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More "Underrate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fair share of the joy of living come from the printed page, good writing is clearly more valuable than ever before in the history of the race. I do not agree with the pessimists who think that a democratic civilization is necessarily an enemy to fine writing for the public. Such critics underrate the challenge which these millions of minds to be reached and souls to be touched must possess for the courageous author; they forget that writers, like actors, are inspired by a crowded house. But the thought and the labor and ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Paris, saw what he did in those grilling months of struggle, fired at in front, sniped at from behind—and no one who saw what he had to do after he came home from Europe in meeting the great new problems which grew out of the war—will for a moment belittle the immensity of his task, or underrate his extraordinary endurance, energy, ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... is all right, a very desirable and admirable quality in every young man's character, and one which is seen far too seldom nowadays. Modesty, however, is one thing, and self-depreciation quite another. It is a mistake for anyone to underrate his own value, and, as you very truly say, you are capable of doing much better work than that needed in either of the occupations that you have named; therefore you are justified in insisting upon having it. A man has a perfect right to the very best ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... of the sister, and it was quite reasonable, therefore, to believe that Talbot was a man not likely to be easily duped. The principals in this crime were evidently well aware of the trust reposed in the Assistant Under-Secretary, and they, again, would not underrate his intelligence. Hence there was a good cause for Talbot to accept the explanations, whatever they were, given him during the conclave in the dining-room; the effect of which, in Inspector Sharpe's words, had been to "puzzle" the young Englishman. ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... power, by which the numbers and strength of our fleet would be reduced to such a point that they would be able to steel their hearts and come out and fight. [Cheers.] We have been at war for five or six weeks, and so far—though I would certainly not underrate the risks and hazards attending upon warlike operations and the vanity of all overconfidence—but so far the attrition has been on their side and not on ours, [cheers,] while the losses which they have suffered greatly exceed any that we have ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... rebellion were punished also among princes and nobles, he fancied there would be very few of them left. He feared that the Turk would bring some such punishment upon them, and he prayed God to avert it. Finally, he bade them remember not to buckle on their armour too loosely, and underrate their enemies, as Germans were too prone to do. He warned them not to tempt God by inadequate preparation, and sacrifice the poor Germans at the shambles, nor as soon as the victory was won to 'sit down again and carouse until the hour of ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... the Eternal City, he is very apt, during the first days of his sojourn, to underrate the power and influence of the Papal system. At home he has been used to see power associated with splendour, and surrounded with the fruits and monuments of intelligence. At Rome everything on which he sets his eye bears marks of a growing barbarism ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... poll the entire Republican vote. This feeling did not grow out of any hostility to any man, but simply out of a desire for Republican success. In other words, I endeavored to take an unprejudiced view of the situation. Under no circumstances would I underrate the ability and influence of Mr. Blaine, nor would I endeavor to deprecate the services he has rendered to the Republican party and to the country. But by this time it ought to be understood that I belong to no man, that I am the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... they have known, would have envied her the plight in which she found herself—joint custodian, with Bentley, of Hal Willett's unconscious confidences—compelled to see a young girl's rapturous love lavished upon a man so saturated with the incense of feminine idolatry as to be more than apt to underrate the priceless boon of ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... reddenest on my hearth, Thou in those island mines didst slumber long; But now thou art come forth to move the earth, And put to shame the men that mean thee wrong: Thou shalt be coals of fire to those that hate thee, And warm the shins of all that underrate thee. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... out-skirts, or gracefully entered the league before dragged in or driven. It was a glittering and two-edged weapon for Hamilton, and he flashed it in the faces of the anti-Federalists until they were well-nigh blinded. Nevertheless, he did not for a moment underrate Clinton's great strength, and he longed desperately for good news from Virginia, believing that the entrance of that important State into the Union would have more influence upon the opposition than all the arts of which ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... undercurrent, no cross trade-wind, no unexplained veering of the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day's sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew; but no doctoring of the social log-book ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... heart-knowledge of pure womanhood could have come otherwise than by the impression on the child's soul of a mother's purity. I seem to have a vision of one of those women whom the world knows not of, silent, deep-hearted, loving, whom the coarser and more practically efficient jostle aside and underrate for their want of interest in the noisy chitchat and commonplace of the day; but who yet have a sacred power, like that of the spirit of peace, to brood with dovelike wings over the childish heart, and quicken into life the struggling, slumbering ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... in his Lives of Sacred Poets, has done himself credit by doing justice to George Wither, and vindicating his claims as poet, whom it has long been the fashion to underrate, but who Southey said "had the heart and soul of a poet ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... "that you underrate the difficulty, madam. What you may be too generous to refuse, I may be too proud to accept. In a moment of noble feeling toward me, you forget what you perhaps ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... time, or degenerate into caricature, the chronicle of scandal, the history-book of the vulgar." It seems, strangely enough, to have been the fashion among the, in comparison with Hogarth, puny academicians of that day, to underrate that great painter, that moral painter. We really should pity the infatuated prejudice of the man, who could see in the deep tragedy, the moral tragedy, "Marriage a la Mode," any humorous exuberance; or not understand that the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... is a thing of the past in so far as it can never win the war for the enemy or enable the enemy to prevent us from winning the war, provided we do not underrate the danger but take adequate steps against it, I affirm now as the opinion of the British Admiralty; but it is a menace that ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... Weir, indifferently; "I care nothing about him." She rose and stood in front of him and leaned her elbows on his shoulders. "You may underrate yourself, if you like," she went on, "but I know that you are capable of accomplishing anything you wish, and of distinguishing yourself. I recall the conversations I have had with you in your serious moments, if you do not, and I expect you to ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... escape notice even in the Central Empires. Not the least of the Committee's difficulties and achievements was to get the truth of our cause and policy so defined as to be susceptible of unequivocal statement by poster, leaflet, film and gramophone record. Sir CAMPBELL STUART perhaps tends to underrate the rival show, the German propaganda organization, whose work, if it did Germany little good, has done and is still doing colossal harm to us. Also he tends to forget that Lord HAIG and his little lot in France at any rate helped the Committee to effect the breakdown of the German ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... Pasha had also received reports that led him to underrate the strength of the Christian armada, and so induced him to put out to sea in search of it. Twice he had reconnoitred the allied fleet. Before Don Juan arrived at Messina, Ulugh Ali had sent one of his corsairs, Kara Khodja, to cruise in Sicilian waters. The corsair painted every part of his ship ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... not misunderstand me, because nobody knows better than a Minister how tremendous is the debt that he owes to the permanent officials of his department. Certainly I have every reason to be the last man to underrate that. Well, any of you may be rapidly placed in a position of real command with inexorable responsibilities. I am speaking in the presence of men who know better than I do, all the details, but it is true that one of you ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... of relatives as to a man's powers are very commonly of little value; not merely because they overrate their own flesh and blood, as some may suppose; on the contrary, they are quite as likely to underrate those whom they have grown into the habit of considering like themselves. The advent of genius is like what florists style the breaking of a seedling tulip into what we may call high-caste colors,—ten thousand dingy flowers, then one with the divine streak; or, if you prefer it, like the coming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the things he thinks for the public good. He should also remember, so far as the matter of ability is concerned, that other men are likely to be much better judges of his capacity than he is himself. If men are likely often to overrate their own capacity, they are also very often likely to underrate it. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Watteau, whose sight is failing, though she still works (half by touch, indeed) at her pillow-lace, was glad to hear me read the letter aloud more than once. It recounts—how modestly, and almost as a matter of course!—his late successes. And yet!—does he, in writing to these old people, purposely underrate his great good fortune and seeming happiness, not to shock them too much by the contrast between the delicate enjoyments of the life he now leads among the wealthy and refined, and that bald existence of theirs in his old home? A life, agitated, exigent, unsatisfying! That is ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... "Don't underrate Shawnee." For an instant Drew rose to the roan's defense and then found himself irritated at being so drawn from the main argument. "And I wouldn't care if you had Gray Eagle, himself, under you, boy—I'm not taking you with me. Let us be snapped up by the Yankees, and you'd be in bigger trouble ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... artistic pleasure is to be gained from the study of the modern realistic school. Its works are powerful but they are painful, and after a time we tire of their harshness, their violence and their crudity. They exaggerate the importance of facts and underrate the importance of fiction. Such, at any rate, is the mood—and what is criticism itself but a mood?—produced in us by a perusal of Mr. Coleridge's Demetrius. It is the story of a young lad of unknown parentage who is brought up in the household of a Polish noble. He is a tall, fair-looking ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... of our disregard of the old Latin proverb which tells us that no man ever became suddenly altogether bad. Even now public opinion is too prone to attach excessive value to projects of vague and visionary development, and to underrate the importance of serious thought and quiet work, which can be the only solid foundation of our national progress. In these new associations—humble indeed in their origin, but destined to play a large part in ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... But it also fails to convince the hasty reader that he has seen the event precisely as it happened, or that he is in possession of a philosophical key to open all historical problems. I do not wish for a moment to underrate the value of work which has different qualities; but I do think that Fitzjames's merits as a solid inquirer may be overlooked by readers who judge a writer by the brilliance of his pictures and the neatness of ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tempted to say at times with Hazael, "Thy servant is but a dog; how can he do these great things?" You are disposed to underrate your gifts, your opportunities, your happy chances in life—in a word, your possibilities. You despair of finding any opening; you are sure that you will never hear a call to come up higher; you think ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... as not misuses and turns against herself. But Mr. Vane," the note of bitterness had vanished; her voice was now earnest, almost grave, "you weren't despondent when you were facing an angry mob after doing me a service I shall never forget. You underrate yourself." ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... let him underrate the cost of his confession by assuming that there is more love than generosity in it, and by telling him that he would rather deprive himself of the honour of this return, than give it to Sophy. But this is how he revealed to me, all unconsciously, what were his real feelings; ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... one who has rowed fifty races with pleasure to underrate, far less to disparage, mere rowing; but still we maintain that for the encouragement of pure manliness, and the varied capacities useful in a sailor's life, one punt chase is far better than ten of ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... Shorely bought a copy of the Sponge, and once more he read Gibberts' story on the way down. The third reading appalled him. He was amazed he had not noticed before the deadly earnestness of its tone. We are apt to underrate or overrate the work of a man with whom we are ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... of "Beowulf" but providentially forbidden the attempt by the conditions laid down for this Chair. I gather—and my own perusal of the poem and of much writing about it confirms the belief—that it has been largely over-praised by some critics, who have thus naturally provoked others to underrate it. Such things happen. I note, but without subscribing to it, the opinion of Vigfusson and York Powell, the learned editors of the "Corpus Poeticum Boreale," that in the "Beowulf" we have 'an epic completely metamorphosed in form, blown out with long-winded empty repetitions ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... had entered it; and had she cared to confound Madame utterly, she might have reminded her of that unwritten history of the past ten years in which the secret episode of Mrs. Pletheridge occurred. For Gabriella was not inclined to underrate her own efficiency, and her confidence was supported by the knowledge that if she left Dinard's the most fashionable of Madame's clientele would ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... its own inner laws. That in spite of all which in the present stage of our literature may create a painful or confusing impression, we have no cause to doubt that a new and powerful upward development will take place, and no cause either to underrate the literature of our own day! It is richer in great, and what is perhaps more important, in serious talents than any other contemporary literature. No other can show such wealth of material, no other such abundance of interesting and, in part, entirely new ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and your Western friends, I think, underrate this speech. It has produced a greater effect here than any other single speech. It is the real platform in the Eastern States, and must carry the conservative element in New York, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... first place there may be a danger that we underrate the value of formalism itself. It spells routine, but routine is not without value in the strengthening of character. The private citizen, who conscientiously day by day had carried out the worship of his household gods and month by month ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... indicating the lettering he desires on the backs." The only safe-guard is for the librarian or owner to prescribe on a written slip in each volume, a title for every book, before it goes to the binder, who will be only too glad to have his own time saved—since time is money to him. I would not underrate the book-binders, who are a most worthy and intelligent class, numbering in their ranks men who are scholars as well as artists; but they are concerned chiefly with the mechanics and not with the metaphysics of their art, and moreover, they are not bound by that rigid rule which should govern ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... lapsing into fierceness, and if we forget this lurking bellicosity and admiration for hard blows in our own nature then we shall set about the task of making an end to it under hopelessly disabling misconceptions. We shall underrate and misunderstand altogether the very powerful forces that are against ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... all their lives to consider themselves below the surface of good society, and brought up in a servile feeling of inferiority, they become arrogant, on the common boon of civility; they attribute to the lowliness of others their own elevation; and underrate a society where there are no artificial distinctions, and where, by any chance, such individuals as themselves can ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... consciousness of having done greater and more efficient services for the country in the time of her greatest peril than any other person in the Republic, and a knowledge of this can not long be suppressed, though I do not underrate the mighty powers that may be ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... manliness run toward the types of maturity. The mind in its reaches toward strength and completeness creates a heart-sympathy—which in its turn craves fulness. There is a vanity too about the first steps of manly education, which is disposed to underrate the innocence and unripened judgment of the other sex. Men see the mistake as they grow older; for the judgment of a woman, in all matters of the affections, ripens by ten ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... to underrate the number of Romanised Celts remaining in England after the Saxon Conquest? The victors would surely enslave a vast multitude, and marry many Celtic women; while those who fled at the first danger would gradually return to their old haunts. Under ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... talk this way. I do not like it. And I do not wish my friends to criticize my other friends. I know you like Mr. Inglish best of all, and that is why you try to underrate the ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... of Eubonia, how you underrate the Author's ability. This is one of the romancer's most venerable devices that is being practised. See for yourself!" And suddenly Horvendile pushed Jurgen so that Jurgen tumbled over in the ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... some importance. I do not underrate the value of kindness and love in any system of government, whether in the household, the school, the stable, the menagerie, or in civil society. But love is not the basis of government. Obedience is yielded to authority, and authority is based on right and power. The child who complies with ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... all his admiration for Turgot, thought him too simple-hearted for a practical statesman, too prone, as noble natures often are, to underrate the selfishness, stupidity, and prejudice that prevail in the world and resist the course of just and rational reform. He described Turgot to Samuel Rogers as an excellent person, very honest and well-meaning, but so unacquainted with the world and human nature that it was a maxim with him, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... my agent could reach it. I fitted out a small armed brig to intercept it, but again I was unfortunate. Like all great organizers I was, however, prepared for failure, and had a series of alternatives prepared, one or the other of which must succeed. You must not underrate the difficulties of my undertaking, or imagine that a mere commonplace assassination would meet the case. We must destroy not only Monsieur Caratal, but Monsieur Caratal's documents, and Monsieur Caratal's companions also, if we ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... results of such a contingency would have been exceedingly terrible. Indeed, you would not now be here to tell the tale. I need not alarm you on that score, but mention it as a warning you will not misunderstand or underrate after ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... cannot concede that the light of the Crescent is greater than the glory of the Cross, that there is less constraining power in the Christ of Calvary than in the Prophet of Arabia? I do not think that I underrate the difficulties in your way when I say that you young men are holding in your hands golden opportunities which it would be madness and folly to throw away. It is your grand opportunity to help build up a new South, not on the shifting sands of policy and expediency, but on the broad basis of ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... statement is true of Chamberlain. He was, as the Times put it, "the Carnot of the moment, the organizer of Liberal victory." [Footnote: Neither Sir Charles Dilke nor Mr. Chamberlain would, however, have desired to underrate the great share in organizing the victory of Mr. Adam, the principal Liberal Whip in the House of Commons, whose services were generally considered to have been very insufficiently recognized by Mr. Gladstone.] Moreover, the confidence and friendship which led to constant consultations ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... be said as to the effect which a solitary life will produce upon a man's estimate of himself? Shall it lead him to fancy himself a man of very great importance? Or shall it tend to make him underrate himself, and allow inferior men of superior impudence to take the wall of him? Possibly we have all seen each effect follow from a too lonely mode of life. Each may follow naturally enough. Perhaps it is natural to imagine your mental stature to be higher than it ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... her courage. There are the lesser courages and the greater. There are many who dare face danger and undertake hard tasks, and face ridicule and failure. It is a fine and a true courage and I do not underrate it. Helen Trounstine had it and had it to the full. She tackled hard tasks; she faced some men whose interests she opposed. She fought out her fights against all comers, and never flinched. She would ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... by any love of system, by any exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know that as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. And great and heroic men have existed who had almost no other information than by the printed page. I only would say that it ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that his duty is to explain his discoveries and intentions until they see as he sees. But the specialist temperament is often not a generalizing and expository temperament. Specialists are apt to measure minds by their speciality and underrate the average intelligence. The specialist is appalled by the real task before him, and he sets himself by tricks and misrepresentations, by benevolent scoundrelism in fact, to effect changes he desires. Too often he fails even ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... intended to underrate technical proficiency. No one can be a satisfactory exponent of music whose technique is deficient, however profound may be his musicianly understanding and feeling. At the same time, with every tone, every measure, mechanically correct, ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... however, probable that these as much underrate the vigor and effect of the attack, as Sickles may overstate it. It is not impossible that some portion of the Eleventh Corps position was actually reached by these columns. The road down which the movement was made ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... which is established by the people themselves from a realization of their needs, and progressively developed as they appreciate its worth. As Dean A. R. Mann recently said, "In dealing with rural affairs it has long been a common mistake to underrate the validity of the farmer's own judgment as to what is good for him." "Superimposed organizations are usually doomed to failure because they express the judgments of those without the community rather than those within whom they are intended to serve." "Ordinarily the ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... German is docile and eager to learn. His interest embraces everything, and most of all what is foreign. He is disposed to admire everything foreign and to underrate what is his own. With foreigners it is just the other way. We Germans know about them, but they know absolutely nothing about us.—PROF. A. LASSON, ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... him—the omission to tell what he knew to be an essential part of the truth about life—was abundantly made good in his later writings. It is true that even in his final philosophy he still seems to me to underrate, or rather to shirk, the significance of that most compendious parable which he thus relates in a letter to Mr Henry James:—'Do you know the story of the man who found a button in his hash, and called the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... indeed. Hence, in estimating the real rank of any art or science, it is necessary for us to conceive it as it would be grasped by minds of every order. There are some arts and sciences which we underrate, because no one has risen to show us with what majesty they may be invested; and others which we overrate, because we are blinded to their general meanness by the magnificence which some one man has thrown around them: thus, philology, evidently the most contemptible of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... step we mount the pyramids. Be bold—be resolute when the clouds gather, difficulties are surmounted by opposition. Self-confidence, self-reliance is your capital. Your conscience the best monitor. Never be over-sanguine, but do not underrate your own abilities. Don't be discouraged. [Transcriber's Note: The original text reads 'Nintynine'] Ninety-nine may say no, the [Transcriber's Note: The original text reads 'hundreth'] hundredth, yes: take ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... Sir James Graham, that during the last twelve months pauperism had diminished, and trade and commerce had improved in the country because the price of wheat was low, Mr. Ward said that he was not going to underrate the benefit produced by an abundant harvest, but he believed that still greater benefit had been effected by the the liberal policy of government. The idea that there were any peculiar burdens on the land, was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... not by reason of her dress, as most of your sex are, but in spite of it. You women always underrate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... deeds vindicate their words, and whose words are unsurpassed by Greek or Roman fame,—men whom even Hume can only criticize for a "mysterious jargon" which most of them did not use, and for a "vulgar hypocrisy" which few of them practised. Let us not underrate the self-forgetting loyalty of the Royalists,—the Duke of Newcastle laying at the King's feet seven hundred thousand pounds, and the Marquis of Worcester a million; but the sublimer poverty and abstinence of the Parliamentary party deserve a yet loftier meed,—Vane surrendering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... that Powder Magazine?" said Hilary. "Well, this business that you call a 'plant' is more like that. I don't want to alarm you, but I think you as well as our young friend Martin, are inclined to underrate the emotional capacity ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... we have already mentioned, Burton in his Translator's Foreword did not do Mr. Payne complete justice, but he pays so many compliments to Mr. Payne's translation elsewhere that no one can suppose that he desired to underrate the work of his friend. In the Foreword he says that Mr. Payne "succeeds admirably in the most difficult passages and often hits upon choice and special terms and the exact vernacular equivalent of the foreign word so happily and so picturesquely that all future translators must perforce use ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... I am sure something could be done by an energetic business man like yourself. As for poor me I feel that I am a child in business matters. I can invent and perfect the invention, and demonstrate its uses and practicability, but 'further the deponent saith not.' Perhaps I underrate myself in this case, but that is not a ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... if there are any real and peculiar sources of trial and difficulty in this pursuit, that they should be distinctly known and acknowledged at the outset. Count the cost before going to war. It is even better policy to overrate, than to underrate it. Let us see then what the real difficulties of ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... David," said he, "and you do not wholly guess wrong; the fact will be of use to me in my defence. Perhaps, however, you underrate my friendly sentiments, which are perfectly genuine. I have a respect for you, Mr. David, mingled with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... err. Possibly I underrate my strength of mind and the influence of habit, which makes easy to us every path; but I will not trust ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... not to underrate the real value of the Peruvian system; nor to suppose that the quipus were as awkward an instrument, in the hand of a practised native, as they would be in ours. We know the effect of habit in all mechanical operations, and the Spaniards bear constant testimony ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made our England ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... him intellectual, and more artistic than inspired, I have no wish to underrate the intrinsic poetry in such lines as these, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... confidence in our men, and that confidence has been justified. We tested them at Gemeizeh, Tokar, Toski, Ferkeh, and Abu Hamed, and were not disappointed; and under the circumstances, perhaps the most competent military critics, the Dervishes [laughter] showed no disposition to underrate the fighting power of our men. And when the role was changed and from the defensive we were able to take the offensive they soon acquired that respect for the Egyptian soldiers that all good troops engender in the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... kinds of enormity, on the ground that they were inspired by God, and could be guilty of no sin, as only exercising their rights of liberty. Madame de Bourignon was an excellent woman, but Leslie and Lavington[632] showed that some of her writings seem dangerously to underrate good works. Moravian principles, lightly understood, made Herrnhut a model Christian community; misunderstood, they became pretexts for the most dangerous Antinomianism.[633] An example may even be quoted from the last century where the nobler elements of mystic enthusiasm were ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... this I do not underrate the achievements of explorers like Stanley, Thomson, Cameron, Schweinfurth, Pogge, Nachtigall, Pinto, de Brazza, Johnston, Wissmann, Holub, Lugard, and others; but apart from the first two, none of them made discoveries ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... a stamp of the foot.] You wouldn't underrate your power if you had seen him, heard him, about an hour ago—[mockingly] after he had discovered ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... George quickly, "you underrate Professor Keredec's shrewdness. His plans are not so simple as you think. He knows that my cousin Louise never obtained a divorce ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... social habits of man are of paramount importance to him, we must not underrate the importance of his bodily structure, to which subject the remainder of this chapter will be devoted; the development of the intellectual and social or moral faculties being discussed in a ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... up my literary ideas, and do the best I can, very gladly," said Van Berg. "But you greatly underrate yourself and overrate my ability. I am still but on the edge of this wilderness of knowledge myself, and in crossing a wilderness ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... rare a gift to be trifled with, like a Mingo's conscience. No, no; off hands, or we shall see which can make the stoutest battle; you and your men of the 55th, or the Sarpent here, and Killdeer, with Jasper and his crew. You overrate your force, Lieutenant Muir, as much as you underrate Eau-douce's truth." ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... reading them aloud to her with all that eager 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
... things. Like him from whom I have derived some of my sentiments, I have found that they tend to make me a happier man. The Christian, like yourself, looks upon every thing with a jaundiced or distorted eye, and is apt to underrate the claims and pleasures of this present scene of our existence. I can truly say that I now enter into them much more keenly than I could when I was an orthodox Christian. I can say with Mr. Newman, I now, with deliberate approval, 'love the world and the things of the world.' The New Testament, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... never broach the subject to him. I finished the geological evidence chapters yesterday; they are very fine and very striking, but I cannot see they are such forcible objections as you still hold them to be. I would say that you still in your secret soul underrate the imperfection of the Geological Record, though no language can be stronger or arguments fairer and sounder against it. Of course I am influenced by Botany, and the conviction that we have not in a fossilised condition a fraction of the plants that have existed, and that ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... will be an advantage to me in some ways to have a lady for my wife; but I should have no difficulty in purchasing that advantage, even with my present means, which I expect to increase largely in the course of some years. Do you not underrate your daughter's personal qualities when you assume that it was her position that induced me ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... prevails very generally concerning the great inferiority of the ancients in naval skill, requires also to be confined strictly to nautical knowledge, and should not lead us to underrate their mechanical powers, or their means of transporting objects of as great bulk as ourselves by sea. The parade which was made at Paris about transporting the obelisk from Egypt, and erecting it in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... were driven from their homes in 1836 and 1837 by the military at Fort Snelling, and is very severe on the autocratic conduct of the officers of the fort, saying that the commanding officers were lords of the North, and the subordinates were princes. I have no doubt they did not underrate their authority, but I think Mr. Stevens must refer to the removals that were made of settlers on the military reservation of which I have ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... beginning of the war, and before the distinction was thus partially effaced, the comparison involved very different elements. In our general military inexperience, the majority were not disposed to underrate the value of specific professional training. Education holds in this country much of the prestige held by hereditary rank in Europe, modified only by the condition that the possessor shall take no undue airs upon himself. Even then the penalty consists only in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... in the plural—we ought, perhaps, rather to have used the singular number. In the one word excitement, assuming the special form of opium—the "insane root"—lies the gravamen of his guilt, as, also, of Coleridge's. Now, we are far from wishing to underrate the evil of this craving. But we ought to estimate Mr. De Quincey's criminality with precision and justice; and, while granting that he used opium to excess—an excess seldom paralleled—we must take his own explanation of the circumstances which led him to begin its use, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... "We mustn't underrate Chambers, however," he declared. "The man made one mistake. He underrated us. We can't repeat his mistake. He is dangerous all the time. He will stop at nothing. Not ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... you that I have come to the heterodox conclusion that there are no such things as independently created species—that species are only strongly defined varieties. I know that this will make you despise me. I do not much underrate the many HUGE difficulties on this view, but yet it seems to me to explain too much, otherwise inexplicable, to be false. Just to allude to one point in your last note, viz., about species of the same genus GENERALLY having a common or continuous area; if they ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... with just that one supreme quality of imaginative courage which made Nelson our starry admiral. Would he be given the ghost of a chance now of putting that gift at his country's disposal? I do not think he would, and I do not think he would because we underrate gifts and exceptional qualities, because there is no quickening appreciation for the exceptional best in a man, and because we overvalue the good behaviour, the sound physique, the commonplace virtues ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... the old man with a persuasive voice, "mind that such imprudence would save our enemies, but would not save your father. Pray consider and answer me. Do you really think that your arguments would be stronger than Sarah Brandon's? You cannot so far underrate the diabolical cunning of your enemy. Why, she has no doubt taken all possible measures to keep your father's faith in her unshaken, and to let him die as he has lived, completely deceived by her, and murmuring with ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... their way, inch by inch, through the tournament to this final tie; and it had been a glorious fight so far. The Hussars, whose self-assurance had led them to underrate the strength of the enemy, were playing now like men possessed. The score stood at two goals all, and electric shocks of excitement tingled through ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... in demanding a certain social amenity from its nurslings (heaven knows it is not exorbitant in its requirements!); for although I well know how hard it is for a man of genius with a seriously underrated subject to maintain serene and kindly relations with the men who underrate it, and who keep all the best places for less important subjects which they profess without originality and sometimes without much capacity for them, still, if he overwhelms them with wrath and disdain, he cannot expect them to ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... afterwards co-ordinated. One may wish pictorial art to have higher ambitions; and one may find in the Primitives an example of a curious mysticism, an expression of the abstract and of dreams. But one should not underrate the power of naive and realistic observation, which the Primitives carried into the execution of their works, subordinating it, however, to religious expression, and it must also be admitted that ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... hardly be supposed that I underrate the horrors of war. I have imagination enough and sympathy enough to follow almost as if I beheld it with my eyes, the great tragedy which has been unfolded in South Africa. The spirit of Jingoism is an ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... the impression they had made on him grew stronger. He was too good a judge of men not to perceive that the budding dramatist had the intelligent imagination which makes for real shrewdness, and he was not disposed to underrate the value of the imagination in forming judgments of men and women. Probably Colonel Grey was a man of less intensity of emotion than Mr. Manley had declared, and Lady Loudwater less subtile and intelligent. But, after making these reductions, he had here possible actors in a drama of passion; ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... a fashion she did not wholly comprehend. "My dear Lady Carfax! You underrate friendship when you say a thing like that. Sit down, won't you? And let me tell you what brought ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... upon this earth I should be the last to underrate the advantages of wealth,—I who have been reared in the gutter, which is Poverty's cradle. Yet I would fain Charlotte's fortune had come to her in any other fashion than as the result of my work in the character of a ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... an ideal type amid surroundings of intensely prosaic realism, with which he himself, moreover, considered as an individual character in a specific story, is in complete, accord. If any one be disposed to underrate the creative and dramatic power to which this testifies, let him consider how it has commonly fared with those writers of prose fiction who have attempted to personify a virtue in a man. Take the work of another famous English humourist and sentimentalist, and compare ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... what to do. Should she go on at once to San Francisco, or telegraph to her father and await him at San Jose? In either case a new fear of the precipitancy of her action and the inadequacy of her reasons had sprung up in her mind. Would her father understand her? Would he underrate the cause and be mortified at the insult she had given the family of his old friend, or, more dreadful still, would he exaggerate her wrongs and seek a personal quarrel with the major. He was a man of quick temper, and had the Western ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... must never forget that. But what true man of letters ever can forget it? It is no such common matter for a gifted nature to come into possession of a current of true and living ideas, and to produce amidst the inspiration of them, that we are likely to underrate it. The epochs of AEschylus and Shakespeare make us feel their preeminence. In an epoch like those is, no doubt, the true life of literature; there is the promised land, towards which criticism can only beckon. That promised land it will not be ours to enter, and we shall die in the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... make him wise and happy, an honest man, a virtuous citizen, and a good patriot, by furnishing him with a comfortable school-house, suitable class-books, competent teachers, and, if he is poor, paying his quarter bills, while they greatly underrate, if they do not entirely overlook, that high moral training, without which knowledge is the power of doing evil rather than good. It may possibly nurture up a race of intellectual giants, but, like the sons of Anak, they will be far readier to trample down ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... "democracy" at the present time. Democracy is still chiefly an aspiration, it is a spirit, it is an idea; for the most part its methods are still to seek. And still more is this "League of Free Nations" as yet but an aspiration. Let us not underrate the task before us. Only the disinterested devotion of hundreds of thousands of active brains in school, in pulpit, in book and press and assembly can ever bring these redeeming conceptions down to the solid ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... would have touched any hearts not protected by an impenetrable padding of beer and sour crout. But it was, unfortunately for the young king, the fashion at the new court to despise and distrust the Greeks, to underrate their exploits, and to declaim against their honesty. The revolution was treated as a war of words, the defence of Missolonghi as a trifle, and the naval warfare as a farce. The Greeks have since, on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... words to describe; but, considering amongst themselves that should the king take this bewitching girl to wife, he would become so entangled in the meshes of love as totally to neglect the affairs of the state, they underrate her beauty to the king, who then gives up all thought of her. But it chanced one day that the king himself beheld the damsel on the terrace of her house, and, perceiving that his vazirs had deceived him, he sternly reprimanded them, at the same ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... don't for a moment imagine I underrate the function of the preacher. There's nothing better than a good sermon,—one that puts new life into you. But what of a sermon that takes life out of you? instead of a spiritual fountain, a spiritual ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... is danger that the Southern whites will, as a rule, misinterpret the meaning of the exodus. Many are inclined to underrate its importance, and those who appreciate its significance are apt to look for temporary and superficial remedies. The vague promises made at the Vicksburg convention, which was controlled by the whites, and called to consider the emigration movement, have had no influence ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... nations to give kings the glory of all that is effected by their generals and officers; and the writers of those days would, of course, in narrating the exploits of the Macedonian army, exaggerate the share which Alexander had in their performances, and underrate those of Parmenio. But in modern times, many impartial readers, in reviewing calmly these events, think that there is reason to doubt whether Alexander, if he had set out on his great expedition without Parmenio, would have ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... still an idea. No soldier could possibly say that his own bayonets were his authority. No soldier could possibly say that he came in the name of his own bayonets. It would be as absurd as if a postman said that he came inside his bag. I do not, as I have said, underrate the evils that really do arise from militarism and the military ethic. It tends to give people wooden faces and sometimes wooden heads. It tends moreover (both through its specialisation and through its constant obedience) to a certain loss of real independence and ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... stated, as the result of personal observation, that England could not be too energetic in, its measures of resistance. He had done something with his little fleet, but he was no braggart, and had no disposition to underrate the enemy's power. "God make us all thankful again and again," he observed, "that we have, although it be little, made a beginning upon the coast of Spain." And modestly as he spoke of what he had accomplished, so with quiet self-reliance did he allude to the probable consequences. It was certain, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in Illinois thus became for Douglas a struggle for political life or death. At war with the President and with a large section of his party, if he could not keep a grip on his own State his political career was over. Nor did he underrate his Republican opponent; indeed, he seems to have had a keener perception of the great qualities which were hidden under Lincoln's rough and awkward exterior than anyone else at that time exhibited. When he heard of his candidature ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... sagacious observer of human affairs. For it is to be chiefly ascribed to a law as certain as the laws which regulate the succession of the seasons and the course of the trade winds. It is the nature of man to overrate present evil, and to underrate present good; to long for what he has not, and to be dissatisfied with what he has. This propensity, as it appears in individuals, has often been noticed both by laughing and by weeping philosophers. It was a favourite ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... life. This is knowing that a man's heart is to the left and not in the middle. This is knowing not only that the earth is round, but knowing exactly where it is flat. Christian doctrine detected the oddities of life. It not only discovered the law, but it foresaw the exceptions. Those underrate Christianity who say that it discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy. In fact every one did. But to discover a plan for being merciful and also severe— THAT was to anticipate a strange need ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... certainly be the last to underrate the part which the self-assertion of the individual has played in the evolution of mankind. However, this subject requires, I believe, a much deeper treatment than the one it has hitherto received. In the history of mankind, individual self-assertion has ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... South Africa and we had to pay our own loss. It did us good for a year or two. Now the pendulum has just reached the other extreme. We've swung back once more into our silly dream. Oh, Maraton, it's true enough that we have great problems to face sociologically! Don't think that I underrate them. You know I don't. But every time I sit and talk to you, I have always at the back of my mind that other fear. . . . Have ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that made him underrate the feat he had performed, for he would have been so glad to have her feel under the slightest obligation to him; but as far as her perceptions were concerned, the beauty of his sentiment was lost, for when he said that the thing that he had done ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... she gave herself up to profoundly sorrowful thoughts. She was only twenty-two. How long the path of her future life looked, and whither would it lead? She had attained all that any woman could desire in the way of the world's bestowment. She did not underrate the value of this. On the contrary, it was as essential to one part of her nature as something far different in the way of human possibility was to another part. She did not lose her hold upon the actual because she was striving after the unattained. All this power and admiration ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... readers, though they may sometimes decline a good thing because for one reason or another they believe it would not be liked. Still, even this does not often happen; they would rather chance the good thing they doubted of than underrate their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mere matter of modest scruples! You underrate yourself, Everett. You are the very man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... and steel pens. The cells they inhabit are gloomy as dungeons, but furnished like parlors. Their business is to keep everybody's accounts but their own. They are of all ages, but of a uniformly dejected aspect. Do not underrate their value. Mr. Bulwer has said, that, in the hands of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword. Suffer yourself to be astonished at their numbers, but permit yourself to withdraw from their vicinity without questioning too closely their present utility or future destination. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... affected in the public mind, I think a dissolution would rather strengthen than weaken the ex-Council party. I am confident I do not overrate their strength—and it is a dangerous, though common error, to underrate the strength of an adversary. They are likewise organizing their party, and exciting the public mind to such a degree as to prevent any sentiments or measures from the present administration from being ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... ignorance; we know the good, but lack the will and purpose to live it out. And this is because the thought of truth and goodness excites no such strength of feeling as that of some lower gratification. We cannot perhaps overrate the value of intellect; we certainly underrate the value of emotion and feeling. "Knowledge puffeth up, love buildeth." It does not require great intellect, it does require intense feeling to be a hero. We slander the emotions by calling people emotional because they are always talking about their feelings; but ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... I am not afraid of him, but I don't underrate him. The men look up to Torrini as a sort of leader; he's an effective speaker, and knows very well how to fan a dissatisfaction. Either he or some other disturbing element has recently been at work among the men. There's considerable ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... truth, and even from reasonable probability. It is indeed a mere omission which does not offend the reader; but such inaccuracies suggest serious reflections. If the epic poets ignore the importance of the masses on the battlefield, is it not likely that they underrate it in the public assemblies? Is it not possible that here too, to please their patrons, they describe the glorious ages of the past as the days when the assembled people would not question the superior wisdom of their betters, but merely assembled to be taught and ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... ruthlessly stripped of all our romantic notions in regard to the "king of beasts"! We suspect that the Doctor, disgusted with the "twaddle" that has undoubtedly been talked in all ages about the "magnanimity" of the "noble" lion and his "terrific aspect," has been led unintentionally to underrate him. In this land we have opportunities of seeing and hearing the lion in his captive state; and we think that most readers will sympathise with us when we say that even in a cage he has at least a very ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... underrate the difficulty of applying this principle of industrial relief over the whole field of industry. There is the great difficulty of defining an industry, or drawing the lines of demarcation between one trade and another. I have not ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... afraid that the diplomatic intrigues and counter intrigues at Madrid have made us lose daily more of that advantageous position without any compensation on the other side. The Queen entreats Lord John Russell not to underrate the importance of keeping our foreign policy beyond reproach. Public opinion is recognised as a ruling power in our domestic affairs; it is not of less importance in the society of Europe with reference to the conduct of an ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... "Grant that he is what we would all like in a friend. Separate him, too, from any idea that I would marry him, for I was not thinking of such a thing. Is there not enough left to distress me? Do you think I underrate the evil of the occupation, even though I believe it has not tainted him? Having owned him as a friend, isn't it difficult to know what degree of friendship I can continue to own ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... importance, they would give the prisoner the full benefit of their doubts. The prisoner had in fact admitted the main fact himself: and had said nothing tending to change the natural construction of it. He had simply endeavoured to underrate the importance of Harlech Castle, but that was of no consequence: a place, weak in itself, may be reputed strong; and, by encouraging people to rise in a period of general political ferment, may do all the mischief that could attach to the seizure of a much stronger place. However, in any case, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... to ask even that colonial courtyard for an explanation of all this. It simply recalled what it had seen and heard. Nor could we of to-day understand the explanation were we to get it. Unable to reconcile industry and leisure, we underrate the real work that went with the idling of those early Virginians; and as to the gayety, we long ago lost sight of the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... turning to Endymion, with a twinkle of malice in his eye. "But when Mr. Westcote releases us, it will be en masse; and then, believe me, I shall come with an army, since I underrate neither the strength of the fortress nor the feeling of ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... listen to me? You prefer even the problem of Wagner to that of Bizet? But neither do I underrate it; it has its charm. The problem of salvation is even a venerable problem. Wagner pondered over nothing so deeply as over salvation: his opera is the opera of salvation. Someone always wants to be saved in his operas,—now it is a youth; anon it is a maid,—this is his ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... fast. It is one of the few ascetic ceremonies in the Jewish Calendar as known to most Jews. There is a strain of asceticism in some forms of Judaism, and on this a few words will be said later. But, on the whole, there is in modern Judaism a tendency to underrate somewhat the value of asceticism in religion. Hence the fast has a distinct importance in and for itself, and it is regrettable that the laudable desire to spiritualise the day is leading to a depreciation of the fast ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... now, as is believed, presented with entire fairness a summary of the more important aspects in which the constitutional objections mentioned have been urged. I would not underrate by a hair's breadth the authority of these great names, the weight of these continuous reassertions of principle, the sanction even of the precedent and general practice through a century. And yet I venture to think that no candid and competent man can thoroughly investigate the ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... very pretty and touching. Her action has, in truth, its springs in a most commendable sentiment that I should be the last to underrate. Shady Dell Farm is interesting, too, for once, if one can swallow one's wrath and dudgeon at being taken there against one's will; and one feels that Jane's parents and Jane's early surroundings must be worth a single visit, if they ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... may not stand high in the eyes of the scientific world—though the closet-systematist may affect to underrate their calling, I dare boldly affirm that the humblest of their class has done more service to the human race than even the great Linnaeus himself. They are, indeed, the botanists of true value, who have not only imparted to us a knowledge of the world's vegetation, but have brought its ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... Spain, as well as Emperor of Germany, in any direction he might turn he would find a trail of blood and fire over the fair face of his dominions in the Mediterranean. Although it might gall his pride to admit that his enemy was formidable, Charles was too wise a man, too experienced a warrior to underrate his foe. He repaired the fortifications of Naples and Sicily at great cost: he wrote letters to the Pope, to Andrea Doria, to the Viceroys of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, to the Marquis de Vasto, and Antonio ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... third, and a good third, to these two fine and subtle studies of modern English life. It is one of those poems which, because they seem simple and superficial, and can be galloped off the tongue in a racing jingle, we are apt to underrate or overlook. Yet it would be difficult to find a more vivid bit of genre painting than the three-panelled picture in this ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... subject to him. I finished the geological evidence chapters yesterday; they are very fine and very striking, but I cannot see they are such forcible objections as you still hold them to be. I would say that you still in your secret soul underrate the imperfection of the Geological Record, though no language can be stronger or arguments fairer and sounder against it. Of course I am influenced by Botany, and the conviction that we have not in a fossilised condition a fraction of the plants that have existed, and that not a ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... service has to pursue the minor and slightly mechanical routine of Whitehall. You will not misunderstand me, because nobody knows better than a Minister how tremendous is the debt that he owes to the permanent officials of his department. Certainly I have every reason to be the last man to underrate that. Well, any of you may be rapidly placed in a position of real command with inexorable responsibilities. I am speaking in the presence of men who know better than I do, all the details, but it is true that one of you in a few years may be placed in command of a district ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... became for Douglas a struggle for political life or death. At war with the President and with a large section of his party, if he could not keep a grip on his own State his political career was over. Nor did he underrate his Republican opponent; indeed, he seems to have had a keener perception of the great qualities which were hidden under Lincoln's rough and awkward exterior than anyone else at that time exhibited. When he heard of his candidature he looked ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... "You underrate my attractions," I replied. "Haven't I told you about Miss Gertie 'Uggins?" Then I proceeded to sketch in Gertrude as well as I could, finishing up with the story of her spirited determination to spend the five shillings I had given her ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... exemptions of the landed interests. Taking advantage of an admission contained in a speech of Sir James Graham, that during the last twelve months pauperism had diminished, and trade and commerce had improved in the country because the price of wheat was low, Mr. Ward said that he was not going to underrate the benefit produced by an abundant harvest, but he believed that still greater benefit had been effected by the the liberal policy of government. The idea that there were any peculiar burdens on the land, was a fallacy ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... thus for rather more than a year, when Richard Calmady married. Julius was perhaps inclined, beforehand, to underrate the importance of that event. He was singularly innocent, so far, of the whole question of woman. He had no sisters. At Oxford he had lived exclusively among men, while the Tractarian Movement had offered a sufficient outlet ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... young friend, do not deceive yourself. You perhaps underrate your own industry. It is very difficult matter to decide how much we can do and how much we ought to do, in the way of study. No mere thinking can determine this matter for us. It can only be decided by being able to see what others do ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... made no more of our presence, than of that of the ducks and geese which he met on the green. He little thought that the little black urchins around him, could see, through those vocal crevices, the very secrets of his heart. Slaveholders ever underrate the intelligence with which{63 SUPPOSED OBTUSENESS OF SLAVE-CHILDREN} they have to grapple. I really understood the old man's mutterings, attitudes and gestures, about as well as he did himself. But slaveholders never encourage that kind of communication, with the slaves, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... Wundt, as of a man whose profession would not permit him to speak hastily upon this topic, I would regard as of special value; but if we rule that out upon the ground that Wundt was not impressed by the investigation, and might naturally be inclined to underrate Zoellner, who was, we have left the opinions of Fechner and Scheibner, both Zoellner's colleagues at Leipsic, both particular friends of Zoellner, and both inclined to agree with him as to the reality of the facts he describes. Both of them regarded Zoellner at the time as of more or less ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... for the express, Shorely bought a copy of the Sponge, and once more he read Gibberts' story on the way down. The third reading appalled him. He was amazed he had not noticed before the deadly earnestness of its tone. We are apt to underrate or overrate the work of a man with whom we are ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... that the Southern whites will, as a rule, misinterpret the meaning of the exodus. Many are inclined to underrate its importance, and those who appreciate its significance are apt to look for temporary and superficial remedies. The vague promises made at the Vicksburg convention, which was controlled by the whites, and called to consider the emigration movement, have had no influence with ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... therefore, to believe that Talbot was a man not likely to be easily duped. The principals in this crime were evidently well aware of the trust reposed in the Assistant Under-Secretary, and they, again, would not underrate his intelligence. Hence there was a good cause for Talbot to accept the explanations, whatever they were, given him during the conclave in the dining-room; the effect of which, in Inspector Sharpe's ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... fault to underrate an enemy, least of all an unknown; and he entertained wholesome respect for Secret Service operators—picked men, as a rule, the meanest no mean antagonist. And this business, he fancied, had all the flavour of Secret Service work—one ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... not commonly in so bad a way as this, we may be sure. Raleigh, who did nothing by halves, was not accustomed to underrate his own misfortunes. His health was uncertain, indeed, and it was still worse in 1606; but his condition otherwise was not so deplorable as this letter would tend to prove. Poor Lady Raleigh soon recovered her equanimity, and the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir George Harvey, indulged Raleigh in ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... mass of them are sheer humbug. From the beginning of the world philosophers have been investigating the countless mysteries which present themselves to every earnest mind; but the arcana are as inscrutable now as ever. I do not wish to discourage you, Beulah; nor do I desire to underrate human capabilities; but, in all candor, this kind of study does not pay. It has not repaid me—it has not satisfied Hartwell, who went deeper into metaphysics than anyone I know, and who now has less belief of any sort than anyone I ever wish to know. I would not advise you to ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... important papers, agreements, and chemicals, they will be on the lookout for us and we will have a good chase if we manage to escape. I don't say this to scare you boys; but you are here, and I don't want you to underrate the present danger. I will be good and glad to get across myself. Not a word of this ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... constant re-origination is the method of Nature, I do not overlook the element nor underrate the importance of Imitation. This it is that secures continuity, connection, and structural unity. By vital imitation the embryonic man assumes the features and traits of his progenitors. After ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the response; "but as I say, she is a stupid woman. Vanity in crime is fatal; it leads the criminal to underrate the intelligence of others. Lady Glanedale is ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... a little, after a fashion she did not wholly comprehend. "My dear Lady Carfax! You underrate friendship when you say a thing like that. Sit down, won't you? And let me tell you what brought ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... barbarian brother. He succeeds, not simply because of the superior address and sagacity which education gives him, though that, no doubt, has much to do with it; not altogether because his habits of life are better, though we would not underrate their value; but equally because the culture of the brain gives a finer life to every red drop in his arteries, and greater hardihood to every fibre which is woven into his flesh. If it is not so, how do you explain the fact that our colored soldier, fighting in his native climate, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... reached the highest point to which a civilian could aspire, cannot, when he estimates the honours of the Chancellor as inferior to those of the natural philosopher, be ascribed to misjudging enthusiasm or personal disappointment. Without, however, seeking, for the sake of antithetic contrast, to underrate the importance of political services, civil or military, or to exaggerate those of the man of science, few, we think, will be disposed to deny that, although the one may be temporarily more urgent and necessary to the well-being of an existing race, yet that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... indulged in no illusions about Pierce, nor about any of his other friends. He was, in fact, an unsparing critic of men's characters, and he had a trait, not rare in New England,—a willingness to underrate men and minimize them. His fellow-citizens are not natural hero-worshipers; to them "a man is a man, for a' that," with an accent that levels down as well as up. Hawthorne had to the full this democratic, familiar, derogatory ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... they can not deprive you of the honor and consciousness of having done greater and more efficient services for the country in the time of her greatest peril than any other person in the Republic, and a knowledge of this can not long be suppressed, though I do not underrate the mighty powers that may be arrayed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... reflectively. He had little toleration for the man of inferior brain, and, although he did not underrate his power for mischief, he relied upon his own wit to circumvent him. He had disposed of this one by warning Santa Ana, and he concluded to be annoyed by him no further. Besides, as a brother-in-law, he would be insupportable except at the ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... me caution you—do not temporize with him. He stands in the North for oppression; gain at any cost; for debauchery—everything that you do not. Between you and Brute MacNair there can be no truce. He is powerful. Do not for a moment underrate either his strength or his sagacity. He is a man of wealth, and his hold upon the Indians is absolute. I cannot remain with you, but through my Indians I shall keep in touch with you, work with ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... protracted by endless psalm singing. What I want to do—with Miss Cook's permission—is to calculate the chances of her being sufficiently athletic to perform the tricks herself, without the aid of spirits. Does she not underrate her unaided powers in assigning a supernatural cause ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... to send them back what they are supposed to send to us? Make the venture. Begin the fight in India, in foreign countries, in the departments. Macassar Oil has been thoroughly advertised; we must not underrate its power, it has been pushed everywhere, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... class of readers, though they may sometimes decline a good thing because for one reason or another they believe it would not be liked. Still, even this does not often happen; they would rather chance the good thing they doubted of than underrate their readers' judgment. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... good fight of faith. "Had I only myself to consider," says one, "how gladly would I sacrifice myself to attack this wrong or that iniquity." We need offer no opinion about the moral quality of such a position; enough to say that it is idle to ignore, or even to underrate, the force ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... Opie's first acknowledged book. It was published in 1801, and the author writes modestly of all her apprehensions. 'Mr. Opie has no patience with me; he consoles me by averring that fear makes me overrate others and underrate myself.' The book was reviewed in the 'Edinburgh.' We hear of one gentleman who lies awake all night after reading it; and Mrs. Inchbald promises a candid opinion, which, however, we do not get. Besides stories and novels, Mrs. Opie was the author of several ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... the more serious classes of literature than fiction, is that in the Scotch Universities there are what we have not in England—well-attended chairs of literature, systematically and methodically studied. Do not let it be supposed that I at all underrate the value of fiction. On the contrary, when a man has done a hard day's work, what can he do better than fall to and read the novels of Walter Scott, or the Brontes, or Mrs. Gaskell, or some of our living writers. I am rather a voracious reader of fiction myself. I do not, therefore, point ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... contribution from each individual, besides the particular duties of his profession. And, if no such liberal intercourse be established, it is the common failing of human nature, to be engrossed with petty views and interests, to underrate the importance of all in which we are not concerned, and to carry our partial notions into cases where they are inapplicable, to act, in short, as so many unconnected units, displacing and repelling ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... as is believed, presented with entire fairness a summary of the more important aspects in which the constitutional objections mentioned have been urged. I would not underrate by a hair's breadth the authority of these great names, the weight of these continuous reassertions of principle, the sanction even of the precedent and general practice through a century. And yet I venture to think that no candid and competent man can ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... constantly lapsing into fierceness, and if we forget this lurking bellicosity and admiration for hard blows in our own nature then we shall set about the task of making an end to it under hopelessly disabling misconceptions. We shall underrate and misunderstand altogether the very powerful forces that are against ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... not yet determined what to do. Should she go on at once to San Francisco, or telegraph to her father and await him at San Jose? In either case a new fear of the precipitancy of her action and the inadequacy of her reasons had sprung up in her mind. Would her father understand her? Would he underrate the cause and be mortified at the insult she had given the family of his old friend, or, more dreadful still, would he exaggerate her wrongs and seek a personal quarrel with the major. He was a man of quick temper, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... shall give when the last bond of the nation is cancelled at Washington amid public rejoicings! A republic's part is to give less advanced nations, still under the influence of feudal institutions, such lessons as this will be. Do not let us, however, underrate England's part in. such a work. She has reduced her public debt wonderfully, and the next twenty years is to see seventy millions sterling more extinguished, unless legislation now existing for this ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... morality, and honour. The Queen is afraid that the diplomatic intrigues and counter intrigues at Madrid have made us lose daily more of that advantageous position without any compensation on the other side. The Queen entreats Lord John Russell not to underrate the importance of keeping our foreign policy beyond reproach. Public opinion is recognised as a ruling power in our domestic affairs; it is not of less importance in the society of Europe with reference to the conduct of an individual state. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... of the uses to which the common man's patriotic devotion may be turned, there is no intention to underrate its intrinsic value as a genial and generous trait of human nature. Doubtless it is best and chiefly to be appreciated as a spiritual quality that beautifies and ennobles its bearer, and that endows him with the full stature of manhood, quite irrespective of ulterior considerations. So it ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... fought their way, inch by inch, through the tournament to this final tie; and it had been a glorious fight so far. The Hussars, whose self-assurance had led them to underrate the strength of the enemy, were playing now like men possessed. The score stood at two goals all, and electric shocks of excitement ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... suppose I would underrate Cooper's abilities If I thought you'd do that, I should feel very ill at ease; The men who have given to one character life And objective existence, are not very rife, You may number them all, both prose-writers and singers, ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... of the work which has been done in the South for the colored people by "missionaries," so to term them, by the assistance of large sums of money donated by philanthropic men and women, are very many-sided indeed. I would in no wise underrate the magnitude of the work performed, nor attribute to those who have been the agents in disbursing these unparalleled benefactions motives other than of the purest and loftiest, in a majority of cases; but I think ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... knows that he owes all that he is to society, without which he could not exist. He knows that, in treating him precisely as it does the lowest of its members, society discharges its whole duty towards him. But he does not underrate his faculties; he is no less conscious of his power and greatness; and it is this voluntary reverence which he pays to humanity, this avowal that he is but an instrument of Nature,—who is alone worthy of glory and worship,—it is, I say, this simultaneous confession of the heart ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... treatment of Ireland. Once convinced that his cause was righteous, he never flinched. He believed that false views of the Irish question prevailed in America, and that he could set them right. He did not altogether underrate the magnitude of the enterprise. "I go like an Arab of the desert," he wrote to Skelton a little later: "my hand will be against every man, and therefore every man's hand will be against me."* A belief in Ireland's wrongs was part of the American creed, like the faithlessness ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... beginning; but they do not lay much stress upon any thing they can accomplish with the use of their own method in this field. It serves, however, a very convenient purpose with them; neither do they at all underrate its ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... already started before my agent could reach it. I fitted out a small armed brig to intercept it, but again I was unfortunate. Like all great organizers I was, however, prepared for failure, and had a series of alternatives prepared, one or the other of which must succeed. You must not underrate the difficulties of my undertaking, or imagine that a mere commonplace assassination would meet the case. We must destroy not only Monsieur Caratal, but Monsieur Caratal's documents, and Monsieur Caratal's companions also, ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... A mere matter of modest scruples! You underrate yourself, Everett. You are the very man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... cosmopolitan, rising and bowing with slow dignity, "if I cannot with unmixed satisfaction hail a hint pointed at one who has just been clinking the social glass with me, on the other hand, I am not disposed to underrate the motive which, in the present case, could alone have prompted such an intimation. My friend, whose seat is still warm, has retired for the night, leaving more or less in his bottle here. Pray, sit down in his seat, and partake with me; and then, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... goodly sight. We do not underrate the external value of books, when we say it is the invisible which forms their chief charm. Sometimes rather too much is said about "tall copies," and "large-paper copies," and "first editions," the binding, paper, type, and all the rest of the outside ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... not overrate the bravery of their troops or the abilities of their generals, but they did underrate the difficulties in conquering a population scattered over a vast extent of territory. They did not take into consideration the protecting power of nature, the impenetrable forests to be traversed, the mighty rivers to be crossed, the mountains to be climbed, and the coasts to be ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... important event: their efforts were experiments, and their achievements were prophetic. The political philosopher may trace in their errors, trials, and successes, the lessons afforded by experience for the instruction of nations. The rapid advance of modern colonisation tends to underrate the first efforts of our predecessors. The first colonial boat-builder founded a great commercial navy; the first shepherd held in his slender flock a ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... a scene the players come forward, hand in hand, bobbing and bowing, grinning and smiling, in a way that suggests a troupe of acrobats after a successful turn. It is not difficult to overrate their work as a company, or rather—and this in a sense is the same thing—to underrate that of our ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... kiss, and there may be a score in a jest; but wherever there is an element of sacrifice, the favour is conferred with pain, and, among generous people, received with confusion. There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor. The other day, a ragged, barefoot boy ran down the street after a marble, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... taken and occupied, it being impossible for the Confederates to defend so long a line of sea-coast. The South had lost rather than gained ground in consequence of their victory at Bull Run. For a time they had been unduly elated, and were disposed altogether to underrate their enemies and to believe that the struggle was as good as over. Thus, then, they made no effort at all corresponding to that of the North; but as time went on, and they saw the vastness of the preparations ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... proportions if today submitted to the ordeal from which they recoiled. Indeed even Mrs. Stanton confessed that if she had had the slightest premonition of all that would follow this convention, she feared her courage would not have been equal to it. Fortunate ignorance, if she did not underrate her bravery, for she and a goodly number of the other signers were steadfast. They chose to side with truth and take ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... drunkards. Doubtless there are. Then I stand here as a woman to entreat, to beseech, to pray against this sin. For the sake of these drunken woman, I ask the ballot to drag them back from the rum-shops and shut their doors [applause]. God forbid that I should underrate the power of love; that I should discard tenderness. Let us have entreaty, let us have prayers, and let us have the ballot, to eradicate this evil. Mr. Collier says he is full of sympathy, and intimates that women should stand here and elevate love above ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... which, perhaps, ought to have been my first. How glad I was to get your letter from Britain! I was afraid of the ocean, afraid of the coast of the island. The other parts of the enterprise I do not underrate; but yet they inspire more hope than fear, and it is the suspense rather than any positive alarm that renders me uneasy. You, however, I can see, have a splendid subject for description, topography, natural ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... supposed, that by calling in her aid, they thereby submitted themselves to her sovereignty. Had such terms been proposed, they would have rejected them with disdain, and trusted for better to the moderation of their enemies, or to a vigorous exertion of their own force. We do not, however, mean to underrate those aids, which, to us, were doubtless valuable, on whatever principles granted: but we would show that they cannot give a title to that authority which the British Parliament would arrogate over us; and that they may amply ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... which prevails very generally concerning the great inferiority of the ancients in naval skill, requires also to be confined strictly to nautical knowledge, and should not lead us to underrate their mechanical powers, or their means of transporting objects of as great bulk as ourselves by sea. The parade which was made at Paris about transporting the obelisk from Egypt, and erecting it in the Place de Concorde, caused our neighbours to overlook the fact, that there are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... however, because I speak of these differences as not fundamental, that I wish to underrate their value. They are important enough in their way, the structure of the foot being in strict correlation with that of the rest of the organism in each case. Nor can it be doubted that the greater division of physiological labour in Man, so that the function of support is thrown ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... affections of that transition state from youth to manliness run toward the types of maturity. The mind in its reaches toward strength and completeness creates a heart-sympathy—which in its turn craves fulness. There is a vanity too about the first steps of manly education, which is disposed to underrate the innocence and unripened judgment of the other sex. Men see the mistake as they grow older; for the judgment of a woman, in all matters of the affections, ripens by ten ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... a queen is a command, and Elizabeth would have felt bound to obey this summons, but she was sick when it came. At least she was not well, and she was not much disposed to underrate her sickness for the sake of being able to travel on this occasion. The officers of her household made out a formal certificate to the effect that Elizabeth was not able ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... knowing that a man's heart is to the left and not in the middle. This is knowing not only that the earth is round, but knowing exactly where it is flat. Christian doctrine detected the oddities of life. It not only discovered the law, but it foresaw the exceptions. Those underrate Christianity who say that it discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy. In fact every one did. But to discover a plan for being merciful and also severe— THAT was to anticipate a strange need of human nature. For no one wants to be forgiven for a big sin as if ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... remarkable degree a gift which was of great service to him during his political career as the successor of Isaac Butt. This was the faculty of weighing up the special qualities of the various members of the Irish Party and using them accordingly. Without attempting for a moment to underrate Parnell as a great leader of men, I must say that there were members of the Party far abler in many respects than he was, and, no doubt, in looking around for someone to supply the qualities in which he, ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... of all the other things. And so Hermione said, "the little that I have," and there was truth in it. And there was as vital a truth in the fact of her whole nature recognizing that little's enormous value to her. Not for a moment did she underrate her possession. Indeed, she had to fight against the tendency to exaggeration. Her intellect said to her that, in being so deeply moved by such a thing as the concealment from her by Vere of something innocent of which Emile ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made our ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... and whelpage that you smile at I would have you throb with. You underrate the firstlings of the heart, the rose and white blossoming, the call upon the senses and the readiness to respond and to fulfil, to give and to take, to be and make happy—the great pride and utter abandon which is young love. At fifteen, ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... to say at times with Hazael, "Thy servant is but a dog; how can he do these great things?" You are disposed to underrate your gifts, your opportunities, your happy chances in life—in a word, your possibilities. You despair of finding any opening; you are sure that you will never hear a call to come up higher; you think your lives must always be ill-paid drudgery, with ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... they can deal with our present system in this piecemeal way very much underrate the strength of the tremendous organization under which we live, and which appoints to each of us his place, and if we do not chance to fit it, grinds us down till we do. Nothing but a tremendous force can deal with this force; it will not suffer itself to be dismembered, ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... saints and sinners are endowed with this joy and insight, this quick sensitiveness to beauty. Some of them cannot find the eternal and transcendent God in a loveliness which, by temperament, they either underrate or do not really see. There are a great many good people who cannot take beauty seriously. They become wooden and suspicious and uncomfortable whenever they are asked to perceive or enjoy a lovely object. Incredible though ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Kaunitz, to whom she intrusted all the management of affairs, is not the least important personage in this drama, nor did he underrate his own consequence. "Heaven," said he, "is a hundred years in forming a great mind for the restoration of an empire, and it then rests another hundred years; on this account I tremble for the fate which awaits this monarchy after me." Throughout a long and arduous ministry he had shown himself ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... fleet would be reduced to such a point that they would be able to steel their hearts and come out and fight. [Cheers.] We have been at war for five or six weeks, and so far—though I would certainly not underrate the risks and hazards attending upon warlike operations and the vanity of all overconfidence—but so far the attrition has been on their side and not on ours, [cheers,] while the losses which they have suffered greatly exceed any that ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... too rare a gift to be trifled with, like a Mingo's conscience. No, no; off hands, or we shall see which can make the stoutest battle; you and your men of the 55th, or the Sarpent here, and Killdeer, with Jasper and his crew. You overrate your force, Lieutenant Muir, as much as you underrate Eau-douce's truth." ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... are disposed to underrate the importance of this tendency in spermatorrhoea. The statistics of any of our large insane asylums will illustrate the influence of masturbation in the production of insanity. Mr. Holmes Coote, in a discussion which followed Dr. Drysdale's paper on the "Medical Aspects of Prostitution," read ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... danger now is, not that people should obstinately refuse to allow anything but their old routine to pass for reason and the will of God, but either that they should allow some novelty or other to pass for these too easily, or else that they should underrate the importance of them altogether, and think it enough to follow action for its own sake, without troubling themselves to make reason and the will of God prevail therein. Now, then, is the moment for culture to ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... our own loss. It did us good for a year or two. Now the pendulum has just reached the other extreme. We've swung back once more into our silly dream. Oh, Maraton, it's true enough that we have great problems to face sociologically! Don't think that I underrate them. You know I don't. But every time I sit and talk to you, I have always at the back of my mind that other fear. . . . Have ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... providentially forbidden the attempt by the conditions laid down for this Chair. I gather—and my own perusal of the poem and of much writing about it confirms the belief—that it has been largely over-praised by some critics, who have thus naturally provoked others to underrate it. Such things happen. I note, but without subscribing to it, the opinion of Vigfusson and York Powell, the learned editors of the "Corpus Poeticum Boreale," that in the "Beowulf" we have 'an epic completely ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Mr. Barker's guesses greatly underrate the number of tributaries which enlarged the trickle of Socialist thought into a mighty river. They also shew how quickly waves of thought are forgotten. Far from being the economic apostle of Socialism, Mill, in the days when the Fabian ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... East, some of them concealed under Latin names, but still aliens, not citizens of his own State, aliens with whom he had little or nothing in common, who had no home in his patriotic feeling, no place in his religious experience.[593] As I said at the beginning of the last lecture, we must not underrate the religiousness of the Roman character, which was never entirely lost; but the secret of its comparative uselessness lies in this—that the natural desire to be right with the Power manifesting itself in the universe, and to know more of that Power, became weakened and destroyed by an over-scrupulous ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... mentioned in the Irish Annals. The inscriptions, however, fully identify the MS. and the box, and show that antiquaries, from the execution of the workmanship and figures on these interesting reliques, often underrate their antiquity—a fault which the world are little inclined to give them credit for, and which they fall into from an anxiety to err on what they consider the side which is least likely to produce the smile of contempt or the sneer ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... the stage. Longfellow said he thought Mr. Charles Mathews was entirely unjust in his criticisms upon Mr. Forrest's King Lear. He considered Mr. Forrest's rendering of the part as very fine and close to nature. He could not understand why Mr. Mathews should underrate it as he did. Longfellow showed us a book given him by Charles Sumner. In it was an old engraving (from a painting by Giulio Clovio) of the moon, in which Dante is walking with his companion. He said it was a most impressive picture to him. He knew it in the original; also there is a very good ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... John's message indicated that the Baptist had no full understanding of what the spiritual kingdom of God comprized. After the envoys had departed, Jesus addressed Himself to the people who had witnessed the interview. He would not have them underrate the importance of the Baptist's service.[572] He reminded them of the time of John's popularity, when some of those then present, and multitudes of others, had gone into the wilderness to hear the prophet's stern admonition; and they had found him to be no reed, shaken by the wind, but a firm and ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... might not be we cannot realize that things are. Until we see the background of darkness we cannot admire the light as a single and created thing. As soon as we have seen that darkness, all light is lightening, sudden, blinding, and divine. Until we picture nonentity we underrate the victory of God, and can realize none of the trophies of His ancient war. It is one of the million wild jests of truth that we know ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... more, without the knowledge of any of those who were so eager to keep her out of the country, seemed impossible; but then in diplomacy it was often the impossible things which happened. He was too astute a man to underrate the undoubted ability of De Froilette. There were few men who probed more accurately the likely trend of future events, or who were quicker to recognize opportunities and seize them than the Frenchman, and Lord Cloverton argued that he was far too clever a man to ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... entered the league before dragged in or driven. It was a glittering and two-edged weapon for Hamilton, and he flashed it in the faces of the anti-Federalists until they were well-nigh blinded. Nevertheless, he did not for a moment underrate Clinton's great strength, and he longed desperately for good news from Virginia, believing that the entrance of that important State into the Union would have more influence upon the opposition than all the arts ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Byron was also an approver: "It is the fashion," he says, "to underrate Horace Walpole; firstly, because he was a nobleman; and secondly, because he was a gentleman; but, to say nothing of the composition of his incomparable Letters, and of the Castle of Otranto, he is the ultimus Romanorum, the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... I do not underrate the achievements of explorers like Stanley, Thomson, Cameron, Schweinfurth, Pogge, Nachtigall, Pinto, de Brazza, Johnston, Wissmann, Holub, Lugard, and others; but apart from the first two, none of them made discoveries that can ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... stamp of the foot.] You wouldn't underrate your power if you had seen him, heard him, about an hour ago—[mockingly] after he had discovered ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... Willmott, in his Lives of Sacred Poets, has done himself credit by doing justice to George Wither, and vindicating his claims as poet, whom it has long been the fashion to underrate, but who Southey said "had the heart and soul of a poet in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... mind of this man, and of such others, it was a very contemptible science indeed. Hence, in estimating the real rank of any art or science, it is necessary for us to conceive it as it would be grasped by minds of every order. There are some arts and sciences which we underrate, because no one has risen to show us with what majesty they may be invested; and others which we overrate, because we are blinded to their general meanness by the magnificence which some one man has thrown around them: thus, philology, evidently the most contemptible of all the sciences, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... talent, though unquestionable, had been bestowed, not as a special attribute, but as an auxiliary of other faculties granted in a larger measure. He has himself not only recognized its limits, but shown an inclination to underrate its value. "I have often thought," he remarks in one of his later papers, "that a critic who would attain to largeness of view would be better without any artistic faculty of his own. Goethe alone, by the universality of his poetical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... then, that neither absolute princes nor the rulers of free States should underrate the importance of matter, but take heed to the disorders which it may breed and provide against them while remedies can still be used without discredit to themselves or to their governments And this should have been done by the ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... it is to be chiefly ascribed to a law as certain as the laws which regulate the succession of the seasons and the course of the trade winds. It is the nature of man to overrate present evil, and to underrate present good; to long for what he has not, and to be dissatisfied with what he has. This propensity, as it appears in individuals, has often been noticed both by laughing and by weeping philosophers. It was a favourite ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rouse to a sense of its noble duties and exalted powers. We underrate the Church. We are looking elsewhere for our highest ideals, instead of claiming from the Church that spiritual guidance and inspiration which should be its right to give. One of the things that ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... one hair's breadth from the path which I have laid down for myself. It is well that I have seen all this"—and she pointed to the newspaper—"for it has given me a new view of the man. I shall not be so likely to underrate him now; and being forewarned ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... not misuses and turns against herself. But Mr. Vane," the note of bitterness had vanished; her voice was now earnest, almost grave, "you weren't despondent when you were facing an angry mob after doing me a service I shall never forget. You underrate yourself." ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... this hypothesis of identity in race has given rise to a tendency to underrate the development of the ancient people of Mexico and Central America, and to lower the estimate of their attainments sufficiently to bring them within reach of close relationship to the wild Indians. The difficulty ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... lad, but the Marquis is an able general, wily and brave. He showed his quality at Fort William Henry and we mustn't underrate him, though I am afraid that's what we'll do; besides the ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the pretensions of Coleridge, I am not likely to underrate anything which he did. But a thing may be very difficult to do, very splendid when done, and yet false in its principles, useless in its results, memorable perhaps by its impression at the time, and yet painful on the whole to a thoughtful retrospect. In dancing it is but too common that ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the Socialist: "You Underrate my Cause! While women remain a Subject Class, You never can move the General Mass, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... presence of a large Greek force in European Turkey with disfavour; that the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire was not agreeable to France; that the Allies could not at that time afford the military contingents stipulated by the Greek General Staff. There will be no disposition to underrate the complexities of the situation, or want of sympathy for those upon whom fell the task of finding a solution satisfactory to all the Powers concerned. But, though these complexities might be good reasons for not accepting the Gounaris offer, they were hardly ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... which have been selected for publication in these volumes possess a value, as examples of the art of public speaking, which no person will be likely to underrate. Those who may differ from Mr. Bright's theory of the public good will have no difficulty in acknowledging the clearness of his diction, the skill with which he arranges his arguments, the vigour of his style, the persuasiveness of his reasoning, and above all, the perfect candour and sincerity ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... what you can to help me, Eunice. Try, won't you, to be quiet and calm. Don't get so wrought up over these things that are unpleasant but unavoidable. I don't underrate your grief or your peculiarly hard position. The nervous shock is enough to make you ill—but try to control ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... but one side of the truth. There is a tendency in some minds to underrate what is plain because all is not plain. For some minds the obscure has a fascination, apart altogether from its nature, just because it is obscure. It is a noble emulation to press forward and 'still to be closing up what we know not with what we know.' But neither in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... not allow ourselves to underrate the plain man's knowledge either of bodies or of minds. It seems, when one reflects upon it, a sufficiently wonderful thing that a few fragmentary sensations should automatically receive an interpretation which conjures up before the mind a world of real things; that, for example, the little ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... soon appear. 2d. She is now going into a controverted matter; and, though she is sincere and truthful, she is of necessity a partisan. Do not take her for a judge. You be the judge. 3d. But, as a judge never shuts his mind to either side, do not refuse her a fair hearing. Above all, do not underrate the question. Let not the balance of your understanding be so upset by ephemeral childishness as to fancy that it matters much whether you break an egg top or bottom, because Gulliver's two nations ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the main paragraph above, that it is a common error of our prosodists, to underrate, by one foot, the measure of all trochaic lines, when they terminate with single rhyme; an error into which they are led by an other as gross, that of taking for hypermeter, or mere surplus, the whole rhyme itself, the sound or syllable most indispensable ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of shreds and patches—bits of gold and bits of tinsel—things written in a hurry to be read in a hurry, and never thought of afterward—suggestive rather than reflective, at the best; and we must plead guilty to a too great proneness to underrate what our ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... "I think you underrate the value of that emotion," she said slowly, and a little awkwardly. She climbed another step and looked down once more upon the figure that was only partly lit up, standing in the street with a colorless face turned upwards. As Mary hesitated, a cab came by and Katharine turned and ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... pursued Godwin, with the modulated, moving voice which always expressed his genuine feeling, 'I seem anything but lovable. I don't underrate my powers—rather the opposite, no doubt; but what I always seem to lack is the gift of pleasing—moral grace. My strongest emotions seem to be absorbed in revolt; for once that I feel tenderly, I have a hundred fierce, resentful, tempestuous moods. To ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... tremble and wish that God's will could in any other wise be accomplished—it was this which caused Him so sharply and suddenly to rebuke Peter. Peter's words penetrated to what was lurking near at hand as His normal temptation. We may very readily underrate the trial and temptation of Christ, and thus have only a formal, not a real, esteem for His manhood. We always underrate it when we do not fully apprehend His human nature, and believe that He was tempted in all ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... people themselves from a realization of their needs, and progressively developed as they appreciate its worth. As Dean A. R. Mann recently said, "In dealing with rural affairs it has long been a common mistake to underrate the validity of the farmer's own judgment as to what is good for him." "Superimposed organizations are usually doomed to failure because they express the judgments of those without the community rather than those within whom they are ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... once, and almost as popular a preacher as Mark, and he did not underrate the difficulties. But it was his firm persuasion that, with tact and common-sense they were by no means insurmountable. What really distressed the old man was that perhaps Mark had been right in thinking that he personally could ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... dangerous supporters of the See of Rome' in public and political affairs. The ultimate failure of their diplomacy and intrigue over the whole field of modern statecraft inclines historians of the present epoch to underrate their mechanics of obstruction, and to underestimate the many occasions on which they did successfully retard the progress of civil government and intellectual freedom. It were wiser to regard them in the same light as fanatics laying stones upon a railway, or of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Underestimation. — N. underestimation; depreciation &c. (detraction) 934; pessimism, pessimist; undervaluing &c. v.; modesty &c. 881. V. underrate, underestimate, undervalue, underreckon[obs3]; depreciate; disparage &c. (detract) 934; not do justice to; misprize, disprize; ridicule &c. 856; slight &c. (despise) 930; neglect &c. 460; slur over. make light of, make little of, make nothing of, make no account of; belittle; minimize, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... knew if his head was empty, his pocket was not. He might not be clever, or have much stability of character, but oh, how many things which made life pleasant he possessed! She who had had them, and had lost them, was not one to underrate the ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... hour contributes something to obliterate, which soon become unintelligible by time, or degenerate into caricature, the chronicle of scandal, the history-book of the vulgar." It seems, strangely enough, to have been the fashion among the, in comparison with Hogarth, puny academicians of that day, to underrate that great painter, that moral painter. We really should pity the infatuated prejudice of the man, who could see in the deep tragedy, the moral tragedy, "Marriage a la Mode," any humorous exuberance; or not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... by no means the least beautiful. It is too much the fashion to underrate the artistic value of the less pretentious forms of needlework, and especially of flat ornament, which has, nevertheless, its own very important place in decoration. As for geometric pattern, that is quite beneath consideration—it is so mechanical! ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... is of some importance. I do not underrate the value of kindness and love in any system of government, whether in the household, the school, the stable, the menagerie, or in civil society. But love is not the basis of government. Obedience is yielded to authority, and authority is based on right and power. The child who complies ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... lack the will and purpose to live it out. And this is because the thought of truth and goodness excites no such strength of feeling as that of some lower gratification. We cannot perhaps overrate the value of intellect; we certainly underrate the value of emotion and feeling. "Knowledge puffeth up, love buildeth." It does not require great intellect, it does require intense feeling to be a hero. We slander the emotions by calling people emotional because they are always talking about their feelings; ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... merely present in the spirit: Germany was present in the flesh. Without any desire to underrate the exploits of the English or the Orangemen, I can safely say that the finest touches were added by soldiers trained in a tradition inherited from the horrors of the Thirty Years' War, and of what the old ballad called "the cruel wars of High Germanie." An Irishman I know, ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... where his services can avowedly be best utilized. This statement is true of Chamberlain. He was, as the Times put it, "the Carnot of the moment, the organizer of Liberal victory." [Footnote: Neither Sir Charles Dilke nor Mr. Chamberlain would, however, have desired to underrate the great share in organizing the victory of Mr. Adam, the principal Liberal Whip in the House of Commons, whose services were generally considered to have been very insufficiently recognized by Mr. Gladstone.] ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... not underrate the psychic intensities introduced into sleep by these remnants of waking life, especially those emanating from the group of the unsolved. These excitations surely continue to strive for expression during the night, and we may assume with equal certainty that the sleeping state renders impossible ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... pillow-lace, was glad to hear me read the letter aloud more than once. It recounts—how modestly, and almost as a matter of course!—his late successes. And yet!—does he, in writing to these old people, purposely underrate his great good fortune and seeming happiness, not to shock them too much by the contrast between the delicate enjoyments of the life he now leads among the wealthy and refined, and that bald existence ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... from me, therefore, to underrate the value of Aryan and Semitic scholarship for a successful prosecution of the Science of Language. But while doing full justice to the method adopted by Semitic and Aryan scholars in the discovery of the laws that regulate the growth and decay of language, we must not ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... for one who has rowed fifty races with pleasure to underrate, far less to disparage, mere rowing; but still we maintain that for the encouragement of pure manliness, and the varied capacities useful in a sailor's life, one punt chase is far better ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... again. "That is what they believe we will say, kinsman, and so underrate them. By our customs, yes, they are cowards. But what care they for our judgments? Did we think of the salkars when we used them to force the lagoon? No, they were only beasts to be our tools. So now it is the same with us, except that we know what they intend. And we shall ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... The question once deliberately decided that peace is no longer consistent with national honor or national safety, the dread alternative must be accepted with all its hazards and all its horrors. To organize only in anticipation of certain and speedy success, to despise and underrate the enemy, to inquire with how small an army and how limited an expenditure the war can be carried on, is as unstatesmanlike as it is in flat defiance of all historical teaching. But if we carry our folly still farther in the same direction,—if we fail to take into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... were ever ready most zealously to assist in the promotion of their mental and social improvement, and they joyfully hailed every opportunity presented to them of enriching their minds by pure and wholesome knowledge. 'An Israelite,' they said, 'cannot underrate the value of knowledge. Every page in our history proves the reverse. Our ancestors, from the earliest period of that history, have been remarkable for their zeal to uphold science and literature as the greatest and holiest acquisitions. ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... her time in conversation—if those could be called conversations in which one of the talkers insisted upon a monopoly of attention. It would be more accurate to describe them as monologues, with occasional interpolations of assent on the part of the listener. We have no wish to underrate their charm, though, from the reports transmitted to posterity, they would hardly seem to have deserved the very warm eulogy pronounced by the physician, who says,[25] "Her conversations lasted ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... have impressed the spirit of his own personality deeply upon the minds of multitudes of men, than to have composed most of those works which the world is said not willingly to let die. Nor, again, is to say that this higher renown belongs to Mr. Carlyle, to underrate the less resounding, but most substantial, services of a definite kind which he has rendered both to literature and history. This work may be in time superseded with the advance of knowledge, but the value of the ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... standard of the Cross over the ramparts of sin and idolatry in Africa? Surely we cannot concede that the light of the Crescent is greater than the glory of the Cross, that there is less constraining power in the Christ of Calvary than in the Prophet of Arabia? I do not think that I underrate the difficulties in your way when I say that you young men are holding in your hands golden opportunities which it would be madness and folly to throw away. It is your grand opportunity to help build up a new South, not on the ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... that he will; and Mr. W. S. Caine, whose prediction in this matter I cannot underrate, warns Mr. Gladstone that to dissolve again will bring on him redoubled failure,—an ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... to be with a much maligned branch of a certain profession, that it needs two of its members in a district to make its exercise profitable, it is not for me to say; but it is seldom found that competition is accompanied by any very amicable feeling in the competitors, or by a disposition to underrate the value of the merchandize which each has to offer for sale. Accordingly, great was the rivalry, constant the feuds, and unintermitting the respective criminations of the Erictho and Canidia of Pendle,[33] who had opened shops for the vending of similar contraband commodities, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... ones," Mrs. Hare resumed. "That is grief—great grief; I would not underrate it; but, believe me, it is as nothing compared to the awful fate, should it ever fall upon you, of finding your children grow up and become that which makes you wish they had died in their infancy. There are times when I am tempted to regret that all my treasures are not in ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... insignificant atom in the great inevitable mass of disapproval which any marked liking for Quisante (May shrank from even thinking of stronger terms) must arouse. She had far too much understanding of the disapproval and far too much sympathy with it to underrate the probable extent and depth of it; to a half of herself she was with it, heart and soul; to a half of herself the impulse that drove her towards Quisante was something hardly rational and wholly repulsive. What purpose, then, did Mrs. Baxter's ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... come to different statistical conclusions. Dean Milman ("Hist. of Christianity," vol. ii. p. 341) when deliberately weighing opposite opinions, says cautiously, that "Gibbon is perhaps inclined to underrate" the number of the Christians. He adds: "M. Beugnot agrees much with Gibbon, and I should conceive, with regard to ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... on my hearth, Thou in those island mines didst slumber long; But now thou art come forth to move the earth, And put to shame the men that mean thee wrong: Thou shalt be coals of fire to those that hate thee, And warm the shins of all that underrate thee. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... this was an important election. Yes, the effect upon his Majesty's Government and upon the Liberal Party for good or ill from this election cannot fail to be far-reaching. There are strong forces against us. Do not underrate the growing strength of the Tory reaction now in progress in many of the constituencies in England. I say it earnestly to those who are members of the Labour Party here to-day—do not underrate the storm which is gathering ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... are on the subject of the New England poets a word about the present misunderstanding and tendency to underrate them may not be out of place. Because it is growing to be the consensus of opinion that the two greatest poets America has produced are Whitman and Poe, it does not follow that the New-Englanders ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... of the war, and before the distinction was thus partially effaced, the comparison involved very different elements. In our general military inexperience, the majority were not disposed to underrate the value of specific professional training. Education holds in this country much of the prestige held by hereditary rank in Europe, modified only by the condition that the possessor shall take no undue airs upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... of de Spain's condition unsettled her resolution. Tales enough of his bloodthirstiness, his merciless efficiency, his ever-ready craft and consummate duplicity were familiar to her—most of them made so within the last three days—for no one in her circle any longer professed to underrate the demonstrated resourcefulness of ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... that we are far more likely to underrate the originality of the Greeks than to exaggerate it, and we do not always remember the very short time they took to lay down the lines scientific inquiry ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... have found perfection. In the blindness of love, each raises the other to a standard of perfection which human nature can never attain, and each becomes equally annoyed on finding, by degrees, that they were in error. The reaction takes place, and they then underrate, as much as before they had overrated, each other. Now, if two young people marry without this violence of passion, they do not expect to find each other perfect, and perhaps have ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to me that neither of you is satisfied with himself— You underrate the service you have rendered, And think too highly of the god's reward: He deems it scarce sufficient recompense For your heroic deeds on ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... might, however, just as easily have been drawn out of human range altogether, and the results of such a contingency would have been exceedingly terrible. Indeed, you would not now be here to tell the tale. I need not alarm you on that score, but mention it as a warning you will not misunderstand or underrate after ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... these as much underrate the vigor and effect of the attack, as Sickles may overstate it. It is not impossible that some portion of the Eleventh Corps position was actually reached by these columns. The road down which the movement was made strikes the plank road but ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... Palace and found her waiting there for us. She got up and told me to ask Mrs. Evans whether she had had anything to eat—that the food was not very good. (This is a custom with the Chinese when entertaining, always to underrate the food.) She said that she would like to show Mrs. Evans her private apartments, so that she could form some idea of the way we lived, so she took Mrs. Evans to one of her bedrooms. She invited Mrs. Evans and Mrs. ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... docile and eager to learn. His interest embraces everything, and most of all what is foreign. He is disposed to admire everything foreign and to underrate what is his own. With foreigners it is just the other way. We Germans know about them, but they know absolutely nothing about us.—PROF. A. LASSON, D.R.S.Z., No. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... in her aid, they thereby submitted themselves to her sovereignty. Had such terms been proposed, they would have rejected them with disdain, and trusted for better to the moderation of their enemies, or to a vigorous exertion of their own force. We do not, however, mean to underrate those aids, which, to us, were doubtless valuable, on whatever principles granted: but we would show that they cannot give a title to that authority which the British Parliament would arrogate over us; and that they may amply be repaid, by our giving to the inhabitants of Great Britain such ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... nurslings (heaven knows it is not exorbitant in its requirements!); for although I well know how hard it is for a man of genius with a seriously underrated subject to maintain serene and kindly relations with the men who underrate it, and who keep all the best places for less important subjects which they profess without originality and sometimes without much capacity for them, still, if he overwhelms them with wrath and disdain, he cannot expect them to heap honors ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... to the Socialist: "You Underrate my Cause! While women remain a Subject Class, You never can move the General ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... eyes, the great loose shoulders and powerfully developed limbs might have told more careful observers than his fellow-students that underneath that calm exterior a latent power existed, which Landauer had best not underrate. ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... inch by inch, through the tournament to this final tie; and it had been a glorious fight so far. The Hussars, whose self-assurance had led them to underrate the strength of the enemy, were playing now like men possessed. The score stood at two goals all, and electric shocks of excitement tingled through ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... really delightful when transfused into some form of art. I have no desire to underrate the services of laborious scholars, but I feel that the use Keats made of Lempriere's Dictionary is of far more value to us than Professor Max Muller's treatment of the same mythology as a disease of language. Better Endymion than any theory, however sound, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... inaptly in the garments of all. It appears to me that there is reason in this answer, and that viewed in its light the criticism which constantly demands historic fidelity is both carping and narrow. I do not mean, however, to underrate historic accuracy in itself, or to depreciate that longing for completeness in every particular, which drives our modern painters to the East to study patiently for months the aspects of nature under its Oriental climate, with its peculiar ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... that weekly gathering meant to women who otherwise would not move outside their little treadmill of household labour, what uplifting, if seemingly futile grasps at the great outside of life? Let no one underrate the Women's Club until the years ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... not, perhaps, to the extent of stuffing with sawdust,—confined air is just as good,—but the walls and the floors, the roofs and the windows, should be made to prevent the escape of heat. He may think I underrate his scientific attainments, but it will do no harm to remind him that an air-tight house may be a very cold one. A man would freeze to death in a glass bottle, when a coarse, porous blanket would keep him comfortable. ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "I'm too old for you. I'm the son of a Jew, and a Houndsditch Jew at that. But I'm rich—what's called rich in my set—and when I marry I shan't keep my wife dependent on me. Ah! don't misunderstand me—yours is a rich manysided nature, and you're too intelligent to underrate the value of money. It means a wide life and lots of interests, books, pictures, music, travel, mixing with the men and women best worth knowing. You're ambitious, my dear, and as my wife you can build yourself up any social position you like. Farringay's ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... enough of his bloodthirstiness, his merciless efficiency, his ever-ready craft and consummate duplicity were familiar to her—most of them made so within the last three days—for no one in her circle any longer professed to underrate the demonstrated resourcefulness ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... an inferior class of readers, though they may sometimes decline a good thing because for one reason or another they believe it would not be liked. Still, even this does not often happen; they would rather chance the good thing they doubted of than underrate their readers' judgment. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that constant re-origination is the method of Nature, I do not overlook the element nor underrate the importance of Imitation. This it is that secures continuity, connection, and structural unity. By vital imitation the embryonic man assumes the features and traits of his progenitors. After birth the infant remains in the matrix of the household; after infancy the glowing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... prisoner the full benefit of their doubts. The prisoner had in fact admitted the main fact himself: and had said nothing tending to change the natural construction of it. He had simply endeavoured to underrate the importance of Harlech Castle, but that was of no consequence: a place, weak in itself, may be reputed strong; and, by encouraging people to rise in a period of general political ferment, may do all the mischief that could attach to the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... injustice done their services by this sentence, I beg to assure them that the sentiment is Cigarette's—not mine. I should be very sorry for an instant to seem to depreciate that "genius of command" without whose guidance an army is but a rabble, or to underrate that noblest courage which accepts the burden of arduous responsibilities and of duties as bitter in anxiety as they ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... inevitable mass of disapproval which any marked liking for Quisante (May shrank from even thinking of stronger terms) must arouse. She had far too much understanding of the disapproval and far too much sympathy with it to underrate the probable extent and depth of it; to a half of herself she was with it, heart and soul; to a half of herself the impulse that drove her towards Quisante was something hardly rational and wholly repulsive. What purpose, then, did Mrs. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... of East Tennessee, and our section will soon feel the effect of his hard blows. From among his own old partisan and religious sectarian parasites he will find men who will obey him with the fanatical alacrity of those who followed Peter the Hermit in the first Crusade. We repeat again, let us not underrate Brownlow." ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... very gladly do anything you wish. You underrate yourself, Amy. You have woman's highest charm. There is a stupidity of heart which is far worse than that of the mind, a selfish callousness in regard to others and their rights and feelings, which mars the beauty of some women worse than physical deformity. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... suffered greatly, so much so, that on two or three occasions, she had fallen into alarming fits,—a fact by no means agreeable to her owner, as he feared that the traders on learning her failing health would underrate her on this account. But Susan was rather thankful for these signs of weakness, as she was thereby enabled to mature her plans and thus to ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... endless psalm singing. What I want to do—with Miss Cook's permission—is to calculate the chances of her being sufficiently athletic to perform the tricks herself, without the aid of spirits. Does she not underrate her unaided powers in assigning a supernatural ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... greatness makes the smallness of all the other things. And so Hermione said, "the little that I have," and there was truth in it. And there was as vital a truth in the fact of her whole nature recognizing that little's enormous value to her. Not for a moment did she underrate her possession. Indeed, she had to fight against the tendency to exaggeration. Her intellect said to her that, in being so deeply moved by such a thing as the concealment from her by Vere of something innocent of which Emile knew, she was making a water drop into an ocean. Her ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... intellectual impotence and with the nullity of his legislative conceptions." Once he has rattled his revolutionary pedantry off, he no longer knows what to say.—As to financial matters and military art, he knows nothing and risks nothing, except to underrate or calumniate Carnot and Cambon who did know and who took risks.[3184]—In relation to a foreign policy his speech on the state of Europe is the amplification of a schoolboy; on exposing the plans of the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... state, whence go abroad the statutes he has framed, shall read again his earlier works, now rescued from the past to teach the young. Reporters on his words shall hang, from every window shall his sapient visage smile, and even the London Times shall think it worth the while to underrate him. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... to fall into the error of writers who underrate their readers' curiosity and intelligence, and so deluge them with comments and explanations, we will now simply relate what Wylie did, leaving you to glean his ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... back, or to swerve by one hair's breadth from the path which I have laid down for myself. It is well that I have seen all this"—and she pointed to the newspaper—"for it has given me a new view of the man. I shall not be so likely to underrate him now; and being forewarned ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... at the present time, is exposed to great dangers from within and without; the reins must be held very firmly in order to conduct the ship of state safely through the breakers, and I believe I am the man to do it. You see, count, I do not underrate my own importance. I know only too well that Austria needs me. Still, the plots and conspiracies that are merely directed against myself, make me laugh. For let me tell you, my dear little count, I really fancy that my person has nothing to fear either ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... if we forget this lurking bellicosity and admiration for hard blows in our own nature then we shall set about the task of making an end to it under hopelessly disabling misconceptions. We shall underrate and misunderstand altogether the very powerful forces that are against ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... once to San Francisco, or telegraph to her father and await him at San Jose? In either case a new fear of the precipitancy of her action and the inadequacy of her reasons had sprung up in her mind. Would her father understand her? Would he underrate the cause and be mortified at the insult she had given the family of his old friend, or, more dreadful still, would he exaggerate her wrongs and seek a personal quarrel with the major. He was a man of quick temper, and had the Western ideas of redress. Perhaps even now she was ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... annoyance. The situation was temporarily relieved, but the assistance thus afforded was no better than a plaster on a large wound. Here again we find Flinders accurately and fully informed: Decaen did not underrate his "dangerous" potentialities. "The ordinary sources of revenue and emolument were nearly dried up, and to have recourse to the merchants for a loan was impossible, the former bills upon the French treasury, drawn it was said for three millions ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Chuang was not disposed to underrate the numbers of the Mahayana for he says that the monks of ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... the savages, he joined on the most equal terms—each man was, for the time, his own captain; and when the leader was chosen—for the pioneers, with all their personal independence, were far too rational to underrate the advantages of a head in the hour of danger—each voice was counted in the choice, and the election might fall on any one. But, even after such organization, every man was fully at liberty to abandon the expedition, whenever he became ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... who has rowed fifty races with pleasure to underrate, far less to disparage, mere rowing; but still we maintain that for the encouragement of pure manliness, and the varied capacities useful in a sailor's life, one punt chase is far better ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... an advantage to me in some ways to have a lady for my wife; but I should have no difficulty in purchasing that advantage, even with my present means, which I expect to increase largely in the course of some years. Do you not underrate your daughter's personal qualities when you assume that it was her position that induced me to seek ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... it then, let's see, let's see,' I reached it out to him. He stretched down over the banisters, and took it; holding out his palm hollowed, as if 'twas some little paltry stone that might otherwise fall and be lost. It nettled me to have him thus underrate our treasure, even though he had never seen it, and so I plumped it down into his hand as if it were as big as a pumpkin. Now the hall was a dim place, being lit only by a half-circle of glass over the door, and so I could not see ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... requires some other contribution from each individual, besides the particular duties of his profession. And, if no such liberal intercourse be established, it is the common failing of human nature, to be engrossed with petty views and interests, to underrate the importance of all in which we are not concerned, and to carry our partial notions into cases where they are inapplicable, to act, in short, as so many unconnected units, displacing ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... You will not misunderstand me, because nobody knows better than a Minister how tremendous is the debt that he owes to the permanent officials of his department. Certainly I have every reason to be the last man to underrate that. Well, any of you may be rapidly placed in a position of real command with inexorable responsibilities. I am speaking in the presence of men who know better than I do, all the details, but it is true that one of you in a few years may be placed in command of a district and have 1,000,000 ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... from a queen is a command, and Elizabeth would have felt bound to obey this summons, but she was sick when it came. At least she was not well, and she was not much disposed to underrate her sickness for the sake of being able to travel on this occasion. The officers of her household made out a formal certificate to the effect that Elizabeth was not able to undertake ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of the foot.] You wouldn't underrate your power if you had seen him, heard him, about an hour ago—[mockingly] after he had discovered ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... said he, "and you do not wholly guess wrong; the fact will be of use to me in my defence. Perhaps, however, you underrate my friendly sentiments, which are perfectly genuine. I have a respect for you, Mr. David, mingled with awe," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a very contemptible science indeed. Hence, in estimating the real rank of any art or science, it is necessary for us to conceive it as it would be grasped by minds of every order. There are some arts and sciences which we underrate, because no one has risen to show us with what majesty they may be invested; and others which we overrate, because we are blinded to their general meanness by the magnificence which some one man has thrown around them: thus, philology, evidently the most contemptible of all ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... has been said, I would not have it understood that I rail at, or deride, or impeach the honesty of the men who tried to help "Dodd" out of the sad condition into which he had fallen. Neither would I underrate the value of religion, in such experiences, nor impugn its power to save sinking souls from death. But I cannot help reiterating the fact that multitudes of young men have drifted on to the rocks of infidelity as "Dodd" ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... attempt by the conditions laid down for this Chair. I gather—and my own perusal of the poem and of much writing about it confirms the belief—that it has been largely over-praised by some critics, who have thus naturally provoked others to underrate it. Such things happen. I note, but without subscribing to it, the opinion of Vigfusson and York Powell, the learned editors of the "Corpus Poeticum Boreale," that in the "Beowulf" we have 'an epic completely metamorphosed in form, blown out with ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... whelpage that you smile at I would have you throb with. You underrate the firstlings of the heart, the rose and white blossoming, the call upon the senses and the readiness to respond and to fulfil, to give and to take, to be and make happy—the great pride and utter abandon which is young love. At fifteen, ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... Cross over the ramparts of sin and idolatry in Africa? Surely we cannot concede that the light of the Crescent is greater than the glory of the Cross, that there is less constraining power in the Christ of Calvary than in the Prophet of Arabia? I do not think that I underrate the difficulties in your way when I say that you young men are holding in your hands golden opportunities which it would be madness and folly to throw away. It is your grand opportunity to help build up a new South, not on the shifting sands of ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... little directly about the problem of modern Ulster, not because I underrate its importance, which is very great, but because I have some hope that my arguments up to this point may be perceived to have a strong, though indirect, bearing upon it.[67] The religious question I leave to others, with only these few observations. It is impossible to make out a historical case ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... called upon to teach the freedmen, or to keep their position as leaders of fashion. A husband would trammel them. If they did marry, they would take the very foolish advice of a contemporary, and go through life with an indignant protest at its littleness. Let such women know that they underrate the married state, its powers and its opportunities. There are no loftier missions than can there be carried out, no nobler games than can there be played. When we think of these objections, coming, as they have to us, from high-spirited, earnest ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... experiments, and their achievements were prophetic. The political philosopher may trace in their errors, trials, and successes, the lessons afforded by experience for the instruction of nations. The rapid advance of modern colonisation tends to underrate the first efforts of our predecessors. The first colonial boat-builder founded a great commercial navy; the first shepherd held in his slender flock a ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... intercept it, but again I was unfortunate. Like all great organizers I was, however, prepared for failure, and had a series of alternatives prepared, one or the other of which must succeed. You must not underrate the difficulties of my undertaking, or imagine that a mere commonplace assassination would meet the case. We must destroy not only Monsieur Caratal, but Monsieur Caratal's documents, and Monsieur Caratal's companions also, if we had reason to believe that he had communicated his ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from youth to manliness run toward the types of maturity. The mind in its reaches toward strength and completeness creates a heart-sympathy—which in its turn craves fulness. There is a vanity too about the first steps of manly education, which is disposed to underrate the innocence and unripened judgment of the other sex. Men see the mistake as they grow older; for the judgment of a woman, in all matters of the affections, ripens by ten years ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... (half by touch, indeed) at her pillow-lace, was glad to hear me read the letter aloud more than once. It recounts—how modestly, and almost as a matter of course!—his late successes. And yet!—does he, in writing to these old people, purposely underrate his great good fortune and seeming happiness, not to shock them too much by the contrast between the delicate enjoyments of the life he now leads among the wealthy and refined, and that bald existence of theirs in his old ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... experiments, a discontented underrating of past traditions, than a meek acquiescence in their supremacy. What is our present condition? We have few poets of the first rank, few essayists or reflective writers, few dramatists, few biographers. I do not at all wish to underrate the immense vitality of our imaginative faculties, which shows itself in our vast output of fiction; but even here we have few masters, and our critics know and care little for style; they are entirely preoccupied with plot and incident and situation. What we lack is true ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... officers man by man for their gallantry and fidelity. Now for the first time (and that he could have remained ignorant of it so long speaks for the passionate unanimity with which the Gauls had risen) he learnt from prisoners the fate of Sabinus. He did not underrate the greatness of the catastrophe. The soldiers in the army he treated always as friends and comrades in arms, and the loss of so many of them was as personally grievous to him as the effects of it might be politically ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... foregoing narrative I have not attempted to conceal or underrate our eagerness to get home. It is a feeling common to all soldiers when their term of service is drawing toward its close, and distant be the day when camp-life shall have such attractions for the American citizen as to make him indifferent ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... cunning, or Shylock of race-hatred; and he contrives to preserve all the characteristics of an ideal type amid surroundings of intensely prosaic realism, with which he himself, moreover, considered as an individual character in a specific story, is in complete, accord. If any one be disposed to underrate the creative and dramatic power to which this testifies, let him consider how it has commonly fared with those writers of prose fiction who have attempted to personify a virtue in a man. Take the work of another famous English humourist and sentimentalist, ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... open air, far from the studio, and afterwards co-ordinated. One may wish pictorial art to have higher ambitions; and one may find in the Primitives an example of a curious mysticism, an expression of the abstract and of dreams. But one should not underrate the power of naive and realistic observation, which the Primitives carried into the execution of their works, subordinating it, however, to religious expression, and it must also be admitted that the ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... old man with a persuasive voice, "mind that such imprudence would save our enemies, but would not save your father. Pray consider and answer me. Do you really think that your arguments would be stronger than Sarah Brandon's? You cannot so far underrate the diabolical cunning of your enemy. Why, she has no doubt taken all possible measures to keep your father's faith in her unshaken, and to let him die as he has lived, completely deceived by her, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... wish to become a priest. He took the name of William P. Matthews, but among his white associates he is known as Bill Nix. He has tried several occupations and is now an Indian doctor. The author was inclined at first to underrate Mr. Matthews's accomplishments and stock of information, but subsequently changed his opinion of him, as he obtained much that agreed with what had been furnished by members of other tribes in former years. ...
— Osage Traditions • J. Owen Dorsey
... courage which made Nelson our starry admiral. Would he be given the ghost of a chance now of putting that gift at his country's disposal? I do not think he would, and I do not think he would because we underrate gifts and exceptional qualities, because there is no quickening appreciation for the exceptional best in a man, and because we overvalue the good behaviour, the sound physique, the commonplace virtues ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... "No, I am not afraid of him, but I don't underrate him. The men look up to Torrini as a sort of leader; he's an effective speaker, and knows very well how to fan a dissatisfaction. Either he or some other disturbing element has recently been at work among the men. There's considerable grumbling in ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... have no conception of the villany done under all these sharing agreements. But forewarned forearmed. Think of some way of baffling this invariable fraud. Ask a knowing printer some way. Do anything but underrate the danger. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... are not so aisy schooled, By slanders bought wid Saxon goold; They'll find, who think us so aisy fooled, How much they underrate us. Then up, mavrone! and take your stand, The layder of the Faynian band, And King you'll soon be of the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... this revolt of the Giljyes was found to be, we are led to suspect that both Sir W. Macnaghten and Sir A. Burnes were misled, probably by the Shah's government, very greatly to underrate its importance and its danger. The force under Colonel Monteath,[16] which in the first instance was sent to suppress it, was so small that it was not only unable to penetrate into the country it was intended to overawe or to subdue, but it was immediately attacked in its camp, within ten miles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... We must not underrate the enemy. He is powerful and cunning—and cruel and ruthless. He will stop at nothing that gives him a chance to kill and to destroy. He has trained his people to believe that their highest perfection is achieved by waging war. For ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the necessity of taking prompt measures for placing the city in a thorough state of defence. He had no fear, he said, of the ultimate triumph of Syracuse in the approaching struggle: only let them be on their guard, and not underrate the power of the enemy whom they would have to face. The words of Hermocrates, who enjoyed a high reputation for valour, patriotism, and sagacity, were not without their effect, and it was resolved that the generals ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... tribes victorious, To living thing may not concede thy meed and actions glorious; How oft thy noble head has woke thy valiant men to battle, As panic o'er their spirit broke, and rued the foe their mettle! Is there, thy praise to underrate, in very thought presuming, O'er crested chieftainry[120] thy state, O thou, of right assuming! I see thee, on thy silken flag, in rampant[121] glory streaming, As life inspired their firmness thy planted hind ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to establish this hypothesis of identity in race has given rise to a tendency to underrate the development of the ancient people of Mexico and Central America, and to lower the estimate of their attainments sufficiently to bring them within reach of close relationship to the wild Indians. The difficulty being reduced in this way, there follows an attempt to get rid of it entirely, and ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... before he had gained his later mastery of language. It is not unfairly characterized by Symonds as 'a tissue of pastoral tales, descriptions, and versified interludes, prolix in style and affected with pedantic erudition.' It is, however, possible to underrate its merits, and it would be easy to overlook its historical importance. Ameto is a rude hunter of the neighbourhood of Florence. One day, while in the woods, he discovers a company of nymphs resting by a stream, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... acquiesce in the arrangements made by the late Emperor. But the selfish rapacity of the King of Prussia gave the signal to his neighbours. His example quieted their sense of shame. His success led them to underrate the difficulty of dismembering the Austrian monarchy. The whole world sprang to arms. On the head of Frederic is all the blood which was shed in a war which raged during many years and in every quarter of the globe, the blood ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in a speech of Sir James Graham, that during the last twelve months pauperism had diminished, and trade and commerce had improved in the country because the price of wheat was low, Mr. Ward said that he was not going to underrate the benefit produced by an abundant harvest, but he believed that still greater benefit had been effected by the the liberal policy of government. The idea that there were any peculiar burdens on the land, was a fallacy peculiar to English gentlemen brought up in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... because calm and clear-sighted; he sees what can be done, and does it. This is often a thing of great simplicity, so that we marvel others did not see it. Now it has been done, and proved successful, many underrate its value, thinking that they also would have done precisely the same thing. The world is more just. It refuses to men unassailed by the difficulties of a situation the glory they have not earned. The world ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... his head was empty, his pocket was not. He might not be clever, or have much stability of character, but oh, how many things which made life pleasant he possessed! She who had had them, and had lost them, was not one to underrate the ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... impossible for the Confederates to defend so long a line of sea-coast. The South had lost rather than gained ground in consequence of their victory at Bull Run. For a time they had been unduly elated, and were disposed altogether to underrate their enemies and to believe that the struggle was as good as over. Thus, then, they made no effort at all corresponding to that of the North; but as time went on, and they saw the vastness of the preparations made for their conquest, the people of the Southern ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... cross trade-wind, no unexplained veering of the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day's sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew; but no doctoring of the social log-book could mislead ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Joanna Baillie, and Milman, and John Wilson exist. The City of the Plague[1816] and the Fall of Jerusalem [1820] are full of the best "materiel" for tragedy that has been seen since Horace Walpole, except passages of Ethwald[1802] and De Montfort[1798]. It is the fashion to underrate Horace Walpole; firstly, because he was a nobleman, and secondly, because he was a gentleman; but, to say nothing of the composition of his incomparable letters, and of the Castle of Otranto[1765], he is the "Ultimus Romanorum," the author of the Mysterious Mother[1768], a tragedy ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... attempting oratory and persuasion, which accomplishment he does not possess:—it is not in iron. We think the more precious metal will beat him when the broader conflict comes. But such an adversary is not to be underrated. I do not underrate him: and certainly not he me. Had he been born with the gifts of patience and a fluent tongue, and not a petty noble, he might have been for the people, as knowing them the greater power. He sees that their knowledge of their power must eventually come to them. In the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... men do not rightly understand either their store or their strength, but overrate the one and underrate the other. Hence it follows, that either from an extravagant estimate of the value of the arts which they possess, they seek no further; or else from too mean an estimate of their own powers, they spend their strength in small matters and never ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... intellect, but underrate his heart." Napoleon was very friendly; his wish to help the King went farther than his duty to follow French policy. He said: "Why should we not be friends; let us forget the past; if everyone were to attach himself to a policy of memories, two nations that have once been ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... struggle, fired at in front, sniped at from behind—and no one who saw what he had to do after he came home from Europe in meeting the great new problems which grew out of the war—will for a moment belittle the immensity of his task, or underrate his extraordinary endurance, ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... that our military draft has been one whit too great. Our great folly hitherto has been to underrate the power of the enemy. In the South every male who can bear arms is now either bearing them or otherwise directly aiding the rebellion. When the sheriffs of every county in the seceding States made their returns to their Secretary of War, they reported one million four ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... without the knowledge of any of those who were so eager to keep her out of the country, seemed impossible; but then in diplomacy it was often the impossible things which happened. He was too astute a man to underrate the undoubted ability of De Froilette. There were few men who probed more accurately the likely trend of future events, or who were quicker to recognize opportunities and seize them than the Frenchman, and Lord Cloverton argued that he was far too clever a man to tell such an unlikely ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... philosophers have been investigating the countless mysteries which present themselves to every earnest mind; but the arcana are as inscrutable now as ever. I do not wish to discourage you, Beulah; nor do I desire to underrate human capabilities; but, in all candor, this kind of study does not pay. It has not repaid me—it has not satisfied Hartwell, who went deeper into metaphysics than anyone I know, and who now has less belief of any sort than anyone I ever wish to know. ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... has been given schools to develop brain power, and I do not underrate their value. He has nearly entered into his domain as far as the material forces are concerned, but there is a moral and spiritual element in humanity which eludes his grasp in practically everything he undertakes. This lack ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... prairie travellers sometimes endure from want of water. But people who live snugly at home, surrounded by springs, and wells, and streams, with cisterns, and reservoirs, and pipes, and hydrants, and jets, and fountains, playing at all times around them, are prone to underrate these sufferings; in fact, too prone, might I not say, to discredit everything that does not come under the sphere of their own observation? They will readily believe that their cat can open a door-latch, and their pig can be taught to play cards, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... position on one of the illustrateds; and then I can always turn dealer," he said, uttering the monstrous proposition, which was enough to shake the Latin Quarter to the dust, with entire simplicity. "It's all experience, besides," he continued; "and it seems to me there's a tendency to underrate experience, both as net profit and investment. Never mind. That's done with. But it took courage for you to say what you did, and I'll never forget it. Here's my hand, Mr. Dodd. I'm not your ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be the last to underrate the part which the self-assertion of the individual has played in the evolution of mankind. However, this subject requires, I believe, a much deeper treatment than the one it has hitherto received. In the history of mankind, individual self-assertion ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... wish to underrate the great service you have rendered me," she said coldly, "and I shall always be your debtor for it; but I can not help asking how you came to be standing under the cedars at this hour ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... million of our kind, and to at least the temporary wretchedness of a whole community,—I do not deny to be in some sort natural; because, when people see a political object which they ardently desire but in one point of view, they are apt extremely to palliate or underrate the evils which may arise in obtaining it. This is no reflection on the humanity of those persons. Their good-nature I am the last man in the world to dispute. It only shows that they are not sufficiently informed or sufficiently considerate. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Gentleman's Magazine, 1758, p. 498. Malartic, Journal du Regiment de Bearn. Levis, Journal de la Guerre en Canada. The French notices of the affair are few and brief. They admit a defeat, but exaggerate the force and the losses of the English, and underrate their own. Malartic, however, says that Marin set out with four hundred men, and was soon after joined by an additional number of Indians; which nearly answers ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... good reason. An officer belonging to a British man-of-war would call you out for questioning his claim to the epithet. But I think you underrate your skill with the small-sword. I've seen you doing very well with that ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... have inserted it as an extract from a letter to me from a celebrated author and divine. I have put in about nascent organs. I had the greatest difficulty in partially making out Sedgwick's letter, and I dare say I did greatly underrate its clearness. Do what I could, I fear I shall be greatly abused. In answer to Sedgwick's remark that my book would be "mischievous," I asked him whether truth can be known except by being victorious over all attacks. But it is no use. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... and a good third, to these two fine and subtle studies of modern English life. It is one of those poems which, because they seem simple and superficial, and can be galloped off the tongue in a racing jingle, we are apt to underrate or overlook. Yet it would be difficult to find a more vivid bit of genre painting than the three-panelled picture in this ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... quickly, "you underrate Professor Keredec's shrewdness. His plans are not so simple as you think. He knows that my cousin Louise never obtained ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... you underrate the value of that emotion," she said slowly, and a little awkwardly. She climbed another step and looked down once more upon the figure that was only partly lit up, standing in the street with a colorless face turned upwards. As Mary hesitated, a cab came by and ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... be careful not to underrate the real value of the Peruvian system; nor to suppose that the quipus were as awkward an instrument, in the hand of a practised native, as they would be in ours. We know the effect of habit in all mechanical operations, and the Spaniards bear constant testimony to the adroitness ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... instinct that made him underrate the feat he had performed, for he would have been so glad to have her feel under the slightest obligation to him; but as far as her perceptions were concerned, the beauty of his sentiment was lost, for when he said that the thing that he had ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... of modest scruples! You underrate yourself, Everett. You are the very man for a clergyman, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... for ourselves, it is never wise to be unjust to others. To deny valor in the enemy we have conquered is to underrate our victory; and if the enemy be strong enough to hold us at bay, much more to conquer us"—she hesitated—"self-respect bids us seek some other explanation of our misfortunes than accusing him of qualities inferior to ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... This feeling did not grow out of any hostility to any man, but simply out of a desire for Republican success. In other words, I endeavored to take an unprejudiced view of the situation. Under no circumstances would I underrate the ability and influence of Mr. Blaine, nor would I endeavor to deprecate the services he has rendered to the Republican party and to the country. But by this time it ought to be understood that I belong to no man, that I am ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... I come now to a subject which, perhaps, ought to have been my first. How glad I was to get your letter from Britain! I was afraid of the ocean, afraid of the coast of the island. The other parts of the enterprise I do not underrate; but yet they inspire more hope than fear, and it is the suspense rather than any positive alarm that renders me uneasy. You, however, I can see, have a splendid subject for description, topography, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... thing. The highest monuments are built piece by piece. Step by step we mount the pyramids. Be bold—be resolute when the clouds gather, difficulties are surmounted by opposition. Self-confidence, self-reliance is your capital. Your conscience the best monitor. Never be over-sanguine, but do not underrate your own abilities. Don't be discouraged. [Transcriber's Note: The original text reads 'Nintynine'] Ninety-nine may say no, the [Transcriber's Note: The original text reads 'hundreth'] hundredth, yes: take off your coat: roll up your sleeves, don't be afraid of manual ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... very close to the common people. He had slept on the ground with his soldiers, fared at table with the swineherd's family, tilled the soil with the farmer folk. His heart went out to humanity. He did not overrate the average mind, nor did he underrate it. He had faith in mankind, and knew that at the last power was with the people. He did not say, "Vox populi, vox Dei," but he thought it. Therefore he set himself to educating the plain people. He prophesied a day when all grown men would be able to read and write, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Do you underrate the good sense of yours, if, in far more than half the things appertaining to daily life, the wisest men say, 'Better leave them to the women'? But you're ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... opinions of relatives as to a man's powers are very commonly of little value; not merely because they sometimes overrate their own flesh and blood, as some may suppose; on the contrary, they are quite as likely to underrate those whom they have grown into the habit of considering like themselves. The advent of genius is like what florists style the BREAKING of a seedling tulip into what we may call high-caste colors,—ten thousand dingy flowers, then one with the divine ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... beasts"! We suspect that the Doctor, disgusted with the "twaddle" that has undoubtedly been talked in all ages about the "magnanimity" of the "noble" lion and his "terrific aspect," has been led unintentionally to underrate him. In this land we have opportunities of seeing and hearing the lion in his captive state; and we think that most readers will sympathise with us when we say that even in a cage he has at least a very grand and noble aspect; and that, when about to be fed, his intermittent growls and small ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... this case, my friend; but do not imagine that I underrate my little niece. My remark was to the effect that I do not see that she does more, though I have no manner of doubt that her pretty little head thinks a great deal more. Now we will get up ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... selected for publication in these volumes possess a value, as examples of the art of public speaking, which no person will be likely to underrate. Those who may differ from Mr. Bright's theory of the public good will have no difficulty in acknowledging the clearness of his diction, the skill with which he arranges his arguments, the vigour of his style, the persuasiveness of his reasoning, and above all, the perfect candour ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... "well equipped and provisioned;" and he stated, as the result of personal observation, that England could not be too energetic in, its measures of resistance. He had done something with his little fleet, but he was no braggart, and had no disposition to underrate the enemy's power. "God make us all thankful again and again," he observed, "that we have, although it be little, made a beginning upon the coast of Spain." And modestly as he spoke of what he had accomplished, so with quiet self-reliance did he ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Tyrconnell, broken down with physical suffering and mental anxiety, feebly concurred in his opinion. They accordingly departed for Galway, leaving the city to its fate, and, happily for the national reputation, to bolder counsels than their own. De Boisseleau did not underrate the character of the Irish levies, who had retreated before twice their numbers at the Boyne; he declared himself willing to remain, and, sustained by Sarsfield, he was chosen as commandant. More than ten thousand foot had ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... two. Now the pendulum has just reached the other extreme. We've swung back once more into our silly dream. Oh, Maraton, it's true enough that we have great problems to face sociologically! Don't think that I underrate them. You know I don't. But every time I sit and talk to you, I have always at the back of my mind that other fear. . . . Have you ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... eccentricities of life. This is knowing that a man's heart is to the left and not in the middle. This is knowing not only that the earth is round, but knowing exactly where it is flat. Christian doctrine detected the oddities of life. It not only discovered the law, but it foresaw the exceptions. Those underrate Christianity who say that it discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy. In fact every one did. But to discover a plan for being merciful and also severe— THAT was to anticipate a strange need of human nature. For no one wants to be forgiven for a big sin as if it were ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... impression on the child's soul of a mother's purity. I seem to have a vision of one of those women whom the world knows not of, silent, deep-hearted, loving, whom the coarser and more practically efficient jostle aside and underrate for their want of interest in the noisy chitchat and commonplace of the day; but who yet have a sacred power, like that of the spirit of peace, to brood with dovelike wings over the childish heart, and quicken into life the struggling, slumbering ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... succeeds, not simply because of the superior address and sagacity which education gives him, though that, no doubt, has much to do with it; not altogether because his habits of life are better, though we would not underrate their value; but equally because the culture of the brain gives a finer life to every red drop in his arteries, and greater hardihood to every fibre which is woven into his flesh. If it is not so, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... overrate my influence, and underrate the Prince's judgment, if you imagine aught save personal merit would weigh with him. Your son shall have every opportunity of deserving his notice, but whether it be favourable or not must depend on himself. If you desire more, you must ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
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