Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Overestimate   Listen
noun
Overestimate  n.  An estimate that is too high; as, an overestimate of the vote.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Overestimate" Quotes from Famous Books



... meeting of the Tile Club, in which the subject of drawing for Scribner's Monthly was first mooted, and I do not believe I overestimate the importance that the position of the club, taken at that time, has had and still has—not as a club, for it was dissolved some years back—in the influence its personal art has wielded upon the printed pages ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith

... very wide; the plays are well-nigh infinite, and as varied as life itself. No one can estimate the value of them. Given right toys and surroundings, the young child has an almost perfect school. It is marvellous how well he learns, Preyer does not overestimate the facts when he says the child in the first three or four years of his life learns as much as the student in his entire university course. In the making of mud pies and doll dresses, sand-pile farms and miniature roads, tiny dams and water-wheels, whittled-out boats, sleds, dog-harnesses, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... that I may be pardoned if I appear to overestimate the remarkable mental capacity and power of comprehension and discrimination which my pupil possesses, I wish to add that, while I have always known that Helen made great use of such descriptions and comparisons as appeal to her imagination and fine poetic ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... himself was, at this period, from being able to give any but the evasive answer he actually did give to the searching philosophical questions put by his youthful admirer. But it is not easy, especially in the light of Isaac Hecker's subsequent experiences, to overestimate the influence which this new presentation of our Saviour had upon the development of his mind and character. For reasons which we have tried to indicate by a brief description of some of his life-long interior traits, the ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... schoolmaster to bring the vernacular languages to literary accomplishment. They could not have helped imitating it, if they would; and they did not think of avoiding imitation of it, if they could. It modified, to a very large extent, their grammar; it influenced, to an extent almost impossible to overestimate, the prosody of their finished literature; it supplied their vocabulary; it furnished models for all their first conscious literary efforts of the more deliberate kind, and it conditioned those which were more or ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... precept, the proportions and harmonies of the virtues, and manifesting the unapproached beauty and majesty of the gentler virtues,(4) which in pre-Christian ages were sometimes made secondary, sometimes repudiated with contempt and derision. We cannot overestimate the importance of this teaching by example. The instances are very numerous, in which the fitness of a specific mode of conduct can be tested only by experiment; and Jesus Christ tried successfully several experiments in morals ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... among the general population, it is very difficult to speak positively. The invert himself is a misleading guide because he has formed round himself a special coterie of homosexual persons, and, moreover, he is sometimes apt to overestimate the number of inverts through the misinterpretation of small indications that are not always conclusive. The estimate of the ordinary normal person, feeling the ordinary disgust toward abnormal phenomena, is also misleading, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... may be superstitious and unscriptural, as indeed they are, but they are quite distinct from a belief in the necessity of a human priest to give the sacraments their virtue. And, without going to such lengths as this, men may overestimate the efficacy of the sacraments, to the disparagement of prayer, and preaching, and reading the Scriptures, and yet may be perfectly clear from the opinion which makes this efficacy depend immediately on a human administrator. ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... crucifixion. Rome was also a favorite resort of pilgrims, chiefly as the site of the graves of the great apostles, while many flocked to the tomb of Saint Martin of Tours. Meanwhile, wrote Henry C. Sheldon in a "History of the Christian Church," there were emphatic cautions against an overestimate of the value of pilgrimages. The eminent Greek Father, Gregory of Nyssa (332-398), said that change of place ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... letters I have received from correspondents unknown to the world of authorship, but writing from an instinctive impulse, which many of them say they have long felt and resisted. One must not allow himself to be flattered into an overestimate of his powers because he gets many letters expressing a peculiar attraction towards his books, and a preference of them to those with which he would not have dared to compare his own. Still, if the homo unius libri—the man of one book—choose ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the ax. Our civilization has originated from many small things. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the ax in advancing civilization. The stone axes, easily blunted and broken, could have made but little impression on the vast forests of pine, oak, and beech, covering the greater part of Britain and the continent in the Neolithic ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... the United States, after other men had tried and failed, to that great but ill-starred revolt against Victorian pedantry, formalism and sentimentality which began in the early 90's. It would be difficult, indeed, to overestimate the practical value to all the arts in America of his intellectual alertness, his catholic hospitality to ideas, his artistic courage, and above all, his powers of persuasion. It was not alone that he saw clearly what was sound and ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... morale, playing a part difficult to overestimate. They provide a basis for evaluating discipline. A study of the history of the State may prove valuable in estimating the present condition in this respect; a nation or command which may be classed as a veteran ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College

... you overestimate my service to him, possibly. I dare say the boat could have picked him ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... that guilt clinches its gripe upon the heart, and claims it for its own. Then, and not before, sin is actually felt and acknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by repentance, grows a thousand-fold more virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it considered, also, that men often overestimate their capacity for evil. At a distance, while its attendant circumstances do not press upon their notice, its results are dimly seen, they can bear to contemplate it.... In truth, there is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... 491. erroneous assumptions, erroneous data, mistaken assumptions, incorrect assumptions (error) 495. V. misjudge, misestimate, misthink[obs3], misconjecture[obs3], misconceive &c. (error) 495; fly in the face of facts; miscalculate, misreckon, miscompute. overestimate &c. 482; underestimate &c. 483. prejudge, forejudge; presuppose, presume, prejudicate[obs3]; dogmatize; have a bias &c. n.; have only one idea; jurare in verba magistri[Lat], run away with the notion; jump to a conclusion, rush to a conclusion, leap to a conclusion, judge ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... from a Southern plantation, he at once takes a name as the first step in liberty—the first assertion of individual identity. A woman's dignity is equally involved in a life-long name, to mark her individuality. We can not overestimate the demoralizing effect on woman herself, to say nothing of society at large, for her to consent thus to merge her existence so ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... to me as a conversationalist, As you wrote in your note you appreciate my sensible conversation I am afraid you overestimate me. I have a friend who is really brilliant, and can converse eloquently upon any subject. May I bring him ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger

... will submit it to Mr. Gifford, and to whomsoever you please besides. With regard to the question of copyright (if it ever comes to publication), I do not know whether you would think three hundred guineas an overestimate, if you do you may diminish it. I do ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... judge the number but to find it hard to do so, and knowing from experience that the larger the number the harder it is to judge he seemed to reason conversely that the more effort it takes to judge the more points there are, and hence he would overestimate the number. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... plugged a hole at first base which had defied the efforts of several predecessors to stop and it helped make a brilliant infield, for it gave the youngsters something they were not afraid to throw at. In giving credit for the work of Griffith's infield, the inclination is to overestimate the worth of the new stars. But there was a tower of strength at short in George McBride, who has been playing steadily and consistently at that position for several seasons without being given one-tenth the credit ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster

... disposed to blame the politicians and the business men. They govern the nation, it is true, but they do it in a rather absentminded fashion. Those revolutionists who see the misery of the country as a deliberate and fiendish plot overestimate the bad will, the intelligence and the singleness of purpose in the ruling classes. Business and political leaders don't mean badly; the trouble with them is that most of the time they don't mean anything. They picture themselves as very "practical," which in practice ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... precious minutes slipped by. Now that the enemy was near he wanted nothing but to drive on up to the end of the shaft, come out into that world wherever the shaft ended, then try to fight his way through to the great hall where he hoped to find Phee-e-al. And his haste made him overestimate the passing time; their journey had been swifter than ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... section of this city is in my opinion not so improbable a thing as you Bostonians imagine. The conflagration hazard in Boston's congested district is not a thing one can exactly calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity. . . . There's your ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... never have made that journey," she resumed. "Fond of the open as he was, he hadn't the physical stamina. He never spared himself; he was apt to overestimate his powers." ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... common to the lower animals and to savage or degenerate man alike—as against the intellect and the reasoned action of the will, he saw a menace to human attainment, to civilisation—in the best meaning of that word— to right reason and noble living, which it would be difficult to overestimate. These good people, while pouring contempt on the body, and even denying its existence, in point of fact thought and talked about little else. All of which struck him as not only very tiresome and very silly, but very dangerous. Modern Protestantism ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... more nor less than he is in this globe of ours or in ourselves. This is how, then, one must begin to withdraw oneself from the multitude into oneself. One ought to arrive at such a point to despise and not to overestimate every labour, so that, the more the desires and the vices contend with each other inwardly and the vicious enemies dispute outwardly, so much the more should one breathe and rise, and with spirit, if possible, surmount this steep hill. Here ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... know in his heart that woefully, from his own and his people's point of view, did he overestimate his strength at the outset. For the time he contents himself with the backwater of Nish for the scene of his oratory of conquest. His vainglorious words may well prove in their environment the prelude of a compulsory confession of failure, which is likely to come at a far briefer ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... Journalists have an excessive overestimate of their influence. They cannot, as Diana said, comparing them with men on the Parliamentary platform, cannot feel they are aboard the big vessel; they can only strive to raise a breeze, or find one to swell; and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... your opponent will retrieve even your best shots. Don't underestimate his ability or overestimate your shot-making prowess. Remember the speed of the ball actually gives your opponent more time to get to it. Always be ready for anything until the ball is actually ruled dead and the ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires

... word; but I sat by myself, and I matured, I think, the maddest scheme that ever entered a sane man's head. Desperate diseases, as everybody knows, ask for desperate remedies, and here I do not know how it was possible for anybody to overestimate the urgency of the case. Count Rossano has gone peacefully to his rest now this many a year, but I had learned to love the man with a loyal affection and esteem, the like of which I never felt for any human creature, except my wife and my own children. It made for a good deal in ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... trouble seriously, But not to gloom or whine; To never overestimate Our strength, or to decline To see this is no picnic, But do our earnest part With brain and muscles, newly trained— To keep a ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton

... overestimate the service which the Federal reserve system has already rendered to the country. It is necessary only to recall the chaotic condition of our banking organization at the time the Federal reserve system was put into operation. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge

... many of the strikers and their families it would be hard to overestimate. Small inconveniences were made light of. Families on strike themselves, or the friends of strikers would crush into yet tighter quarters so that a couple of boys or two or three girls out of work might crowd into the vacated room, and so have a shelter over their heads "till the strike was over." ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... We cannot overestimate the effect upon Jeremiah himself, and through him and Ezekiel upon the subsequent history of Israel's religion, of this drastic separation in 597 of the exiles of Judah from the remnant left in the land. After suffering for years the hopelessness of converting ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... combination of things which only really comes into view in actual warfare. The special standpoint of a particular arm must be rejected as unjustified, and the departmental spirit must be silenced. Care must be taken not to overestimate the technical and material means of power in spite of their undoubted importance, and to take sufficient account of the spiritual and moral factors. Our age, which has made such progress in the conquest of nature, is inclined to attach too much importance ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... one-syllable word when he can think of a longer one No satisfaction in being a Pope in those days Not afraid of a million Bedouins Not bring ourselves to think St John had two sets of ashes Old Travelers One is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare Only solitary thing one does not smell in Turkey Oriental splendor! Original first shoddy contract mentioned in history Overflowing his banks People talk so glibly of "feeling," "expression," "tone," Perdition catch ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

... overestimate the originality of the Cortrights' seaside garden, and even after your intimate description, it contained several surprises in the shape of masses of the milkweeds that flourish in sandy soil, especially the dull pink, and the orange, about which the brick-red monarch butterflies ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... that neither in the city nor country are we likely to overestimate the influence of the press. The daily and weekly paper have a wide circulation among rural people and furnish a source of penetrating and persistent social influence all the more significant because the readers are little conscious of what they receive from their reading. ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves

... put it that way,—I'm sure I don't know; beyond that it embarrasses me horribly to have you overestimate me so. If any courage has been shown this night, it is yours ... But I'm forgetting again." He thought to divert her. "Where shall I tell the cabby to go this ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... overestimate the value of the insistence on the social aspect of human affairs as Mrs. Gilman has ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... North, speaks excitedly," said the elder gentleman; "yet I think she does not overestimate the unfortunate position in which your odd fancy places you. I know nothing of the reasons that have impelled you to this step; I only know that the popular opinion is that the cause is utterly inadequate. You are still young, with a future ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... and Physical Education. While outdoor games are not necessary to maintain health, yet we can scarcely overestimate the part that the great games of baseball, football, tennis, golf, and croquet, play in the physical development of young people. When played in moderation and under suitable conditions, they are most ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... said, that, "when the Lord wants anything done in this world, he makes a man a little wrong-headed in the right direction." With this goes the disposition to overestimate the importance of one's work and to push principles and theories towards extremes. The saying is true of some individuals at or before certain crises in affairs; it is not true of the great inevitable historical movements, any more than the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... The weaklings have to look out for themselves, receive ample warning in the disastrous obvious effects of the slightest imprudence. The robust, even the wariest of them, even the Henry Gowers, overestimate and overtax their strength. Gower's downfall was champagne. He could not resist a bottle of it for dinner every night. As so often happens, the collapse of the kidneys came without any warning that a man of powerful constitution would deem worthy of notice. By the time the doctor began ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government. When they found, after a short trial, that the confederacy of States, was too weak to meet the necessities of a vigorous and expanding republic, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... was chiefly in slender plumpness and bloom. But it served her purpose as no classic mould would have done. She did not overestimate it. But she was probably better satisfied with it than with most of those conditions of her life that people were always telling her were ideal. They spoke of her as the only child in a way that implied ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... had none of the advantages which even the poorest boys may now enjoy. But he achieved greatness by always making the best use of such opportunities as came in his way. He was not afraid of work. He did not give up to discouragements. He did not overestimate his own abilities. He was earnest and faithful in little things; and that, after all, is the surest way of attaining to great things. There is no man to whom we Americans owe a greater debt of gratitude. ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin

... contemptuously. "Probably also a bee. Who but a bee would overestimate human beings like that? Your Miss Cassandra, or whatever her name is, doesn't know her history. Those cities and towers and other human devices you speak of are none of them any good to us. Who would take such an impractical view of the world as you do? If you don't accept the premise ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels

... mere seed of this mighty growth, will become once more the purely technical concern of scientific men." [Footnote: The Times (London), Literary Supplement, June 2, 1921, p. 352. Professor Einstein said when he was in America in 1921 that people tended to overestimate the influence of his theory, and to under-estimate ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... years. The report of the Secretary of the Navy shows the saving in our naval expenditures which would result. The Senator from Alabama, Mr. Morgan, in his argument upon this subject before the Senate of the last session, did not overestimate the importance of the work when he said that 'The canal is the most important subject now connected with the commercial growth and progress of the ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... Can we overestimate the influence of these associations, of these Soldiers'-Aid Societies, rising up in every city and village, in producing just such a state of mind, in keeping the soldier one of us, one of the people? Five hundred thousand ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... suddenly paler, as if her heart, appalled by the apparition of some menace in his words, had summoned to its assistance all the blood in her face. And after a while she said: Babhru, thou art ill, and thy unfortunate affection not only makes thee overestimate my value, but even leads thee to alarm thyself and me, by creating imaginary fears. And moreover, come what may, the mischief, if any mischief is, is done, and the tongue that is thy bugbear is safe and at a distance in its owner's head, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown

... estimated about 4,500 square kilometers. This was probably too large an estimate, and it is undoubtedly an overestimate for the Bontoc culture area, the northern border of which is farther south than the border of the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... vigorous mind, her clear insight, and strong common-sense, made her quick to judge and discriminate. As Dinah knew, she very seldom made a mistake in her opinion of a person. Dinah's charitable nature was rather prone to overestimate her friends and acquaintances—"all her geese were swans." As Elizabeth often said, when she cared for any one she simply could not see their faults. "If we were all as blind as Dinah," her sister would say, "the world would be a happier place;" but all the same ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... the "Critical Review," a post which resulted in a fine of L100 and three months' imprisonment for a libel on Admiral Knowles. He died on October 21, 1771. Smollett wrote altogether five novels and a number of historical works and records of travel. It is impossible to overestimate his influence on novel-writing. Most of the great Victorian writers, especially Charles Dickens, owe ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... "You overestimate my worth and his interest. He is a man who lives in a world of his own and needs no society, save such as is afforded in his tasteful and elegant home. He loves books, flowers, music, paintings, and his dog! He is a stern ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... put several small relics in a row on the edge of the lower part of the big mahogany bookcase, and was counting on her fingers the names of the friends for whom they were intended. Her grief was sufficiently real to make her, perhaps, overestimate the number of those to whom such relics would be precious. A tender smile was on her lips at the recollection of an old soldier servant of Sir David's who had been with him in Egypt. She hesitated a moment between two objects—one, a good silver-mounted ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... ulcerate, may form in almost any part of the body, and the damage that occurs is considerable indeed. Various diseases result which the lay mind would not associate with syphilis, but it would be difficult to overestimate the resultant diseases that may occur in any organ ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health

... dogmatism, which gives us the secret of the enormous influence of Treitschke on his countrymen, as it explains the hypnotism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on a previous generation. I do not think it would be easy to overestimate the extent of that influence. It is true that in one sense Treitschke's political philosophy only expresses the Prussian policy, and that he did not create it. But when a political ideal is expounded with such clarity and such force, when it is propagated with such enthusiasm, ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... attain the Ultima Thule of the Greenland shore." Impressed with the impracticability of a direct journey across the main ice-pack, he decided to follow the shore-line, five men dragging a sledge, while Kane and Godfrey travelled by dog-team. He had been led by his resolute spirit to overestimate the physical strength of his men and himself, and the party broke down before it had even approached the Humboldt Glacier. Their enthusiastic leader was stricken with fainting spells and rigidity of limbs, but Kane would not admit his illness to be more than ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... embarrassing nature of this factor in the campaign are hard to overestimate. The insufficient number of horses and their debility have doubtless accounted {p.098} for much of the delay and seeming languor of action, which has appeared otherwise inexplicable; the utter weakness of the poor beasts having indeed been expressly alleged as the reason for failure of cavalry ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan

... treated me so much better than the Atlantic ever had that I am probably inclined to overestimate everything I saw on the voyage. It was the first trip at sea that ever gave me any pleasure. The huge vessels are in themselves a great comfort, and in the placid waters and the sliding down the rotund side ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... the most important. The victories by which the struggles between the European conquerors themselves were ended deserve lasting commemoration. Yet, sometimes, even the most important of them, sweeping though they were, were in parts less sweeping than they seemed. It would be impossible to overestimate the far-reaching effects of the overthrow of the French power in America; but Lower Canada, where the fatal blow was given, itself suffered nothing but a political conquest, which did not interfere in the least ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... a large proportion of medical students, much of the first session is wasted in learning how to learn—in familiarising themselves with utterly strange conceptions, and in awakening their dormant and wholly untrained powers of observation and of manipulation. It is difficult to overestimate the magnitude of the obstacles which are thrown in the way of scientific training by the existing system of school education. Not only are men trained in mere book-work, ignorant of what observation means, but the habit of learning from books alone ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... kinds to test the resources of the golfer. Now, however, that this question is raised, I feel it desirable to say without any hesitation that the majority of golfers possess vastly exaggerated notions of the effect of strong cross winds on the flight of their ball. They greatly overestimate the capabilities of a breeze. To judge by their observations on the tee, one concludes that a wind from the left is often sufficient to carry the ball away at an angle of forty-five degrees, and indeed sometimes, when it does take such ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... to overestimate the far-reaching influence of such a Council. An interchange of opinions on the great questions now agitating the world will rouse women to new thought, will intensify their love of liberty and will give them a realizing sense ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... sick or dying man, he says, "we overestimate the value of human life, and, besides, we in a measure usurp the place of Providence, when we believe we may save it by committing sin." In other words, Dorner counts falsifying with the intention of deceiving, even with the best of motives, a lie, and therefore a sin—never justifiable. ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull

... emphasized in the training of the colonial girl was manners or etiquette—the art of being a charming hostess. As Mrs. Earle says, "It is impossible to overestimate the value these laws of etiquette, these conventions of custom had at a time, when neighborhood life was the whole outside world." How many, many a "don't" the colonial miss had dinned into her ears! Hear but a few of them: "Never sit down at the table ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... from the question of a sterile abnegation, we must foresee that it may be important not to overestimate one's individual interests, to the visible detriment of ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi

... hope gentlemen will pardon the criticism, but you talk too much, and too many of you try to talk at once. My head is aching from the roar and din of your noisy orators. Gentlemen, what does it all amount to? You are talking about prohibition, but you overestimate your political strength. Disastrous failures attend upon all your endeavors to conquer existing evils by the votes of men alone. Give women the legal power to combat intemperance, and they will soon ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... difficult to overestimate the services that you have rendered to the state. We shall, at an early day, decide in what manner most fitly to reward them, and in the meantime you will remain in command of the ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty

... intimate knowledge of women clerks and secretaries in the City for the past twenty years, says that it is difficult to overestimate the poverty of a vast number of girls. Many of them are the chief breadwinners of the family. She knows of half a dozen cases of men of forty and a little older who are living on the earnings of their daughters; there may be two girls in the family, one getting 12s. ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... imagining that the young fellow with whom you have an engagement of marriage would be rendered inconsolable by the loss of you, when it would be made up to him by the possession of a fortune, perhaps you overestimate things." ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder

... experiments. It was here that the opposite of the hypothesis which I had presupposed suggested itself to me with surprising force. I found that just the ones who perceive the repetition least hate it most, and that those who have a strong perception of the uniform impressions and who overestimate their number are the ones who on the whole welcome repetition ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... witchery of him because they do not well know the fine art of approaching him. I would, therefore, be a doorkeeper, and throw some doors wide open, that men and women may unhindered enter. This essay aims to stand as a porter at the gate. We shall never overestimate Shakespeare, because we can not. Some men and things lie beyond the danger of hyperbole. No exaggeration is possible concerning them, seeing they transcend all dreams. Space can not be conceived by the most luxuriant imagination, holding, as it does, all worlds, and ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... unexpurgated, are often revolting to any sane mind, and have been proved to be untrustworthy even as a record of fact. But almost incredible baseness was coupled with extraordinary gifts, and it is impossible to overestimate Rousseau's influence upon the modern world, and upon its literature and its whole point of view and way of thinking. (Rousseau, biography: ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... student, but as a player and composer whose fame was gradually spreading throughout the country. So rapid had his progress been both on the organ and the pianoforte that he was even led to overestimate his own powers, and one day remarked somewhat boastingly to a friend that he could play any piece, however difficult, at sight without a mistake. The friend, disbelieving his statement, invited him to breakfast shortly afterwards, and placed ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... attracts, never repels? It is not only valuable in business, but also in every field of life. It makes statesmen and politicians, it brings clients to the lawyer, and patients to the physician. It is worth everything to the clergyman. No matter what career you enter, you can not overestimate the importance of cultivating that charm of manner, those personal qualities, which attract people to you. They will take the place of capital, or influence. They are often a substitute for a large amount of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... thus be seen that Christian missions in China are being conducted upon a large scale. It would be difficult to overestimate the silent and yet mighty energy represented by such work, steadily continued through a long series of years, and representing the life labours of thousands of devoted men and women and an annual expenditure of hundreds of ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... tendency among Mendelians and mutationists to overestimate the importance of experiments in comparison with reasoning, either inductive or deductive. Bateson, however, has admitted that Mendelian experiments and observations on mutation have not solved the problem of adaptation. It seems to be demanded, nevertheless, that characters must be produced experimentally ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... theories of Darwin and Wallace brought to a head and presented in a concrete shape the somewhat vague speculations as to development and evolution which had long been floating in the minds of naturalists. In the actual working out of Darwin's great theory it is impossible to overestimate the influence of Lyell. This is made abundantly clear in Darwin's letters, and it must never be forgotten that Darwin himself was a geologist. His training in this science enabled him to grasp the import of the facts so ably marshalled by Lyell ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... farm-rents being fixed by the value of the capital, and the latter being measured by the tax, to depreciate his real estate would be to reduce his revenue. On the other hand, it is equally evident that the same proprietors could not overestimate the value of their property, in order to increase their incomes beyond the limits of the law, since the tenants and farmers, with their old leases in their ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... a good one in every respect; it is not easy to overestimate either its delightfulness or its moral power. It is not possible for a great society to place before itself a more eminently Christlike purpose. It has been greatly honored of God in its results thus far. And no decently intelligent ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

... scarcely overestimate the value of sound eyes in the horse, and hence all diseases and injuries which seriously interfere with vision are matters of extreme gravity and apprehension, for should they prove permanent they invariably depreciate the selling price to a considerable extent. A blind horse is always dangerous ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... overestimate the act, my dear child. There was quite as much policy in it as magnanimity. I know men well: they are greater slaves to opinion than women; they have not half our moral courage, and not one of them can long confront the disapprobation of the world. From ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... these men," he said to Hurlstone significantly, "and do not overestimate your strength. Thank Heaven, no bones are broken, and you are only bruised by the fall. With a little rest, I think we can get along without laying the captain's medicine-chest under contribution. Our kind friend Mr. Brooks has had the lower ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... It is impossible to overestimate the durability of homespun materials. I have "flannel sheets" a hundred years old, the lightest, most healthful, and agreeable summer covering for children's beds that ever any one was blessed with. Cradle sheets of this thin, closely woven, white worsted stuff are not slimsy like thin flannel, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... in a review of the control of prostitution, an estimate in regard to the syphilization of a nation. The estimates are made on the most conservative figures, as, in the desire of the reviewer not to overestimate, he starts by figuring out the actual number of prostitutes in England, Wales, and Scotland to be only 50,000, when they were estimated, by those who had carefully studied the subject, as being more than double that number; the conservative estimate is, however, suitable for our purpose; so that ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... The Faerie Queene, the Don Quixote of Cervantes, the poems and novels of Scott, Grimm's and Andersen's Fairy Tales, much of Defoe and Swift, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake field, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner (he himself was very fond of that poem), and many other things, and I cannot overestimate the good they did me. His talks to me during our walks gave me, under the guise of pleasantry, not so much specific information concerning things (though that was not wanting), but—character; that is, the questions ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... within forty miles of the city; and in the city itself, it was said that the personal roll of Peter Poyas embraced a membership of six hundred names. More than one witness placed the conjectural strength of Vesey's forces as high as 9,000, but I am inclined to write this down as a gross overestimate of the people actually enrolled ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke

... overestimate the magnitude and difficulty of the work, nor the immensity of the credit which would justly be due to British rule ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... value to automobilism of this great trial one can hardly overestimate it. There is no place here for the freak machine or scorching chauffeur, such as one has found in many great events of the past. A great touring contest over such a course would be bound to have important results in many ways. The ordinary class of circuit is a very close ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... more and more apparent that the exact number of lives lost will never be known. Up to the present time the disposition has been to under rather than overestimate ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... "do not overestimate my services. Long years ago in our temples the condition of the state was represented in this manner. I have only disinterred that which later generations had in ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... however, are the most direct and valuable result of the antiseptic action by exclusion of air. The Exhibition Jury on Class 3, in their Report on this subject, speak thus warmly thereupon:—'It is impossible to overestimate the importance of these preparations. The invention of the process by which animal and vegetable food is preserved in a fresh and sweet state for an indefinite period, has only been applied practically during the last twenty-five years, and is intimately ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various

... is—How has it worked in practice? The method of voice production here recommended has given the writer advantages that it would be difficult to overestimate. Lungs naturally weak grew to three times their former size and strength; his voice increased in depth, richness and resonance; though constantly speaking in large churches for years, he has never known what hoarseness, sore throat or ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... real statesman as the vastest human Poetry. Ever to look beyond the present moment, to foresee the ways of Destiny, to care so little for power that he only retains it because he is conscious of his usefulness, while he does not overestimate his strength; ever to lay aside all personal feeling and low ambitions, so that he may always be master of his faculties, and foresee, will, and act without ceasing; to compel himself to be just and impartial, to keep order on a large scale, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... believe that although the business genius must have a good inheritance, yet the inheritance does not determine what its possessor shall make of himself. Many persons are inclined to overestimate the influence of inheritance in determining success in business. The folly of this attitude is every day becoming more and ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity. It is just here that the very highest society asserts its superior breeding. Among truly elegant people of the highest ton, you will find more real equality in social intercourse than in a country village. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... One can hardly overestimate the boon a man like Dr. Russel is to a district. Trust is a plant of slow growth with the natives, but they have learned to trust him entirely, and go to him in all their troubles as children go to a father. And he has a very real helpmate in his wife. I ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... this tests the prudence of men more severely, he was always ready to accept what the world and time brought him, so that he supported with an equable mind the good and the evil which Fortune sent him. In truth it is impossible to overestimate what art gains by good society, gentle manners, and modesty, joined with other excellent traits, especially when these emanate from the intellect and from superior minds. Thus everyone should render himself no less pleasing by his character than by the excellence of his art. At the end ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... cannot overestimate real intensity of feeling behind Irish question here. It is growing every day and is not at all confined to Irishmen. The passage of resolution of sympathy with almost unanimous vote in Senate last night is but a slight evidence of interest here. I wish ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... the panic-stricken animals ran amuck when they saw and felt the flames and charged wildly down the street, trampling under foot all who were in the way. One man was gored through and through by a maddened bull. At least a dozen persons', it is said, were killed, though probably this is an overestimate. One observer tells us that "the first sight I saw was a man with blood streaming from his wounds, carrying a dead woman in his arms. He placed the body on the floor of the court at the Palace Hotel, and then told me he was the ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... attitude must be taken toward autodidacts and dilettantes who always measure the value of their knowledge by the amount of effort they had to use in getting it, and hence, always overestimate their acquirements. It is to be observed that they assert no more than their information permits them to, and their personality is easily discoverable by the manner in which they present their knowledge. The self-taught man is in the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... of government and increased railroad facilities are doing wonders for our neighbors across the Rio Grande. The iron horse and steel rail are great promoters of civilization. It would be impossible to overestimate the importance of this branch of progress in the interests of both Mexico and the United States, by which means we are constantly becoming more and more intimately united. The Mexican Central Railroad ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... those who feel that female dignity is compromised by it, I have here omitted a woman's flippant overestimate of the number of women in London society who suffer from nervous disorders at the ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... efforts to achieve this end, and she really almost succeeds—at least she can reach a higher point on the trunk of a tree than any other dog of her size I know—say six feet; if the bark is rough, perhaps seven feet would not be an overestimate. Her attempts are unremitting—once the frenzy is on it is with the greatest difficulty that she can be separated, panting ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.

... or other, the strange and secret ways through which that Arch-ruler of Civilization, familiarly called "Money," insinuates itself into our thoughts and motives, our hearts and actions; affecting those who undervalue as those who overestimate its importance; ruining virtues in the spendthrift no less than engendering vices in the miser. But when I half implied my farewell to the character of a novelist, I had imagined that this conception might be best worked out upon the stage. After some unpublished and imperfect ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the knowledge acquired by his observations on the nature or operations of mind, he owes no new power over that which he surveys: in at least its direct consequences, his science is barren. It would be difficult, however, to overestimate its indirect consequences. It seems impossible that the metaphysical province should long exist blank and unoccupied in any highly civilised country, especially in a country of active and acquiring intellects, such as Scotland. If the philosophy ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... beginning of the Sherman campaign in Georgia, where I found a ward of eighty sick and wounded soldiers fresh from the battle of Resacea. My professional fitness for duties so grave and so large in extent was of a very questionable order, and I did not in the least overestimate it. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... one likely to overestimate the value of one's possessions, mental or physical? Are the pupils (and perhaps the teacher) likely to overestimate what is done in the socialized recitation? What things may ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... me. I get so that I fairly hate myself for the utter failure that I am, that at least I have been so far. I get to analyzing myself; I can't help it, and the result isn't pleasant. I've been doing so lately. I don't overestimate myself in the least, Elice girl. Practically, commercially, I'm a zero. I'm simply not built that way. If I'm ever of any use in the world, ever amount to anything whatever, it will be in an impractical, artistic way. Whether I'll ever win out so—oh, for light, for light!... ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... mean by coming here at this hour?" he demanded savagely. "You came here to warn me!—really, you overestimate my credulity!" ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... of Christopher Marlowe as a leader among English poets it would be almost impossible for historical criticism to overestimate. To none of them all, perhaps, have so many of the greatest among them been so deeply and so directly indebted. Nor was ever any great writer's influence upon his fellows more utterly and unmixedly an influence for good. He first, and he alone, guided Shakespeare into the right ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... to overestimate the value of these benefactions to men of talent and genius. Where would Wordsworth have been, what could he have done, without the gift bestowed upon him by Raisley Calvert! In America such assistance is oftener given in the more ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... of our civilization. Its supremacy and power it is impossible to overestimate; it enters every avenue of development, and it may be set down as the prime factor in the world's progress. Its utility and its universality are hand in hand, whether in the magnificent iron steamship of the ocean, the network of iron ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... It is impossible to overestimate the ethnologic importance of the materials thus obtained. They are invaluable as the genuine production of the Indian mind, setting forth in the clearest light the state of the aboriginal religion ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... poem in the English language, and valuable for that reason. While it is rather terrifying in some of its details its unreality saves it from harmful possibilities. Parents and teachers are inclined rather to overestimate the unpleasant consequences of reading terrifying things when they are of this character. Few, if any, children will read the story if it displeases them and those who do will not retain the disagreeable impression it makes for any great length ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... ship upon the hull of the half-destroyed frigate of that name. Had the whole amount necessary for her completion been given, the vessel would have been ready weeks before she was, under the dribblet system adopted. Then, indeed, it would be hard to overestimate her value; damage to shipping in Hampton Roads; or her ultimate effect upon ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... the case, his want of discrimination was rather due to an overestimate of Inductive proof than to an undervaluation of Mathematical Demonstration. That Mathematics, Astronomy, and Physics were more perfect Sciences than the others in point of precision, he distinctly affirms, pointing out that 'the relative perfection of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... balance their real importance against both the good and the bad qualities shown not only by the individual but by his brothers, sisters, parents, and other relatives. Conscientious sufferers from visible defects of any kind are apt to overestimate their importance. Moreover, many supposedly hereditary defects may equally well be the result of an unfavorable environment like that which caused similar defects in the parents. Under ideal conditions they might never appear at all. In such matters, too, the best ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various



Words linked to "Overestimate" :   approximation, value, overestimation, appraisal, overvaluation, overvalue, overrate, idea, estimate, overrating



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com