"Overestimate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pater-familias, and had boys of his own to send to Rugby, and to encourage and advise in their school-life by letters which—and it is paying them a high compliment to say so—are almost as good as those which his father had, thirty years before, addressed to him at the same place. It is impossible to overestimate the advantage to a school-boy of having a father who can appreciate and sympathize with boyish thoughts and aims, and knows how to use his natural mentorship wisely. We shall be much surprised if readers do not find the letters from George's father to him, and his to his own boys, among ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... assume that neither in the city nor country are we likely to overestimate the influence of the press. The daily and weekly paper have a wide circulation among rural people and furnish a source of penetrating and persistent social influence all the more significant because the readers are little conscious of what ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... with an intimate knowledge of women clerks and secretaries in the City for the past twenty years, says that it is difficult to overestimate the poverty of a vast number of girls. Many of them are the chief breadwinners of the family. She knows of half a dozen cases of men of forty and a little older who are living on the earnings of their daughters; there may be two girls in the ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... to a head and presented in a concrete shape the somewhat vague speculations as to development and evolution which had long been floating in the minds of naturalists. In the actual working out of Darwin's great theory it is impossible to overestimate the influence of Lyell. This is made abundantly clear in Darwin's letters, and it must never be forgotten that Darwin himself was a geologist. His training in this science enabled him to grasp the import of the facts ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... harmonize Darwinism with the Bible, but these efforts, while honest and sometimes even agonizing, have not been successful. How could they be when the natural and inevitable tendency of Darwinism is to exalt the mind at the expense of the heart, to overestimate the reliability of the reason as compared with faith and to impair confidence in the Bible. The mind is a machine; it has no morals. It obeys its owner as willingly when he plots to kill as when he plans ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... any word in the language has cause to complain of ill-treatment, this one has. Appreciate means, to estimate justly—to set the true value on men or things, their worth, beauty, or advantages of any sort whatsoever. Thus, an overestimate is no more appreciation than is an underestimate; hence it follows that such expressions as, "I appreciate it, or her, or him, highly," can not be correct. We value, or prize, things highly, not appreciate them highly. This word is also very improperly ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... hope that I may be pardoned if I appear to overestimate the remarkable mental capacity and power of comprehension and discrimination which my pupil possesses, I wish to add that, while I have always known that Helen made great use of such descriptions and comparisons as appeal to her imagination and fine poetic nature, yet recent developments ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... not disposed to blame the politicians and the business men. They govern the nation, it is true, but they do it in a rather absentminded fashion. Those revolutionists who see the misery of the country as a deliberate and fiendish plot overestimate the bad will, the intelligence and the singleness of purpose in the ruling classes. Business and political leaders don't mean badly; the trouble with them is that most of the time they don't mean anything. They picture themselves as very "practical," which in ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... uranium, which gave rise to lead. As regards methods based on the production of helium, what we have to say will largely apply to it also. If some unknown source of these elements exists we, of course, on our assumption overestimate the age. ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... It had staked out a claim on that counter some five years before, and if anything was required to convince it of the value of the possession it was the fact that it was being constantly pushed off. To a firm-minded cat this alone gave the counter a value difficult to overestimate, and sometimes an obsequious customer fell into raptures over its beauty. This was soothing, and the animal allowed customers of this type to scratch ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... that the younger sister was the moving spirit of the house. Elizabeth's vigorous mind, her clear insight, and strong common-sense, made her quick to judge and discriminate. As Dinah knew, she very seldom made a mistake in her opinion of a person. Dinah's charitable nature was rather prone to overestimate her friends and acquaintances—"all her geese were swans." As Elizabeth often said, when she cared for any one she simply could not see their faults. "If we were all as blind as Dinah," her sister would say, "the world ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to win here," said Dick. "If we don't, I'm thinking the cause of the Union will be more than doubtful. We don't seem to have the generals in the East that we have in the West. Our leaders hang on here and they don't overestimate the enemy." ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... there can be but one answer to that question. Oriental superstition cast its blight upon the fair field of science, whatever compensation it may or may not have brought in other fields. But we must be on our guard lest we overestimate or incorrectly estimate this influence. Posterity, in glancing backward, is always prone to stamp any given age of the past with one idea, and to desire to characterize it with a single phrase; ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... obtained by the Royal Flying Corps. In regard to the collection of information it is impossible either to award too much praise to our aviators for the way they have carried out their duties or to overestimate the value of the intelligence collected, more ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... Kaiser must know in his heart that woefully, from his own and his people's point of view, did he overestimate his strength at the outset. For the time he contents himself with the backwater of Nish for the scene of his oratory of conquest. His vainglorious words may well prove in their environment the prelude of a compulsory confession of failure, which is likely to ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... overestimate the service which the Federal reserve system has already rendered to the country. It is necessary only to recall the chaotic condition of our banking organization at the time the Federal reserve system was put into operation. The old system consisted of a vast number of independent banking units, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the nation, so that we cannot but admire the real statesman as the vastest human Poetry. Ever to look beyond the present moment, to foresee the ways of Destiny, to care so little for power that he only retains it because he is conscious of his usefulness, while he does not overestimate his strength; ever to lay aside all personal feeling and low ambitions, so that he may always be master of his faculties, and foresee, will, and act without ceasing; to compel himself to be just and impartial, to keep order on a large scale, to ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... impossible to overestimate the excitement, the animosity, and the contention which arose in the New England colonies from these discussions over "singing by rule" or "singing by rote." Many prominent clergymen wrote essays and tracts upon the subject; of these essays "The Reasonableness of Regular ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... 1832 Irving returned from his long sojourn in Europe, he found an immense advance in fiction, poetry, and historical composition. American literature was not only born,—it was able to go alone. We are not likely to overestimate the stimulus to this movement given by Irving's example, and by his success abroad. His leadership is recognized in the respectful attitude towards him of all his contemporaries in America. And the ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... me so much better than the Atlantic ever had that I am probably inclined to overestimate everything I saw on the voyage. It was the first trip at sea that ever gave me any pleasure. The huge vessels are in themselves a great comfort, and in the placid waters and the sliding down the rotund side of the great globe under warmer and warmer skies one gains a very ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... still a deal of patient, hard, clear-visioned thinking to win from the newer interpretations of the Bible that understanding and acceptance of its value which went with the inherited faith. The more liberal-minded religious teachers doubtless very greatly overestimate the penetration of popular thought already accomplished, by what seems to them a familiar commonplace. The New Testament is still, even for the scholar, a challenging problem. Conclusions are being bitterly ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... But I overestimate our numbers, for it was not the whole of the Heilbron contingent that reached the firing line. We had to leave some of them behind with the horses at the foot of the kop, and there were others who remained ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... consistency, this confident dogmatism, which gives us the secret of the enormous influence of Treitschke on his countrymen, as it explains the hypnotism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on a previous generation. I do not think it would be easy to overestimate the extent of that influence. It is true that in one sense Treitschke's political philosophy only expresses the Prussian policy, and that he did not create it. But when a political ideal is expounded with such ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... as an individual. Then I guessed that nocturnal prowlings were not in the least her habit, and I was also reminded (I had been struck with the circumstance in talking with her before I took possession) that it was impossible to overestimate her simplicity. ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... to be entailed on the third and fourth generation. When a slave escapes from a Southern plantation, he at once takes a name as the first step in liberty—the first assertion of individual identity. A woman's dignity is equally involved in a life-long name, to mark her individuality. We can not overestimate the demoralizing effect on woman herself, to say nothing of society at large, for her to consent thus to merge her existence so ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... "You overestimate my worth and his interest. He is a man who lives in a world of his own and needs no society, save such as is afforded in his tasteful and elegant home. He loves books, flowers, music, paintings, and his dog! He is a stern man, and shares his griefs and joys with no one. ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Each special requirement must be regarded as part of that general combination of things which only really comes into view in actual warfare. The special standpoint of a particular arm must be rejected as unjustified, and the departmental spirit must be silenced. Care must be taken not to overestimate the technical and material means of power in spite of their undoubted importance, and to take sufficient account of the spiritual and moral factors. Our age, which has made such progress in the conquest of nature, is inclined to attach too much importance ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... report of the Secretary of the Navy shows the saving in our naval expenditures which would result. The Senator from Alabama, Mr. Morgan, in his argument upon this subject before the Senate of the last session, did not overestimate the importance of the work when he said that 'The canal is the most important subject now connected with the commercial growth and progress of the ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... tendency among Mendelians and mutationists to overestimate the importance of experiments in comparison with reasoning, either inductive or deductive. Bateson, however, has admitted that Mendelian experiments and observations on mutation have not solved the problem of adaptation. It seems to be demanded, nevertheless, that characters must be produced ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... else in Him, more than we, that guaranteed it? What, as President Tucker asks, is this power which shall make "maybe" into "is" for us? "Without doubt the trend of modern thought and faith is toward the more perfect identification of Christ with humanity. We cannot overestimate the advantage to Christianity of this tendency. The world must know and feel the humanity of Jesus. But it makes the greatest difference in result whether the ground of the common humanity is in Him or in us. To borrow the expressive language of Paul, was He 'created' in us? ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... letters I have received from correspondents unknown to the world of authorship, but writing from an instinctive impulse, which many of them say they have long felt and resisted. One must not allow himself to be flattered into an overestimate of his powers because he gets many letters expressing a peculiar attraction towards his books, and a preference of them to those with which he would not have dared to compare his own. Still, if the ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... coward and a weak hero. But in the spiritual region, strength and courage do go together. The consciousness of the divine power with us, and that alone, will make us bold with a boldness that has no taint of levity and presumption mingled with it, and never will overestimate its own strength. The charge to Joshua, then, not only insists upon the duty of strength, but on the duty of conscious strength, and on the duty of measuring the strength that is at my back with the weakness that is against ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of these writings through many ages, and the actual impression made on the world by the type of character which they embodied and, in a sense, created. In this view, Cicero represents a force that no historian can neglect, and the importance of which it is not easy to overestimate. He did for the Empire and the Middle Ages what Lucretius, with his far greater philosophic genius, totally failed to do—created forms of thought in which the life of philosophy grew, and a body of expression which alone ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... think you in nowise overestimate the value of Meadows Taylor's life and work in India, and I cordially recognise the exceptional claims of the two ladies, on whose behalf you have written to me, to the grant which I regret to hear they require. Their case is rather a ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... has been so often expounded. I think that at present the tendency is rather to do injustice to the common-sense embodied in this system, to the soundness of its aims, and to its value in many practical and immediate questions, than to overestimate its claim to scientific accuracy. That claim may be said ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... to overestimate the far-reaching influence of such a Council. An interchange of opinions on the great questions now agitating the world will rouse women to new thought, will intensify their love of liberty and will give them a realizing sense of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... and entreated him to preach to them regularly; to which he consented, but not until he had assured himself that this would be acceptable to the pastor of the Reformed congregation. But his mission was to the sheep scattered abroad, of whom he reckoned (an extravagant overestimate) not less than one hundred thousand of the Lutheran party in Pennsylvania alone. Others, as he soon found, had been feeling, like himself, the hurt of the daughter of Zion. A series of conferences was ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... is easy to overestimate the drift in the direction of radicalism. The Plumb Plan has not yet been made the sine qua non of the American labor program. Although the American Federation of Labor endorsed the principle of ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... that no physical explanation in the least meets the needs of the case, and we are consequently obliged to look for it in something differing from the operations of chemistry and physics. Of this argument Dr. Johnstone[10] says: "It is almost impossible to overestimate the appeal which it ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... property; since, house and farm-rents being fixed by the value of the capital, and the latter being measured by the tax, to depreciate his real estate would be to reduce his revenue. On the other hand, it is equally evident that the same proprietors could not overestimate the value of their property, in order to increase their incomes beyond the limits of the law, since the tenants and farmers, with their old leases in their hands, would ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government. When they found, after a short trial, that the confederacy of States, was too weak to meet the necessities of a vigorous ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... "You overestimate me," he replied. "All I can do, for now, is to camp down here and try to figure the problem out—with your help. Whatever this thing is, it's evident it stands between us and our plan. Either Chicago lies on the other side—(provided, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... being the mainstay of Virginia and fighting with General Braddock against the French and Indians, he became the mainstay of the United Colonies and fought through seven long and trying years against the veterans of England. Who can overestimate the great patience and courage and determination that heroic struggle ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... investigating and reporting the defects in the system and in the administration of our charitable and penal laws, and have furnished in their reports information and suggestions of great value. If it is true that an abuse exposed is half corrected, it would be difficult to overestimate their work. They have, their reports show, discovered abuses and cruelties practiced, under color of law, in the midst of communities noted for intelligence and virtue, which would disgrace any age. Let the board be granted increased powers and facilities for the discharge ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... cleanliness, and separation of the sexes, such as health and comfort require; they would really be conferring an amount of benefit on the community at large, and, at the same time, we believe, upon themselves, which it would not be easy to overestimate. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... for twenty-five years he disseminated the knowledge of the best thought and literature broadcast over the land. When we consider the immense circulation of that periodical and the quality of its readers, we can hardly overestimate the value of his work. Many have ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... observe the different forms which vulgarity is apt to take in the two countries. In England vulgarity is stolid; in America it is smart and aggressive. We are apt, I think, to overestimate the amount in the latter country because it is so much more in voluble evidence. An English vulgarian is often hushed into silence by the presence of his social superior; an American vulgarian either recognises none such or ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... In sum, he gave some semblance of reality in the United States, after other men had tried and failed, to that great but ill-starred revolt against Victorian pedantry, formalism and sentimentality which began in the early 90's. It would be difficult, indeed, to overestimate the practical value to all the arts in America of his intellectual alertness, his catholic hospitality to ideas, his artistic courage, and above all, his powers of persuasion. It was not alone that he saw clearly what was sound and significant; it was that he managed, by the sheer charm ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Manderpootz. "I've dismantled it. One of van Manderpootz's few mistakes was to leave it around where a pair of incompetents like you and Denise could get to it. It seems that I continually overestimate the intelligence of others. I suppose I tend to judge them by ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... Beowulf and Grendel is a prose rendering of the oldest poem in the English language, and valuable for that reason. While it is rather terrifying in some of its details its unreality saves it from harmful possibilities. Parents and teachers are inclined rather to overestimate the unpleasant consequences of reading terrifying things when they are of this character. Few, if any, children will read the story if it displeases them and those who do will not retain the disagreeable impression it makes for any great length ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... must be taken toward autodidacts and dilettantes who always measure the value of their knowledge by the amount of effort they had to use in getting it, and hence, always overestimate their acquirements. It is to be observed that they assert no more than their information permits them to, and their personality is easily discoverable by the manner in which they present their knowledge. The self-taught man is in the end only the parvenu of knowledge, and just as the parvenu, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... say here that the usefulness of the President for the good of his country and the consideration of greater questions will some day be reduced to very little unless he may be able to avoid this effort to please voters who overestimate their greatness. ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... preserved provisions, however, are the most direct and valuable result of the antiseptic action by exclusion of air. The Exhibition Jury on Class 3, in their Report on this subject, speak thus warmly thereupon:—'It is impossible to overestimate the importance of these preparations. The invention of the process by which animal and vegetable food is preserved in a fresh and sweet state for an indefinite period, has only been applied practically during the last ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... plugged a hole at first base which had defied the efforts of several predecessors to stop and it helped make a brilliant infield, for it gave the youngsters something they were not afraid to throw at. In giving credit for the work of Griffith's infield, the inclination is to overestimate the worth of the new stars. But there was a tower of strength at short in George McBride, who has been playing steadily and consistently at that position for several seasons without being given one-tenth the credit ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... you mean by coming here at this hour?" he demanded savagely. "You came here to warn me!—really, you overestimate my credulity!" ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... trouble seriously, But not to gloom or whine; To never overestimate Our strength, or to decline To see this is no picnic, But do our earnest part With brain and muscles, newly trained— To keep ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... had presupposed suggested itself to me with surprising force. I found that just the ones who perceive the repetition least hate it most, and that those who have a strong perception of the uniform impressions and who overestimate their number are the ones who on the whole ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... without hearing what I have to say. If you are imagining that the young fellow with whom you have an engagement of marriage would be rendered inconsolable by the loss of you, when it would be made up to him by the possession of a fortune, perhaps you overestimate things." ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... own language Never left any chance for newspaper controversies Never uses a one-syllable word when he can think of a longer one No satisfaction in being a Pope in those days Not afraid of a million Bedouins Not bring ourselves to think St John had two sets of ashes Old Travelers One is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare Only solitary thing one does not smell in Turkey Oriental splendor! Original first shoddy contract mentioned in history Overflowing his banks People talk so glibly of "feeling," "expression," "tone," Perdition ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... enemies. Truly, you offer me a great advantage in prospective, and are good enough to propose that I step into Count Schwarzenberg's place and rule the country in the Elector's name, as he has done. But I am not blind to my own shortcomings, and do not overestimate myself. I know very well that I am as yet but an inexperienced young man, who has still a great deal to learn, and is by no means in a position to take the place of so distinguished and adroit a statesman as Count Schwarzenberg. ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... George, notwithstanding his father's injunction, leapt up before the concluding sentences were out of Mr. Broad's mouth. Mr. Scotton, however, rose, and Mr. Allen pulled George down. Mr. Scotton wished to say just one word. They could not, he was sure, overestimate the gravity of the situation. They were called together upon a most solemn occasion. Their worthy pastor had spoken as a minister of the gospel. He, Mr. Scotton, as a layman, wished just to remind them ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... the course of a month of extreme old age. But you have produced three strapping volumes, full of life and freshness and vigor, that will live forever." This sounds well for Ticknor; but it needs only a glance at Irving's recorded correspondence to see that he was inclined to overestimate the work of others. That kind heart must needs assume the functions of a head which was very well able ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... as dependent on soul as the Self, on the other hand, undervalue body as a mere tool with which the soul works, and are inclined to denounce life as if unworthy of living. We must not undervalue body, nor must we overestimate mind. There is no mind isolated from body, nor is there any body separated from mind. Every activity of mind produces chemical and physiological changes in the nerve-centres, in the organs, and eventually in the whole body; while every activity of ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... ask our president if he does not overestimate the importance of standing up so straight that there is danger of falling over backward? There is no difference of opinion as to the commercial value of the great asset which he has established for the Companies, in so completely winning the confidence of the people at large as well as those who ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... excitedly," said the elder gentleman; "yet I think she does not overestimate the unfortunate position in which your odd fancy places you. I know nothing of the reasons that have impelled you to this step; I only know that the popular opinion is that the cause is utterly inadequate. You are still young, with a ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... the basis of our civilization. Its supremacy and power it is impossible to overestimate; it enters every avenue of development, and it may be set down as the prime factor in the world's progress. Its utility and its universality are hand in hand, whether in the magnificent iron steamship of the ocean, the network of iron rail upon land, the electric ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... doctors are supposed to be thorough in our own field—I said lately to one of the ablest men at the New York Bar, "About one lawyer in a hundred knows his business." He said, "That is a gross overestimate." Shortly after I talked with three Judges, one of the City Court, one of the Supreme Court, and one of the United States Circuit, and they each agreed that my friend's remark was about true, and that in most cases litigants would do as well ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... believe that although the business genius must have a good inheritance, yet the inheritance does not determine what its possessor shall make of himself. Many persons are inclined to overestimate the influence of inheritance in determining success in business. The folly of this attitude is every day ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... the mantel. 'Whatever the reason,' he said airily, 'the result is momentarily inconvenient. Though I am one of those who think it would be easy to overestimate the importance——' ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... eloquence which an author who loves and feels his work is bound to convey into the pronounced expression of it. And she listened, absorbed and often entranced, for there was no gain-saying the fact that Angus Reay was a man of genius. He was inclined to underrate rather than overestimate his own abilities, and often showed quite a pathetic mistrust of himself in his very best and most ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... first master, in the best times,—portraits of Pericles, Alcibiades, Crito, Prodicus, Protagoras, Anaxagoras, and Socrates, with the lovely background of the Athenian and suburban landscape. Or who can overestimate the images with which he has enriched the minds of men, and which pass like bullion in the currency of all nations? Read the "Phaedo," the "Protagoras," the "Phaedrus," the "Timaeus," the "Republic," and the "Apology of Socrates." 5. Plutarch cannot be spared from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... good one in every respect; it is not easy to overestimate either its delightfulness or its moral power. It is not possible for a great society to place before itself a more eminently Christlike purpose. It has been greatly honored of God in its results thus far. And no decently intelligent history of ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... flames and charged wildly down the street, trampling under foot all who were in the way. One man was gored through and through by a maddened bull. At least a dozen persons', it is said, were killed, though probably this is an overestimate. One observer tells us that "the first sight I saw was a man with blood streaming from his wounds, carrying a dead woman in his arms. He placed the body on the floor of the court at the Palace Hotel, and then told me he was the janitor of a big ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... to a position on their rear. The next day an attack was made on their front; they were caught between two divisions of the king's troops and were defeated. Howe put their loss at 3,300, which is certainly an overestimate, though he made nearly 1,100 prisoners, among them the generals Sullivan and Lord Stirling, as the Americans called him, an unsuccessful claimant of that earldom.[113] The British casualties were 377. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... baronage into so close and intimate a union with the representatives of the towns that at the opening of the reign of Edward the Third the two orders are found grouped formally together, under the name of "The Commons." It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this change. Had Parliament remained broken up into its four orders of clergy, barons, knights, and citizens, its power would have been neutralized at every great crisis by the jealousies ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... case, his want of discrimination was rather due to an overestimate of Inductive proof than to an undervaluation of Mathematical Demonstration. That Mathematics, Astronomy, and Physics were more perfect Sciences than the others in point of precision, he distinctly affirms, pointing out that 'the relative perfection ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... various kinds to test the resources of the golfer. Now, however, that this question is raised, I feel it desirable to say without any hesitation that the majority of golfers possess vastly exaggerated notions of the effect of strong cross winds on the flight of their ball. They greatly overestimate the capabilities of a breeze. To judge by their observations on the tee, one concludes that a wind from the left is often sufficient to carry the ball away at an angle of forty-five degrees, and indeed sometimes, ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... to overestimate the importance of Mr. Humphrey Crewe, of his value to the town of Leith, and to the State at large, and in these pages only a poor attempt at an appreciation of him may be expected. Mr. Crewe by no means underestimated this claim upon the community, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... improbability, in spite also of the slender amount of evidence on which it rests,—must needs be accepted as true. They lose sight of the correlative difficulty:—How comes it to pass that the rest of the copies read the place otherwise? On all such occasions it is impossible to overestimate the importance of detecting the particular cause which has brought about, or which at least will fully account for, this depravation. When this has been done, it is hardly too much to say that a case presents itself like ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... to overestimate the value of obedience, but there are some—I will not say who can dispense with obedience, of course not, but who cannot put off their individualities, who cannot become the merely typical novice—that one who would tell you, if she were asked to describe the first six months ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... THE NEWSPAPERS.—It is impossible to overestimate the influence of the newspapers and the periodical press in general, in the protection of wild life. But for their sympathy, their support and their independent assaults upon the Army of Destruction, our ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... We cannot overestimate the importance of the change effected in the Roman constitution by the creation of this office of the tribunate. Under the protection and leadership of the tribunes, who were themselves protected by oaths of inviolable sanctity, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... in the form of debating has received favor among educators. It seems to serve the ends of practice in speaking and it gives also good mental discipline. The high regard for debating is not misplaced. We can hardly overestimate the good that debating has done to the subject of speaking in the schools and colleges. The rigid intellectual discipline involved in debating has helped to establish public speaking in the regular curriculum, thus gaining for it, and for teachers in it, greater respect. To bring training in speech ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... incorporation into a new history. Dr. Palfrey has used these with a most patient fidelity, and his references to them and his extracts from them convey to his readers the results of an amount of labor which the most grateful of them will not be likely to overestimate. While he speaks to us in his text, he allows those whom we most wish to hear to speak to us in his rich and well-chosen excerpts from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... some cases they may have had values influential in determining the course of events. It chanced that I myself was an actor in one of these lesser incidents, when second secretary to our legation in France, during the summer of 1862. I may possibly overestimate the ultimate importance of my adventure, for Mr. Adams, our minister of the court of St. James, seems to have failed to record it, or, at least, there is no allusion to it in his biography. In the perplexing tangle of the diplomacy of ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... Canadian body politic the impress of the Loyalist migration is so deep that it would be difficult to overestimate it. It is no exaggeration to say that the United Empire Loyalists changed the course of the current of Canadian history. Before 1783 the clearest observers saw no future before Canada but that of a French colony under the British crown. 'Barring a catastrophe ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... unbroken tradition. And how long, under various names, had Cybele, Mother of Gods, been worshipped in Asia? By our era all these religions were fused into one religion, of many cults and rites and ancient traditions; and the incredible weight of old tradition in that world is hard to overestimate. ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... of those who feel that female dignity is compromised by it, I have here omitted a woman's flippant overestimate of the number of women in London society who suffer from nervous disorders at the climacteric ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... time in men's conventions. I hope gentlemen will pardon the criticism, but you talk too much, and too many of you try to talk at once. My head is aching from the roar and din of your noisy orators. Gentlemen, what does it all amount to? You are talking about prohibition, but you overestimate your political strength. Disastrous failures attend upon all your endeavors to conquer existing evils by the votes of men alone. Give women the legal power to combat intemperance, and they will soon be able to prove that they do not like drunken husbands any better ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... army. It was Colonel James Beecher, of the famous Beecher family, and a brother of Henry Ward Beecher. He was in command of the First North Carolina Colored Regiment. In this position it would be hard to overestimate the variety and value of his services, for he became for his soldiers at once a gallant fighter, an eloquent, convincing preacher, and a most indefatigable and successful school-teacher. Preaching had been his vocation before entering the army, and so it was but natural for him to continue in that ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... first and probably the best of Cooper's historical romances. Even his admirers must confess that it is crudely written, and that our patriotic interest inclines us to overestimate a story which throws the glamor of romance over the Revolution. Yet this faulty tale attempts to do what very few histories have ever done fairly, namely, to present both sides or parties of the fateful conflict; and its unusual ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... diminish the joys of youth, preserves inviolate memories which nothing can destroy. The place whose quiet fame is made is surer of the future than the one which is on the brink of fabulous glory. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... twelve feet long she was, with an air, as she sat on the water, of knowing every little wickedness of the ocean and understanding the way to conquer it too; her mainmast cleared eighty-five feet, and was stepped well forward, with a boom that Colin did not overestimate greatly when he put it at eighty feet. Although the boy was not a keen judge, he thought the bowsprit immensely long, and noticed what a ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... to overestimate the practical importance of these results. They raise coffee and tea from the rank of stimulants to that of food,—from idle luxuries to real agents of support and lengthening of life. Henceforth the economist can hear of their increasing consumption without a regret. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Regarding the proportion of inverts among the general population, it is very difficult to speak positively. The invert himself is a misleading guide because he has formed round himself a special coterie of homosexual persons, and, moreover, he is sometimes apt to overestimate the number of inverts through the misinterpretation of small indications that are not always conclusive. The estimate of the ordinary normal person, feeling the ordinary disgust toward abnormal phenomena, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... is big and broad enough to include both ideas, the human mind is prone to overestimate the one or the other. Traces, at least, of a similar mode of thought persisted by the Greek Fathers of the Church, and disappeared, if ever, with the predominance of Latin theology. To the oriental the idea of evolution is natural. The earth is to him no inert, resistant clod; she brings ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... to overestimate the ethnologic importance of the materials thus obtained. They are invaluable as the genuine production of the Indian mind, setting forth in the clearest light the state of the aboriginal religion before its contamination by ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... Jewish family in Holloway that her resolve came to a head. A cab would be necessary to carry her goods to her distant garret. What an opportunity for carrying off the children at the same time! The house was actually on her homeward route. The economy of it tickled her, made her overestimate the chances of capture. As she packed the motley, far-spreading heap into the symmetry of her sack, pressing and squeezing the clothes incredibly tighter and tighter till it seemed a magic sack that could swallow up even the Holloway Clothing Emporium, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... importunities for rewards for services. I assure your Majesty truthfully that, even if you had here three hundred encomiendas and a like number of offices, you could not recompense them for their services, which they exaggerate and overestimate beyond what they have actually performed for your Majesty. The most deserving of them merits very little, unless it be a reward for having conducted himself with great freedom, and for having destroyed the property committed ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... Edward Carson in it—it is impossible to describe or overestimate the effect of this in Ireland. The fact that Mr. Redmond could, had he chosen to do so, have sat in the same Cabinet with Sir Edward Carson had no mollifying influence. If Mr. Redmond had consented, he would, on the ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... owes his extraordinary control over the elements. To the knowledge acquired by his observations on the nature or operations of mind, he owes no new power over that which he surveys: in at least its direct consequences, his science is barren. It would be difficult, however, to overestimate its indirect consequences. It seems impossible that the metaphysical province should long exist blank and unoccupied in any highly civilised country, especially in a country of active and acquiring intellects, such as Scotland. If the philosophy ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... impossible to overestimate the value of all this work in industry. The Prime Minister, speaking last year on this subject, said, "It is a strange irony, but no small compensation, that the making of weapons of destruction should afford ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... overestimate the distances they did—and they did overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the Rat Portage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember we figured on double what we had actually done? A man's wife corrected him on how long they had been ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... profitable paths, and the slow and groping struggle with its own ignorance, inertia, and folly, leaves it covered in every age of history with filth and blood. It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility. There is a fond of unhappiness in every bosom, but the depths are seldom probed; and there is no doubt that sometimes frivolity and sometimes sturdy habit helps to keep attention on the surface and to cover up the inner void. Certain moralists, without ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... that his overestimate of her ignorance of affairs had not lured him into giving her the names of the parties at interest to transcribe. But did she really understand? ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... region, for a long way inland Mr. Weaver and others described it as of the like good quality as at the Mission, but with much muskeg. It is difficult to estimate the extent of the latter, for, being more noticeable than good land, the tendency is to overestimate. Its proportion to arable land is generally put at about 50 per cent., which may be over or under the truth, for only actual township or ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... it becomes more and more apparent that the exact number of lives lost will never be known. Up to the present time the disposition has been to under rather than overestimate the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... of the strikers and their families it would be hard to overestimate. Small inconveniences were made light of. Families on strike themselves, or the friends of strikers would crush into yet tighter quarters so that a couple of boys or two or three girls out of work might crowd into the vacated ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... Miss Burns," cried Frederick, "how you overestimate me! Work! I am no better than a tramp. The thing I thought to cure myself with was laziness, idleness. Here I sit in a land discovered and conquered as a result of the tremendous will power of the Europeans, with my oars gone, my rudder gone and my last bit of free will. It is this that distinguishes ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... without an atom of moral sense or loyalty, and both possessed ability, differing in kind, perhaps, which they used in the accomplishment of their own ends. France can never overestimate the great evil these two men did to the national cause. Napoleon's power and penetrating vision kept them in check only when he could grasp the nettle. Even when absent on his campaigns, they knew he was kept in close touch ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... Sometimes, however, they overestimate their abilities, and their wandering disposition brings them into trouble. Once I found a herd of seven up to their backs in soft snow, and tired out,—a strange condition for a caribou to be in. They were taking the affair philosophically, ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... question of a sterile abnegation, we must foresee that it may be important not to overestimate one's individual interests, to the visible ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... thousands, of men and women, drawn largely by curiosity or want of occupation into societies of which the very names are hardly known to the general public, exercise any influence on the world at large? It would certainly be an error to overestimate the power that each of these societies individually can wield; to do so would be, in fact, to play into the hands of the leaders, whose plan, from Weishaupt onwards, has always been to represent themselves as directing the destinies of the universe. ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... reply that all delight is fitful and uncertain unless bound or blended with the power to be indifferent to involuntary annoying emotions, and that self-command is in itself the highest mental pleasure, or one which surpasses all of any kind. He who does not overestimate the value of money or anything earthly is really richer than the millionaire. There is a foolish story told by COMBE in his Physiology of a man who had the supernatural gift of never feeling any pain, be it from cold, hunger, heat, or accident. The rain beat upon ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... patronizing. The advertisements inserted in trade papers and the letters sent out to the "trade" are often so condescendingly written that they infuriate the men to whom they are addressed. It is safer to assume that the man you are writing to is an intelligent human being. It is better to overestimate his mentality than to underestimate it, and it is better to "talk" to him in the letter than to ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... to a sick or dying man, he says, "we overestimate the value of human life, and, besides, we in a measure usurp the place of Providence, when we believe we may save it by committing sin." In other words, Dorner counts falsifying with the intention of deceiving, even with the best of motives, a lie, and therefore a sin—never justifiable. ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... while the precious minutes slipped by. Now that the enemy was near he wanted nothing but to drive on up to the end of the shaft, come out into that world wherever the shaft ended, then try to fight his way through to the great hall where he hoped to find Phee-e-al. And his haste made him overestimate the passing time; their journey had been swifter than ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... toward minor hereditary defects is to balance their real importance against both the good and the bad qualities shown not only by the individual but by his brothers, sisters, parents, and other relatives. Conscientious sufferers from visible defects of any kind are apt to overestimate their importance. Moreover, many supposedly hereditary defects may equally well be the result of an unfavorable environment like that which caused similar defects in the parents. Under ideal conditions they might never appear at all. In such matters, too, the ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... You did not overestimate the originality of the Cortrights' seaside garden, and even after your intimate description, it contained several surprises in the shape of masses of the milkweeds that flourish in sandy soil, especially the dull pink, and the orange, about ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... stimulating essays, 'On Actors and the Art of Acting,' has told us that audiences are inclined to overestimate the genius of an actor and to underestimate his trained skill. We are prone to accept the fallacy of the "inspiration of the moment," and to give little credit to the careful preliminary rehearsing which is at once a humble substitute for inspiration, should this ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... inexorably condemned himself to a severity of rule that a dispassionate judge of his life might deem very exaggerated, very unnecessary. It is so natural for an honorable man to so dread that he should do a dishonorable thing through self-interest or self-pity, that he may very well overestimate the sacrifice required of him through what he deems justice or generosity. May it not be so with you? I can conceive no reason that can be strong enough to require of you such fearful surrender of every hope, such utter ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... found that they had a slender view of his law reading, and spoke slightingly of Ford as a lawyer. They had both diligently studied to the lower depths of the law, had a fair appreciation of their acquisitions, and would not overestimate the few months of solitary reading of a boy in ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... the same man. The circumstances differ, but the one man is but the other turned inside out. And all round about us we see the fierce fight to get more and more of these things, the tight grip of them when we have got them, the overestimate of the value of them, the contempt for the people who have less of them than ourselves. Our aristocracy is an aristocracy of wealth; in some respects, one by no means to be despised, because there often go a great many good qualities to the making and the stewardship ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Coll. fourth series, iv. 422.] An established priesthood is naturally the firmest support of despotism; but the course of events made that of Massachusetts revolutionary. This was a social factor whose importance it is hard to overestimate; for though the influence of the elders had much declined during the eighteenth century, their political power was still immense; and it is impossible to measure the degree in which the drift of feeling toward independence would have been arrested had they been thoroughly loyal. At all events, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... and the defeated Republican candidate was no less a person than M. Jules Ferry himself! The first district of St.-Die gave him 6,192 votes, and elected a Monarchist to replace him by 6,403 votes. It is not easy to overestimate the significance of this change. Probably enough the majority will emphasize it by 'invalidating' the election of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... retrieve even your best shots. Don't underestimate his ability or overestimate your shot-making prowess. Remember the speed of the ball actually gives your opponent more time to get to it. Always be ready for anything until the ball is actually ruled dead and the ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... difficult for each to find ready at his command the elements for such research, how can we overestimate the great value of establishing schools in which the instruction of students of the great art shall be guided in accordance with the established laws of aesthetics? The time of greatest necessity is the immediate ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... naturally inclined to overestimate the value of any new sources of information opened by their own diligence or sagacity of research, and a little of this feeling is perceptible in Mr. Bancroft's Preface; but, after all, we apprehend that the new ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... Martin H. Fisk, Isaac A. Parker, Ephraim March, William E. Barnard, Ambrose W. Clarke, Amos N. Currier, Richard C. Stanley, Albert S. Bickmore, George S. Morris, and John W. Scribner. It is hardly possible to overestimate the influence of these men in shaping the thought and life ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... roll of Peter Poyas embraced a membership of six hundred names. More than one witness placed the conjectural strength of Vesey's forces as high as 9,000, but I am inclined to write this down as a gross overestimate of the people actually enrolled as members ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... chiefly as the site of the graves of the great apostles, while many flocked to the tomb of Saint Martin of Tours. Meanwhile, wrote Henry C. Sheldon in a "History of the Christian Church," there were emphatic cautions against an overestimate of the value of pilgrimages. The eminent Greek Father, Gregory of Nyssa (332-398), said that change of place brings God ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... Spenser's The Faerie Queene, the Don Quixote of Cervantes, the poems and novels of Scott, Grimm's and Andersen's Fairy Tales, much of Defoe and Swift, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake field, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner (he himself was very fond of that poem), and many other things, and I cannot overestimate the good they did me. His talks to me during our walks gave me, under the guise of pleasantry, not so much specific information concerning things (though that was not wanting), but—character; that is, the questions he put to me, the remarks and comments he made, the stories he told, were ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... been shrewdly said, that, "when the Lord wants anything done in this world, he makes a man a little wrong-headed in the right direction." With this goes the disposition to overestimate the importance of one's work and to push principles and theories towards extremes. The saying is true of some individuals at or before certain crises in affairs; it is not true of the great inevitable historical movements, any more than the history of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... from being able to give any but the evasive answer he actually did give to the searching philosophical questions put by his youthful admirer. But it is not easy, especially in the light of Isaac Hecker's subsequent experiences, to overestimate the influence which this new presentation of our Saviour had upon the development of his mind and character. For reasons which we have tried to indicate by a brief description of some of his life-long interior traits, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Morgan) in his argument upon this subject before the Senate at the last session did not overestimate the importance of this work when he said that "the canal is the most important subject now connected with the commercial growth and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... picture Bach as settled in his Weimar home, no longer as a student, but as a player and composer whose fame was gradually spreading throughout the country. So rapid had his progress been both on the organ and the pianoforte that he was even led to overestimate his own powers, and one day remarked somewhat boastingly to a friend that he could play any piece, however difficult, at sight without a mistake. The friend, disbelieving his statement, invited him to breakfast shortly afterwards, and placed several pieces ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... a compliment to me as a conversationalist, As you wrote in your note you appreciate my sensible conversation I am afraid you overestimate me. I have a friend who is really brilliant, and can converse eloquently upon any subject. May I bring ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... clause contains the principle, that solicitude for the future is at bottom heathen worldly-mindedness. The heathen tendency in us all leads to an overestimate of material good, and it is a question of circumstances whether that shall show itself in heaping up earthly treasures, or in anxious care. These are the same plant, only the one is growing in the tropics ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the perfect control of themselves and their steeds in difficult circumstances. In addition to these causes of superiority, they have a vast advantage over the Federal troops in the present contest from two causes: It is hard to overestimate the advantage they find in a knowledge of the ground, the roads, the ravines, the hiding-places, the marshes, the fords, the forests, &c. But even more important than this is the sympathy they have from ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... as it already is, by no means completes the list of the last three years' gains of pictures for England. Such a record shows how compact with treasures the little island is becoming. And meanwhile, what is America doing in this way? The overestimate of the importance and value of Mr. Belmont's collection in New York shows how far the American public yet is from knowing its own ignorance and poverty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... with fivefold greater powers placed in his hands and fivefold greater attention and capacity demanded for their control? If sixty years ago the free forces and rushing advance of the republic urgently needed the regulation of a powerful and learned conservative body, who can overestimate the ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... word; but I sat by myself, and I matured, I think, the maddest scheme that ever entered a sane man's head. Desperate diseases, as everybody knows, ask for desperate remedies, and here I do not know how it was possible for anybody to overestimate the urgency of the case. Count Rossano has gone peacefully to his rest now this many a year, but I had learned to love the man with a loyal affection and esteem, the like of which I never felt for any human creature, except my wife and my own children. ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... produce harmony of thought will bring happiness and contentment; the will, rightly drilled,—and divinely guided,—can drive out all discordant thoughts, and usher in the reign of perpetual harmony. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of forming a habit of cheerfulness early in life. The serene optimist is one whose mind has dwelt so long upon the sunny side of life that he has ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... fire in the congested section of this city is in my opinion not so improbable a thing as you Bostonians imagine. The conflagration hazard in Boston's congested district is not a thing one can exactly calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity. . . . ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... developing the aesthetic appreciation is the tendency to overestimate its dependence on, in the first place, skill in creative work and the active emotions involved in achievement, and in the second place, the intellectual understanding of the situation. It has been largely taken for granted that the constructive work in the arts or in music increased one's ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... we would not be so unscientific as to deny for a moment that it would be better for every woman to get her advice and instruction concerning the use of contraceptive directly from a doctor, nevertheless it is impossible to overestimate the help men and women could give each other were the free exchange of information on methods of birth ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... accomplishment. They could not have helped imitating it, if they would; and they did not think of avoiding imitation of it, if they could. It modified, to a very large extent, their grammar; it influenced, to an extent almost impossible to overestimate, the prosody of their finished literature; it supplied their vocabulary; it furnished models for all their first conscious literary efforts of the more deliberate kind, and it conditioned those which ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... full preparations which he considered essential to success not only in battle, but in pursuit of a defeated enemy. From his point of view, Thomas was unquestionably right in his action. How he came to make so great an overestimate of the Confederate strength, in view of the means of information in his possession and the estimate General Sherman had given him before he started for Savannah, it is difficult to conjecture. But the fact is now beyond question that Thomas made all those elaborate preparations to attack an ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... victories by which the struggles between the European conquerors themselves were ended deserve lasting commemoration. Yet, sometimes, even the most important of them, sweeping though they were, were in parts less sweeping than they seemed. It would be impossible to overestimate the far-reaching effects of the overthrow of the French power in America; but Lower Canada, where the fatal blow was given, itself suffered nothing but a political conquest, which did not interfere in the least with ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... father and mother it is difficult to overestimate, almost as difficult as to overestimate what he has accomplished ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... We cannot overestimate the effect upon Jeremiah himself, and through him and Ezekiel upon the subsequent history of Israel's religion, of this drastic separation in 597 of the exiles of Judah from the remnant left in the land. After suffering ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... of him because they do not well know the fine art of approaching him. I would, therefore, be a doorkeeper, and throw some doors wide open, that men and women may unhindered enter. This essay aims to stand as a porter at the gate. We shall never overestimate Shakespeare, because we can not. Some men and things lie beyond the danger of hyperbole. No exaggeration is possible concerning them, seeing they transcend all dreams. Space can not be conceived by the most luxuriant imagination, holding, as it does, all worlds, and capable of holding another ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... influence morale, playing a part difficult to overestimate. They provide a basis for evaluating discipline. A study of the history of the State may prove valuable in estimating the present condition in this respect; a nation or command which may be classed as a veteran has an advantage over ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... temptation which most easily besets Mr. Forster are trifles, but the same leaning betrays him sometimes into graver mistakes of overestimate. He calls Swift the best letter-writer in the language, though Gray, Walpole, Cowper, and Lamb be in some essential qualities his superiors. He praises his political writing so extravagantly that we should think he had not ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Pentuer, "do not overestimate my services. Long years ago in our temples the condition of the state was represented in this manner. I have only disinterred that which later generations had in some ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... that way,—I'm sure I don't know; beyond that it embarrasses me horribly to have you overestimate me so. If any courage has been shown this night, it is yours ... But I'm forgetting again." He thought to divert her. "Where shall I tell the cabby to go ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the occasion and the glowing words of praise for the two friends of the dead, spoken with such peculiar force by the minister, led her, as was natural, to overestimate their worth and to undervalue her own. With the same spirit, therefore, with which she admired Herbert and Bob for their acts, she condemned her own inactivity, and there in that little room beside the remains of the humble ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... you overestimate my service to him, possibly. I dare say the boat could have picked him up in ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... acquired can never be undone; and fame attaches to its author, even though he does nothing to deserve it anew. The fame which vanishes, or is outlived, proves itself thereby to be spurious, in other words, unmerited, and due to a momentary overestimate of a man's work; not to speak of the kind of fame which Hegel enjoyed, and which Lichtenberg describes as trumpeted forth by a clique of admiring undergraduates—the resounding echo of empty heads;—such a fame as will make posterity smile when it lights upon a grotesque architecture ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... than this it would be hard to overestimate its value, or to praise as it deserves ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... observations unquestionably have certain value for comparative psychology, it is well known that unless an observer knows the history of an act, he is not able to evaluate it in terms of intelligence and is especially prone to overestimate its value as evidence ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes |
