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More "Construe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Harrington to Prince Henry (brother of Charles I.) about Dr John Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1592, says that no one "could be admitted to primam tonsuram, except he could first bene le bene con bene can, as they called it, which is to read well, to conster [construe] well, and to sing well, in which last he hath good judgment." [The three bene's are ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... and when pressed to be more explicit, said: "You must take it as we received it." "But what did you mean to take?" asked Livingston. "I do not know," replied Talleyrand. "Then you mean that we shall construe it our own way?" said Livingston again, to which Talleyrand made final reply: "I can give you no direction. You have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and I suppose you will make the ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... look'd about, she did behold How over that same door was likewise writ, Be Bold—Be Bold, and everywhere Be Bold. Whereat she mused, and could not construe it; At last she spied at that room's upper end Another iron door, on which was writ— ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the Peace, especially in the country, surpasses all description, and it is so much the order of the day that all cases which are not too utterly flagrant are quietly reported by the newspapers, without comment. Nor is anything else to be expected. For on the one hand, these Dogberries do merely construe the law according to the intent of the farmers, and, on the other, they are themselves bourgeois, who see the foundation of all true order in the interests of their class. And the conduct of the police corresponds to that of the Justices of the Peace. The bourgeois may do what he will ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... happy for the revelling in brilliant pranks and conceits of a modern vein of composition. And in the elusive humor of the subject is not the least charm and fitness. Too much stress has been laid on the graphic purpose. There is always a tendency to construe too literally. While we must be in full sympathy with the poetic story, there is small need to look for each precise event. We are tempted to go further, almost in defiance, and say that music need not be definite, even ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... to understand whether we all construe the rule referring to the secrecy of our transactions alike. I am told that different constructions are placed upon it by different members, and would suggest the propriety of the PRESIDENT'S giving his views of ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... will say that too many young workmen use the lathe too much, and seem to depend on a fine looking lathe and handsome tools, and spend too much time in using the lathe and in decorating their bench with a fine display. But don't construe this as meaning that one can do nice work with a jack knife and handsaw, for I most certainly believe in a good and substantial set of tools, or I would not have taken so much space in speaking of them. Next, one must have a good bench, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... councillors, Fujiwara no Yoshitsugu, Fujiwara no Momokawa, and Fujiwara no Uwona. It was with the Fujiwara families that the responsibility rested chiefly, and the general conduct of the Fujiwara at that period of history forbids us to construe their apparent indifference in a wholly bad sense. Probably the simplest explanation is the true one: Koken herself ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... repeat to you that I cannot engage in an affair of honour with a thief. I knocked him down this morning, but that was in the heat of righteous anger. For fear that your report to him may lead Mr. Lapelle to construe my refusal to meet him day after to-morrow morning as cowardice on my part, permit me to make this request of you. Please say to him that I shall arm myself with a pistol as soon as I have reached my house, ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... confirmation from every recent decision of the supreme court of the United States, in which certain laws of individual states have been sustained, in cases where, to say the least, it was very questionable whether they did not infringe the provisions of the constitution, and where a disposition to construe those previsions broadly and extensively, would have found very plausible grounds to indulge itself in annulling the state laws referred to. See the cases of City of New York vs. Miln, 11th Peters, 103; Briscoe vs. the Bank of the ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... "In Grammar Schools, boys were made to construe their Latin into French."—Ibid. "Pueri in scholis, contra morem caeterarum nationum, et Normannorum adventu, derelicto proprio vulgari, construere Gallice compelluntur. Item quod filii nobilium ab ipsis cunabulorum crepundiis ad Gallicum idioma informantur. Quibus profecto rurales homines assimulari ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... This sentence altogether is difficult to construe, and Mr. Watters, in the "China Review," was the first to disentangle more than one knot in it. I am obliged to adopt the reading of {.} {.} in the Chinese editions, instead of the {.} {.} in the Corean text. It seems clear that only one person is ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... am translating the 'Oberon' of Wieland; it is a difficult language, and I can translate at least as fast as I can construe. I have made also a very considerable proficiency in the French language, and study it daily, and daily study the German; so that I am not, and have not ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... occasion would be sufficient to effect it. They will instantly take fire on such a declaration, proclaim the judgment of the Company in their favor, demand a reparation of the acts which they will construe wrongs with such a sentence warranting that construction, and either accept the invitation to the proclaimed scandal of the Nabob Vizier, which will not add to the credit of our government, or remain in his dominions, but not under ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... right, upon all doubtful points, to construe the charter in that manner which was most favorable to himself. But no interpretation was allowed inconsistent with the "Sacrosancta Dei" and the "Vera Christiana Religio"—the former implying a prohibition of the most wicked kind of blasphemy, as well as the desecration ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... prophecy has led some interpreters to construe it as, 'When a king over men is righteous... then it is as a morning,' etc. But surely such a platitude is not worthy of being David's last word, nor did it need divine inspiration to disclose to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Thy commandments,' he meant, 'The prevailing opposition is the reason why I, for my part, grasp Thy law more strongly.' The hostility of others evokes my warmer love. The thought, so understood, is definite, true, and important, and so I venture to construe it, and enforce it as containing a lesson ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was done at that little age, and it comprised this: "He got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and vice versa, construe and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, and many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in Comenius's 'Janua,' and had a strong ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... of a Greek proverb, he calls me downright ass." But while Boyle complains of these sprinklings of ink, he himself contributes to Bentley's "Collection of Asinine Proverbs," and "throws him in one out of Aristophanes," of "an ass carrying mysteries:" "a proverb," says Erasmus, (as 'the Bees' construe him.) "applied to those who were preferred to some place they did not deserve, as when a dunce was made ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... I remained a poor man, I had felt no jealousy; for I trusted in the promise we had exchanged and relied on your honesty in keeping your word. But, when I had perceived your new intention, something went wrong inside my brain, so that I began to construe all your former good as bad. I thought that from the first you had never intended to keep your word, and had brought me into the Klondike to get me out of the way, so that, possessed of the secret information which I had given you, you might steal a march on me, and set out for El Dorado ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... way!" grunted Netta. "Latin has a paralysing effect upon my brain. Instead of sharpening me it deadens my faculties. When I've been trying to construe a page of Virgil, my intellect ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... subject, would not be worth ink and paper; and I am, moreover, aware, that this reasoning may be abused. Any attempt to construe the purposes of Deity must be liable to the same misapplication. And, besides, it is not my design to go so far back; I seek not so much to excuse as to account for—less to justify than to analyze—the characteristics of the class before me. I ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... crowing twelve as loud as he can. It is therefore time for me to depart. I have briefly made you acquainted with the Emperor's intentions and desires, and your wise and fertile brain will know how to enlarge and construe. Farewell, Sir Stadtholder in the Mark, farewell, and may ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... infallibility. There are verses in the Mahabharata that are exceedingly difficult to construe. I have derived much aid from the great commentator Nilakantha. I know that Nilakantha's authority is not incapable of being challenged. But when it is remembered that the interpretations given by Nilakantha came down to him from preceptors ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... so construe the Law of Love and Service? Does it permit us to seek protection under false pretences; to say yes when we mean no; to kneel before a God we do not believe in; to accept immunity under a law we ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... bounds which they continually overleap. They define number, for instance, as a form, or inflection, and yet speak of nouns "plural in form but singular in sense," or "singular in form but plural in sense;" that is, if you construe them rigorously, plural or singular in form but singular or plural form in sense. They tell you that case is a form, and yet insist that nouns have three cases, though only two forms; and speak of the nominative and the ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... you found any friend who can construe That Latin account, t'other day, of a monster? If we can't get a Russian—and that story in Latin Be not too improper, I think ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... the player) 'reputed able, at my proper cost, to build a windmill. What though the world once went hard with me, when I was fain to carry my playing fardel a foot-back; Tempora mutantur, I know you know the meaning of it better than I, but I thus construe it; it is otherwise now; for my very share in playing apparel will not be sold for two hundred pounds.' 'Truly' (said Roberto) 'it is strange that you should so prosper in that vain practise, for that it seems to me your voice is nothing gracious.' 'Nay, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... same manner Hale insisted on paying for six loaves of sugar which the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury sent to his lodgings, in accordance with ancient usage. Similar cases of the judge's readiness to construe courtesies as bribes may be found in notices of trials and ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... letter: 50 It were a shame to call her back again, And pray her to a fault for which I chid her. What a fool is she, that knows I am a maid, And would not force the letter to my view! Since maids, in modesty, say 'no' to that 55 Which they would have the profferer construe 'ay.' Fie, fie, how wayward is this foolish love, That, like a testy babe, will scratch the nurse, And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod! How churlishly I chid Lucetta hence, 60 When willingly I would have had her ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... for brevity. He claims that "if the English book were printed in such paper and letter as the Latin is, it should not exceed the Latin in quantity," and that students "shall not find any more English than shall suffice to construe the Latin withal, except in such few places where the great difference of the phrases of the languages enforced me." Yet he believes that his version is not unnecessarily hard to understand, and he urges readers who have found it difficult to "read it ofter, in which doing you ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... have now invaded the frontier of the Colony, and as I construe my instructions from the government, it is my duty to march forward to ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... "Gentlemen, I'll let you construe your own contracts according to your consciences. I have one of my own to carry out. Mac Tavish has just handed me a jolt ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... the balance of the Prince to that of the worker. For the machinery of the city could not continue in operation a fortnight, before some accident requiring delicate repair work would put it partially out of commission. And the Yun-Yun was quick to resent anything it could construe as a slight on one ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... said that she had just met a lunatic who had alarmed her by fixing his attention upon herself, and speaking to her in a ruffian manner; and it was also true that she did sincerely regard him in that light. This led me at the time to construe the whole affair into a casual collision with some poor maniac escaping from his keepers, and of no future moment, having passed by without present consequences. But had she, instead of thus reporting her own erroneous impression, reported ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... witness of the bitterness, the tumult of my feelings, during this day; ever since you left me. You cannot conceive any thing more forlorn, more vacant, more anxious, than this weak heart has been and still is. I was terrified at my own sensations, and, with my usual folly, began to construe them into omens of evils; so inadequate, so disproportioned was my distress to the cause that ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... transcendental poets of the day—take him fresh from Alexander Smith, or Alfred Tennyson's Maud, or the Mystic of Bailey—and we will engage to find him at least ten passages in the first ten pages of Men and Women, some of which, even after profound study, he will not be able to construe at all, and not one of which he will be able to read off at sight. Let us take one or two selections at random from the first volume, and try. What, for instance, is the meaning of these four stanzas from the poem entitled ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... was gone. Still, such was the force of habit, that he never went without the Latin grammar in his pocket, and I have often watched him sitting down in the poultry-yard, fancying, I presume, that he was in his school. There would he decline, construe, and conjugate aloud, his only witnesses being the poultry, who would now and then raise a gobble, gobble, gobble, while the ducks with their quack, quack, quack, were still more impertinent in their replies. A sketch of him, in this position, has been taken by Sarah, and now hangs over ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... however, though it would be wrong to construe it as an omen of Divine wrath, cannot but have an injurious effect on the fruits of the earth. Let it be your care to see that the scarcity of this one year does not bring ruin on us all. Even thus was it ordained by the first occupant of our present ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... not let me add to your uneasiness," he resumed, "while I am attempting to alleviate it. Instruct me what I can do to show my esteem and respect, rather than permit me thus unguided, to rush upon what you may construe into insult and arrogance." ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... you would construe them," cries Partridge; "for Horace is a hard author, and I cannot understand as ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... then," said George, pointing out a passage in the volume, "what you think of these lines. My good uncle would call them gibberish. I am not sure that I can construe them; but when I was your age, I think I could—what ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from a violent paroxysm as starvation from a mortal shot, filled him and wrung him body and soul. The discovery had not been altogether unexpected, for throughout his anxiety of the last few days since the night in the churchyard, he had been inclined to construe the uncertainty unfavourably for himself. His hopes for the best had been but periodic interruptions to a chronic ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... been lost on the Provencal, who well knew how to construe the wind by the direction of straws, and saw at once, by the boldness of the populace, that they themselves were conscious of a coming tempest. "Par Dieu," said he, as he saluted Adrian, who, gravely, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... understanding is formed; and confuses their ideas of piety, by mixing them with so much heterogeneous matter. They only casually read, or hear read, the Scriptures of truth, while they are obliged to learn by heart, construe, and repeat, the poetical fables of the less than human gods of the ancients. And, as the excellent author of 'The Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion' observes, 'Nothing has so much contributed to corrupt the true spirit of the Christian institution, as that ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... clear and unequivocal in its terms, and no Supreme Court can indefinitely continue to construe it as meaning anything but what it says. This Court should be bombarded with suits until it makes some definite pronouncement, one way or the other, on the broad question of the constitutionality of the disfranchising ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... strange than true— That cloudy weather can construe Unto our thoughts a gloomy view, That all things ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... wailing for children, furnished heartrending sights, but no victim bore such physical marks as the most vivid imagination could construe into ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... boy can construe Homer, if he understands Horace, and can taste Virgil; but how seldom does he ask, or examine, or think whether he can restrain his passions,—whether he is grateful, generous, humane, compassionate, ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... admitted even if we construe Saxonicum as ravaged by Saxons, rather than occupied by Saxons—a construction which is so little natural, that I doubt whether it would ever have been resorted to if the language of Gildas had not been supposed to preclude the notion of any Saxon invasion ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... observations which I had to address you upon this paper; and having shown you that by the least liberal construction, no criminality of intention can be imputed to the author, how can I doubt of your acquittal? For it is your duty to construe the author's words so as to give them an innocent meaning if they will bear it, and not come to a conclusion of guilt from them unless you shall be convinced that they will not possibly admit of any other ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... to all military commanders, and I can see no good reasons why I, too, may not ask for it; and this simple concession, involving no public interest, will much soften the blow which, right or wrong, I construe as one of the hardest I have sustained in a ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... say. Now the business was not a pretty or a romantic one—it had something to do with leather—but it was extremely profitable, and as I looked forward to one day sharing all Jack's worldly goods I did not grumble at the leather. Not that Jack had ever yet said a word to me which I could construe into a downright offer. He had looked, certainly, but then with eyes like his there is no knowing what they may imply. They were dark blue eyes, and his hair was bright brown, with a touch of yellow in it, and his moustache was tawny, and his skin was sunburnt ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... country, birth, alliance, &c., ebb and flow with our conceit; please or displease, as we accept and construe them, or apply them to ourselves." Faber quisque fortunae suae, and in some sort I may truly say, prosperity and adversity are in our own hands. Nemo laeditur nisi a seipso, and which Seneca confirms out ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the native fairy tales; and a wise teacher led him later through Virgil and Terence and Plautus and the Italian poets in the same freedom of spirit. Withal, he never acquired any facility in Greek,[152] and, refusing to play the apprentice where he was accustomed to be master,[153] he declined to construe in a difficult tongue; read his Plutarch in Amyot; and his Plato, doubtless, in the Latin version. It all goes with the peculiar spontaneity of his mind, his reactions, his style; and it was in virtue of this ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... enough," he rasped on. "The police could only construe your visit to Moyne's flat as zeal on behalf of the bank. And it was safer, much more circumspect on your part, not to order the flat searched at once, but only as a last resort, as it were, after you had led the police to ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... depend upon honesty and confidence for their value, and are at a sad discount in hard times of fraud and corruption. Unprincipled men find means of evading the written agreement upon their face by ingenious subterfuges or downright repudiation. An arbitrary majority will construe the partnership articles to suit their own interests, and stat pro constitutione voluntas. It is true that the litera scripta remains, but the meaning is found to vary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... piece though written by a professed republican, I dared not declare myself the panegyrist of a nation, whose maxims were exactly the reverse of my own. More grieved at the misfortunes of France than the French themselves I was afraid the public would construe into flattery and mean complaisance the marks of a sincere attachment, of which in my first part I have mentioned the date and the cause, and which I was ashamed ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... then Master of Trinity. One of the subjects I had to take up was either the 'Amicitia' or the 'Senectute' (I forget which). Whewell, more formidable and alarming than ever, opened the book at hazard, and set me on to construe. I broke down. He turned over the page; again I stuck fast. The truth is, I had hardly looked at my lesson, - trusting to my recollection of parts of it to carry me through, if ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... had afterwards proof to the contrary, a coward; and matching myself against him I knew I would do the king's navy more credit than he. But I kept my thought to myself—and next day made a sad bungle, I remember, of my construe of Thucydides' account of the sea fight ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... been for days, nor indeed since the last conversation I have recorded. But her face, though it was now sensible, was pinched and white, and so drawn with mortal fear that I believed her dying, and sprang to her, unable to construe otherwise the pitiful look in her ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... dream and vision of the conceiving master-mason, some mediaeval Vilars or other unknown to fame, were for a few minutes flashed down through the centuries to an unappreciative age. Giles saw their eloquent look on this day of transparency, but could not construe it. He turned ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... faults and virtues, though at some times she rated their combination more reverently than at others. Truth to tell, she had known him well; her judgment, impelled by the suggestion of his possible love, had scanned him patiently. Yet now she owned herself at fault, unable to construe the manner of this action or assign a particular motive with which it was in harmony. It is by manner that the individual is revealed (for many men may do the same deed), and a friend who perforce must know a friend only by faith ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... mentioned Michael Angelo's poetry some time ago; it is the most difficult to construe I ever met with, but just what you would expect from such a man, shewing abundantly how conversant his soul was with great things. There is a mistake in the world concerning the Italian language; the poetry of Dante ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... of the language, when it refers to superior powers, has such a tendency to exaggeration, as to afford great facilities to those who would construe it ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... and swimming were remarkable; and a better rabbit-dog and more sagacious, courageous watchdog never lived. As to the languages, I will acknowledge he could speak none; but he understood English perfectly, and never failed to construe rightly any of Mr Clare's Latin addresses—much better than ever Walter could do. Indeed, Mr Clare's commands to and conversations with Ugly ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... unions are intended as guides for and restrictions upon the administrative officials, but in all cases the latter are given considerable latitude. The cost of the benefit, therefore, depends largely upon the strictness with which the officials construe the rules. In those unions where the injuries entitling to a benefit are not specifically defined, the officers have great discretionary power. Indeed, even if they have the best intention, it is in many trades often impossible ...
— Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions • James B. Kennedy
... there could be no genuine Fairfax; to-night he entertained many doubts of his former deductions. He found it possible to construe Dorothy's actions both ways. She was afraid to have him search out the man who had written her wedding certificate, perhaps because it was a fraud, or perhaps because there was a Fairfax somewhere, concerning whom ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... lecture in the Hall, I could not bear Meeke's superiority, and I tried to sit as far from him as I could, that I might not hear him construe." ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... manifested love and good-will toward his virulent enemies. How could Christ approve such malice? Truly he could not endorse it. Nor could he commend his enemies for crucifying him and putting him to death upon the cross without cause. No such conclusion may be drawn. The devil and his adherents must not construe the passage to mean license to heap all manner of torture and distress upon Christ and his saints as upon those who must not only patiently bear these things, unmoved by revengeful desires, but must render gratitude to their persecutors as if their acts were praiseworthy. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... case it is a severe strain upon common sense to construe the rules so as to prevent a quorum of the House from taking any proceedings at all required by the Constitution; and it is still more difficult to find any justification for holding that the special resolutions of this House ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... that thus Mr. Jerome would have the saving grace to admire and toady him. But Mr. Jerome showed no signs of doing anything of the sort; he treated him with an austere and distant politeness that Lord Ashbridge could not construe as being founded on admiration and a sense of his own inferiority, for it was so clearly founded on dislike. That, however, did not annoy Lord Ashbridge, for it was easy to suppose that poor Mr. Jerome knew no better. But Barbara annoyed him, for not only ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... a suspicious glance up and down the street. There was no one whom even the clever Henri Dubois could construe as an enemy—no one save some chattering Marseillais loitering around their doorsteps, and three girls huddled together in ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... hours of the morning are slipping away; we must construe our hieroglyphics without further palaver. The sleeper lies upon his side, his left hand resting near his face upon the pillow. Were he to move it ever so little during our examination, the history of years might be thrown into confusion. Nevertheless, we shall ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... were already withdrawn in consequence of the impressive warnings their commanding officer had received from the Department of War. It is hoped and believed that his Government will take a more dispassionate and just view of this subject, and not be disposed to construe a measure of justifiable precaution, made necessary by its known inability in execution of the stipulations of our treaty to act upon the frontier, into an encroachment upon its rights or a stain upon ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... returned to his room and made another frantic search—but they were nowhere to be found; and as he could not bring himself to receive his guests in his ordinary morning costume—which the Professor would probably construe as a deliberate slight, and which would certainly seem a solecism in Mrs. Futvoye's eyes, if not in her daughter's—he decided to put on the Eastern robes, with the exception of a turban, which he could not manage to wind round ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... much to decry. For after all, it must be allowed, that nothing could be justly urged against the English government, with respect to France, except the omission of a mere form, which other nations might interpret into an irregularity, but could not construe into perfidious dealing, as the French had previously violated the peace ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... from New York, her owner and master were justified in believing that, whatever else and theretofore happened, this simple, humane and universally accepted principle would not be violated. Few, at that time, would be likely to construe the warning advertisement as calling attention to more than the perils to be expected from quick disembarkation and the possible rigors of the sea after the proper safeguarding of the lives of passengers by at least full opportunity to take ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... in their person that every hostile weapon levelled against them was immediately turned into some agreeable present. Stones became balls of silk—arrows, flowers—swords, feathers, etc. Even so it is with Lady Placid. The grossest insult that could be offered she would construe into an elegant compliment; the very crimes of others she seems to consider as so much incense offered up at the shrine of her own immaculate virtue. I'm certain she thinks she deserves to be canonised for having kept out of Doctors' Commons. Never is ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... maintain, notwithstanding a recent act on the part of the Emperor, which some construe into the expression of unfavorable sentiments toward us. I allude to the appointment of Fronto, Nigridius Fronto, to be chief priest of the temple of the Sun, which has these several years been building, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... ungentlemanly!" He crumpled up my verses and tossed them into the waste-paper basket. "We had better get on with our Tacitus." And "Offensive!" I heard him muttering once more, as he picked up the book and found his place. I began to construe. His outburst had disconcerted me, and no doubt I performed discreditably: but glancing up in some apprehension after a piece of guess-work which even to me carried no conviction, I saw that again he was not ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... with the prodigious talents which we have. I have always had a regard for dunces,—those of my own school days were among the pleasantest of the fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest in life; whereas, many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by the yard, and construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble prig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before his ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Declaration of London and the general subject of contraband, Page was instructed to call the British Government's attention to the consequences which followed shipping troubles in previous times. It is hard to construe this in any other way than as a threat to Great Britain of ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... suppose a mind of the latter of our two classes, whose imagination is pent in consequently, and who takes its {41} facts 'hard;' suppose it, moreover, to feel strongly the craving for communion, and yet to realize how desperately difficult it is to construe the scientific order of nature either theologically or poetically,—and what result can there be but inner discord and contradiction? Now, this inner discord (merely as discord) can be relieved in either of two ways: The longing to read the facts religiously ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... completely liberate himself from the bonds of sloth, of worldly vanity, dissipation, and unworthy love, before he could step forth and walk steadily along the new road which had appeared to him. His ignorance was appalling. He could no longer construe a line of Latin, he had not for months opened a book; and as to Italian, he knew it no better than any Piedmontese street porter. His idleness, his habit of absolute vacuity, was even worse; his desire to shine before the frivolous women, the inane young men of Turin, nay, merely ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... way—'because he was in a foolish anxiety lest you might have vanished; I told him it was best that he should have the evidence of a very practical person's senses that you were really here and that he hadn't only dreamt it. And as we did know each other, you see—You will construe my behaviour ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... approached, the society found itself driven to the necessity of helping in this, too, by the fact that the present warden would furnish the men with only the same outfit as in summer, the under-clothes they might happen to have on at the time, added. And, in making out this summer suit, he would construe the letter of the law in the superlative degree, which says, "A suit of cheap clothing,"—he obtaining the cheapest, the most miserably poor. To illustrate, a man left prison in one of those suits, and, before walking a mile, was obliged to call and borrow sewing implements to repair them. The day ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... official oath to-day with no mental reservations and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules; and while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... To construe the expression "managing all their affairs," into a surrender of self government, would be, we think, a perversion of their necessary meaning, and a departure from the construction which has been uniformly put on them. The great subject of the article is ...
— Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, at January Term, 1832, Delivered by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall in the Case of Samuel A. Worcester, Plaintiff in Error, versus the State of Georgia • John Marshall
... convulsed, familiar with Teuton naivete. Then he dubiously shook his head. To Jim's unexpected discomfort the affair was regarded seriously. If he had not ejaculated this affront, something could be done. But now he had been guilty of what the Germans might rightfully construe as a voluntary indignity offered to the Imperial Secret Service in the performance of its highly responsible duties. If he wanted to avoid important trouble, the only simple and effective course would be to quit the country. He could leave that ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... merit and reward that God is obliged in strict justice (ex obligatione iustitiae), prior to and apart from any formal act of acceptance or promise on His part, to reward good works by the beatific vision. This view is scarcely tenable because there is no common basis on which to construe a relation of strict justice between the Creator and His creatures,(1311) and moreover St. Paul expressly teaches that "The sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... I entreat you, construe my gratitude into any sense of future favors,—no such thing; for whatever may be my success with you hereafter, I am truly deeply grateful for the past. Circumstances, into which I need not enter, have made me for some years past a resident in a foreign country, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... active, and excelled at football and the like all the lads of my age. I likewise began, what I had never done before, to take pleasure in the exercises of the school. I made great progress in Welsh and English grammar, and learnt to construe Latin. My master no longer chid or beat me, but one day told my father that he had no doubt that one day I should ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... evidence which proved Addison to be the author of this version? Was it a work which Tickell was incapable of producing? Surely not. Tickell was a Fellow of a College at Oxford, and must be supposed to have been able to construe the Iliad; and he was a better versifier than his friend. We are not aware that Pope pretended to have discovered any turns of expression peculiar to Addison. Had such turns of expression been discovered, they would be sufficiently accounted for by supposing Addison to have corrected ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... often called, rebukingly, "temper" is but the cordial and puissant vitality which contains all the elements that make temper the sweetest at last. Who amongst us, how wise soever, can construe a child's heart? who conjecture all the springs that secretly vibrate within, to a touch on the surface of feeling? Each child, but especially the girl-child, would task the whole lore of a sage deep as Shakspeare ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dear Theo., can't this be done a little oftener? You must, by this time, I think, have gone through Lucian. I wish you to begin and go through it again; for it would be shameful to pretend to have read a book of which you could not construe a page. At the second reading you will, I suppose, be able to double your lessons; so that you may go through it in three weeks. You say nothing of writing or learning Greek verbs;—is this practice ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... began to construe the words that I had read—"Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me"—in a different sense from what I had done before. For then I had no notion of any deliverance ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... surface of the proposition but the senator perceived in it all the opportunity their two modest accomplices of the boiler deck asked. That pair and their adherents—not followers—you wouldn't catch them leading—they and their gathering adherents would construe the landing of the players as an attempt to deliver them out of their hands and would undertake to seize and maltreat the actor, at least, the moment he should be off the boat. That they were likely to fail was little to the senator; there would be a tumult, so managed as to bring Hugh to the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... that he expects in future, to concert with thee in the affair of slavery. I herewith send thee some pamphlets, and in a confidence of thy goodness of heart, which by looking to the intention, will construe the freedom I have taken in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... blissed it all this livelong night; They took 't away, to vex me, maybe, And now they say I killed the child outright. And never shall I be glad again. They sing songs about me! 'tis bad of the folk to do it! There's an old story has the same refrain; Who bade them so construe it? ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... finally. "I am most grateful, and I am sure my people will construe it as yet another sign of the ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... our mistakes is that we confuse life and lifetime, and construe life to mean the span of life. In this conception the unit of measurement is so large that our concept of life evaporates into a vague generalization. Life is too specific, too definite for that. The quality of life may better be measured and tested ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... written hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs regular, and most of the irregular; got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin and vice versa, construe and prove what he read, began himself to write legibly, and had a strong passion for Greek. The number of verses he could recite was prodigious, and he had a wonderful disposition to mathematics. As to his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... "Forty Years on" is sung all over the world. But, when I went to Harrow, we were confined to the traditional English songs and ballads, and to some Latin ditties by Bradby and Westcott, which we bellowed lustily but could not always construe. E. E. Bowen's stirring, though often bizarre, compositions (admirably set to music by John Farmer) began soon after I entered the school, and E. W. Howson's really touching and melodious verses succeeded Bowens' some ten years after I had left. Other song-writers, of greater ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... inoffensive person who is no match for him. That is a piece of cowardice, and protest is more than justifiable. There is a fine true story of a famous head-master, who disliked a weakling, putting on a stupid, shy, and ungainly boy to construe, and making deliberate fun of him. There was a boy present, of the stuff of which heroes are made, who got up suddenly in his place and said, "You are not teaching that boy, sir; you are bullying him." The head-master ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which, as far as I could with truth, I did not scruple to bestow on his many superior gifts; and the next to conceive some chagrin that I should for a moment hesitate. The noblest natures, Louisa, are the most subject to pride, can the least endure neglect, and are aptest to construe whatever is not directly affirmative in their ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... character, I do not hesitate to take up her defence. Something presses heavily on her mind; what, I cannot surmise. But I will see her and find it out. Till then, wear your willow as gracefully as you do your laurels, and construe nothing to your disadvantage. This I ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... interior words, they too are subject to illusion; the enemy can form and counterfeit them. Or if they come from a good angel (for God Himself never speaks thus) we may mistake and misapprehend them. They are spoken in a divine manner, but we construe them in a human ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... the Scholar," cried Captain Westbury, laughing; and he called to a trooper out of the window—"Ho, Dick, come in here and construe." ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sport.— [EXEUNT.] So, now I have the keys, and am possest. Since he will needs be dead afore his time, I'll bury him, or gain by him: I am his heir, And so will keep me, till he share at least. To cozen him of all, were but a cheat Well placed; no man would construe it a sin: Let his sport pay for it, this is ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... First, What real Use or Advantage can this Translation be to the Publick? As for school-Boys and Learners, Bernard's and Hool's Translations, the great number of Notes, a School-Master, or their own Industry will well enough teach 'em to construe it. Men of Sense and Learning, they read it wholly for the Latin sake; therefore a Translation is of no use to them. Lastly, They won't fit our Stage; and consequently they are impertinent at best. To these we answer; First, As to School-Boys and Learners; ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... not wish to alarm his wife by calling her attention to this spectre, which he believed at her side, but he could not hide from her his agitation, which every movement of his caused her to construe as falsely ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... deliver the glorious message with which he is charged by the true Head of the Church. For a man thus minded, there is within the pale of the establishment no place. He has been at no college; he cannot construe a Greek author or write a Latin theme; and he is told that, if he remains in the communion of the Church, he must do so as a hearer, and that, if he is resolved to be a teacher, he must begin by being a schismatic. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it not been for the question of women's suffrage being agitated throughout the country at the time, we should not have heard a syllable of the Scottish women's franchise bill," a sneering admission which we willingly construe ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... away, labouring to construe some hideous dream of the past; half was in the present, cringing before some sickening reality. She remained so for perhaps ten seconds, and then—plucky girl that she was—she mastered herself, looked deliberately round and up with a circular glance, strangely in ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... election was held under it, my friends on the charter committee insisted that I should accept the Democratic nomination for City Attorney. Under the charter, the City Attorney was the legal adviser of all the city and county officials, and it was his business to define and construe this organic law, and the friends of the charter wished some one who was in sympathy with the instrument to give ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... and departments are selected and chosen from the army itself, or fresh from West Point, and too commonly construe themselves into the elite, as made of better clay than the common soldier. Thus they separate themselves more and more from their comrades of the line, and in process of time realize the condition of that old officer ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... sea of time toward the shore of the unknown eternity. Because the conception of capturing fishes in the Sea is at one time in the Lord's discourses employed to indicate the benevolent labour of the Gospel ministry, it does not follow that you are compelled to construe that conception in the same way wherever it occurs, although the circumstances manifestly render the application incongruous ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... each successive book sank me lower into darkness, until I had so vastly improved in ignorance, that I could myself have written a quarto upon it, which all the world should not have found it possible to understand. It should have taken three men to construe one sentence. I confess, however, to not having yet seen the writings upon this impracticable theme of Colonel Perronet Thompson. To write experimental music for choruses that are to support the else ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... different; now the congenital force of the tendency to perversion may be more decisive and at other times more influence may be exerted by the collateral increase of the same through the deviation of the libido from the normal sexual aim and object. It would be unjust to construe a contrast where a cooperation exists. The greatest results will always be brought about by a neurosis if constitution and experience cooperate in the same direction. A pronounced constitution may perhaps be able to ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... and the fair Shuttlecockiana), and her mother accepted in this blind obedience the text of her entire character. It is difficult for those who think very earnestly for their children to know when their children are thinking on their own account. The exercise of their volition we construe as revolt. Our love does not like to be invalided and deposed from its command, and here I think yonder old thrush on the lawn who has just kicked the last of her lank offspring out of the nest to go shift for itself, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Professor Bury, and Mr. E. M. Antoniadi. The meaning of [Greek: teleutaioi krotoi] is not clear. Various interpretations have been suggested; to read [Greek: brotoi], mortals, instead of [Greek: krotoi], and to construe [Greek: teleutaioi] adverbially, 'finally, O mortals!'; to understand a reference to the judgment day, 'O applauses given at the final judgment'; to take the phrase as equivalent to, 'O celebrities at (or to) the very ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... for nothing could have been more commonplace than the greeting exchanged. Even the fancy of fourteen years could not construe Constance's "Hello, old boy!" and Max's nonchalantly offered hand into the slightest foundation for a romance. So far as outward appearances went Max was much more affectionate towards the Colonel, who did not disguise his ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... not prove so helpful. One of them, though he has since become an energetic man of business on the Pacific Coast, was certainly not helped into his present position by his Latin; for of all the translations I have ever heard or read of, one of his was the worst. Being called to construe the first line of the Aeneid, he ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... since the death of her husband, who hated it, brought her boy to the camp at Rochelle, where he was received as the chief of the Huguenots. His culture was not extensive. He had learned to speak the truth, to ride, to shoot, to do with little sleep and less food. He could also construe a little Latin, and had read a few military treatises; but the mighty hours of an eventful life were now to take him by the hand, and to teach him much good and much evil, as they bore him onward. He ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fold, so that they should not infect and contaminate the good and the loyal. It was in this sense that St. Paul, the inspired Apostle, in the very first century of the Christian era, instructed Titus to construe and administer the law committed to his charge. After warning Titus that there are "many vain talkers and deceivers," St. Paul commands him "to rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in faith". He adds further: "These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke, with all authority". ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... Sir John Harrington to Prince Henry (brother of Charles I.) about Dr John Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1592, says that no one "could be admitted to primam tonsuram, except he could first bene le bene con bene can, as they called it, which is to read well, to conster [construe] well, and to sing well, in which last he hath good judgment." [The three bene's are of course ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... termed it; but the first look into Alice Greggory's blue-gray eyes had taught him the fallacy of that idea. In that very first meeting with Alice, he feared that he had revealed his secret, for she was plainly so nervously distant and ill at ease with him that he could but construe her embarrassment and chilly dignity as pity for him and a desire to show him that she had nothing but friendship for him. Since then he had seen but little of her, partly because he did not wish to see her, and partly because his time was so fully occupied. Then, too, in a round-about ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... the Coffee-house, I could not forbear reflecting with my self upon that gross Tribe of Fools who may be termed the Overwise, and upon the Difficulty of writing any thing in this censorious Age, which a weak Head may not construe into private Satyr ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Bible, and against laymen who sought edification from them. He says that "no prudent person will deny that there is need of many supplements and explanations from other writings" than the Bible, to the end, namely, that a person may construe from the German Bibles the true Catholic faith. Fact is, that faith is not in the Bible. This happened three years after the birth of Luther. (Kurtz, II, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... with French names and French authors: but my amazement reached its climax when Miss Temple asked Helen if she sometimes snatched a moment to recall the Latin her father had taught her, and taking a book from a shelf, bade her read and construe a page of Virgil; and Helen obeyed, my organ of veneration expanding at every sounding line. She had scarcely finished ere the bell announced bedtime! no delay could be admitted; Miss Temple embraced us both, saying, as she drew ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... thirteen pages; and the dedication (to that revered monarch, George IV) must have cost him no little study and correspondence. Walter Scott was called in council, and offered one miscorrection which still blots the page. In spite of all this pondering and filing, there remain pages not easy to construe, and inconsistencies not easy to explain away. I have sought to make these disappear, and to lighten a little the baggage with which my grandfather marches; here and there I have rejointed and rearranged a sentence, always ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is a severe strain upon common sense to construe the rules so as to prevent a quorum of the House from taking any proceedings at all required by the Constitution; and it is still more difficult to find any justification for holding that the special resolutions of this House adopted December 19th last, or the standing ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... I am not yet settled to any serious employment. The expectation of Coleridge not a little unhinges me, and, still more, the number of visitors we have had; but winter is approaching, and I have good hopes. I mentioned Michael Angelo's poetry some time ago; it is the most difficult to construe I ever met with, but just what you would expect from such a man, shewing abundantly how conversant his soul was with great things. There is a mistake in the world concerning the Italian language; the poetry of Dante and Michael Angelo proves, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... itself driven to the necessity of helping in this, too, by the fact that the present warden would furnish the men with only the same outfit as in summer, the under-clothes they might happen to have on at the time, added. And, in making out this summer suit, he would construe the letter of the law in the superlative degree, which says, "A suit of cheap clothing,"—he obtaining the cheapest, the most miserably poor. To illustrate, a man left prison in one of those suits, and, before walking ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... in the possession of a guaranteed construe, left behind by M'Turk, who had that day gone into the sick-house with a cold. Yet he was too wary a hand to ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... talents which we have. I have always had a regard for dunces,—those of my own school days were among the pleasantest of the fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest in life; whereas, many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by the yard, and construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble prig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before his ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... him up to finish construing Helen's speech. Whereupon all the other boys draw long breaths, and begin to stare about and take it easy. They are all safe; Arthur is the head of the form, and sure to be able to construe, and that will tide on safely till ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... lessons they should have prepared. The Sixth did not get off so easily. Dr. Litter, in his lofty solitude as head-master, had heard nothing of what had passed; nor was it until the Sixth took their places in the library and began to construe that his attention was called to the fact that something unusual had happened. But the sudden hesitation and blundering of the first "put on," and the inability of those next to him to correct him, were too marked ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... equality between merit and reward that God is obliged in strict justice (ex obligatione iustitiae), prior to and apart from any formal act of acceptance or promise on His part, to reward good works by the beatific vision. This view is scarcely tenable because there is no common basis on which to construe a relation of strict justice between the Creator and His creatures,(1311) and moreover St. Paul expressly teaches that "The sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... my people in the direction of Inverlochy, and there met with Ian of Glenroy, who had been out for intelligence. Argyle is moving upon Inverlochy with three thousand chosen men, commanded by the flower of the sons of Diarmid.—These are my news—they are certain—it is for you to construe their purport." ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... have been abused by both parties. As far as has come to my knowledge, you are misinformed. I have never seen or heard a sentence of blame uttered against you by the republicans; unless we were so to construe their wishes that you had more boldly co-operated in a project of a treaty, and would more explicitly state, whether there was in your colleagues that flexibility, which persons earnest after peace would have practised. Whether, on the contrary, their demeanor was not cold, reserved, and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Nor is it quite clear, whether Scythian usage is adduced to excuse the polygamy, or a marriage, which would be considered incestuous in other countries. The Latin version has carefully preserved the ambiguity, filiam Escam uxorem. I am not inclined to construe it 'his own daughter' though I have too little confidence in the uniformity of the grammatical idioms of the Byzantines (though Priscus is one of the best) to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth; but this difficulty has been removed. It is conceded in the report that the vestments, the use of which is now condemned, were in use by authority of Parliament in that year. Having that fact, you are bound to construe the rubric as if those vestments were specifically named in it, instead of being only referred to. If an act should be passed to-morrow that the uniform of the Guards should henceforth be such as was ordered for them by authority, and used by them in the ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... leaven of life; It lightens its doughy compactness. Don't always—the world with deception is rife— Construe what men say with exactness! I pity the girl, In society's ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... the war powers of the President; I study, and study, and cannot find them as absolute as the Lincolnites construe them. All that I read in the Constitution are the real war powers in the Congress, and the President is only the executor of those powers. The President must have permission for every thing, almost at every step—and has no right to issue decrees. He has no war powers over those of Congress, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... among the upper class, and indeed was fashionable among both ladies and gentlemen of rank. In this the court of Elizabeth set the fashion. The daughter of the duchess was taught not only to distill strong waters, but to construe Greek. When the queen was translating Socrates or Seneca, the maids of honor found it convenient to affect at least a taste for the classics. For the nobleman and the courtier an intimacy with Greek, Latin, and Italian was essential ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... what variety of little things affect the heart, and how surely they collectively gain it? If you have, you have made some progress. I would try a man's knowledge of the world, as I would a schoolboy's knowledge of Horace: not by making him construe 'Maecenas atavis edite regibus', which he could do in the first form; but by examining him as to the delicacy and 'curiosa felicitas' of that poet. A man requires very little knowledge and experience of the world, to understand glaring, high-colored, and decided characters; they are but ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... a hundred times; and when it is said that I am in favor of interfering with Slavery where it exists, I know that it is unwarranted by anything I have ever intended, and as I believe, by anything I have ever said. If, by any means, I have ever used language which could fairly be so construe (as, however, I believe I never have) I now correct it. So much, then, for the inference that Judge Douglas draws, that I am in favor of setting the Sections ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... I can construe the obscure wish with which your letter concludes. I join heartily in desiring some termination to my present doubts; but whether in the direction you would think right, or by a return to Anglicanism, is the question. I am astonished to find how resolute Keble is in maintaining his present position. ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... Matate, and to the privy councillors, Fujiwara no Yoshitsugu, Fujiwara no Momokawa, and Fujiwara no Uwona. It was with the Fujiwara families that the responsibility rested chiefly, and the general conduct of the Fujiwara at that period of history forbids us to construe their apparent indifference in a wholly bad sense. Probably the simplest explanation is the true one: ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... related to some of the English officers; her very presence proved this, while her selection as one of the ladies of honor, was evidence of high standing socially. And she had dared me, challenged me with her eyes, to remain, and learn more. There was no promise, no word spoken I could construe into a pledge, and yet there was invitation, a suggestion, vague but comprehended, which youth could not easily ignore. My veins throbbed with anticipation—already was my arm about the slender waist, my eyes looking into her own. For a dance with her, a possible ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... but I never dreamed it would be the ovation it was. It becomes difficult to write of these personal courtesies, as I find them increasing in the progress of my life from now on. I trust the casual reader will not construe anything in these pages into a boastful desire to spread myself in too large ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... violating the law and that since he could recover from the town only, if free from all just imputation of negligence or fault," in this case he could recover nothing. In deciding this case, however, the Court was not called upon to construe the terms "necessity or charity," as affecting the liability of corporations plainly shown to be negligent in the performance of their duties to others; but many ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... charmed you, as well as the questions he asked. He looked like a little Jesu in a picture of Annibal Carraci's listening to the Doctors. He has been reading to-day speeches in Livy, with the French translation. We gave him sentences this evening to construe. It was wonderful how well he did them. The weather grows fine, and I shall desire leave to carry him back till the 25th of next month, for he is very well; the cough which (he) has is trifling. He has no ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... old Juvenal; And to chivvy Livy. The class-room hereafter will miss a row Of eager young students of Cicero. The 'longshoreman—yes, and the dock-rat, he's Down upon Socrates. And what'll Induce us to read Aristotle? We shall fail in Our duty to Galen. No tutor henceforward shall rack us To construe old Horatius Flaccus. We have but a wretched opinion Of Mr. Justinian. In our classical pabulum mix we've no wee sop Of AEsop. Our balance of intellect asks for no ballast From Sallust. With feminine scorn no fair Vassar-bred lass at us Shall smile if we own that we cannot read Tacitus. No admirer ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the city. On the entrance side rises a vast mass of sculpture surmounted by a statue of Vercingetorix, the hero of those parts, the gentleman over whose name we have all broken our teeth when learning to construe Caesar "De Bello Gallico." Passing him by for the first time, I should have liked to shake hands with him for old times' sake, to show my lack ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... strength. Fellows who faint at the veriest trifle criticise the tactics of Hannibal; whimpering boys store themselves with phrases out of the slaughter at Canna; and blubber over the victories of Scipio, because they are obliged to construe them. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... choose, as he had done, a more elastic creed, to fling his life's allegiance into a communion whose tenets were so framed as to adjust themselves to the strain of purely individual interpretation. One must have tenets to interpret. What happened, when they became untenable? One might construe the Nicene Creed into a round dozen different 'ologies. A mere framework, a skeleton of belief such as the Apostles' Creed was capable of no such reconstruction. One either believed it, or one did not. Unless—Did anybody ever believe any one thing ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... desired this might be construed indulgently, and accordingly many ships were suffered to pass (with goods more or less perishing) under that order. Now that the King of Holland continues obstinate they want to squeeze him, and to construe the order strictly. There have been many consultations what to do, whether they should make another order rescinding the last or execute the former more strictly. Both are liable to objections. The first will ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... to such a declaration, there was a pride about her manner, a certain restraint which she ever seemed to exercise over me, that effectually sealed my lips. Her very presence was a moral tonic, and I felt it would be easier to tear out my tongue than to utter anything which she could construe into possible insult. The very depth of her perfect womanhood was itself protection, and, until the veil was finally lifted, my lips were vowed ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... justice of the peace might be called on by any common informer to decide what was, or what was not a libel, and to commit or hold to bail, on his sole judgment, the accused party. His lordship argued that such a specific intimation to magistrates regarding the mode in which they were to construe the law, even supposing the law itself to be clear and undisputed, was a high offence against the constitution. He moved for the production of a case that had been submitted to the law-officers; but it was negatived on ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that I am one of those who construe this against Heath," said the loyal fellow. "He is the best fellow in the world. The whole thing, for me, lies in a nutshell. Heath is not a man to disturb himself about his neighbor's concerns, and he don't expect his neighbors to interest themselves in his. This Burrill has picked up, somehow, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... gentlemen, concluded all the particular observations which I had to address you upon this paper; and having shown you that by the least liberal construction, no criminality of intention can be imputed to the author, how can I doubt of your acquittal? For it is your duty to construe the author's words so as to give them an innocent meaning if they will bear it, and not come to a conclusion of guilt from them unless you shall be convinced that they will not possibly admit of any ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... the other grants, such restraint, though the most innocent, could not have failed to have had an injurious effect on the vital principles of the Government and often on its most important measures. Those who might wish to defeat a measure proposed might construe the power relied on in support of it in a narrow and contracted manner, and in that way fix a precedent inconsistent with the true import of the grant. At other times those who favored a measure might give to the power relied on a forced or strained construction, and, succeeding in the object, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... savage crews cried, "Amigo yammerschooner," "Anclas aqui," "Bueno puerto aqui," and like scraps of Spanish mixed with their own jargon. I had no thought of anchoring in their "good port." I hoisted the sloop's flag and fired a gun, all of which they might construe as a friendly salute or an invitation to come on. They drew up in a semicircle, but kept outside of eighty yards, which in self-defense would have ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... Latin class which the girls ever remembered. Each one was afraid to construe well, for fear she might be suspected of having done her preparation with the aid of the translation. Miss Harper made no comments, and gave neither praise for good work nor blame for bad. She took the marks as usual, and at the end of the hour left the room without referring ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... occupation was gone. Still, such was the force of habit, that he never went without the Latin grammar in his pocket, and I have often watched him sitting down in the poultry-yard, fancying, I presume, that he was in his school. There would he decline, construe, and conjugate aloud, his only witnesses being the poultry, who would now and then raise a gobble, gobble, gobble, while the ducks with their quack, quack, quack, were still more impertinent in their replies. A sketch of him, in this position, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... encouraged to the best of his ability, my studies were terribly irksome to me, and my lessons being consequently neglected, led to my having impositions without number. I believe I must have learnt the whole of Virgil by heart, although I could not now construe the introductory lines of the first book of the Aeneid; and as for history I could then, nor now, no more tell you the names of the Roman emperors, or the dates of accession of the various Kings of England, than I could square the circle, ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Lawyers trained by the study of this code learned to conceive of all the functions of the state as acts, powers, and rights of a monarchical sovereign. They stood beside the kings and princes of the later Middle Ages ready to construe the institutions of suzerainty into this monarchical form. They broke down feudalism and helped to build the absolutist dynastic state, wherever the Roman law was in force, and wherever it had greatly influenced the legal system. The church also had great interest to employ ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... amend the Constitution peaceably and quietly, whenever experience shall point out defects or imperfections. And, finally, the people of the United States have at no time, in no way, directly or indirectly, authorized any State legislature to construe or interpret their high instrument of government; much less to interfere by their own power to arrest its course ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... disbelief in the practice of secret vivisection. His question, however, admitted of two different replies. The physiologist might assert the necessary seclusion of physiological experimentation, or he might construe the question in a literal sense as pertaining merely to the locking of his inner door. He preferred the latter course. "I have ever come across a laboratory where there were any closed doors. In my laboratory any student wanting to speak to me walks straight in. The door of my laboratory, where ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... the main issue as far as he can, and whose chief aim has been to make as many loopholes as possible for himself to escape through in case of his being called to account. Or, again, to that of one who has to construe an Act of Parliament which was originally framed so as to throw dust in the eyes of those who would oppose the measure, and which, having been since found unworkable, has had clauses repealed and inserted up and down it, till it is in an ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... that her image had never been absent from my heart since first I saw her, that I should never know peace or happiness again until she would give me some hope, and that I would sooner die than have her construe my words into an insult. She was touched by the earnestness and evident sincerity of my manner; and, encouraged by her silence, I proceeded hastily to inform her that my name was Cornari, that I was a young man of humble birth, but that ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... later came the New Ordinances, which contain a most interesting precedent, hitherto almost unnoted, of the American principle of having the courts construe the Constitution. Section VI: "It is Ordained, That the Great Charter be kept in all its points in such manner, that if there be in the said Charter any point obscure or doubtful, it shall be declared by the said Ordainours, and others whom they will, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... for another. [329] They never fail to deceive, unless it crosses their own interest. In their suits, they are like flies on the food, who never quit it, however much they be brushed away. Finally, there is no fixed rule by which to construe them; a new syntax is necessary for each one; and, as they are all anomalous, the most intelligent man would be distracted [330] if he tried ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... Vicar's seat; you'll hear The doctrine of a gentle Johnian, Whose hand is white, whose voice is clear, Whose phrase is very Ciceronian. Where is the old man laid? Look down, And construe on the slab before you: "Hic jacet Gulielmus Brown, Vir nulla ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... than abstract independence as such interacts. But then neither abstract oneness nor abstract independence exists; only concrete real things exist, which add to these properties the other properties which they possess, to make up what we call their total nature. To construe any one of their abstract names as making their total nature impossible is a misuse of the function of naming. The real way of rescue from the abstract consequences of one name is not to fly to an opposite name, equally abstract, but rather to correct the first name by qualifying adjectives ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... language, and the English name became a term of reproach. An old writer in the eleventh century says: "Children in scole, agenst the usage and manir of all other nations, beeth compelled for to leve hire own langage, and for to construe his lessons and thynges in Frenche, and so they haveth sethe Normans came first into England." The Saxon was spoken by the peasants, in the country, yet not without an intermixture of French; the courtly language was French with some vestiges of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... much mistaken! The "Relievo dei Cavalli" at Alcamo offers no relief for you! The Magpie may prate on her sign-post about clean beds, for magpies can be made to say any thing; but pray do not construe the "Canova Divina" Divine Canova! He never executed any thing for the Red Lion of Calatafrini, whose "Canova" is a low wine-shop, full of wrangling Sicilian boors. Or will you place yourself under the Eagle's wing, seduced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... add to your uneasiness," he resumed, "while I am attempting to alleviate it. Instruct me what I can do to show my esteem and respect, rather than permit me thus unguided, to rush upon what you may construe into ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... anagrammatize the name of Wittenberge to one of the Universities of England; that scorn to be counted honest, plaine meaning men, like their neighbours, for not so much as out of mutton and potage, but they will construe a meaning of kings and princes. Let one but name bread, but they will interpret it to be the town of Bredan in the Low countreyes; if of beere he talkes, then straight he mockes the countie Beroune in France; if of foule weather or a shower of raine, he hath relation ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... more to construe. Then I was free. I buried my hands deep into my breeches pockets, for I was ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... fists. Many of these men were not telling any one how they felt on the big questions that were agitating the State. Some announced themselves with the usual grandiloquent generalities. It is easy enough to say that one believes in reform and good citizenship, for one can construe ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... been times when, as he believed, that beautiful girl's high thoughts had tended toward him; there had been looks, gestures, even words, that had this effect to him, or that seemed to have had it; and Beaton saw that he might easily construe Mrs. Horn's confidential appeal to him to get Margaret interested in art again as something by no means necessarily offensive, even though it had been made to him as to a master of illusion. If Mrs. Horn had to choose between him and the life of good works to which her niece ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... years. It would be a gracious act and would help much. It would strengthen League of Nations movement in House and Senate and encourage our friends in Senate and House and throughout country. Our people just as emotional as people of Europe. If you return without reception, Lodge and others will construe it as weakness. If the people of our country could have seen you as people of Europe, our situation would be much improved, especially result of last November would have been different. My suggestion would be speech at Faneuil Hall, Boston; speech in Providence, New Haven, New York and reception ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... to fling the former huge one, sons of Mammon and Mud, into some kind of chains again, reduce them to some kind of silence again,—unless the old Mud-Demons are to rise and devour us all? Truly it is so I construe it: and if —- and the Eighteen millions are well justified in their anger at me, and the Eighteen thousand owe me thanks and new love. That is my decided opinion, in spite of you all! And so, along with —-, probably in the same ship with him, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... much the order of the day that all cases which are not too utterly flagrant are quietly reported by the newspapers, without comment. Nor is anything else to be expected. For on the one hand, these Dogberries do merely construe the law according to the intent of the farmers, and, on the other, they are themselves bourgeois, who see the foundation of all true order in the interests of their class. And the conduct of the police corresponds to that of the Justices ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... and short answers, were not more decidedly rude to White Connal than to others; indeed she was rather more civil to him than to Ormond. There was nothing in her manner of keeping Connal at a distance, beyond what he, who had not much practice or skill in the language of female coquetry, might construe into maiden coyness to the acknowledged ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Transvaal. They had done all this for a race of men who had been uniformly harsh and unjust to the Kafirs, who had brought their own Republic to bankruptcy and chaos by misgovernment, who were and would remain foes of the British empire, who were incapable of appreciating magnanimity, and would construe forbearance as cowardice. They had destroyed the prestige of British power in Africa among whites and blacks, and thereby sowed for themselves and their successors ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Concordances learned, as I touched before, let the master read vnto hym the Epistles of Cicero, gathered togither and chosen out by Sturmius, for the capacitie of children. First, let him teach the childe, cherefullie and plainlie, the cause, and matter of the letter: then, let him construe it into Englishe, so oft, as the childe may // The order easilie carie awaie the vnderstanding of it: // of teaching. Lastlie, parse it ouer perfitlie. This done thus, let the childe, by and by, both construe and parse it ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... you in few words. I went to school, forsooth, both at Polle's and also at St. Antonie's; (was) in the fifth forme, past Esop's Fables, readd Terence, Vos isthaec intro auferte; and began with my Virgil, Tityre tu patulae. I could say my rules, could construe and pars with the best of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... from the populace to his great elevation, they inferred that he was a boor and a bungler, not (as might have seemed equally fair and rather more logical) that he was a capable man; and, with a foregone conclusion, they were quite ready to construe as blundering and grotesque that line of policy and conduct on his part, which, after a war of no immoderate length, resulted in the surmounting of obstacles which they had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... act which might tend to revive their animosities,—and a very slight occasion would be sufficient to effect it. They will instantly take fire on such a declaration, proclaim the judgment of the Company in their favor, demand a reparation of the acts which they will construe wrongs with such a sentence warranting that construction, and either accept the invitation to the proclaimed scandal of the Nabob Vizier, which will not add to the credit of our government, or remain in his dominions, but not under his authority, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... pitched battles with them: three thrashed me, and one I thrashed. I learned to play at cricket, to hate rich people, to cure warts, to write Latin verses, to swim, to recite speeches, to cook kidneys on toast, to draw caricatures of the masters, to construe Greek plays, to black boots, and to receive kicks and serious advice resignedly. Who will say that the fashionable public school was of no use to me ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... establishment, in 1803, was an era in the world of English letters. The papers were not merely reviews, but monographs on interesting subjects—a new anatomy of history; it was in a general way an exponent, but quite an independent one, of the Whig party, or those who would liberally construe the Constitution,—putting Churchmen and Dissenters on the same platform; although published in Edinburgh, it was neither Scotch nor Presbyterian. It attacked ancient prescriptions and customs; agitated ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... like to know how many women truly want the suffrage, and how, when it was won, the earnest anti-tariff wife would construe the marriage service in the face of the husband's belief in high tariff. The indirect influence of women in politics is worth a thought. We felt it sorely in 1861, and thence on to the war's end, and to-day it is the woman ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... consequence of the impressive warnings their commanding officer had received from the Department of War. It is hoped and believed that his Government will take a more dispassionate and just view of this subject, and not be disposed to construe a measure of justifiable precaution, made necessary by its known inability in execution of the stipulations of our treaty to act upon the frontier, into an encroachment upon its rights or ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... thoughts and affections."—Ib. To me it seems a shameful abuse of speech, and a vile descent from the dignity of grammar, to make the voices of "brutes" any part of language, as taken in a literal sense. We might with far more propriety raise our conceptions of it to the spheres above, and construe literally the metaphors of David, who ascribes to the starry heavens, both "speech" and "language," "voice" and "words," daily "uttered" and everywhere ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... As none (so little) like them; her sad brow A sable velvet feather covers quite, Even like the forehead-cloth that, in the night, Or when they sorrow, ladies use to wear: Their wings, blue, red, and yellow, mix'd appear; Colours that, as we construe colours, paint Their states to life;—the yellow shows their saint, The dainty Venus, left them; blue, their truth; The red and black, ensigns of death and ruth. And this true honour from their love-death sprung,— They were the ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... The first line speaks of the man, Ulysses, and designates his main attribute by a word, which may be translated versatile or resourceful, though some grammarians construe it otherwise. Thus we are told at the start of the chief intellectual trait of the Hero, who "wandered much," and who, therefore, had many opportunities to exercise his gift. In the second line our attention is called to the real starting point of the poem, the taking of Troy, which is the background ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... that the first volume contains all the facts, and the second volume contains His interpretation and application of the facts in the understandings and hearts of His people. We have no more facts from which to construe God than these which belong to the earthly life of Jesus Christ, and we never shall have, here at all events. But whilst the first volume to the bottom of the last page is finished and tolerates and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... are so strong and so sincere. The Queen would certainly under other circumstances have instantly written to the King. On the other hand, her first letter to her cousin (the King's daughter) may be sufficient, as it conveys a direct message; and there may be people who will construe this into a political act, but the Queen thinks that this risk should rather be run than that she should appear unfeeling and forgetful ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... so rich has been another way. Now, suppose a mind of the latter of our two classes, whose imagination is pent in consequently, and who takes its {41} facts 'hard;' suppose it, moreover, to feel strongly the craving for communion, and yet to realize how desperately difficult it is to construe the scientific order of nature either theologically or poetically,—and what result can there be but inner discord and contradiction? Now, this inner discord (merely as discord) can be relieved in either of two ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... multitude of state affairs, yet I am well assured that, had he some pretty pastime to array for entertainment of the Queen's Grace, horse and man would be seeking the humble cottage of Erasmus Holiday. PARVO CONTENTUS, in the meanwhile, I hear my pupils parse and construe, worshipful sir, and drive away my time with the aid of the Muses. And I have at all times, when in correspondence with foreign scholars, subscribed myself Erasmus ab Die Fausto, and have enjoyed the distinction due to the learned under ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... cher. You have a way of getting off with a jest, but I always feel that if I say a word they'll construe it into a proposal. Et ca ne m'arrange pas du tout, du tout. Mais du ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... that he would rather "choose a virgin of mean fortunes honestly bred"? Mr. Masson forthwith breaks forth in a paroxysm of what we suppose to be picturesqueness in this wise: "What have we here? Surely nothing less, if we choose so to construe it, than a marriage advertisement! Ho, all ye virgins of England (widows need not apply), here is an opportunity such as seldom occurs: a bachelor, unattached; age, thirty-three years and three or four months; height ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... you saucy scamp! I can't afford to feed you on diamonds from my sacred ring! Did you get your greedy nature from some sable Dodonean ancestress? If we had lived three thousand years ago, I might be superstitious, and construe your freak into an oracular protest against my engagement. Feathered augurs survive their ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... young bantam!" said Mr Cupples. "Don't think you're going to break into my privacy and get off with the booty so cheaply. Just you construe ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the speaker turned; and, without the explanation or addition of a single word, retraced his steps and disappeared in the woods, leaving the puzzled Elwood to construe the meaning of his story as he best could. Very soon, however, sounds reached his ears which enabled him to form some conjecture what the man intended by his odd announcement. The mingling voices of ox-team drivers, with their loud and peculiarly modulated "Haw Buck! gee! and up there, ye lazy ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... by springing certain ensnaring commendations on the honesty and sincerity of sea-faring people, paying a particular attention to his plate, and affecting a simper of approbation at everything which he said, which by any means she could construe into a joke, or with modesty be supposed to hear: nay, even when he left decency on the left hand, which was often the case, she ventured to reprimand his freedom of speech with a grin, saying, "Sure you gentlemen ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, and therefore could not have been guilty of the heartless allusion to it in the Dedicatory Epistle, he there said, "If anything occurred to me that might seem to look that way, I referred to the mind,"—a phrase which it is difficult to construe otherwise than as an admission that he had written the Dedicatory Epistle, but had employed the familiar quotation there ("monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum") only metaphorically. All in all, then, the authorship of the Dedicatory Epistle, as well as the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... you there residing, as is your duty, upon my arrival, I shall be able to construe the reasons for your absence, and shall ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... of heart than in my piece though written by a professed republican, I dared not declare myself the panegyrist of a nation, whose maxims were exactly the reverse of my own. More grieved at the misfortunes of France than the French themselves I was afraid the public would construe into flattery and mean complaisance the marks of a sincere attachment, of which in my first part I have mentioned the date and the cause, and which I was ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... operating my paper as I direct, I should have been informed of it. This is a matter vital to the interests of our community, and you have hitherto shown yourself too alert in accepting my slightest suggestion for me to construe this failure as negligence. Negligence I might esteem as at least honest and frank; your course has been neither the one ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... we answer, what we mean by "this doctrine"; if we construe immanence to signify "allness," we may as well admit first as last that there is no way of escape from the difficulties which these queries suggest. In that case it is not for us to pick and choose—to say that God ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... classics, and particularly Greek, with much higher reputation than any other schoolmaster within a pretty extensive circuit. Two of his pupils read all the Iliad, and all or the greater part of Sophocles. After hearing a long sentence of Greek or Latin distinctly recited, he could generally construe and translate it with little or no hesitation. He was always much gratified by Telford's visits, which were not infrequent, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... you want," he resumed, "I think we might construe it as legal, though worth at the ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... is clear and unequivocal in its terms, and no Supreme Court can indefinitely continue to construe it as meaning anything but what it says. This Court should be bombarded with suits until it makes some definite pronouncement, one way or the other, on the broad question of the constitutionality of the disfranchising Constitutions of ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... "Now construe," said Barry, looking at the linguist with a bewildered expression. It was a source of no little inconvenience to his friends that De Bertini was so very fixed in his determination to speak English. He was a trier all the way, was De Bertini. You rarely caught him helping out his remarks ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... have just heard the opinions of scholars whose names you must respect. I, who construe Anglo-Saxon with difficulty, must admit the poem to contain many fine, even noble, passages. Take for example Hrothgar's lament ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... patronage of persons of distinction. In the year 1573, being then but about ten years of age, he was page to some honourable person, as may be collected from his own words: In some of his epistles to Henry Reynold esquire, it appears that even then he could construe his Cato, and some other little collections of sentences, which made him very anxious to know, what sort of beings the poets were, and very pressing upon his tutor to make him, if possible, a poet. In consequence of this he was put to the reading ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... "Your humility may construe that into flattery which was said by me in perfect sincerity and truth-that I can not help," replied Edward. "I might have added much more, and yet have been sincere; if you had not reminded me of my not being of gentle birth, I might have had the presumption to have told you much ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... the colonies had used different devices, in the South a rattlesnake flag with the motto, "Don't tread on me," and for the Connecticut troops the colony arms and the motto Qui transtulit sustinet, "which we construe thus: 'God, who transplanted us hither, will support us.'"[142] Massachusetts had used the pinetree flag and the motto "Appeal to Heaven," and the little navy had a sign by which its ships were known to each other, "the ensign up to the main topping-lift." Now for the first time the thirteen stripes ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... were! He returned to his room and made another frantic search—but they were nowhere to be found; and as he could not bring himself to receive his guests in his ordinary morning costume—which the Professor would probably construe as a deliberate slight, and which would certainly seem a solecism in Mrs. Futvoye's eyes, if not in her daughter's—he decided to put on the Eastern robes, with the exception of a turban, which he could not manage to wind round ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... months, than I had done badly in my life. Speaking of "sentiment," I will say that too many young workmen use the lathe too much, and seem to depend on a fine looking lathe and handsome tools, and spend too much time in using the lathe and in decorating their bench with a fine display. But don't construe this as meaning that one can do nice work with a jack knife and handsaw, for I most certainly believe in a good and substantial set of tools, or I would not have taken so much space in speaking of them. Next, one must ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... the prophecy has led some interpreters to construe it as, 'When a king over men is righteous... then it is as a morning,' etc. But surely such a platitude is not worthy of being David's last word, nor did it need divine inspiration to disclose to him that a just king is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... construe it that way," he persisted, "and declare the obligation null and void, how soon could you get ready to be married to the political boss of this town and one of its leading business men? Agnes," he went on, suddenly quite serious, "I can not do without you any longer. I have ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... Malcolm's acknowledgment was only a repetition of the acknowledgment made by his predecessors the Scottish kings, to Eadward and Cnut (see pp. 63, 84); but William was more powerful than Eadward or Cnut had been, and was likely to construe ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... does not consist of distinct faculties, but that what we choose to call so are only different activities of the same power. Each one is just as essential as the other, on which account Education must grant to each faculty its claim to the same fostering care. If we would construe correctly the axiom a potiori fit denominatio to mean that man is distinguished from animals by thought, and that mediated will is not the same as thought, we must not forget that feeling and representing are not less necessary ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... during all those eighteen years, had never made love to Sylvia, unless his constant attendance upon Sabbath evenings could be so construed, as it was in that rural neighborhood, and as Sylvia was fain to construe ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sentences out of which he has so laboured to squeeze every unnecessary word, that their grammatical connection is broken up, and they present a compact mass of meaning which without previous knowledge it is almost impossible to construe. We are also puzzled by an abridged, interjectional, way of carrying on the historical part of the narrative; by the author's habit of alluding to imaginary or typical personages in the same tone as to real ones; ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... walked and talked, we seven Americans, in that elder Rome that most people know so much better than the one with St. Peter's and the Corso, because of the clinging nature of those early impressions which we construe for ourselves with painful reference to lists of exceptions. We all felt that it was a small place to have had so much to say to history, and were obliged to remind ourselves that we weren't looking at the whole of it. Poppa acknowledged that his tendency ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... translating the 'Oberon' of Wieland; it is a difficult language, and I can translate at least as fast as I can construe. I have made also a very considerable proficiency in the French language, and study it daily, and daily study the German; so that I am not, and have not ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Latin was tosay,* *meant For he so young and tender was of age; But on a day his fellow gan he pray To expound him this song in his language, Or tell him why this song was in usage: This pray'd he him to construe and declare, Full oftentime upon his ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... whether his boy can construe Homer, if he understands Horace, and can taste Virgil; but how seldom does he ask, or examine, or think whether he can restrain his passions,—whether he is grateful, generous, humane, compassionate, just ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... read the Lesson like a sensible man in its native English? Don't laugh, children, you know what I mean. There's no good in this fellow working his brain. He can't go up again before September, and according to the Bishop's letter to my father, he is safe to pass, if he could not construe a line, after what he did at Wil'sbro'. The Bishop and Co. found they had made considerable donkeys of themselves. Yes, 'tis the ticket for you to be shocked; but it is just like badgering a fellow for his commission by asking him how ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Cloud-Compelling— by blowing a cloud, or to speak in the vernacular, indulging in a cigar; hoisting a frog; tailing a dog or cat, or in any other way acting contrary to the precepts of the Animals' Friend Society; learning to construe on the Hamiltonian system; furtively denuding the birch-rods of their "budding honours." Cum multis aliis quae nunc ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... also the intention of the legislator as evidenced by—what I should like to call—the history of the clause. They look for the intention of the draftsman, they search the Parliamentary proceedings concerning the clause, and they interpret and construe the clause with regard to the intention of the draftsman as well as to the ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... fight Hood at Pulaski, as he (Thomas) had at first ordered. I simply submitted to him the plain record, with the best possible construction I could put upon it, and that only so far as it was necessary for me to construe it to give the general basis of my action. If any official duty remained to be done in that regard, that duty devolved on ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... welcomed him back joyfully, and it was not long before he was once more at cards with them. The promise he had given to Trautvetter he should construe after his own views; he would be careful to keep within bounds, under ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... scriptural record. Our Lord's statement to the noisy mourners that "the damsel is not dead but sleepeth" told that her sleep was to be of short duration. It was a rabbinical and common custom of the time to speak of death as a sleep, and those who laughed Jesus to scorn for His statement chose to construe His words in a sense of such literalism as the context scarcely warrants. It is noticeable that the Lord used a strictly equivalent expression with respect to the death of Lazarus. "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth," said He, "but I go that I may awake him out ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... but waited for Mr. Holden to state the matter. But in Abner's present angry condition, he chose to construe his silence ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... found a subject for his verse in such an occurrence has been much commented on. Poetic fancy would hardly have chosen such a theme, and these Sonnets seem to be certainly based on an actual occurrence. And if so, certainly we may construe them very literally; and read literally they certainly appear to be an old man's lament at having been superseded by a younger ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... tell me, said he, how to construe this, and what the sense of it may be? No, said Cleodemus, it is no profit to know what it means. And yet, quoth Aesop, no man understands this thing better and practises it more judiciously and successfully than yourself. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
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