Erroneous

“Have you sought for means of attaining your aim in religion?” “No, I considered it erroneous and did not follow it,” said Pierre, so softly that the Rhetor did not hear him and asked him what he was saying.

Larry dropped the box back onto the floor and made what he would later think of as the most wildly erroneous statement of his entire life.

To this the Roman legate answered: “As for that which has been said, that it is better and more advantageous for your state not to interfere in our war, nothing can be more erroneous; because by not interfering you will be left, without favour or consideration, the guerdon of the conqueror.” Thus it will always happen that he who is not your friend will demand your neutrality, whilst he who is your friend will entreat you to declare yourself with arms.

Inasmuch as in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding and the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually commence immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic term “I”: a whole series of erroneous conclusions, and consequently of false judgments about the will itself, has become attached to the act of willing—to such a degree that he who wills believes firmly that willing suffices for action.

LVI Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes In connection with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly tempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them which are to be found in certain books, both ancient and modern, especially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc.

But even this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part; and to say that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and physically impossible.

Why, I did not expect to see you before tomorrow.” “My dear Albert,” replied Franz, “I am glad of this opportunity to tell you, once and forever, that you entertain a most erroneous notion concerning Italian women.

My father’s care and attentions were indefatigable, but he did not know the origin of my sufferings and sought erroneous methods to remedy the incurable ill.

But those inconsistencies of content, such as Gimli’s famous (and erroneous) statement in Book III, Chapter 7, ‘Till now I have hewn naught but wood since I left Moria’, which would require rewriting to emend rather than simple correction, remain unchanged.

Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly entertained—namely, that each species has been independently created—is erroneous.

"Magnificence of old (the prince replied) Beneath our roof with virtue could reside; Unblamed abundance crowned the royal board, What time this dome revered her prudent lord; Who now (so Heaven decrees) is doom'd to mourn, Bitter constraint, erroneous and forlorn. Better the chief, on Ilion's hostile plain, Had fall'n surrounded with his warlike train; Or safe return'd, the race of glory pass'd, New to his friends' embrace, and breathed his last! Then grateful Greece with streaming eyes would raise, Historic marbles to record his praise; His praise, eternal on the faithful stone, Had with transmissive honour graced his son. Now snatch'd by harpies to the dreary coast. Sunk is the hero, and his glory lost; Vanish'd at once! unheard of, and unknown! And I his heir in misery alone. Nor for a dear lost father only flow The filial tears, but woe succeeds to woe To tempt the spouseless queen with amorous wiles Resort the nobles from the neighbouring isles; From Samos, circled with the Ionian main, Dulichium, and Zacynthas' sylvan reign; Ev'n with presumptuous hope her bed to ascend, The lords of Ithaca their right pretend. She seems attentive to their pleaded vows, Her heart detesting what her ear allows. They, vain expectants of the bridal hour, My stores in riotous expense devour. In feast and dance the mirthful months employ, And meditate my doom to crown their joy."

4 Although they had been honed like hawks toward the guns since early childhood, Cuthbert and Alain still carried an erroneous belief common to many boys their age: that their elders were also their betters, at least in such matters as planning and wit; they actually believed that grownups knew what they were doing.

Dante, Convito, IV 25, says:— “Thus the adolescent, who enters into the erroneous forest of this life, would not know how to keep the right way if he were not guided by his elders.” Brunetto Latini, Tesoretto, II 75:— “Pensando a capo chino Perdei il gran cammino, E tenni alia traversa D’ una selva diversa.” Spenser, Faerie Queene, IV ii 45:— “Seeking adventures in the salvage wood.” ↩︎ Bunyan, in his Pilgrim’s Progress, which is a kind of Divine Comedy in prose, says:— “I beheld then that they all went on till they came to the foot of the hill Difficulty. … But the narrow way lay right up the hill, and the name of the going up the side of the hill is called Difficulty. … They went then till they came to the Delectable Mountains, which mountains belong to the Lord of that hill of which we have spoken before.” ↩︎ Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress:— “But now in this valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it; for he had gone but a little way before he spied a foul fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon.

A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray’s understudy from the Follies.

derived.” To whom thus Eve, recovering heart, replied: “Adam, by sad experiment I know How little weight my words with thee can find, Found so erroneous, thence by just event Found so unfortunate; nevertheless, Restored by thee, vile as I am, to place Of new acceptance, hopeful to regain Thy love, the sole contentment of my heart, Living or dying from thee I will not hide What thoughts in my unquiet breast are risen, Tending to some relief of our extremes, Or end, though sharp and sad, yet tolerable, As in our evils, and of easier choice.

All political writers since the time of Charles II had been prophesying “that in a few years we would be reduced to an absolute state of poverty,” but “we find ourselves far richer than before.”39 The erroneous notion that national opulence consists in money had also given rise to the absurd opinion that “no home consumption can hurt the opulence of a country.”40 It was this notion too that led to Law’s Mississippi scheme, compared to which our own South Sea scheme was a trifle.41 Interest does not depend on the value of money, but on the quantity of stock.