"Overestimate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... positive till I know you better.... I'm afraid you've got a tendency to overestimate the gullibility of people in general. It's either that, or.... No: I don't believe you're intentionally ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity. It is just here that the very highest society asserts its superior breeding. Among truly elegant people of the highest ton, you will find more real equality in social intercourse than in a country village. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... 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 him in vain, ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the ax. Our civilization has originated from many small things. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the ax in advancing civilization. The stone axes, easily blunted and broken, could have made but little impression on the vast forests of pine, oak, and beech, covering the greater part of Britain and the continent in the Neolithic Age. Clearings necessary for pasture ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... 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 agreeable experience. The ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... 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 of their duties, and ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... 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 Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... not only valuable in business, but also in every field of life. It makes statesmen and politicians, it brings clients to the lawyer, and patients to the physician. It is worth everything to the clergyman. No matter what career you enter, you can not overestimate the importance of cultivating that charm of manner, those personal qualities, which attract people to you. They will take the place of capital, or influence. They are often a substitute for a large amount of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... earnestly called and had never gone away again. It is possible to overpraise Balzac in parts or to mispraise him as a whole. But so long as inappropriate and superfluous comparisons are avoided and as his own excellence is recognized and appreciated, it is scarcely possible to overestimate that excellence in itself and for itself. He stands alone; even with Dickens, who is his nearest analogue, he shows far more points of difference than of likeness. His vastness of bulk is not more remarkable than his peculiarity ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... upon a topic which 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 to have ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... 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 ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... the scrutin d'arrondissement. Five Republicans, not six, were chosen, 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 ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... say) conspicuously out of harmony with the present time. But if you hanker for these pictures of the past that is another matter. I will merely issue a warning that you should preserve this book on some shelf not too accessible by those who are still young enough to overestimate its importance. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... 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
... certainly did not overestimate the value of the manuscript, and it would be extremely interesting could we trace the evidence by which it came to be believed that it was written by the hand of St. Tecla. A note in Arabic at the foot of the first page of Genesis says that ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... 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 ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... "You overestimate my little exploit," the baron replied modestly, "there was no danger worth mentioning," then sinking his voice to a whisper, "but to protect you I would meet and conquer giants, put to flight a whole host of Saracens, attack and destroy dragons and horrid ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... 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 future before you. ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... the heart, and claims it for its own. Then, and not before, sin is actually felt and acknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by repentance, grows a thousand-fold more virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it considered, also, that men often overestimate their capacity for evil. At a distance, while its attendant circumstances do not press upon their notice, its results are dimly seen, they can bear to contemplate it.... In truth, there is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve, either for good or evil, except at the very ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... formerly existing, except 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
... 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 ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... his main body 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 Americans retreated ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... and Wallace brought 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 Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... 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
... 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, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... may go to show how far Dr. Brownson himself was, at this period, 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 ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... 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 held from month to month, in which men of the various German sects took counsel together over ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... the side of a corpse in the grave. Such notions may be superstitious and unscriptural, as indeed they are, but they are quite distinct from a belief in the necessity of a human priest to give the sacraments their virtue. And, without going to such lengths as this, men may overestimate the efficacy of the sacraments, to the disparagement of prayer, and preaching, and reading the Scriptures, and yet may be perfectly clear from the opinion which makes this efficacy depend immediately on ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... 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 would be a happier place;" but all the same ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... develop the natural resources of our country. Too much encouragement cannot be given to the reported efforts of certain railway companies to divert a portion of the tide of immigration to the Southern states. It is impossible, in the opinion of the Bureau, to overestimate the importance of this subject as bearing upon the effect of immigration on the future welfare ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... dower of virtues or of vices which are ours by inheritance, but we are responsible for the inheritances of our children, and this is a most solemn thought. Do you not begin to see that we cannot value ourselves too highly if we have the right idea of what our real worth is? We can scarcely overestimate the results of our own deeds. We may think it does not matter if we do not always tell the exact truth; if at some times we equivocate and at others exaggerate, but when we remember that truth is the foundation of character, ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... 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 ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... embarrassing nature of this factor in the campaign are hard to overestimate. The insufficient number of horses and their debility have doubtless accounted {p.098} for much of the delay and seeming languor of action, which has appeared otherwise inexplicable; the utter weakness of the poor beasts having indeed been expressly ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... 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 ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... 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 wholly in that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... upon those things which tend to 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 acquired ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... walking this tiny quarter-deck of space. So I went round to the west side, where the water-lilies are. Fish were rising about three yards beyond the weedy beds, and I foolishly thought I would try for them. Now, you cannot overestimate the difficulty of casting a fly across yards of water-lilies. You catch in the weeds as you lift your line for a fresh cast, and then you have to extricate it laboriously, shortening line, and then to let it out again, and probably come to ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... the average, to become in some more or less remote future; say, at the end of the year, when promotions are to take place, or by the time they are ready to go to college or to enter upon what, in contrast with the probationary stage, is regarded as the serious business of life. It is impossible to overestimate the loss which results from the deflection of attention from the strategic point to a comparatively unproductive point. It fails most just where it thinks it is succeeding—in getting a preparation ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... 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 ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... think you overestimate my service to him, possibly. I dare say the boat could have picked him up ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... first meeting of the Tile Club, in which the subject of drawing for Scribner's Monthly was first mooted, and I do not believe I overestimate the importance that the position of the club, taken at that time, has had and still has—not as a club, for it was dissolved some years back—in the influence its personal art has wielded upon the printed pages ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... prevalent among ignorant whites as among negroes, though with the latter there is generally a tendency to overestimate. Where negroes make wrong estimates, in three cases out of four they will be found excessive. With whites the variation will be diminutive as often as excessive. In judging of numbers of men, a column of troops, for example, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... to overestimate the value of the Celtic contribution to our national literature and character: the race that gave us Ossian, and Finn, and Cuchulain, that sang of the sorrowful love and doom of Deirdre, that told of the pursuit of Diarmit and Grania, till every dolmen ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... 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 ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... and Physical Education. While outdoor games are not necessary to maintain health, yet we can scarcely overestimate the part that the great games of baseball, football, tennis, golf, and croquet, play in the physical development of young people. When played in moderation and under suitable conditions, they are ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... Can we overestimate the influence of these associations, of these Soldiers'-Aid Societies, rising up in every city and village, in producing just such a state of mind, in keeping the soldier one of us, one of the people? Five hundred thousand hearts following with deep interest his fortunes,—twice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... for Foreign Affairs. His uncle M. de Talleyrand thinks a great deal of him and often entrusts him with very delicate work. This morning he gave M. de Marsan a valuable paper to copy—a paper, Monsieur, the importance of which it were impossible to overestimate. The very safety of this country, the honour of our King, are involved in it. I cannot tell you its exact contents, and it is because I would not tell more about it to the police that they would not help me in any way, and referred me to you. How could ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... impression of her reserve and independence as her girlish reasoning and manner was now delightfully at variance with her tallness, her aquiline nose, and her erect figure. Mr. Boyle, like most short men, was apt to overestimate the qualities of size. ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... forever assured. Old age, which may 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
... assumptions, incorrect assumptions (error) 495. V. misjudge, misestimate, misthink[obs3], misconjecture[obs3], misconceive &c. (error) 495; fly in the face of facts; miscalculate, misreckon, miscompute. overestimate &c. 482; underestimate &c. 483. prejudge, forejudge; presuppose, presume, prejudicate[obs3]; dogmatize; have a bias &c. n.; have only one idea; jurare in verba magistri[Lat], run away with the notion; jump to a conclusion, rush to a conclusion, leap to a conclusion, judge hastily, shoot ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... emphasized in the training of the colonial girl was manners or etiquette—the art of being a charming hostess. As Mrs. Earle says, "It is impossible to overestimate the value these laws of etiquette, these conventions of custom had at a time, when neighborhood life was the whole outside world." How many, many a "don't" the colonial miss had dinned into her ears! Hear but a few of them: "Never sit down at the table till asked, and after the blessing. Ask for ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... truisms. And the physical theory, the mere seed of this mighty growth, will become once more the purely technical concern of scientific men." [Footnote: The Times (London), Literary Supplement, June 2, 1921, p. 352. Professor Einstein said when he was in America in 1921 that people tended to overestimate the influence of his theory, and to under-estimate ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... to overestimate the weariness and cynicism and despair that have been caused in the world by its more recklessly hopeful men—the men who plump down happily anywhere and hope, the optimists who are merely slovenly in ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... put several small relics in a row on the edge of the lower part of the big mahogany bookcase, and was counting on her fingers the names of the friends for whom they were intended. Her grief was sufficiently real to make her, perhaps, overestimate the number of those to whom such relics would be precious. A tender smile was on her lips at the recollection of an old soldier servant of Sir David's who had been with him in Egypt. She hesitated a moment between two objects—one, a good silver-mounted leather purse, ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... 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. Like ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... himself 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? To ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... It is impossible 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 contact with the ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... "Merrimac;" or rather for an iron-clad ship upon the hull of the half-destroyed frigate of that name. Had the whole amount necessary for her completion been given, the vessel would have been ready weeks before she was, under the dribblet system adopted. Then, indeed, it would be hard to overestimate her value; damage to shipping in Hampton Roads; or her ultimate effect upon ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon |
