"Distort" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crucifix. It must have been the work of some craftsman whose art was pure and fine as the silver he had wrought in. But that was not what Anne saw. She had always found something painful and repellent in those crucifixes of wood which distort and deepen the lines of ivory, or in those of ivory which gives again the very pallor of human death. But the precious metal had somehow eternalised the symbol of the crucified body. She saw more than the torture, the exhaustion, the attenuation. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... not interfere with the proper action of the punch for the letter which is to be punched next adjacent to it. It may also be feared that the effect of punching the second letter, if it be sufficiently near to the first, may distort the form of that first figure. If neither of these evils should arise, still the bur produced by the punching might be expected to interfere with the goodness of the impression produced by the copperplate; and the plate itself, after having all but its edge covered with figures, ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... shrugged his shoulders and remained silent. When it finally appeared that he was not going to ask anything more, his wife added: "If you could listen, like any one else, and not interrupt with remarks that distort all one's ideas"—Then, as he persisted in his silence, she relented still further. "Why, of course, as you say, you will have to know it in the end. But I can tell you, to begin with, Owen, that it's ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... What principles seem to determine her choice of details? Which sense impressions—sight, sound, taste, smell, touch—does she most frequently and successfully suggest? Note instances where her figures of speech sharpen the imagery and others where they seem to distort it. In what ways is the influence of Keats ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... means, Tecumseh joined the standard of Great Britain in the war of 1812; and as a Brigadier General in her army, lost his life, bravely supporting the cause which he had espoused. He deserved a better fate; and but for prejudice which is so apt to dim the eye and distort the object, Tecumseh would, most probably, be deemed a martyr for his country, and associated in the mind with the heroes ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... sweeping the dirt up on the under-flouncings. (Let us hope that fashion never comes back!) Don't wear too much jewelry; it is in bad taste in the first place, and in the second, is a temptation to a thief. And don't under any circumstances, distort your ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... and anger distort men's countenances, but never have I seen aught to compare with the disorder of Chatellerault at that moment. He stamped and raved and fumed. He poured forth a thousand ordures of speech in his frenzy; he heaped insults upon me and imprecations ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... a little brass box and a leaf. This leaf of one of the pepper plants he was smearing with a little creamy-looking mixed lime from the brass box, on which he placed a fragment of betel-nut, rolled it in the leaf, thrust it into his mouth, which it seemed to distort, and then began to expectorate a nasty red juice, with which he stained ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... It was also the first negotiation undertaken by Adams in London, and as a man new to the diplomatic service he attached to it an unusual importance, even, seemingly, to the extent of permitting personal chagrin at the ultimate failure of the negotiation to distort his usually cool and fair judgment. The matter in question was the offer of the United States to accede by a convention to the Declaration of Paris of 1856, establishing certain international rules for the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... convince us even against our own experience, they are positively undoing the work which education was meant to do. When we receive them merely as an enlargement of what we know and make of the unseen things of which we read, things in the image of the seen, then they quite distort our ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... centre of attraction. Nevertheless, no graver injury can be done the play as an acting drama than by treating it as a one-part piece. The accepted method of shortening the tragedy by reducing every part, except that of Hamlet, is to distort Shakespeare's whole scheme, to dislocate or obscure the whole action. The predominance of Hamlet is exaggerated at the expense ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... assures me the babe is still on the bottle. Such being the case, I sent for you. They are inseparable. They have put off falling in love so long that, when they do, it will prove a catastrophe for one of them. Take him away for a while. Distort his ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... acts of Csar speak also the same language; and as these are less susceptible of a false coloring than the features of a general character, we find this poet of liberty, in the midst of one continuous effort to distort the truth, and to dress up two scenical heroes, forced by the mere necessities of history into a reluctant homage to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... have an idea that the ultraviolet light—the actinic rays beyond the violet end of the spectrum, you know—will penetrate fog to a great distance, and in spite of its higher refractive power, which would distort and magnify an object, ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... not think this, then there is only the other extreme of austere abnegation of self for any cause however trivial. Nature is the only guide and I don't believe Nature is bad. Of course the curse of freedom will allow one for a long time to distort and vilely modify natural instincts, but at least one can fly from the too palpable artificial. Dear Poodie, don't sigh. I only let off steam in words—that is safe. I am still a slave to this disgusting civilization and ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... first, the greatest gift of love. We can not deny, however, that love is a mystery, inexplicable, profound. With all the chains, with all the pains, and I may even say, with all the disgust with which the world has surrounded it, buried as it is under a mountain of prejudices which distort and deprave it, in spite of all the ordure through which it has been dragged, love, eternal and fatal love, is none the less a celestial law as powerful and as incomprehensible as that which suspends ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... than her loveliness and ladylike conduct will command. Those who are most pleasing will receive the most attention, and those who desire more should aspire to acquire more by cultivating those graces and virtues which ennoble woman, but no lady should lower or distort her own true ideal, or smother and crucify her conscience, in order to please any living man. A good man will admire a good woman, and deceptions cannot long be concealed. Her show of dry goods or glitter of ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... with inspiration for expression which, MacDowell felt, could not be clearly demonstrated in a small space, and that the music therefore is apt to distort the words if they are harnessed to it in song form. Most of MacDowell's finest pianoforte pieces bear verses in addition to titles, thus definitely indicating what the music is intended to suggest. His verses are of an uncommon and gifted order, for he was a true poet in both ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... communicated to him by Malachy himself, though some particulars were no doubt added by other Irish informants. It is true, we must also allow for bias on St. Bernard's part in favour of his friend. Such bias in fact displays itself in Secs. 25, 26. But bias, apart from sheer dishonesty, could not distort the whole narrative, as it certainly must have been distorted in the Life, if the narrative of A.F.M. is to be accepted ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... are right," I answered slowly, "they do just wring and distort them and deform them for life. But I intend to see that Nell's has no such torturous operation performed on it if I can appeal to you or ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... becomes prevalent in the world for evil without some fault on the part of somebody. Even though it may not have been expressed in exact terms, some false person has intentionally spread it abroad. And then a man in his wrath, when he hears the lie will distort it, and twist it, and aggravate it,—to his own wrong and to ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... which all life must spring, but they do not answer all questions about all the subordinate provinces of life. The arts in their narrow sense, philosophy, even pleasure, they pass by. Man will not neglect the one or distort the other if he has really breathed the spirit of Christ, but at times the urgency of his Master's business will seem to shut ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... do not sympathise with the fierce republican spirit of those unhappy times that scalped the head feebly protected by a mitre or a crown. But the private virtues and the rich genius of such a man are pure from the taint of party. We are now to see how far private hatred can distort, in its hideous vengeance, the resemblance it affects to give after nature. Who could imagine that Parker is ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... princes. A few prejudiced writers have vainly endeavoured to exaggerate the racial or linguistic factor, and contended that, in the eyes of science, Belgian nationality could not exist. The duty of a scientist is not to distort the manifestations of natural phenomena in the light of some more or less popular idea. His duty is to explain facts. The development and permanence of Belgian nationality, in spite of the most adverse conditions, is one ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... informed in law, to know what we are about. The interference of local officials I shall resent, and if necessary, prosecute. As for yourself, you have not shown your credentials. I trust you will have the honor not to magnify or distort any information I may have inadvertently exposed to your scrutiny. I wish you farewell. Shall I send one of my servants to conduct you ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... about the downfall of his country, the loss of his people, the efflux of his life like water, by the order of the Bel, the king. May Ea, the grand prince, whose destiny takes premier rank, the messenger of the gods, who knows all, who has prolonged my life, distort his understanding and intellect, curse him with forgetfulness, dam up his rivers at their source. In his land may Ashnan (the deity of wheat), the life of the people, not grow. May Shamash, great judge of heaven and earth, who governs the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... value and emphasize the emotion, the meaning, the poetry, the dramatic or narrative significance of the words. Phrase with this end in view; sacrifice anything except tone-production to this end. Do not distort the rhythm, but bend it sufficiently to emphasize important words and syllables, by holding them a little, at the expense of unimportant words or syllables. Finally, remember that ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... hand, no poet has so planted our literature with gorgeous gardens from which generations of lesser laborers will be enriched and prospered. The figures in which Tennyson uses Nature are not, moreover, strained or artificial; they do not distort or cover the inner meaning, but bloom from it, revealing its beauty and its sweetness. All bear the mark of loving thought,—now so delicate that its very faintness thrills and holds us, now strong ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Continued efforts are also needed to remove many domestic disincentives, which now hamper U.S. export growth. And we must ensure that countries do not manipulate investment, or impose investment performance requirements which distort trade and cost us ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... inculcated in him in earliest youth, and he is assured that he may never have any doubts about them, under penalty of thereby forfeiting eternal salvation; propositions, I mean, which affect the foundation of all our other knowledge and accordingly determine for ever, and, if they are false, distort for ever, the point of view from which our knowledge starts; and as, further, the corollaries of these propositions touch the entire system of our intellectual attainments at every point, the whole of human knowledge is thoroughly adulterated ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... claiming all degrees and shades of delight, from peace and calmest content to ecstasy. His life was hid in God. No vain show could enter at his eyes; every truth and grandeur of life passed before him as it was; neither ambition nor disappointment could distort them to his eternal childlike gaze; he beheld and loved them from the bosom of the Father. It was not for himself he came to the world—not to establish his own power over the doings, his own influence over the hearts of men: he came that they might know the Father who was his joy, his ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... individual has lost all relationship with his natural, instinctive and reasoning mind. He is disassociated. Reason, instinct, emotion and intuition are all in conflict within him. The emotional and intuitional faculties overfunctioning distort his common understanding. His idea centers are not able to distinguish between the real and the unreal in thoughts. He becomes possessed and obsessed by ideas born of emotion and intuition that have no foundation in fact, and as time goes on, he loses ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... no friend to a house who calumniates the husband to the wife. Is it the part of a friend to distort dear Ernest's kindliness and gayety into ill morals; to pervert his love of poetry and plays into an unworthy attachment to actors and—oh!" and the tears would come. But she dried them, for now she hated this man; with all the little power of hatred she had, she ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... you think that people ought always to speak the truth, and to be especially careful not to distort the remarks of others?" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... elementary education, as it is given in such a school, tends to arrest growth, is to under-estimate its capacity for mischief. In the act of arresting growth it must needs distort growth, and in doing this it must needs deaden and even destroy the life which is ever struggling to evolve itself. It is well that from time to time we should ask ourselves what compulsory education has done for the people of England. How much ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... at home who trimmed their shrubbery into pyramids and squares and spires and all manner of unnatural shapes, and when I saw the same thing being practiced in this great park I began to feel dissatisfied. But I soon saw the idea of the thing and the wisdom of it. They seek the general effect. We distort a dozen sickly trees into unaccustomed shapes in a little yard no bigger than a dining room, and then surely they look absurd enough. But here they take two hundred thousand tall forest trees and set them in a double row; allow no sign of leaf or branch to grow on the trunk lower down than six ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you may, distort and twist as you like the unimportant trivialities, the main facts related by O'Meara have never been really shaken. What is more, he is backed up by Napoleon himself in Lowe's personal interviews with him, and more particularly by his letters to ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... not advance positive truths, they were useful in the method they created. They had no hostility to truth, as such; they only doubted whether it could be reached in the realm of psychological inquiries, and sought to apply knowledge to their own purposes, or rather to distort it in order to gain a case. They are not a class of men whom I admire, as I do the old sages they ridiculed, but they were not without their use in the development of philosophy. The Sophists also rendered a service to literature by giving definiteness ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... within. At the blockhouse a guard was mounted—doubtless a watchful and stanch lookout, but unconforming to military methods, for he sang, to speed the time, a metrical psalm of David's; the awkward collocation of the words of this version would forever distort the royal poet's meaning if he had no other vehicle of his inspiration. There were long waits between the drowsy lines, and in the intervals certain callow voices, with the penetrating timbre of youth, came to Emsden's ear. His eyes ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... common with the whole class of allegorical pastorals, is undoubtedly open to the charge of artificiality, since, in truth, the pastoral garb can never illustrate, but only distort and obscure subjects drawn from other orders of civilization. Yet none but a great master could, to produce a desired effect, have utilized every association which tradition afforded with the consummate skill observable ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... breath, this little one that I am holding in my maternal grasp.' She was terrible. At first, I had seen her as an angel of goodness. Now, although she had not changed, she was like an angel of mercilessness and vengeance. I saw a sort of hatred for those who would trouble him distort her face, resplendent with superhuman maternity. Her cruel heart was full of one heart only. It foresaw sin and shame. It hated men and settled accounts with them like a destroying angel. She was the mother with fearful nails, standing erect, and ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... time, then, as it becomes used to the confinement and study, for a longer and longer period each day. Their end in education is to produce noble men and women; that is to say, physical, moral, and intellectual beauty by assisting the natural growth. They hold it a sin to falsify or distort the mind, as well as the soul or body of a child. They seem to be as careful to cultivate the genius and temperament as the heart and conscience. Their object is to train and form the pupil according to the intention of Nature without forcing him beyond his strength, or into an artificial mould. ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... not on speaking terms. Blake, too, had arrived, a little cross and crabbed for him, as his wounds were painful, consisting mainly of bruises where his wounded horse had fallen and rolled with him. But he could limp about and swear, and distort the poetry of the old masters and be savage and cynical. He hated Gleason, ridiculed him in public, and hailed him ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... his will abide to the end, Do what you will, distort your ways you may wend, Hardships and knocks but insure him your friend Shown by the ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... nothing, so long as my motives in coming are known. But people talk so cruelly, and will distort the facts so gladly, and we have always held our heads so high. And now the Penheim!" She ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... the iron sash cramps are used to apply pressure to the joint. As this method is in some cases apt to bend and distort thin boards it is wise practice to fix (as a temporary measure) a stout piece of straight wood on to the board to be joined by using two handscrews as shown at the left hand of the illustration. At the right hand of the sketch a wooden cramping arrangement ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... which have been offered in explanation of the religious phenomena of the world may be summed up as follows: The first and second theories we have rejected as utterly false. Instead of being faithful to and adequately explaining the facts, they pervert, and maltreat, and distort the facts of religious history. The last three each contain a precious element of truth which must not be undervalued, and which can not be omitted in an explanation which can be pronounced complete. Each theory, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... intention of falsehood, seem incapable of speaking the truth. If they relate a circumstance that has passed under their own observation, or describe anything that they have seen, they add here and diminish there, distort this and give a new color to that, in such a manner that the hearer receives an impression of nothing as it really is. If there seem to be no malicious or evil design in all this, such persons are commonly ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... his descendants call it now. To this great end all means were good: all that was not a means to this end was superfluous. To achieve it he was prepared to play the oddest tricks with natural forms—to distort. All great artists have distorted; Cezanne was peculiar only in doing so more consciously and thoroughly than most. What is important in his art is, of course, the beauty of his conceptions and his power in pursuit: indifference to verisimilitude is but ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... under such guidance can a man develop his latent powers in safety and with certainty, since they know how fatally easy it is for the untrained clairvoyant to deceive himself as to the meaning and value of what he sees, or even absolutely to distort his vision completely in bringing it down into his ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... bestialized, whose practices are libertine, and whose imaginations are all impure, to receive the truth that there are such things as purity and virtue, and that there are men and women around him who are virtuous and pure. There is no truth which personal vice will not distort. The approaches to a sensual mind are through the senses, and the same may be said of all minds in a general way; but the approaches to a sensual mind are only through the senses, and they, being perverted, abused, exhausted, or unduly excited, furnish the utterly ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... unadventurous, he seems to say, there is still the individual, who, perhaps all the more because of the rigid decorums forced upon him, may adventure with secret desires through pathless space. Only, the pressure of too many inhibitions can distort human spirits into grotesque forms. The inhabitants of Winesburg tend toward the grotesque, now this organ of the soul enlarged beyond all symmetry, now that wasted away in a desperate disuse. They see visions which in some ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... of that blessedness—the 'sleeping in Jesus'—has been the one that the weary have laid hold of at all times; but do not let us forget what lies even in that figure of sleep, or distort it as if it meant to express a less vivid life than that here below. I think we sometimes misunderstand what the Bible means when it speaks about death as a sleep, by taking it to express the idea that that intermediate state is one of a kind of depressed consciousness, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... one instance, I shall be called upon by my friends to do the same in many. An invidious and inquisitorial scrutiny into the personal disposition of public officers will creep through the whole Union, and the most sordid and selfish passions will be kindled into activity, to distort the conduct and misrepresent the feelings of men, whose places may become the prize of ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... Is his award, against these brainless creatures. 'Tis not the wholesome sharp morality, Or modest anger of a satiric spirit, That hurts or wounds the body of the state; But the sinister application Of the malicious, ignorant, and base Interpreter; who will distort, and strain The general scope and purpose of an author To his particular ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... walked toward the house, revolving these disquieting conjectures, all his first suspicion and antagonism toward Wilhelm revived in full force, and he was in a mood well calculated to distort the simplest acts, when he suddenly saw sitting in the square stoop at the door the two persons who filled his thoughts, Wilhelm and Carlen,—Wilhelm steadily at work as usual at his carving, his eyes closely fixed on it, his figure, ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... 337.) The Chinese have by nature unusually small feet (72. This fact was ascertained in the 'Reise der Novara: Anthropolog. Theil.' Dr. Weisbach, 1867, s. 265.); and it is well known that the women of the upper classes distort their feet to make them still smaller. Lastly, Humboldt thinks that the American Indians prefer colouring their bodies with red paint in order to exaggerate their natural tint; and until recently European women added to their naturally bright colours by rouge and white cosmetics; ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... shift and break. It is that distant years which did not take Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow, Have forced my swimming brain to undergo Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake Thy purity of likeness and distort Thy worthiest love to a worthless counterfeit. As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port, His guardian sea-god to commemorate, Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort And vibrant tail, ...
— Sonnets from the Portuguese • Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
... only conscientious reporter in Kenton City, or whether you will simply be like all the rest. Are you going to have the courage of your convictions—which I think I can surmise, though you haven't as yet confided them to me—or are you going to wear the slave-chains of your fellows, and distort, and misrepresent, and truckle and kow-tow to the policy of the most venal press ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... thought. And if the paper wants me to falsify or suppress or distort, I have to do it. Is that ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... federalism. And whether our efforts to save the principles and form of our constitution have not been salutary, let the present republican freedom, order, and prosperity of our country determine. History may distort truth, and will distort it for a time, by the superior efforts at justification of those who are conscious of needing it most. Nor will the opening scenes of our present government be seen in their true aspect, until the letters ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... officers' sick-bay, and the doctor had done his best to make him comfortable. He was slumbering, so I did not speak. I stood for some minutes watching his youthful countenance. It was almost feminine in its beauty—so clear, so fair, so free from the effects of the evil passions which distort and disfigure so often the features of those of older years. His long light-brown hair had fallen off his clear broad forehead, and his lips were parted, and moved slightly, as if he were speaking to himself. A sickly ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... amorous lips incline, Full with young Eros' osculative sign, To the lorn maiden whose lact-albic hands, Drew albu-lactic wealth from lacteal glands Of that immortal bovine, by whose horn Distort, to realm ethereal was borne The beast catulean, vexer of that sly Ulysses quadrupedal, who made die The old mordacious Rat, that dared devour Antecedaneous Ale, in John's ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... the archeological facts of the last fifty years and read them up or down, across or diagonally, inside and out, and this fact rises into your mind like a Banquo that will not down. Historians may distort truth and rob the African race of its historical position, but facts are everywhere throwing open the secret closets of nations and exposing ethnic skeletons that laugh and jest at our racial vanities. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... no ambition but that of avarice," replied Almamen; "and as the plant will crook and distort its trunk, to raise its head through every obstacle to the sun, so the mind of man twists and perverts itself, if legitimate openings are denied it, to find its natural element in the gale of power, or the sunshine of esteem. These Hebrews were not traffickers and misers ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to Ulpius. It is a peculiarity observable in the characters of men living under the ascendancy of one ruling idea, that they intuitively distort whatever attracts their attention in the outer world, into a connection more or less intimate with the single object of their mental contemplation. Since the time when he had been exiled from the Temple, the Pagan's faculties had, unconsciously ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... salvation"? Then we may be sure that, whatever is meant by the "made Himself void," heauton ekenosen, which describes His Incarnation here, one thing it could never possibly mean—-a "Kenosis" which could hurt or distort His absolute fitness to guide and bless us whom He came to save. That awful and benignant "Exinanition" placed Him indeed on the creaturely level in regard of the reality of human experience of growth, and human capacity ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... much the more true and natural, if it conveys the impression which the object under the influence of passion makes on the mind. Let an object, for instance, be presented to the senses in a state of agitation or fear, and the imagination will distort or magnify the object, and convert it into the likeness of whatever is most proper to encourage the fear. "Our eyes are made the fools" of our other faculties. This is the universal law of ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... narrative of Livy, who was a man of fine imagination, these stories retain much of their genuine character. Nor could even the tasteless Dionysius distort and mutilate them into mere prose. The poetry shines, in spite of him, through the dreary pedantry of his eleven books. It is discernible in the most tedious and in the most superficial modern works on the early times of Rome. It enlivens the dulness of the Universal History, ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Bergson calls it, though practically useful, has, according to him, two grave drawbacks from the point of view of speculation. By focussing our attention upon anything less than the whole fact, and so isolating a part from the rest, he says we distort what we knew originally: furthermore just in so far as we make a selection among the facts, attending to some and passing over others, we limit the field of direct knowledge which we might otherwise have enjoyed. For these ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... mere fact of being married, are always entitled to certain consideration, put—par exemple—into a bed-room, a little larger than a dog kennel, and accommodated with a looking-glass, that does not distort one's features like a paralytic stroke. But we single men suffer a plurality of evils and hard-ships, in entrusting ourselves to the casualties of rural hospitality. We are thrust up into any attic ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... frightful complaint is not immediately dangerous; but I never can believe that the violent and sudden prostration of strength, the dreadfully convulsive movements which distort the limbs, the livid hue that spreads itself over the complexion, can take place without shaking the seat of health and life. Repeatedly we thought the malady cured, and for a few days the poor sufferer believed himself restored to health and strength; but ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... Old-World shell of inherited impressions was a plastic being of all womanly possibilities. But so little did she know of herself, so futile was her struggle in the dark with only sudden flashes to blind her and distort all she saw, that with nothing to shape that moulding kernel it would shrink and wither, and in a few years she would be but a polished shell, perfect of proportion, hollow ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... that evil land, with fresh Spring-water mixed, be trampled to the full; The moisture, mark you, will ooze all away, In big drops issuing through the osier-withes, But plainly will its taste the secret tell, And with a harsh twang ruefully distort The mouths of them that try it. Rich soil again We learn on this wise: tossed from hand to hand Yet cracks it never, but pitch-like, as we hold, Clings to the fingers. A land with moisture rife Breeds lustier herbage, and is more than meet Prolific. Ah I may never such for me ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... my honor now that I am not going to distort or discolor the facts of this miserable trial. No, I will give them to you honestly, detail by detail, just as Manchon and I set them down daily in the official record of the court, and just as one may read ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... appealed equally to his artistic and thoughtful mind. At one moment it would appear before him with an ideal loveliness such as had never blessed the eye of his fancy even; but while he yet looked the features would distort themselves into the vivid expression of some contemptible trait, so like what he had seen in reality, during the evening, that, in uncontrollable irritation, he would start up ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... never know, and therefore do not count your scalps too carefully or try to number your Israel and Judah. Neither, on the other hand, allow your seed to be forced by the hothouse of advertising or business pushing, or anything which will distract or distort that quiet gaze upon the work by which you love it for its own sake, and judge it on its merits; all such sidelights are misleading, since you do not know whether it is intended that this or that shall prosper or both ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... and horrible" production, in which one will find "a bizarre mixture of Druidic practice and Christian superstition." It describes Heloise as a sorceress of ferocious and sanguinary temper. Thus can legend magnify and distort human failing! As its presentation is important in the study of Breton folk-lore, I give a very free translation of this ballad, in which, at the same time, I have endeavoured to preserve the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... sake of those to whom nothing can be stated so well but that they misunderstand and distort it, we must add a word, in case they can understand even that. There are very many persons who, when they hear of this liberty of faith, straightway turn it into an occasion of licence. They think that everything is now lawful for them, and do not choose to show themselves free ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... that will hold water can, of course, be readily converted into an aquarium. But as we desire a clear view of the contents at all times, glass is the best material. And since glass globes refract the light irregularly and magnify and distort whatever is within them, we shall find an advantage in having the sides of the aquarium parallel and the form rectangular. As the weight of the aquarium, when filled with water, is enormous,—far more than we should at first imagine,—it follows that it must be capable of resisting pressure ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... more thoroughly understood in this country. Other countries entered the war through necessities of various sorts. America committed herself to the conflict for a cause which even the cynical German propaganda, hard as it has tried, has been unable to distort into a selfish or commercial one. We are preparing to share in every way the sacrifices, both in blood and wealth, which our allies have been making these past three years. And as our reward we ask for no selfish or commercial ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... Jacobinism, falsehood, licentiousness, and impiety! The first four or five charges might have been proved with little difficulty, if it were worth while to break a butterfly on a wheel, but it was necessary to distort the meaning and even the text of the original in order to give any colour to the ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... propose to dwell on the Renaissance and how Greek came in: for a number of writers in our time have been busy with the Renaissance, and have—I was going to say 'over-written the subject,' but no—it is better to say that they have focussed the period so as to distort the general perspective at the cost of other periods which have earned less attention; the twelfth century, for example. At any rate their efforts, with the amount they claim of your reading, absolve ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... language of the two is itself composite and abounds in forms of speech that belong to one earlier still. For the N.T. Greek, even in the writings of Luke, contains a large number of Hebrew idioms; and a literal rendering into English cannot but partially veil, and in some degree distort, the true sense, even if it does not totally obscure it (and that too where perfect clearness should be attained, if possible), by this admixture of Hebrew as well as ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... hardly of value. Sonnets in music become abominable. I have made many experiments for finding the affinity of language and music. The two things are diametrically opposed, unless music is free to distort syllables. A poem may be of only four words, and yet those four words may contain enough suggestion for four pages of music; but to found a song on those four words would be impossible. For this reason the paramount ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... such a holy awe as Dostoeffsky felt when in moments of revelation he saw by some sudden gleam into the hearts of the criminals around him in Siberia—and what do we do with them? Tie up their souls in official red tape and render their bodies anaemic with clothes, distort them in factories or slay them on battlefields. The doctor is herein the New Mystic at whose feet all must patiently learn the Revelation of Humanity. When there is not quite so much Mankind in the world, and ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... to distort them. He had no knowledge of it. He never realized the change. He passed to the realms of sleep like a tired child, striving to follow the course of the flying sparks from the fire till his final memory was of a hundred ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... surrounding nations (acquired by having seen most of them several times and having visited and closely observed them), and inasmuch as there is no one else able to do it—considering also his detachment from outside considerations and interests, which, intermingling, distort all one's views: therefore this Audiencia, the city, the orders, the military captains, and all the other citizens, unanimously elected him for this purpose. As he made excuses for not going, and his superior declined to give him permission, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... vouchsafe To place us down beneath, where numbing cold Locks up Cocytus. Force not that we crave Or Tityus' help or Typhon's. Here is one Can give what in this realm ye covet. Stoop Therefore, nor scornfully distort thy lip. He in the upper world can yet bestow Renown on thee, for he doth live, and looks For life yet longer, if before the time Grace call him not unto herself." Thus spake The teacher. He in haste forth stretch'd his hands, And caught my guide. Alcides ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... see a man trying to distort the proper meaning of words, and, presenting a garbled statement of the views of an opponent, I take it as conclusive evidence that he has a bad cause; more when he is constantly at it, and manifests in all that he does a feeling of uneasiness and ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... whether these Indians had any amusements of music or dancing, prevailed with two of them to give a specimen of their dancing. One of them began to distort his features and turn up his eyes. He then proceeded to execute, in succession, a variety of strange gestures and attitudes, accompanied by hideous distortions of countenance. His body was generally in a stooping posture; and his hands rested on his knees. After a few minutes, he began to ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... not difficult to distort the story enough to reverse the roles he and the officer had played, and, when he had finished, Pierce was loud in his praise ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... the vast horizons and solemn heights, of scholastic divinity. A dogmatic system is hard in hard hands, and shallow in shallow minds, and barren in dull ones, and unreal and empty to preoccupied and unsympathising ones; we dwarf and distort ideas that we do not like, and when we have put them in our own shapes and in our own connection, we call them unmeaning or impossible. Dogmas are but expedients, common to all great departments of human thought, and felt in all to ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... of her charms that she hid the ankle in such flowing sables, that she bound the black locks straightly under a little widow's-cap, seldom parted the fine lips above the treasured pearls beneath, disdained to distort the classic features, and graved no wrinkles on the smooth, rich skin with any lavish smiling. She went about the house, a self-contained, silent, unpleasant little vial of wrath, and there was ever between her and Eloise a tacit feud, waiting, perhaps, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... of young women are selected who step into the ring, and holding up the recently taken scalps, begin a low chant. The braves circle round, brandishing weapons of various kinds, whilst they distort their faces and bodies into the most horrid shapes. Simultaneously jumping into the air, they come down on both feet with a blow and thrust of their weapons, while it would appear as if they were indulging in the most horrible butchery. ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... intellectual operations only to vitiate them; its part is to fill up the gaps of memory by conjecture, to magnify and attenuate realities, and to confuse them with the products of pure invention. Most children distort everything by inexactitude of this kind, and it is only after a hard struggle that they ever attain to a scrupulous accuracy—that is, learn to master their imagination. Many men remain children, in this respect, the whole ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... to arouse suspicions as to the questioner's motives. Such information is obtained more readily by cultivating the friendship of boys than by consulting the older folks. This tendency to disguise or to distort the truth, though it has its natural basis in a desire for self-protection, gives the Manbos a reputation for lack of that straightforwardness and frankness that is so noticeable among the Mandyas, even after ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... wry face. "Nay, but they are not to take in a decoction or in nauseous form, so you need not snub that so charming nose, or I shall point out to my friend Arthur what woes he may have to endure in seeing so much beauty that he so loves so much distort. Aha, my pretty miss, that bring the so nice nose all straight again. This is medicinal, but you do not know how. I put him in your window, I make pretty wreath, and hang him round your neck, so you sleep well. Oh, yes! They, like the lotus ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... conditional clauses in vii and xxvi to be later insertions (e.g. Skinner, 169 f.). But it was natural to the malice of his foes to distort Jeremiah's conditional, into an absolute, threat, and in xxvi. 13 he corrects them. My translation follows the Greek version, and omits the Hebrew additions which are found in our ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... the pleasure of helping young men. But beware how you do this, saying in your heart, "I will help this young man, and when he succeeds I will reap my reward." Such a selfish thought will utterly poison your advice, deflect your moral vision, distort your intellectual perceptions. ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... what they contained. Say, good Mr. M'Choakumchild: when from thy store thou shalt fill each jar brim full by and by, dost thou think thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within, or sometimes only maim him and distort him!" ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... from philosophical interests and from philosophies that have played any important part in the history of thought we may well doubt. We should suspect that the same practical interest that works unceasingly to distort and popularize philosophy would help to ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... By what name am I to call you,—since you will answer to none that I remember? Surely you do not live: yet I know the sleeping-places of all my dead,—and yours, I do not know! Neither are you any dream;—for dreams distort and change; and you, you are ever the same. Nor are you any hallucination; for all my senses are still vivid and strong.... This only I know beyond doubt,—that you are of the Past: you belong to memory—but to the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... that they do not know the whole Atlantic Union movement is built under the canopy of "implementing Article 2 of this NATO Treaty?" Or, are they too stupid to understand this? Or, are they so dishonest that they distort the facts, thinking that the public is too confused or ignorant to ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... issuance by this government on May 29 of a statement regarding the nationalist aspirations for freedom of the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugoslavs, German and Austrian officials have sought to misinterpret and distort its manifest interpretation. In order, therefore, that there may be no misunderstanding concerning the meaning of this statement, the Secretary of State to-day further announces the position of the United States Government to be that all branches of the ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... control, the wildest ambition of despotism would have required no broader base for its designs. A power to punish crimes unspecified by law is a power above law, and ignorance or corruption may easily distort innocence itself into crime. But the main duty of the Four Hundred was to prepare the laws to be submitted to the assembly of the people—the great popular tribunal which we are about presently to consider. Nor could any law, according to Solon, be introduced into that assembly ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Satanic working, which, if it could, would burn your body, will assuredly assail you daily through the pens and tongues of deceivers and deceived, who, under a semblance of a zeal for Christ, will evermore distort your words, misrepresent your motives, rejoice in your failings, exaggerate your errors, and seek by every poisoned breath of slander to destroy your powers ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... speechless. How could he wilfully distort facts in this barefaced way? It seemed a revelation of some incredible pettiness of character hitherto unsuspected in him. When she found her voice she spoke evenly, with ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... uniform of a Lieutenant-Colonel, which showed how deeply he was in the toils. Though it emphasized the elegant proportions of his figure, it sat uncomfortably upon him. His vanity was not equal to his sense of guilt. The uniform was a livery of dishonor. He could not distort it into a virtue, try as he would. He lacked that cunning artifice which a man of the world possesses, that of winning over ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... rich man marries a girl who has been earning her own living, the newspapers always distort it," he whispered aside to me a few minutes later. "Jameson, you're a newspaperman—I depend on you to get the ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... exactly, I think, to the facts. When we are engaged in a sensation, or when we perceive something, a phenomenon occurs which simply consists in having consciousness of a thing. If to this we add the idea of the subject, which has consciousness, we distort the event. At the very moment when it is taking place, it is not so complicated; we complicate it by adding to it the work of reflection. It is reflection which constructs the notion of the subject, and it is this which afterwards introduces this construction into the states of consciousness; ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... story had given Clara food for thought. She was uneasily conscious, after all, that there might be a grain of truth in what had been said, enough, at least, to justify her in warning Tom to be careful, lest his enemies should distort some amiable ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... dichromate or chromate) added to water containing soft creatures such as molluscs, generally will kill them gently by paralysis and leave them relaxed. Usually almost anything else one uses, short of illegal or expensive drugs, causes such specimens to distort or contract into useless lumps. Once the chromate has thoroughly killed and relaxed them, say after an hour or two, the specimens can be fixed, preserved, or manipulated as required. You may wish to compare this method with the method ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... feels. And this difficulty is much further complicated by the fact that words themselves tend in the process to harden and petrify, and in their hardening to form, as it were, solid blocks of accretion which resist and materially distort the subtle and evasive play of the human psychology ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... the models of art, although nature is so disfigured that they are no longer to be found among us. The Gothic trammels, the innumerable bands which confine our limbs as in a press, were quite unknown. The Greek women were wholly unacquainted with those frames of whalebone in which our women distort rather than display their figures. It seems to me that this abuse, which is carried to an incredible degree of folly in England, must sooner or later lead to the production of a degenerate race. Moreover, I maintain that the charm which these corsets are supposed to produce is in ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... deficient not only in judgment, but also in candor. For whereas we, with a simple mind, desired, in passing, to recount those things which original sin embraces, these men, by framing an invidious interpretation, artfully distort a proposition that has in it nothing which of itself is wrong. Thus they say: "To be without the fear of God, to be without faith, is actual guilt"; and therefore they deny that it ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... program of emancipation. Out of her revolt against its absurdities has come the most definite development in American costume which we have had, and that is the sensible street costume, which in spite of efforts to distort and displace it, a woman still may wear without differentiating ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... prisoner's features distort; I saw him suddenly dash himself down upon his knees despite his fetters, and beat his face into the dust, crying out the while in a passion of hoarse remorse that made one's ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... substitutes for existing words and phrases, and infinitely more serious than that invention, goes on a perpetual misuse and distortion of those that are insufficiently known. These are processes not of growth but of decay—they distort, they render obsolete, and they destroy. The obsolescence and destruction of words and phrases cuts us off from the nobility of our past, from the severed masses of our race overseas, far more effectually than any growth of neologisms. A language may grow—our ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... fears the soiling of its nice dresses, she can keep a long slip or apron, which will entirely cover the dress, and can be removed, when the child is taken in the arms. A child should not be allowed, when quite young, to bear its weight on its feet, very long at a time, as this tends to weaken and distort the limbs. ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... having expressed in bad French what all scientific minds had seen for the last two hundred years as clearly as he had done. The scientific spirit was the fundamental principle in my disposition. M. Pinault would have been the master for me if he had not in some strange way striven to disguise and distort the best traits in his talent. I understood him better than he would have wished, and, in spite of himself. I had received a rather advanced education in mathematics from my first teachers in Brittany. Mathematics and physical induction have always been ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... grotesquely false accounts of Israel's origin and Israel's religious teachings; and he wrote here with more spirit and with more conviction than in his earlier elaborate works. He has no longer to accommodate himself to the vanity of a Roman Emperor, or to distort events so as to glorify his nation or to excuse his own conduct. He is able for once to set out his idea wholeheartedly, and he shows that, if he had few of the qualities required for a great historian, he had several of the talents of an apologist. His ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... It never occurs to him that he might as well call him "a marquis," or "a privy councillor"—that he is simply naming a rank or class, not a phrase for a good man. And this perennial temptation to a shameful admiration, must, and, I think, does, constantly come in and distort and poison our ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... under a globose moon, homeward; or, on the back of one of her father's fleet horses, sweeping eastward over the grassy land, in the level light of the setting sun, watching the strange herald-shadow of herself and her horse rushing away before them, ever more distort as it fled:—like some ghastly monster, in horror at itself, it hurried to the infinite, seeking blessed annihilation, and ever gathering speed as the sun of its being sank, till at last it gained the goal of its nirvana, not by its well run race, but in the ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... stretched in their berths. For a few seconds she is quiet; then, contorting her face into a deep scowl, she gives vent to the most violent bursts of passion,—holds her long black hair above her head, assumes a tragic attitude, threatens to distort it from the scalp. "That one's lost her mind-she's fitty; but I think the devil has something to do with her fits. And, though you wouldn't think it, she's just as harmless as can be," Mr. Praiseworthy coolly remarks, looking at Mrs. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... word, Russ reached for the power controls. A sudden roar of thunderous fury and the beams leaped at the sphere ... but this time the sphere did not materialize again. Again the wrench shuddered through the laboratory, a wrench that seemed to distort space and time. ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... abstract principle which flourishes there and fills it completely. Should actual experience through the eye or ear plant some unwelcome truth forcibly in his mind, it cannot subsist there; however noisy and relentless it may be, the abstract principle drives it out;[1116] if need be it will distort and strangle it, considering it a slanderer since it refutes a principle which is true and undeniable in itself. Obviously, a mind of this kind is not sound; of the two faculties which should pull together harmoniously, one is degenerated and the other overgrown; facts cannot ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... himself in terms of somewhat exaggerated admiration when writing of a painter whom he appreciates, or a picture that he loves. To us this enthusiasm is an attractive characteristic. It has never been permitted to distort the vision or cloud the critical faculty; and we follow the teaching of the Master all the more closely because we feel his fervor, and know how completely he becomes possessed with a subject which appeals to his imagination or his heart. I have therefore not ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... has given the divergent views it was certain to create, as constituting a part of its history. He reminds us that two sets of persons equally acquainted with the facts, equally free from any wish to distort them, might be led into opposite judgments through the mere action of some impalpable bias in one direction or the other, which third, more critical or more indifferent, would adopt a compromise between the two; and he closes his introductory ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... with a passion that made his face drip with sweat and distort into savage fury of ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... to shed his privileges, still clings to this one. It is possible to imagine that a novel might be as bare of all background as a play of Racine; there might be a story in which any hint of continuous life, proceeding behind the action, would simply confuse and distort the right effect. One thinks of the story of the Princesse de Cleves, floating serenely in the void, without a sign of any visible support from a furnished world; and there, no doubt, nothing would be gained by bringing the lucid action to ground and fixing it in its setting. It is ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... this body? Yes, but it shall not Distort my soul, by all the gods that be! And when it's done its worst, Pain's victory Shall be an empty one! Whate'er my lot, My banner, ragged, but nailed to the mast, Shall fly triumphant ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris |
