of the word. It seemed evident that she was wealthy. Her gown of filmy black had the cachet of an exclusive house, the expensive simplicity that serves so well as a background for wonderful jewels. Against it gleamed a heavy strand ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Sancho were discussing what the future was holding for them, and Sancho gave the glad news to his master that he had induced his wife to sanction his departure and his becoming governor. Sancho was very much annoyed by his master's continual interruptions and corrections. Whenever Sancho would misuse or abuse a word, as he did in almost every sentence, Don Quixote would stop and ask him what he meant, until poor Sancho was so confused that he did not know what he had meant. Finally Don Quixote asked him to tell ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... these proper and legitimate functions of government are neglected, the necessary result must be not only that the improvements which the people have a right to expect will be neglected, and the prosperity of the country checked, but that each branch of legislature will misuse its power, and the popular mind be easily led into excitement upon mere abstract theories of government to which their attention is directed as the remedy for the uneasiness ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... the Epistle of James is a commentary on the last petition of the Lord's Prayer. When we pray: "Lead us not into temptation," it is, as James says, not God who tempts, for God tempteth no man. The temptation comes through our misuse of the circumstances which God offers us as our opportunity. We ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... been possible, Miss Manette, that you could have returned the love of the man you see before yourself—flung away, wasted, drunken, poor creature of misuse as you know him to be—he would have been conscious this day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that he would bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and repentance, blight you, disgrace you, pull you down with him. I know very well that you can have no tenderness for me; ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Spencer (who is certainly the greatest of living philosophers) pass as a partisan of socialism. It is strange, indeed, that anyone could have been able to make him believe that there is in Italy enough ignorance among writers as well as among readers for one to misuse so grotesquely the name of Herbert Spencer, whose extreme individualism is known to all ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... respectable British cynic; his intelligence is largely one of trifles; he is wise over trivial and trumpery things. He delights in reminding us—with an air!—that everybody is a humbug; that we are all rank snobs; that to misuse your aspirates is to be ridiculous and incapable of real merit; that Miss Blank has just slipped out to post a letter to Captain Jones; that Miss Dash wears false teeth and a wig; that General Tufto is almost as tightly laced as the beautiful Miss Hopper; ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... attempt to misuse and pervert this part of the face which I scarcely dare to touch upon, for it is so utterly fantastic and mystical that I fear the charge of heresy if I give words to my thoughts. It occurs among bats, a tribe of obscure creatures about ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... who could repudiate his wife, disown her, and send her from his door for almost any reason, real or false. In earlier times, at the epoch when the liberty of the citizen was the pride of Rome, marriage almost languished there on account of the misuse of divorce, and both men and women were allowed to profit by the laxity of the laws on this subject. Seneca said, in one instance: "That Roman woman counts her years, not by the number of consuls, but ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... the great war tried to remedy in two opposite ways. For the majority the easiest solution was to borrow from their richer neighbors, and thus originated that affectation of all things foreign, which, in speaking, led to the most variegated use and misuse of foreign words. Patriotically-minded men, on the contrary, endeavored to cultivate the purity of their mother tongue the while they enriched it; this, above all, was the ambition of the various "Linguistic Societies." ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Plan of Management 2. what we have defined as the "Transitory" plan of management 3. management which not only is not striving to be scientific, but which confounds "science" with "system." Both its advocates and opponents have been guilty of misuse of the word. Still, in spite of this, the very fact that the word has had a wide use, that it has become habitual to think of the new type of management as "Scientific," makes its choice advisable. We shall use it, but restrict its content. With us "Scientific Management" is used to mean ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... dishonourable for the receiver to disown a benefit, or for the giver to demand a return of it: for a benefit is a loan, the repayment of which depends merely upon the good feeling of the debtor. To misuse a benefit like a spendthrift is most shameful, because we do not need our wealth but only our intention to set us free from the obligation of it; for a benefit is repaid by being acknowledged. Yet while they are to blame who do not even show so much gratitude as to acknowledge their ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... with little difficulty." With due deference to the opinion of our genial confrere, we cannot accept his conclusions. We have yet to learn of any public school in which flouting at the Bible or religion enters into the matter of instruction, and we apprehend that the number of teachers who thus misuse their office really constitutes so small a fraction of the teaching community as to be hardly worthy the learned doctor's attention. As a matter of fact, by far the greater number of American teachers in public schools and private schools, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... their possessions. Austere faces, inexorable discipline, penance in this world and terror in the next—nothing graceful or gentle anywhere, and the void in my cowed heart everywhere—this was my childhood, if I may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... its grasp. There was the more reason to do this, because of the difficulties which were felt, and the disputes which had arisen about 'mysteries' in religion. Undoubtedly it is a word very capable of misuse. 'Times,' says the author last quoted, 'unfruitful in theological knowledge are ever wont to fall back upon mystery and upon the much abused demand of "taking the reason prisoner to the obedience of faith."' With some, religion has thus been made barren and ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... is made FREE!—Man, by birthright, is free, Though the tyrant may deem him but born for his tool. Whatever the shout of the rabble may be— Whatever the ranting misuse of the fool— Still fear not the Slave, when he breaks from his chain, For the Man made a Freeman grows ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... than his own beasts of burden. The poor man will be tempted franctically to oppose his selfishness and unbelief to the selfishness and unbelief of the rich, and clutch from him by force the comfort which really belong to neither of them, in order that he may pride himself in them and misuse them in his turn; and the clergy will be tempted, as they have too often been tempted already, to fancy that reason is the enemy, and not the twin sister of faith; to oppose revelation to science, as ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... of the streamers of passers like a wounded snipe he was marked simultaneously as game by two hunters. One was "Bully" McGuire, whose system of sport required the use of a strong arm and the misuse of an eight-inch piece of lead pipe. The other Nimrod of the asphalt was "Spider" Kelley, a sportsman with ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... is believed to indicate the need of bringing the voice forward in the mouth. Other forms of throaty production are taken to show a lack of support, a wrong management of the breath, a need of breath-control, a misuse of nasal resonance, or an improper action of the vocal cords. In all these attempts to interpret sympathetic sensations by means of mechanical doctrines the teacher naturally relies on those doctrines ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... unrecorded quite By those who might have touched with Raphael's hand The large imperial legend of our race, Ere it brought forth the braggarts of an hour, Self-worshippers who love their imaged strength, And as a symbol for their own proud selves Misuse the sacred name of this dear land, While England to the Empire of her soul Like some great Prophet passes through the crowd That cannot understand; for he must climb Up to that sovran thunder-smitten peak Where he shall grave and trench on adamant The Law ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... political question of great moment. But this he had done as an advocate, and had interfered only as a barrister of to-day might do, who, in arguing a case before the judges, should make an attack on some alleged misuse of patronage. Now, for the first time, he made a political harangue, addressing the people in a public meeting from the rostra. This speech is the oration Pro Lego Manilia. This he explains in his first words. Hitherto his addresses ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... said, "he wants to take our little girl away. He loves her very dearly, Alfred," she said, "and I think it our duty to let her go, no matter how hard it is, and oh, please Heaven, Alfred, he'll treat her well and not misuse her, or beat her," and she ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... with far purer intentions than those with which they were carried on. That they afterward turned to great wickedness, is not to be denied; some of the degenerate Crusaders of the latter days were among the wickedest of mankind, and the misuse of the influence they gave the Popes became a source of some of the worst practices of the Papacy. Already Pope Urban was taking on him to declare that a man who perished in the Crusade was sure of salvation, and his doctrine was still further perverted ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... time of athletic competitions, baseball matches, and rural sociability, rolled by, but Harris scarcely knew of its passing. He had long ago ceased to take any personal interest in the frivolities of the neighbourhood; he saw in picnics and baseball games only an unprofitable misuse of time, and when he thought of them at all it was to congratulate himself that Allan was not led away by any such foolishness. Finding no great happiness in his own home, he had fallen into the way of walking over to Riles's on Sunday afternoons, and the two spent many hours in ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... other qualities mentioned above, I say that every prince ought to desire to be considered clement and not cruel. Nevertheless he ought to take care not to misuse this clemency. Cesare Borgia was considered cruel; notwithstanding, his cruelty reconciled the Romagna, unified it, and restored it to peace and loyalty. And if this be rightly considered, he will be seen to have been much more merciful than the Florentine people, who, to ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Christmas Eve (I supposed) she wore an evening dress of black lace, and the only word for what she looked has suffered such misuse that one hesitates over it: yet that is what she was—regal—and no less! There was a sort of splendor about her. It detracted nothing from this that her expression was a little sad: something not uncommon with her lately; a certain melancholy, faint but ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... in itself a sin, is in itself right; it is only in its misuse that it becomes reprehensible in a given case. Concealment is a prime duty of man; as truly a duty as truth-speaking, or chastity, or honesty. God, who cannot lie to his creatures, conceals much from his creatures. "The secret things ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word; they have not deserved it," and he went on talking like that. "It is like your paltry race—always lying, always claiming virtues which it hasn't got, always denying them to the higher ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... so? for what earthly good Can man possess which he may not enjoy? Parents, a prosp'rous country, friends, birth, riches. Yet these all take their value from the mind Of the possessor: he that knows their use, To him they're blessings; he that knows it not, To him misuse converts them into curses. ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... bench outside the sheds to think what I ought to do. I knew, as well as I know now, that Lawrence was runnin' away, and I had drove him to it. But I swear, sir, before my Colonel and my God, that I didn't mean to make Lawrence mad, or misuse him in any way. You know ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... doubtful whether it is perfectly apprehended by the writer. He can avoid the use of those pedantic terms which are really nothing but offensive and, fortunately, ephemeral scientific slang. There has been, for instance, a recent vogue for the extensive misuse, usually tautological misuse, of the word "complexus"—an excellent word if used rarely and for definite purposes. Mr. Haseman drags it in continually when its use is either pointless and redundant or else serves purely to darken wisdom. He speaks of the "Antillean ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... life, by itself, creates more problems than it solves. The problem of international disarmament, for example, has been forced on us by the fear of that perdition to the suburbs of which our race has manifestly come through the misuse of scientific knowledge. Humanity is disturbed about itself because it has discovered that it is in possession of power enough to wreck the world. Never before did mankind have so much energy to handle. Multitudes of people, dubious ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... name, when I hear strangers use, Not meaning her, sounds to me lax misuse; I love none but My Lady's name; Maud, Grace, Rose, Marian, all the same, Are harsh, or blank ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... tingling for a mighty throw, such as my utmost self-command, and fear of hurting any one, could but ill refrain. Afterwards, I was always very sadly ashamed of myself, knowing how poor a thing bodily strength is, as compared with power of mind, and that it is a coward's part to misuse it upon weaker folk. For the present there was a little breach between Master Stickles and me, for which I blamed myself very sorely. But though, in full memory of his kindness and faithfulness in London, I asked his pardon many times for my foolish anger with him, and offered to ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... summits towering thousands of feet into the blue. Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones. So, life is meant for discipline, and unless we use it for that, however much enjoyment we get out of it, we misuse it. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and in the realising of the practical ends of life. Once again it must be noted that in the establishment of the various systems of knowledge the one activity ever present is that of reason seeking ever to connect part to part in order that some end or interest may be attained. Moreover, we may misuse the power of reason, and employ it in the attainment of ends which are valueless in the sense that they further no real interest or end in life. This is done whenever knowledge is crammed, whenever the bond of connection between ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... to me first. Thus it was I lost you. If I have had, indirectly, any act or part in the fate of that unhappy man, by putting means, however small, within his reach, Heaven forgive me! I might have known, perhaps, that he would misuse money; that it was ill-bestowed upon him; and that sown by his hands it could engender mischief only. But I never thought of him at that time as having the disposition or ability to be a serious impostor, or otherwise than as a thoughtless, idle-humoured, dissipated spendthrift, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... foregoing chapter has been comprehended. As the author has a horror of what is termed "cramming," he expresses the hope that no student will use these synopses, which have been prepared with much care, for so great a misuse of ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... nothing in the utilitarian theory inconsistent with the fact that there are other things which interest us in persons besides the rightness and wrongness of their actions. The Stoics, indeed, with the paradoxical misuse of language which was part of their system, and by which they strove to raise themselves above all concern about anything but virtue, were fond of saying that he who has that has everything; that he, and only he, is rich, is beautiful, is a king. But no claim of this description ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... the firm, and she will never know what was done with it. With that amount, Otto, you know I can recoup all these terrible losses, and in less than a year all will be repaid. But without it. . . . You must get it, Otto. Hear me, you must. Am I to be arrested for the misuse of trust moneys? Is our honoured name to be cursed and spat on?" The old man choked and stammered in his anger ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... fault, came as a stumbling-block in her way; she could not bear to go into the world and face strangers. And Maurice on his side could not endure the thought that his beautiful young wife should be exposed to slights and humiliations; so Nea's fine talent wasted by misuse. ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... consequently easy to himself. Among the various plausible reasons which were urged against the continued existence of the conventual houses, one of the most likely to appeal to the practical sense of the multitude was the misuse of the resources with which they had been endowed. While it was admitted that in their earlier days they had been extremely useful in mitigating distress among the poor, it was now argued that their indiscriminate charities were doing more harm than good, and that the changed economic ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... persons are not satisfied with any of the accepted practices; as if a new world could be built of a sudden. There will always be things which the pious must endure. If anyone thinks that Mass ought to be abolished because many misuse it, then the Sermon should be abolished also, which is almost the only custom accepted by your party. I feel the same about the invocation of the saints ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... ignorant, but nevertheless, no one is responsible but himself, says the Sporting Goods Dealer. Gun barrels can only burst by having some obstruction in the barrel or by overloading with powder. Any gun barrel can be burst by misuse or by carelessly loading smokeless powder, but no barrel will burst by using factory loaded ammunition, provided there is no obstruction or foreign substance inside the barrel. When a gun barrel bursts at the breech or chamber, it is caused by ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... was at least expected to be more reverent than other men to those divine beings of whose nature he partook, whose society he might enjoy even here on earth. He might be unfaithful to his own high lineage; he might misuse his gifts by selfishness and self-will; he might, like Ajax, rage with mere jealousy and wounded pride till his rage ended in shameful madness and suicide. He might rebel against the very gods, and all laws of right and wrong, till he perished his ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... This word is now used in a most ignorant way; and from its misuse it has come to be a word wholly useless: for it is now never coupled, I think, with any other substantive than these two—faith and confidence: a poor domain indeed to have sunk to from its original wide range of territory. Moreover, when we say, implicit faith, or implicit ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... of self-defence; and as James nearly suppressed the importation of tobacco the English began to grow it on their own land. But the Scottish Solomon who was on the alert, added another law restraining its cultivation 'to misuse and misemploy the soil of this fruitful Kingdom.' As this enforced the trade with the English colony of Virginia alone, it was soon found that Spanish and Portuguese tobacco might be brought into port on the payment of the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... shutter, I saw Edward's carriage rolling away along the avenue, and ours being packed in the court below. I felt glad that we were going too; glad that we were going to London; glad that there was something to think of—to talk of—to do. Glad! what a misuse of words. God knows, there was no gladness in my heart that morning, but it was something to be able to forget myself occasionally in the bustle and excitement around me. Mr. and Mrs. Middleton were not aware that anything had passed between Edward and myself. They ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... colonel had not yet heard the full story, and it was just as evident that the portion of it that he had heard had disturbed him almost beyond precedent. He was taciturn in speech, and severe and formal in manner. To misuse and neglect the flag of his country was, indeed, no ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... identical. "Biology, like theology, has its dogmas. Leaders have their disciples and blind followers." Wise words! They are those of the author with whom we are dealing. To say "we know" when really we only surmise is a misuse of language, just as it is also a misuse to ask the question "Does nature make a departure from its previously ordered procedure and substitute chance for law?" since the ordinary reader is all too apt to forget that ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... they were instantly stormed at by shot and shell. At length General Buller found it necessary in face of such frequent treachery, officially to warn his whole army to be on their guard against the white flag, a flag which to his personal knowledge was already through such misuse stained with the blood of two gallant British ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry |
