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Mistake   Listen
noun
Mistake  n.  
1.
An apprehending wrongly; a misconception; a misunderstanding; a fault in opinion or judgment; an unintentional error of conduct. "Infallibility is an absolute security of the understanding from all possibility of mistake."
2.
(Law) Misconception, error, which when non-negligent may be ground for rescinding a contract, or for refusing to perform it.
No mistake, surely; without fail; as, it will happen at the appointed time, and no mistake. (Low)
Synonyms: Blunder; error; bull. See Blunder.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mistake" Quotes from Famous Books



... to see you! And how are they all at home?" and she ran over the list, name for name. "We mustn't forget your father. But he's a hard 'un and no mistake," said the aunt, putting on a mimic ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... appearance is not attractive, and it led me into a foolish mistake which I quickly regretted. When I recovered consciousness, and saw him attending on me, much worse and more carelessly dressed ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... nothin' yet, but I hope to desarve the name o' a hunter some day. I can guide you to the east side o' the mountains, for I've comed from there; but more than that I can't do, for I'm a stranger to the country here, like yourself. But you're on the east side o' the mountains already, if I mistake not; only these mountains are so rugged and jumbled up, that it's not easy tellin' where ye are. And what," continued Dick, "may be the name o' the bourgeois who speaks ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... where they are kept, and, as it was the time of the "Great Silence," I could not recover it. I guessed rightly that a Sister, believing it to be her own, had taken it; but just on that evening I had counted much on doing some work, and was I to spend a whole hour in the dark on account of this mistake? Without the interior light of grace I should undoubtedly have pitied myself, but, with that light, I felt happy instead of aggrieved, and reflected that poverty consists in being deprived not only of what is convenient, ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... suicide, sir, and that there was a large sum of money missing. But why should Albert take any one else's money? He has money of his own, and he earns a good income besides—we have all that we need. Oh, it is some dreadful mistake! There is the newspaper account of the discovery of the body. Perhaps Mr. Muller might like to read that." She pointed to a sheet of newspaper on the desk. The commissioner handed it to Muller. It was an evening paper, ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner

... the library. I related this experience to the barber at the hotel, and he turned to the porter and said, "You make just such mistakes, porter." The porter replied, "Yes, I knows I makes sentimental mistakes." He supposed a sentimental mistake was one that was made in a sentence. Big words never stumble them. And yet, little by little they are gaining in the use of language, ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 44, No. 5, May 1890 • Various

... "Handsome apartments to gentlemen, by a widow lady living alone." These advertisements are at once recognized by those in search of them. Families from the country frequently stumble across these places by accident. If the female members are young and handsome, they are received, and the mistake is not found out, perhaps, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... my word, I knew nothing of that melodrama. It seems the Greek girl put opium (a great many poppies, as monsieur told us, grow about there) in the pirate's grog, just to make him sleep soundly and leave her free for a little walk with me, and the old duenna, unfortunate creature, made a mistake and trebled the dose. The immense fortune of that cursed pirate was really the cause of all my Zena's troubles. But she explained matters so ingenuously that I, for one, was released with an injunction from the mayor and the Austrian commissary of police to go back to Rome. Zena, ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... fault, my lord: it is through Major Carbonnell's mistake that the world is deceived. Still I must acknowledge myself so far participator, that I have never contradicted ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... 412 "'You mistake greatly, Sir,' said he, to one of the visiting governors of Bridewell, who condoled with a man of his talents in such a position, 'if you think a residence in this sequestered haunt a subject of regret. The mind, as Milton says, is its own seat, and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... his ear with his pen, and looking dubiously at me. 'So the books say; but I don't see how that can be. Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him have made that mistake of putting some of the trouble out of his head, after it was ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... had one and the same line of talk that he always used. I resented it. No wonder it was easy for him. "Great mistake," said Poppleton. "Too soft. Look at this"—here he picked up a big stone and began pounding at the gate-post—"see how easily it chips! Smashes right off. Look at that, the whole corner knocks right ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... feet thick; and, as for running away, or going for to kill herself, it wasn't in the gal to do no sich thing. Ben Benson, you was a brute, beast, and two or three sarpents to boot, not to tell the gal all she wanted to know. You obstinate old wretch, you've gone and done it now, and no mistake. It's as much as I can do to keep from knocking you on the head with a marlin-spike, you sneakin' old sea-dog! What if she was dead now, friz stiff agin a tree, or a lyin' in the bottom of the river, what would you think of yourself, I'd like ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... yon tale. I do no think I should ever have risked a similar fate by making the same sort of mistake, but I profited by hearing it, and I always remembered it. And there was another thing. I never thought, when I was going to sing for soldiers, that I was doing something for them that should make them glad to listen to me, no matter what I ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... pardonable enough—signals that the last accession to their number was so very ornamental they could hardly expect her to be useful. They must look out for defects, and prepare to atone for failures by their surpassing attainments. But the mistake was soon rectified, and fresh light dawned on the doubtful question. Mrs. Hull was the first to recognize and testify that nothing was to be feared from Annie Millar's youth and beauty, while something might be gained by them, because she was far ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... should never be forgotten that Jesus was a Jew, and heir to all the Messianic ideas of his people. In these, glory, not rejection and death, was to be the Messiah's portion. That he was always superior to current expectations is no sign that he did not feel their force. They quite mistake who find the bitterness of Jesus' "cup" simply in his physical shrinking from suffering. The temptation was ever with him to find some other way to the goal of his work than that which led through death. What Peter said hid a force greater than any word of the disciple's. ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... G.-V. sphondylis; List. spongiolis. According to Lister, this is a dish of mushrooms, but he is wrong. He directs to remove sinews when mushrooms haven't any, but shellfish have. Torinus is correct. Gollmer makes the same mistake, believing spondyli to be identical with spongioli. He and Danneil take elixata for "choice" when this plainly means "cooked." If one were not sure of either word, the nature of the subject would leave no room for any doubt. Cf. note 1 ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... the prisoner or witness is required to grope about for a trinket or small coin in a basket or jar already occupied by a lively cobra. Should the groper not be bitten, our courtly friend, Asirvadam, is satisfied there has been some mistake here, and gallantly begs the gentleman's pardon. To force the subject to swallow water, cup by cup, until it burst from mouth and nose, is also a very neat ordeal, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... not made the fatal mistake of sending the ultimatum when they did, things would have gone differently; but it is of no use going back on ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot

... sixteenth-century French town has often been described before, but I am particularly fortunate in being able to sketch you something of what went on in Rouen, not merely with the background of Lelieur's drawing, but even with the sound of the music which was heard in her streets; and, if I mistake not, the one is as unknown to English readers as the other. It has been said that Guillaume le Franc, a musician of Rouen, actually composed the tune known as the "Old Hundredth," originally set to the 134th Psalm in the Geneva Psalter, and used ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... Nature, found too late, will be hanged, as if he were a sheep-stealer; hanged, and no mistake! Poor Wolf gathered himself together, wife and baggage; girded up his loins; and ran with the due despatch. He is now found sheltered under Hessen-Darmstadt, at Marburg, professing something there; and all the intellect of the world is struck with astonishment, and with silent or vocal pity ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... I've made a mistake; but the hour hand was on it, any way! It's only four, you can sleep ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... James Smith. He tells me that I am wrong in saying that his work in which I stand in the pillory is all reprint: I have no doubt I confounded some of it with some of the manuscript or slips which I had received from my much not-agreed-with correspondent. He adds that my mistake was intentional, and that my reason is obvious to the reader. This is information, as the sea-serpent said when he read in the newspaper that he ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... may be no mistake, let me reiterate: That the spine must be held erect at all times when sitting or standing. That frequently during the day when sitting or standing the chin should be brought down and in with a backward movement, the head being turned at times far either to the right or left side, with ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... saw that an airplane meeting its requirements would make this trip squarely around the world in seven and a half hours less than ten days I could scarcely credit my senses, and I figured it all over to make sure you had made no mistake. I found out you had not. If you can maintain an average speed of one hundred and twenty miles, and can make up any unforeseen delays by greater speed, I must admit it really looks possible for you to be back inside of ten days. That ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... recommends Dr. Faustus to take refuge in it. "My old woman lives there," he says, "and the devils are more afraid of her than you are of them." Faustus does not take this advice, but goes on meditating and reflecting (which had been his mistake all along) until the clock strikes twelve, and dreadful voices talk Latin in heaven. So Faustus, in his fur coat, is carried away by little black imps; and serve him ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... short-sighted to recognise my own folly. I might have known that anything out of the common course rouses a curiosity which supplies its own explanation at any cost to propriety or respect. I have courted my own doom. I am the victim of my own mistake. But," he continued, with a flash of his old fire which made him a dignified figure again, "I'm not going to cringe because I have lost ground in the first skirmish. I come of fighting blood. Oliver's reputation shall not suffer long, whatever I may have done in my ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... mistake of a worthy woman, who in the church of St. John of Lyons mistakes a sleeping soldier for one of the statues on a tomb, and sets a lighted ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... how right he had been—right, that is, to have put himself forward always, by the happiest instinct, only in impossible conditions. He had the happy consciousness of having exposed the important question to the crucial test, and of having escaped, by that persistent logic, a grave mistake. What better proof of his escape than the fact that he was now free to renew the all-interesting inquiry, and should be exactly, about to do so in different and better conditions? The conditions ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... cannot tell; but she never heard of friends or home again. Whether it was really Jupiter in the form of a bull that carried her away, nobody knows. It all happened so long ago that there may have been some mistake about the story; and I should not think it strange if it were a sea robber who stole her from her home, and a swift ship with white sails that bore her away. Of one thing I am very sure: she was loved so well ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin

... he cannot capture us as he expected, intends to attack the fort with his great guns," observed the commander. "He will find, if he attempts to do so, that he has made a still greater mistake than at first. He must be well acquainted, however, with the navigation or he would not venture to bring his frigate ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... left the room Noel took a five-pound note out of his pocket, and enclosing it in an open envelope laid it carelessly on the chimney-piece. There was no writing on the envelope, and the note might well have been slipped into it by mistake. Noel also slipped a ring of some value from his finger, and dropped it into a little tray, which contained odds and ends of ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... exert no greater power upon the hills, but [be-out this fact] if he touch them, they will smoke." "Man is not a stable being, but he is a reed, floating on the current of time." This method of analyzing sentences, however, if I mistake not, is too much on the plan of our pretended philosophical writers, who, in their rage for ancient constructions and combinations, often overlook the modern associated meaning and application of this word. It appears to me to be more consistent with the modern use ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... was struck at daylight next morning and the journey resumed. The dogs raced fresh and strong after their rest, and the miles were devoured with greedy haste. The white valleys wound in a mazy tangle round the foot of tremendous hills, but never a mistake in direction was made by the driver, Nick. To him the trail was as plain as though every foot of it were marked by well-packed snow; every landmark was anticipated, every inch of that chaotic land was an open ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... Now good-bye! and pray write to me soon. Put only my name, for they know where I am at the post-office. I am so well known here that it is impossible a letter for me can be lost. My cousin wrote to me, and by mistake put Franconian Hotel instead of Palatine Hotel. The landlord immediately sent the letter to M. Serrarius's, where I lodged when I was last here. What rejoices me most of all in the whole Mannheim and Munich story is that Weber has ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... steal some ponies; they would be along pretty soon. All this occurred after the Arapahoes had separated from the Cheyennes. The latter had placed the shoulder-blade of the buffalo on the trail, to prevent their making the mistake of going to the fort, where, after their trouble with the train, the soldiers would make it hot for them; but as I had found their message first, their plan ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... looked especially tall at that moment. "Her plain—husband. Extremely plain, as it happens"—he was himself again for an instant—"but—her husband." It seemed to the child that he had forgotten which one of them had asked him the question and was addressing himself to her mother by mistake. He seemed at once angry and demanding and anxious, and she had never seen her mother so pink. However, her question had been answered and she had affairs of her own. She went away without a backward glance so she did not see her stepfather drop to his knees ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... says Hegel, slowly stepping forward, but what a mistake have both philosophers and the vulgar been making all this time! They have presumed that these posts support the rope! It is the rope which upholds the posts; which are indeed but its opposite ends. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... has been brought forward has just claims to be considered by the impartial as quite sufficient to prove these two points—that the New Testament can neither subsist with the Old Testament, nor without it; and that the New Testament system was built first upon a mistake, and afterwards buttressed up with ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English

... over difficulties; a gleam of what Miss Betty called the Barnwell stubbornness shone in his eyes as he made an inward vow to find some way to convince Celia of his ignorance of much which had happened at the time of his father's death, and to gain from his mother an admission of her mistake. The question how to accomplish this, filled him ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard

... Pedagog, putting his spoon into the condensed-milk can by mistake. "There isn't a single scheme in daily journalism that hasn't been tried—except printing an evening ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs

... ten ells of green stamyn, and charged me thirty shillings the ell, and I vow it was scarce made up ere it began a-coming to bits. I'll give it him when I can catch him! and if I serve not our Seth out for dinting in the blackjack last night, I'm a Dutch woman, and no mistake! Black jacks are half-a-crown apiece, and so I told him; but I'll give him a bit more afore I've done with him; trust me. There is no keeping lads in order. The mischievousness of 'em's past count. My husband, he says, 'Lads will be lads,'—he's that ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... second doing, I mean the second time of her sitting, is less like Mrs. Pierce than the first, and yet I am confident will be most like her, for he is so curious that I do not see how it is possible for him to mistake. Here he and I presently resolved of going to White Hall, to spend an houre in the galleries there among the pictures, and we did so to my great satisfaction, he shewing me the difference in the payntings, and when I come more and more to distinguish and observe the workmanship, I ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... look, and then, with a pitiful bravado, took a step forward with an attempted return to his usual confident air. He professed to be dumfounded at the accusation; he was the victim of a dreadful mistake; he tried, with a ghastly smile, to reassert his old dominion, calling Skiddy "old man" and "old chap" in a shaky, fawning voice, and wanting to take him below "to talk it over." But the little consul was adamantine. The ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... spite of everything. In that little vial there is a powerful remedy unknown in your Western medicine. Now I want you to apply it, and to follow with the utmost exactness my instructions. If you fear you should forget what I tell you, write it down, for a mistake might be fatal to you, and would certainly be ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... which I desire to consider these words now. First, we have seen, in previous sermons, that these paradoxes of the Christian life which we call the Beatitudes are a linked chain, or, rather, an outgrowth from a common root. Each presupposes all the preceding. Now, of course, it is a mistake to expect uniformity in the process of building up character, and stages which are separable and successive in thought may be simultaneous and coalesce in fact. But none the less is our Lord here outlining successive stages in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... c. 1.) gives a good description of the Propontis, but contents himself with the vague expression of one day and one night's sail. When Sandy's (Travels, p. 21) talks of 150 furlongs in length, as well as breadth we can only suppose some mistake of the press in the text of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... I am the kitchen-maid!" said Peggy savagely to herself; but there was little fear of such a mistake, and, the moment that Lady Darcy noticed the girl's presence, she introduced her kindly enough, if with somewhat ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... were, as we know, far less brilliant and less extravagant than those supplied by popular imagination. It would be a mistake, however, to neglect or despise them on account of their tedious monotony and the insignificance of the characters who appear on the stage. It was by dint of fighting her neighbours again and again, without a single day's respite, that Rome succeeded ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... hearers, we conclude that it was about this period, and within the walls of the Tron Church, that by far the most wonderful exhibitions of his power as a pulpit orator were witnessed. "The Tron Church contains, if I mistake not," says the Rev. Dr. Wardlaw, who, as frequently as he could, was a hearer in it, "about 1400 hearers, according to the ordinary allowance of seat-room; when crowded of course proportionally more. And, though I can not attempt any pictorial sketch of the place, I may, in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... the mistake of much popular criticism to regard poetry, music, and Painting—all the various products of art—as but translations into different languages of one and the same fixed quantity of imaginative thought, supplemented by certain technical qualities of colour, ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... to Mr. Elliott the true condition of their visitor, and greatly alarmed him. He had never been a witness of the horrors of delirium tremens, and only knew of it by the frightful descriptions he had sometimes read, but he could not mistake the symptoms of the coming attack as now seen in Mr. Ridley, who, on getting from Mrs. Birtwell a repeated and stronger promise to care for Ethel, rose from the sofa ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur

... If I mistake not, I closed my last letter just as the news arrived here that the attempt of the democratic party in France to resist the infamous proceedings of the government had failed, and thus Rome, as far as human calculation went, had not a hope for her liberties left. An inland city cannot ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... portion of the monotype machine is actually automatic. It performs all its operations without human assistance or direction. Occasionally it will stop of its own accord and refuse to work, but this merely means that it has found something amiss with the perforated instructions, a mistake as to the length of a line or so forth, and it refuses to continue until the workman in charge of it puts the error right, then it starts on again and continues on its even course, casting letters and spaces and punctuation marks, and arranging them first in words, ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... tied her horse to a pillar, and led her into the banqueting hall. At the feast the girl sat next him in the place of honour, as she had done the day before. But the witch's daughter gnawed bones under the table, and the Prince gave her a push by mistake, which broke her leg—he had never noticed her crawling about among the people's feet. She was ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... He discovered his mistake one lovely afternoon as he sat smoking idly on the terrace. Mrs. Windlebird came to him, and a glance was enough to show Roland that something was seriously wrong. Her ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... will be condemned," she said to M. Folgat. But she said, also, that despair belonged to criminals only, and that the fatal mistake for which Jacques was likely to suffer ought to inspire his friends with nothing but ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... went back to hotel quivering under the insult. Had framed telegram ordering the British Fleet to the Bosphorus, when VAMBERY turned up, pale and trembling; besought the SHAH to do nothing rash; explained it was all a mistake. This followed up by invitation to dine at the Palace the ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various

... till now I had remained carelessly seated, 'there's only one way to decide a thing like this—only one way that's right ENGLISH—and that's man to man. Take off your coat, sir, and these gentlemen shall see fair play.' At this there came a look in his eye that I could not mistake. His education had been neglected in one essential and eminently British particular: he could not box. No more could I, you may say; but then I had the more impudence—and ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... forth on canvas, or in stone, the noble deeds of patriots dying for their country? To paint truly patriotic pictures well, a man must have his heart in his work—he must be a true patriot himself, as John Bellini was (if I mistake not, he had fought for his country himself in more than one shrewd fight). And what makes men patriots, or artists, or anything noble at all, but the spirit of the living God? Those great pictures of Bellini's are no more; they were burnt a few years afterwards, with the magnificent ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... second page had a good share of self-conceit, however, and so was not greatly confused by the King's jest. He determined that he would avoid the mistake which his comrade had made. So he commenced reading the petition slowly and with great formality, emphasizing every word, and prolonging the articulation of every syllable. But his manner was so tedious ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... them. In Ireland, Mr. Justice Fitzgerald says that intemperance leads to nineteen-twentieths of the crime in that country, but no one proposes a Coercion Act to deal with that evil. In England, the judges all say the same thing. Of course it is a mistake to assume that a murder, for instance, would never be committed by sober men, because murderers in most cases prime themselves for their deadly work by a glass of Dutch courage. But the facility of securing a reinforcement of passion undoubtedly tends to render always dangerous, and sometimes irresistible, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... not willing—for his sake. He would regret it later. They always do. Besides, like Carl, I had certain unuttered ideals about serving the world in those days. We still have. Only now we better understand the world. Make no mistake about this. Men are just as noble as they used to be. Plenty of them are willing to sacrifice themselves—but not us. That is why so few of the sort most needed go in for teaching and preaching in these ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... be angry with the child. She was so loyal, so careful of his interests. And he couldn't expect her to take kindly to Elise. There would be a natural jealousy. "That's Palmer and Hoskins's mistake. I can't haggle with a lady, Barbara. Noblesse oblige." But he winced under ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair

... at them fascinated. There could be no mistake. Barney Bill's cropped, shoe-brush hair was white as the driven snow; but the wry, bright-eyed face was unchanged. And Jane, quietly and decently dressed, her calm eyes fixed on him, was—Jane. These two curiously detached ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... popular audience. The puerilities and buffooneries that are sometimes undertaken by these men, for the purpose of conciliating the crowd, certainly amuse the crowd, and so answer their end, though not in a way to bring reputation to the actors. No greater mistake can possibly be made than that of regarding an American lecture-going audience with contempt. There is no literary tribunal in this country that can more readily and justly decide whether a man has anything to say, and can say it well, than a lecture-audience in one of the smaller cities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... know you, my good sir," stammered Sampson; "I never set eyes upon you before; and unless you are a messenger sent after me from the office, you must be under a mistake. You are ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... bed, and one or two of the soldiers seeing some one in bed, and more to find out who was there than anything else, sauntered into the room and up to the bed. As soon as he saw he had made a mistake, he quickly apologized and retreated to the front porch, where, to cover his embarrassment, he asked how far it was to Haynes'. Boone told him it was ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... Hawkweeds, which many mistake for dandelions; cowslips, in seed now, and primroses, with foreign primulas around them and enclosed by small hurdles, foxgloves, some with white and some with red flowers, all these have their story and are intensely English. Rough-leaved comfrey of the side of the river and brook, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... some mistake," she said. "You cannot possibly have received my letter, or you have not ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... song, and of seeing a little cluster of Eucalyptus trees, two surprises we had not looked for. The oriole, a well known and beautiful American bird, also a songster that may be compared to the nightingale, is indeed no stranger here, and, having once heard and seen him, you cannot mistake him for any other bird. His song is an invariable prognostic of rain, as we discover on ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... asked what he thought of the arrangement. Capt. McKee answered, "All that I find fault with is the desperate chances Mr. Drannan will take in going out to meet the savages all by himself." I said, "Capt., there is where you make a mistake. My safety lies in my going out to meet the Indians alone, and I will assure you and the other gentlemen that there will not be a gun fired if I can get to the Indians before they get to ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan

... mistake of too much simplification in the complicated detail of modern tactics where the difficulty is always to see the forest for the trees. Strategy has not changed since prehistoric days. It must always remain the same: feint and surprise. The first primitive man who looked at the breast of his ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... the mouth, and no mistake," was Tom's comment, when the boys were left to themselves. "I never saw him ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield

... know—that's the strange part of it. But, my dear, isn't it worthwhile to learn something, even by making such a mistake?" ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... I thought you would grow up to feel as I did; I thought you would thank me for leading you to see such things as the blind world is incapable of seeing. There I made a mistake; and sorely am I punished for it. Don't visit it upon my head in your recollections when I can ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... his chair and, leaning on his knee, thus expressed his inward thoughts: "You can fight if you like but when it's all over you'll remember what I say and know it's the straight wire. You've been swallowing the fairy tales about ours being a union of pressed men but you will see your mistake, believe me. You may whip us; you've got the Government and the police and the P.M.'s and the money and the military but how much nearer the end will you be when you have whipped us? You'll know by then that the chaps up North, like men everywhere else, will go down fighting and ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... great mistake if we narrow down the interpretation of that word 'mammon' in the context (which is 'that which is least,' etc., here) to be merely money. It covers the whole ground of all possible external and material possessions, whatsoever things a man can only have in outward seeming, whatsoever things belong ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... to argue. "I dare say we didn't explain," she said civilly. "It has been a mistake, and very ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... eyes fell to the photograph. It was a snapshot of the ranger and a very attractive young woman. They were smiling into each other's eyes with a manner of perfect and friendly understanding. To see it gave Arlie a pang. Flushing at her mistake, she turned the card over and handed ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... you more particularly because you're Londoners; and Londoners beat all creation for thinking about themselves. However, I don't go with the gentleman in everything he said. All this struggling and striving to make the world better is a great mistake; not because it isn't a good thing to improve the world if you know how to do it, but because striving and struggling is the worst way you could set about doing anything. It gives a man a bad style, and weakens him. It shows that ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... to the Morgue,'" read on Mr. Brake with agitated voice. "'It was not until midnight that the mistake was discovered. A messenger was dispatched at twenty minutes after twelve o'clock to the elegant residence of the popular doctor, in Delight Street. The news was broken to the widow as agreeably as possible. Mrs. Thorne is a young and very beautiful ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... has been a misfortune that a good phrase has been discredited; and that Mill's assailants, in exposing the errors of that particular theory of a "wage fund," seemed to imply that the whole conception of a "wage fund" was a mistake. For the result has been, that the popular mind seems to regard the amount spent in wages as an arbitrary quantity; as something which, as Malthus put it, might be fixed at pleasure by her Majesty's justices of the peace. Because the law was inaccurately ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... thought the safest plan would be to make for it. This meant a walk of some hours, with nothing to eat on the way, but a train from Winnipeg would stop early in the morning, and the others would not expect him to resume his journey east. If they had found out their mistake, they would take it for granted that he was a confederate of the man they followed and most likely calculate on his trying to reach the new Canadian Northern line. Foster felt angry with the fellow who had lured him into the adventure and resolved to extricate ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... two-master keeled over, with useless anchor and cable exposed, "to point a moral and adorn a tale." Sometimes a party will take boat for a row upon the placid bosom of this bay; but woe unto them if they consult not the almanac! A mistake may leave them high and dry on the beach, miles from the dykes, and as the tide comes in with a bore, a sudden influx, wave above wave, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... do what must be done," said the voice. "If you mean, shall I regret my choice, that is possible; at least you may regret it. But it will not have been a mistake." ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... exclaimed Willy, astonished. "Why, I always believe my mother. She never made a mistake in ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May

... stockholders have received two or three per cent in all on their original investment, there is a prevailing idea that the certificates of its stocks are no longer good for any thing, except to light the fire. That's a mistake. Long after the company has foundered, its shares float, like the shattered debris which the sea casts upon the beach months after the ship has been wrecked. These shares M. Latterman collects, and carefully stores away; and upon the shelves of his office you may see numberless ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... conscience, you must excuse me. You don't define it quite properly. It is not conscience that interferes with you, but timidity, I believe. You live outside of society. You are bashful, and awkward. Youare dimly conscious of all this, and it is this consciousness that you mistake for conscience. In this case there can be no question about conscience. What has conscience to do here, since it is natural for man to enjoy himself, since it is his ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... sorry to lose you. And now, skipper," said he, "get off your coat and wade in. I've put on the Esmarch's bandage for you. Don't be niggardly with the chloroform—I've got a good heart. And remember to do what I told you about that femoral artery, and don't make a mistake there, or else there'll be a mess on the floor. Shake hands, old man, and good luck to your surgery; and anyway, thank you ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... night! to have you back again! How could I mistake you for that dreadful schoolmaster!" Here her ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... argument that we must do our best to render the regular army strong and efficient, and that it would be a mistake to weaken them unnecessarily by excessive drafts upon their personnel with the object of making the reserves tactically equal to them. This aim may sometimes be realized; but the general level of efficiency throughout the troops ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... modern fittings, was well-nigh deserted save for Sir Chetwynd and his particular group of friends, to whom he was holding forth, between slow cigar-puffs, on the squalor of the Arabs, the frightful thievery of the Sheiks, the incompetency of his own special dragoman, and the mistake people made in thinking the Egyptians ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... loved his wife, his hourly thought was: "I have made a mistake; I have three balls and chains, but I have only two legs. I ought to have made my fortune before I married. I could have found an Adeline any day; but Adeline stands in the way of my ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... maturity. Yet, though Lord Roberts planned each general move, an immense amount of actual work was left to the generals. The country they had to pass through was rugged and inhospitable. The foe they had to fight was brave, resourceful, and well supplied with all munitions of war; a single mistake on the part of any one of them would have wrecked the magnificent plan of the Commander-in-Chief. But no mistakes were made; each general worked as if his soul's salvation depended upon his individual efforts. ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... she stopped speaking, but she held them with her eyes from the mistake of supposing she had done. Lindsay, who was watching her closely and hanging with keen pleasure on the sweetness and precision of what she found to say, noted a swift constriction pass upon her face, and was ready to swear ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... the same time was not less embarrassed and confused under his uncertainty what steps to take: at last, looking earnestly at Mesrour, he said to him in a serious tone, "Whom is it you speak to, and call the commander of the faithful? I do not know you, and you must mistake me for somebody else." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... Council immediately determined that gondolas should be black and that they should only be gilt and adorned inside. As for freedom, if any one talked of it he was immediately tortured until he retracted all his errors, and was then promptly beheaded for fear that he should fall again into the same mistake. Nella said so, and told hideous tales of the things that had been done to innocent men in the little room behind the Council chamber in the Palace. Besides, if one talked of justice, there was Zorzi's case to prove that there was no justice at all in Venetian law. Marietta ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... between the things that can be shaken and the kingdom that cannot be moved. It is bad strategy to defend an elongated line. It is cowardice to treat the capture of an outpost as involving the evacuation of the key of the position. It is a mistake, to which many good Christian people are sorely tempted in this day, to assert such a connection between the eternal Gospel and our deductions from the principles of that Gospel as that the refutation of the one must be the overthrow of the other. And if it turns out to be so in any ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... word," said Trumeau, as he went off, "it would have been a great mistake to have spoken. I have got that wretch of a Quennebert into my clutches at last; and there is nobody but himself to blame. He is taking the plunge of his own free will, there is no need for me to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... de ral, de ral! That's all very fine, Mr. Commissioner; only you mistake your man; you think you are ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... not been collated: Of Maximilian's list, Otopachgnato, les gens du large, possibly a duplication, by mistake, of Watopachnato, les gens de l'age; Tschantoga, les gens des bois; Tanin-tauei, les gens des osayes; Chabin, les gens des montagnes. Of Hayden's ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey

... took my bag by mistake? But don't let it weigh unduly on your conscience. Mine's clear anyway, and I feel that my troubles ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various



Words linked to "Mistake" :   stupidity, confuse, identify, boner, miscue, slip, slip-up, misprint, bungle, betise, typo, nonachievement, fuckup, foul-up, mess-up, boo-boo, cockup, revoke, flub, balls-up, literal error, botch, misidentify, ballup, misestimation, offside, smear, misapprehension, slip up, renege, skip, misreckoning, oversight, pratfall, typographical error, misremember, misconception, folly, blunder, confound, blooper, err, parapraxis, fault, confusion, lapse, distortion, miscalculation, bloomer, misunderstanding, stain, corrigendum, blot, mix-up, fall for, misjudge, smirch, misstatement, incursion, trip up, spot, erratum, nonaccomplishment, omission, foolishness



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