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Erring   /ˈɛrɪŋ/   Listen
Erring

adjective
1.
Capable of making an error.  Synonym: error-prone.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Erring" Quotes from Famous Books



... then, my child. And one word before we part. The chapel where Mr. Fairfax reads prayers—where God, I hope, is worshiped both in spirit and in truth—is meant as much for the sorrowful, the erring, the sinners, as for those who think themselves close to Him. For, Betty, the God whom I believe in is a very present Help in time of trouble. I want you to realize that at least, and not to cease attending prayers, ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... our offices were thronged with clients of all sexes, ages, conditions, and nationalities. The pickpocket on his way out elbowed the gentlewoman who had an erring son and sought our aid to restore him to grace. The politician and the actress, the polite burglar and the Wall Street schemer, the aggrieved wife and stout old clubman who was "being annoyed," each awaited his or her turn to receive our opinion as to their ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... rather the spirit and practice of the Church to propose to her erring children the heroic example of souls who passed through the storms and trials of life, who had the same weaknesses to contend with, the same enemies to combat, as they have, whose triumph is her glory and her crown? The Catholic Church, which has so successfully promoted the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... upon Charlotte and Harry, every line of sternness was gone like a flash. Harry's arm was round his sister's waist, her head against his shoulder; but in a moment he gently released himself, and went to his father. And in his nineteenth-century way he said what the erring son of old said, "Father, I have not done right lately. ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... fifteen years old he was conducting his father's public garage in a town not far from Denver; at that age he knew as much about motors as the men who built them, and he had, moreover, the invaluable knack of putting his finger immediately on a piece of erring mechanism and, with the aid of a bit of wire and a pair of pliers, setting it to rights. Given enough wire and a pair of pliers, I believe that he could ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... the sum of all religion. They make the highway along which man may return, without danger of erring, to the order and happiness that were lost far back in the ages now but dimly seen in retrospective vision. No lion is found in this way, nor any ravenous beast; but the redeemed of the Lord may walk there, and return with songs and everlasting ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur

... grasp upon his arm, Max would have stepped off the rock and gone headlong, but he hastily found a place for his erring foot, and stood still while a slight slit was made in the back of his tweed jacket, and the salmon fly which had hooked in there ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... left, which he did rather in the manner of a heavy father in melodrama, shaking the dust of an erring son's threshold off his feet, I mixed myself a high-ball, and sat down to consider the position of affairs. It did not take me long to see that the infernal boy had double-crossed me with a smooth effectiveness which Mr Fisher himself might have envied. Somewhere in this ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... slept the Earth, And the mysterious eyes above, Gazed down with chastened looks of love, Not, as when first they hymned her birth, With ardent songs of holy mirth, But mournfully serene and clear;— As on some erring one we gaze, Whose feet have strayed from wisdom's ways, But who, in error, still is dear. Far o'er yon swiftly flowing stream Fair fell the young moon's silver beam, And gazing on its restless sheen, Stood one ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands

... overcome at that moment and fainted. Protracted torture, want of nourishment, fatigue of the road, swept him from his feet. The tenth day had now passed since he left, groping his way, erring and feeling his way with his stick, hungry, fatigued and not knowing where he was going, unable to ask the way, during the daytime he turned toward the warm rays of the sun, the night he passed in the ditches along the road. When he happened to pass through a village, or hamlet, or accidentally ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... says of Watts, "every kind of knowledge was by the piety of his mind converted into theology." And for the rest,—by the labour of his hands, by his fasting from the things of the flesh, by his lofty faith—however erring or forgotten or betrayed, in individual cases,—by every impressive lesson of a hard life lived unto others and a hard death died unto himself, century after century it was the monk who taught and helped the barbarian of every land ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue

... God, look down, merciful Father on us, two erring, weak, sinful boys; look down and bless us, Lord, for the love thou bearest unto thy children. One thou art taking; Lord, take me to the green pastures of thy home, where no curse is; and one remains—O Lord! bless him ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... of the scientific world, too, are complicated by the theological bearing of a good deal of scientific discovery and discussion, and many a scientific man finds himself either compelled to defend himself against theologians, or to aid theologians in bringing an erring brother to reason. ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... accused of the crimes vulgarly supposed to attach themselves to religious orders; if they had been charged with falling into the sins to which poor human nature by its frailty is liable; if erring members had been denounced, men who had entered the order through disappointment, or from some other unworthy motive, men such as Sir Walter Scott depicts in his imaginary Templar, Brian de Bois Guilbert, in his novel, Ivanhoe, we might well believe that some at least ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... Wandering from the path astray, Hapless crowd, rash, indiscreet, Turn away your erring feet, ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... letter which Miss Dayne received in Pittsburg, from a poor old mother who thought she recognized in Miss Dayne her erring daughter. ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy

... word of warning and counsel to the erring, and tell knowledge to the perplexed. We would guide the ignorant in the paths of prudence, and the young would sit at our feet and hear us gladly in the school of life. Then folly would fade away as the morning vapour, and the sun of wisdom would shine on all men, and the peace of God would ...
— The Spirit of Christmas • Henry Van Dyke

... sisterly way and return to nature as a purely domestic animal. A sevenmonths' child, he had been carefully brought up and nurtured by an aged bedridden parent. There might have been lapses of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, when at long last in sight of the whipping post, to lead a homely life in the evening of his days, permeated by the affectionate surroundings ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... also must oblige him, and give in. D'Espremenil rages his last; Barrel Mirabeau 'breaks his sword,' making a vow,—which he might as well have kept. The 'Triple Family' is now therefore complete; the third erring brother, the Noblesse, having joined it;—erring but pardonable; soothed, so far as possible, by sweet eloquence from ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... sympathy should be shown to the erring Koreans, who, in spite of their offence, should be treated as unfortunate fellow ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... "I following her (Moral Philosophy) in the work as well as the passion, so far as I could, abominated and disparaged the errors of men, not to the infamy and shame of the erring, but of the errors." (Convito, Tr IV. c. 1.) "Wherefore in my judgment as he who defames a worthy man ought to be avoided by people and not listened to, so a vile man descended of worthy ancestors ought to be hunted out by all." (Convito, Tr. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... hebiishi. Analogous restrictions were placed on the Kwanto clergy, who were to be summarily removed from their benefices if found appealing to Kyoto for promotion, the only exception being in favour of Zen-shu priests. In their case the erring brother guilty of such an offence got off comparatively lightly—'an influential member of the same sect will be directed to administer a gentle admonition.' The clergy within the Bakufu domains were to be kept strictly in hand; if they ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... ye'll credence pay, For our father, high and sage, Wrote the tale in sacred page, As a record to the world, Record sad of vengeance hurl'd. I, a low and humble wight, Beg permission now to write Unto all that in our land Tongue Egyptian understand. May our Virgin Mother mild Grant to me, her erring child, Plenteous grace in every way, And success. ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... became a wealthy merchant. On the death of old Belcour, the young man came to England as the guest of his unknown father, fell in love with Miss Dudley, and married her. He was hot-blooded, impulsive, high-spirited, and generous, his very faults serving as a foil to his noble qualities; ever erring and repenting, offending and atoning for his offences.—Cumberland, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... retreated from battle, who were kings whose coronal locks underwent the sacred bath. I am also myself devoted to the practice of virtue. Thou, O Vrisha, seemest to be like one that is intoxicated with spirits. For all that, I will, from friendship, seek to cure thy erring and intoxicated self. Listen, O Karna, to this simile of a crow that I am about to narrate. Having heard it, thou mayest do what thou choosest, O thou that art destitute of intelligence and that art a wretch of thy race. I do not, O Karna, remember the slightest fault in me for which, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... holiest end in view. I do not even except St. Peter's, or any building erected to the glory of God, whom, as Luther says, "we cannot serve or aid; He needs no help from us." This temple is to bring peace, which is so greatly needed among His erring creatures. "The highest worship of God is service to man." At least, I feel so ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... cares for me, and I have no fear if He provides for me." Your heart says that this is too good to be true, and that it is too glorious to be for you. Still you acknowledge it must be most blessed. Fearful one, erring one, anxious one, I bring you God's promise, it is for me and for you. Jesus will do it; as God, He is able, and Jesus is willing and longing as the Crucified One to keep you in perfect peace. This is a wonderful fact, and it is the ...
— 'Jesus Himself' • Andrew Murray

... well for the youth that he had fallen into such hands. There were few persons in that part of the world like Mark Forrester. A better heart, or more honorable spirit, lived not; and in spite of an erring and neglected education—of evil associations, and sometimes evil pursuits—he was still a worthy specimen of manhood. We may as well here describe him, as he appears to us; for at this period the youth was still insensible—unconscious ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... given much to have been spared the spectacle of this proud, erring woman's humiliation. But Paul Harley was scientifically remorseless. I could detect ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... authorities were quite disposed by Spinoza's association with Van den Ende and his perceptible neglect of ceremonial observances, to believe him capable of any intellectual villainy. They promptly set about to reclaim the erring soul. Report has it they sought two means: they offered Spinoza an annuity of 1,000 florins if he would, in all overt ways, speech and action, conform to the established opinions and customs of the Synagogue; or, if he did not see the wisdom and profit ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... with inferior dramatists and writers of prose fiction, whose ruder hands need them as convenient motive powers and as vehicles of the expression of a lower view of human nature. Not so with him. He has weak and erring men—men who are misled by their passions, ambition, revenge, selfish lust, or what not; but Iago, Edmund, and the Duke in "Measure for Measure" are almost all his characters of their kind. In "Richard III." he merely painted ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... breath upon him. O, let not the soul that suffers, dare to look Nature in the face, where she sits majestically aloft in the solitude of the mountains; for her face is hard and stern, and looks not in compassion upon her weak and erring child. It is the countenance of an accusing archangel, who summons us to judgment. In the valley she wears the countenance of a Virgin Mother, looking at us with tearful eyes, and a face of ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... will He not show me that He satisfies the dream? I say with the old Psalmist, "Lo, I come," but He comes not forth to meet me; He does not even seem to discern me when I am yet a long way off, as the father in the parable discerned his erring son. ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... deep in Dante's hell, where- in we meet with tombs enclosing souls which denied their immortalities. But whether the virtuous heathen, who lived better than he spake, or erring in the prin- ciples of himself, yet lived above philosophers of more specious maxims, lie so deep as he is placed, at least so low as not to rise against Christians, who believing or knowing that truth, have lastingly denied it in their practice and conversation—were ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... virgin could withstand, If gentle Damon did not squeeze her hand? With varying vanities, from every part, They shift the moving toyshop of their heart; Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive, Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive. This erring mortal's levity may call; Oh, blind to truth! the sylphs ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... blessings undeserved Have marked my erring track,— That, wheresoe'er my feet have swerved, His chastening turned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... her sometimes that Lydia had been granted her by a merciful Providence in order that she might make that "fresh start all over again" which is the never-realized ideal of erring humanity. Marietta had been a young lady fourteen years before, and fourteen years meant much—meant everything to people who progressed as fast as the Emerys. Uncertain of themselves, they had not ventured to launch Marietta ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... in grief, for she had loved Arabel like an own child; and the uncertainty of her fate, I think, hastened my mother's death. My father left no means untried to discover the whereabouts of the erring girl—but in vain. For years her fate was shrouded in mystery. My parents died. Inez was taken from me, and weary and heartsick, I came to New York, hoping to find some distraction in new scenes, and among ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask

... witness Pete's simple grief, to hear him breathe a forgiveness for the erring woman, and to be trusted with the thoughts of his heart as a father might be trusted by a young child—it was anguish, it was agony, it was horror. More than once he felt an impulse to cast off his load, to confess, to tell everything. But he reflected that he had no right to do this—that the ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... both justly and generously by men, who bears a sunny face and pleasant words into society, whose cultured mind enriches freely all with whom it is brought into relation, who has abundant charity for the weak and erring, and who takes life and what it brings him contentedly, is an admirable man, and good in all the points which make him admirable. A house that presents a harmonious and handsome interior to the eye of the passenger, and whose exterior combines equal ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... worthy when I died To take my place here at your side; I toiled through long and weary years From lower planes to these high spheres; And through the love you sent from earth I have attained a second birth. Oft when my erring soul would tire I felt the strength of your desire; I heard you breathe my name in prayer, And courage conquered weak despair. Ah! earth needs heaven, but heaven indeed Of earth has just ...
— New Thought Pastels • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... from them, and the malevolent frame of mind against the human race, which are bound up with crime—these shall disappear. Education shall train man to self-conscious obedience to law, as well as to kindly feeling towards the erring, and to an effort not merely for their removal but for their improvement. But the more Pestalozzi endeavored to realize his ideal of human dignity, the more he comprehended that the isolated power of a private ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... the taint of must— The hand that traced the lines is dust, And silvery hair is on the head Of that same boy since first he read This missive from the sainted one That bore her love to an erring son— More fondly prized than any other— 'Twas written ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy

... with many an erring lad," she continued reminiscently; "sometimes with fair success, but only too often without, apparently, winning him away from his bad companions. But your idea was most unique. To think it all came of your reading Hugo's masterpiece, and taking it to heart. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson

... Rinval was near; Crimora, bright in the armour of man; her hair loose behind, her bow in her hand. She followed the youth to the war, Connal her much beloved. She drew the string on Dargo; but erring pierced her Connal. He falls like an oak on the plain; like a rock from the shaggy hill. What shall she do, hapless maid!—He bleeds; her Connal dies. All the night long she cries, and all ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson

... subdivisions of conscience, and only observe what follows from what has just been said, namely, that there is no such thing as an erring conscience. No doubt it is possible sometimes to err in the objective judgement whether something is a duty or not; but I cannot err in the subjective whether I have compared it with my practical ...
— The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics • Immanuel Kant

... feareth, to him safety is sent': moderation marketh the noble and gentle manners are of gains the grandest. It behoveth me to dissemble with this tyrant and needs must he be cast down." Then quoth he to the wolf, "Verily, the Lord pardoneth his erring servant and relenteth towards him, if he confess his offences; and I am a weak slave and have offended in presuming to counsel thee. If thou knewest the pain that befel me by thy buffet, thou wouldst ken that even the elephant could not stand against ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... robust society of that age? If Fielding, like his elders, indisputably loved good wine, let us remember that none of the heroes of his three great novels, neither that rural innocent Joseph Andrews, nor the exuberant youth Tom Jones, nor erring, repentant Captain Booth are immoderate drinkers. The degradation of drinking is, in Fielding's pages, accorded to brutalised if honest country squires, and cruel and corrupt magistrates; and there is little evidence throughout his life to indicate that the great novelist ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... that I have to give to one whom I have always loved as if he were my own son. This is all I can do for you. It may fail; but I would rather trust that jury to be right than trust myself today; because, I repeat, I feel like flinging open every prison door in all the world, and telling every erring, stumbling man to try once more to do what his soul tells him he ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... my works and all I do, Rest only on Thy will, I know, Thy blessing prospers ever, When Thou dost guide, we persevere In right ways, erring never. ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt

... hearts. The public eye may look unconcernedly on the miserable victim of vice, and that shattered wreck of a man may move the multitude to laughter or to scorn. But to the Mason, it is the form of sacred humanity that is before him; it is an erring fellow-being; a desolate, forlorn, forsaken soul; and his thoughts, enfolding the poor wretch, will be far deeper than those of indifference, ridicule, or contempt. All human offences, the whole system of dishonesty, evasion, circumventing, forbidden indulgence, and intriguing ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... in his body ached; but what was that in comparison with the anguish of soul he endured? Conscience, that sure monitor, proclaimed with its still small voice, "Thou hast sinned against God;" and he longed for the hour when he could be alone, and, like erring Peter, ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers

... obligation, levy, rate, or tax; and in the material, balance of forces, equilibrium, action and reaction. If the scales are evenly balanced the augury will be good and favourable to the purport of the quest, but if weighted unevenly it is a case of mene, tekel, upharsin; for it shows an erring judgment, an unbalanced mind, failure in one's obligations, injustice. A sword seen in connection with the scales denotes speedy judgment and retribution. This is an illustration of ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial

... something would have been done to commemorate them but that three of them were Protestants, and difficulties had been raised by the bigoted. But Francois thought only of the young men in their common grave at St. Eustache. He remembered when they went away one bright morning, full of the joy of an erring patriotism, of the ardour of a weak but fascinating cause: race against race, the conquered against the conquerors, the usurped against ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... affluent ease... He had been grounded in the religious conviction that work had been wished upon a defenseless humanity as a curse. He still remembered his Sabbath-school stories, particularly the scornful text with which the Lord had banished those two erring souls from Eden. Henceforth they were to work! To earn their bread by the sweat of their brows! He had a feeling now that either God had been tricked into granting a boon or else the scowl which had accompanied ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... ever at war with each other; still he is not a mixture, or agglomerate, of the finite and the infinite. A love perfect in nature cannot be linked to an intelligence imperfect in nature; if it were, the love would be either a blind impulse or an erring one. Both morality and religion demand the presence in man of a perfect ideal, which is at war with his imperfections; but an ideal is possible, only to a being endowed with a capacity for knowing the truth. In degrading human ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... the earth they came, The multitude of moving heartless things, 3830 Whom slaves call men: obediently they came, Like sheep whom from the fold the shepherd brings To the stall, red with blood; their many kings Led them, thus erring, from their native land; Tartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings 3835 Of Indian breezes lull, and many a band The Arctic Anarch ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... you know; and the benefactor always loves the thing he benefits. It is on this principle alone God loves his erring creatures, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... largeness of heart of which he does not seem to wish us to imagine him as in certain circumstances incapable, contrast sharply enough with the peasant meanness of Lisbeth. Indeed, Balzac, whose seldom erring instinct in fixing on the viler parts of human nature may have been somewhat too much dwelt on, but is undeniable, has here and elsewhere hit the fault of the lower class generally very well. It does not appear that the Hulots, though they treated her ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... not be afraid,' she cried, folding her gentle hands, whose very touch seemed to carry hope and healing. 'Jesus is so very tender with us; He will never send the erring away. Let us ask Him to be with you now, to give you of His own ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... conception of what an arrest for debt meant. She knew that next to death imprisonment was the severest punishment inflicted on erring mortals, and she now heard that Charley was in prison. She did not stop to think whether it was for his life, or for some more limited period. It was enough for her to know, that this terrible misfortune had come upon him, to him who, to her young fancy, was so bright, so good, so clever, so excellent, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... excess in this degrading vice, that he should suffer his natural inclination to overcome his Christian duty, which might in some have taken no deep root. I have been surprised and disgusted by the censures passed on the erring Indian by persons who were foremost in indulgence at the table and the tavern; as if the crime of drunkenness were more excusable in the man of education than ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... the slave States a declaratory exposition of our views. We have come bearing the olive branch. We are met by the South in a spirit of conciliation. The delegates tell us that they hope to be able to bring back their erring sister States into the fold of the Union, if they can go to them bearing satisfactory guarantees from us. Pennsylvania is willing that we should give them that opportunity. We have lived in harmony with ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... that 'tempora mutantur, et, nos mutamus in illis.' That the mandates and maxims of the Saviour are far beyond the mutations and erring passions of mortality. His sayings are intended ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... she forgot her own wretchedness in her sympathy for her erring and more unfortunate sister—for the woman and the mother who had been outraged ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... God, that in whatsoever state he was, he could therewith be content. Not only in heaven—not only in paradise—but in a dungeon, loaded with irons, and beaten with stripes, he could rejoice and give glory to God. This firm and unshaken allegiance in a weak and erring mortal to the throne of the Most High God, presents a spectacle of moral grandeur and sublimity to which the annals of eternity, but for the existence of ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... on to say that he appealed to public sympathy, through the public press, because, owing to some gross insufficiency in the laws of extradition, he could not call upon the magistracy of a foreign country to restore to him his erring wife. But he thought that public opinion, if loudly expressed, would have an effect both upon her and upon her father, which his private words could not produce. "I wonder very greatly that you should put ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... don't I love him?—he's a better man than you! Why don't you? IS he a better man than you? He's usage, he's honour, he's the right thing, he's the breed and the tradition,—a gentleman. You're your erring, incalculable self. I suppose we women will trust this sort and love your sort to the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... heroes who have been divinized or translated. The Celtic island-valley of Avalon, the abode of King Arthur, "with its orchard-lawns and bowery hollows," so exquisitely alluded to by Tennyson, is a kindred spot with the Homeric Elysian plain. Emerson says, "The race of gods, or those we erring own, are shadows floating up and down in the still abodes." This is exactly the meaning of Lucretius also. They are all air-cities, these seats of the celestials, whatever be the creed,—summery, ethereal climes, fanned with spice-winds and zephyrs. Meru, Kaf, Olympus, Elboorz,—they are all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... 1:12-15] Do not court death by leading an erring life, And do not by the deeds of your hands draw destruction upon yourselves. For God did not make death, And he hath no pleasure when the living perish; For he created all things that they might exist, ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... effect. From Oregon came an impetuous, slangily-worded exhortation to Lydia not to make a fool of herself and miss the best of life to live up to the tommyrot standard of old dry-as-dust Endbury. The Emerys heard but seldom from this erring son, and Lydia, who had been but a child when he left home, had never before received a letter from him. He wrote from a fruit farm in Oregon, the description of which, on the grandiloquent letter-head, gave an impression of ampleness ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... poor performances of actual man, as the absolute wisdom and impeccability of the Stoic. Yet, unlike the Stoic scheme, Christianity is aware of the necessity, and provides for it, that the means of appropriating this ideal perfection should be such as are consistent with the nature of a most erring and imperfect creature. Its motion is towards the divine, but by and through the human. In fact, it offers the Stoic humanized in his scheme of means, and the Epicurean exalted in his final objects. Nor is it possible to conceive a practicable scheme of morals ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... Than doubt and hate and all ill thoughts which throng, Haply, round hope's or fear's world-wandering feet That find no rest from wandering till they meet Death, bearing palms in hand and crowns of song; His face, who thought to vanquish wrong with wrong, Erring, and make rage and redemption meet, Havoc and freedom; weaving in one weft Good with his right hand, evil with his left; But all a hero lived and erred and died; Looked thus upon the living world he left So bravely that with pity less than pride Men ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the Marionette. I am never tired of their bewitching absurdity, their inevitable defects, their irresistible touches of verisimilitude. At their theatre I have seen the relenting parent (Pantalon) twitchingly embrace his erring son, while Arlecchino, as the large-hearted cobbler who has paid the house-rent of the erring son when the prodigal was about to be cast into the street, looked on and rubbed his hands with amiable ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... the title and the estates is at last borne to his long home, there to lie until summoned before that presence where he and those who were kings, and those who were clowns, will stand trembling as erring men, awaiting the fiat of eternal justice. In his turn, the young lord ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... out something in his native tongue and she breathlessly, imploringly replied. Lorry did not understand their words, but be knew that she had saved him from death at the hand of her loyal, erring guard. Allode lowered his gun, bowed low and turned ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... "Christian liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free;" to add fuel to the fire of investigation, and in the crucible of deep inquiry, melt from the gold of pure religion, the dross of man's invention; to appeal from the erring tribunals of a fallible Priesthood, and restore to its original state the mutilated Testament of the Saviour; also to induce all earnest thinkers to search not a part, but the whole of the Scriptures, ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... Paul, "my erring daughter! On my word This is the most distressing news that I have ever heard. Why, naughty girl, your excellent papa has pledged your hand To a promising young robber, the lieutenant of ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... that Mr. Denton was touched beyond expression. He had never seen a more holy sight than this young girl pleading with tears in her eyes with an erring sister. ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon

... Hood, at Kirklees Nunnery, in fair Yorkshire, with mercy in his heart toward those that had been his undoing; for thus he showed mercy for the erring and pity for the weak through all the time of ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... existed eternally, which the rest of us have not—to live a few years on earth and go through a certain programme ending with a violent death. In consideration of this death, God undertakes to forgive His erring children, who could not help being sinners, and yet are just as much to blame as if they could, but only on consideration that they "believe" in time to flee from the wrath to come. If they happen to die half a minute too late, repentance will ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... in large black letters, traced by a finger well charged with moistened gunpowder, the ominous name—JUDGE LYNCH,—the Rhadamanthus of the forest, whose decisions are yet respected in the land, and whose authority sometimes bids fair to supersede that of all erring ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... Mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is Mine; the soul that sinneth it shall die. But if a man be just... he shall surely live, saith the Lord God." Israel, therefore, was master of his own destiny. If he persisted in erring from the right way, the hour of salvation was still further removed from him; if he repented and observed the law, the Divine anger would be turned away. "Therefore... O house of Israel... cast away from you ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... limbo of twenty-three years, the name burst from him, and with what a host of memories its echo peopled the room, where that erring daughter had formerly reigned ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... Hercules, prefect of the cattle. There was a deuce to pay, and Hercules was inconsolable, and immediately started out after a new wife, and has had one up on a visit, but says she has "no conversation"; and I think he will take back the erring and possibly repentant candlestick; whom we all devoutly prefer, as she is not only highly decorative, but good-natured, and if she does little work makes no rows. I tell this lightly, but it really was a heavy business; many were accused of complicity, and Rafael was really very sorry. I had to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... polar star. He ever kept it in view, and it was nearly impossible for him to avoid uttering it, even when prudence demanded silence. Judith read his answer in his countenance, and with a heart nearly broken by the consciousness of undue erring, she signed to him an adieu, and buried herself in the woods. For some time Deerslayer was irresolute as to his course; but, in the end, he retraced his steps, and joined the Delaware. That night the three camped on the head waters of their own river, and the succeeding evening they ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... till, at last, they rose from the woodlands like a flight of birds, and disappeared in the skies. Thereafter, abandoned of such sweet influences, the Mardians fell into all manner of sins and sufferings, becoming the erring things their descendants were now. Yet they knew not, that their calamities were of their own bringing down. For deemed a victory, the expulsion of the winged beings was celebrated in choruses, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... very well and who likes some of his fellow men but not all of them and whose instinct is to punch law-breakers in the nose and not weep over them and lead them to the nearest bar and say, 'Go to it, erring brother!'" ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... down, resolved to wait patiently for her coming, without any announcement of my being there. I was not sorry, indeed, to have some moments to collect my thoughts, and restore my erring faculties ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... writers who claim to guide our opinions read Scott at all? Do they know the scene of the hidden and revealed forces in the Trossach glen—the carriage of the Fiery Cross—the sentence on the erring nun —the last fight of her betrayer? Do they know the story of Jeannie Deans? But it is useless to ask these questions or to multiply these instances. Scott is placed. Master of laughter, master of tears, giant of swiftness; crowned king, ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... mild Esli had charge of the sewing-class, and the class had got into bad ways; carelessness and chattering prevailed, so Esli came in despair to me, and I talked to the erring children. They were sorry, made no excuses, and promised to be different in future. I left them repentant and thoroughly ashamed of themselves, and ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... of Chisalla is a dwarf precipice called Mbondo la Zumba and, according to the interpreters, it is the Lovers' Leap of Tuckey. But its office must not be confounded with that attributed to the sinister-looking scaur of Leucadia; here the erring wives of the Kings of Boma and their paramours found a Bosphorus. The Commander of the First Congo Expedition applies the name to a hanging rock on the northern shore, about eighteen miles higher up stream. A portentous current soon swept us past Pere la Chaise, and shortly after ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... one jar to the tradesman, the second to the guardian of the peace, and retain the third. Then he would bring an action; and (provided that all the conditions had been accurately fulfilled, without the slightest flaw) the erring tradesman would be told by the Court not to do it again; while the complainant would have to pay all costs, and possibly a fine; and would be sneered at by the magistrate as a fussy idiot ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... I would hinder The Scottish member's legislative rigs, That spiritual Pindar, Who looks on erring souls as straying pigs, That must be lashed by law, wherever found, And driven to church as to ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... mingled lay; Till the mountains of the slain Raised the valleys to the plain. Be all the glory to Thy name divine! The swords were our's; the arm, O Lord, was Thine. Therefore to Thee, beneath whose footstool wait The powers which erring man calls Chance and Fate, To Thee who hast laid low The pride of Europe's foe, And taught Byzantium's sullen lords to fear, I pour my spirit out In a triumphant shout, And call all ages and all lands to hear. Thou who evermore endurest, Loftiest, mightiest, wisest, purest, Thou ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... hands of common-place, they are simply revolting. In the hands of folly and affectation, their repulsiveness is aggravated by the simpering conceits which usurp the place of the strongest passions of our nature. He only is privileged to unveil these gloomy depths of erring humanity, who can subdue their repulsiveness by touches of ethereal feeling; and whose imagination, buoyant above the waves of passion, bears the heart of the reader into havens of calm beauty, even when following ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... forbearance, that thereby we might bring others (or be brought by others) to the knowledge of the truth: this would make us go to God, and say with Elihu, Job xxxiv. 32, "That which we know not, teach thou us." Brethren, did we but all agree that we were erring in many things, we should soon agree to go to God, and pray for more wisdom and revelation of his mind and will ...
— An Exhortation to Peace and Unity • Attributed (incorrectly) to John Bunyan

... them up most michty," said the post. "Thae was his very words or something like them. 'Adam,' says he, 'was an erring man, but aside Eve he ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... monster, there germinating into a blossom; anon knitting itself into a branch, alternately thorny, bossy, and bristly, or writhed into every form of nervous entanglement; but, even when most graceful, never for an instant languid, always quickset; erring, if at all, ever on the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... place, full of the sweetest harmonies of nature, and filling the human heart with a grateful sense of God's love, has, by the sordid wickedness of man, been perverted into a paradise of the Prince of Darkness, who, knowing too well the weakness and folly of poor erring humanity, lures by every artificial attraction and fascination even the poor pilgrim invalid, who hopefully journeys here to breathe the pure fresh air and to recover health; and also does his best to complete ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... Mr Chester, leaning over her, and speaking in mild and quite venerable accents; 'I would, dear girl, it were my task to banish, not increase, those tokens of your grief. My son, my erring son,—I will not call him deliberately criminal in this, for men so young, who have been inconstant twice or thrice before, act without reflection, almost without a knowledge of the wrong they do,—will break his plighted faith to you; has broken it even now. Shall ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... is in some way incompetent and consequently is not performing its functions. To suggest to it a course of action, to try to guide it, when not really antagonizing it, is to presuppose that it is capable of erring, and as I have already said to you such suppositions are menaces to the existence of colonial governments. The common crowd overlooks this and the young men who set to work thoughtlessly do not know, do not comprehend, do not try ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... followers believe, no arguments will destroy their faith in him; but if Jesus was not perfect, according to modern standards, it is important that his status as God, or man, should be revised. Loss of confidence in an erring idol is not loss of ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd

... kind, I then, in higher life employed, Had indolence and ease enjoyed; And, like a gentleman, caress'd, Had been the lady's favourite guest. Or were I sprung from spaniel line, Was his sagacious nostril mine, By me, their never-erring guide, From wood and plain their feasts supplied 70 Knights, squires, attendant on my pace, Had shared the pleasures of the chase. Endued with native strength and fire, Why called I not the lion sire? A lion! such mean views ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... pedant, to whom would be for ever dead the possibility of such enjoyment as I know in these final years. Who can say? Perhaps the sole condition of my progress to this state of mind and heart which make my happiness was that very stumbling and erring which I ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... his mouth, and turning up the whites of his eyes—yet he assured us that he never afterwards heard anything very serious laid to his prejudice—that he became in due time an elder of the Kirk—gave his children a religious education—erring only in making rather too much of a pet of his eldest born, whom, even when grown up to manhood, he never called by any other name than ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... last word, her beautiful hand was slightly clenched, as if helping out a sentiment so completely in accordance with her brave spirit. These motions, however, ceased suddenly—she heaved a deep sigh, and the troubled spirit of the kind, the generous, the erring, but affectionate Sarah M'Gowan—as we shall call her still—passed away to another, and, we trust, a better life. The storms of her heart and brain were ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... taking up Mr Lyall's excellent 'Sportsman's Guide,' and making a selection on his own account. The information is very correct so far as we have tried it, sometimes—perhaps most anglers are inclined that way—erring a little to the couleur de rose side of things, but quite trustworthy in being followed as a suggester for a fortnight's fishing. We have gained much pleasure in exploring some of our more remote lochs, of the existence of which we might never have been aware but for its information. We ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior

... not see. No daggers of reproach were sheathed in those reposing eyes. Oh! how remorse and shame shrink from being arraigned before that throne of light where the immortal spirit sits enthroned—the human eye! If thus conscious guilt recoils from the gaze of man, weak, fallible, erring man, how can it stand the consuming fire of that Eternal Eye, in whose sight the heavens are not clean, and before which archangels bend, veiling their brows with ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... my faults, You would not hear me through; You said you were an erring man, And earthly angels few. But would I show my better side? And would I deign to bless? You held my hand—what could I do? And so ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... was at first vigorously attacked. Erring minds declaring the system of the great Frenchman to be wrong, and submitting others of their own, as the Russian Klaproth and the German Seyffarth, disturbed Champollion's peace; still more bitterly, however, was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... &c., designed at first to kindle a spirit of devotion among the rude and uneducated, but gradually becoming objects of real adoration. Intercessions were supposed to be made by the Virgin Mary, and by favorite saints, more efficacious with Deity than the penitence and prayers of the erring and sinful themselves. The influence of this veneration for martyrs and saints was degrading to the mind, and became a very lucrative source of profit to the priests, who peddled the bones and relics of saints as they did indulgences, and who invented innumerable lies to ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... it," he said, "that you are a special emissary, a sort of minister plenipotentiary, from the Gray Dragon. As a matter of fact, you are here simply to persuade me to correct my erring ways; to persuade me to give you my promise for him that I will put China and Len Yang forever ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... wrath smouldered dully, ready to blaze forth at any moment. Matilda waited with the same sort of pleasurable excitement which impels a child to wait under the open window of a house in which there is good reason to believe that an erring playmate is about ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... presences, and women criminals profited by the removal of the abuses they challenged. Holloway became a home from home, in which beaming wardresses welcomed old offenders, and to which husbands conducted erring wives in taxicabs, much as Ellwood and his brethren marched of themselves from Newgate to Bridewell, explaining to the astonished citizens of London that their word was their keeper. A suffragette's word stood higher than consols, and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... punishment on the charge of bad language and impudence, could hardly in justice be less than Orbilian or Draconic. But he was apparently if not assuredly almost as incapable as Shakespeare of presenting the most infamous of murderers as an erring but pardonable transgressor, not unfit to be received back with open arms by the wife he has attempted, after a series of the most hideous and dastardly outrages, to despatch by poison. The excuse for Heywood is simply that in his day as in Chaucer's the orthodox ideal of a married heroine ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... it with great reluctance) long before she was impelled thither by events and her consciousness of its necessity. She would often exclaim to me: 'How happy I was during the lifetime of Louis XV.! No cares to disturb my peaceful slumbers! No responsibility to agitate my mind! No fears of erring, of partiality, of injustice, to break in upon my enjoyments! All, all happiness, my dear Princess, vanishes from the bosom of a woman if she once deviate from the prescribed domestic character of her sex! Nothing was ever framed ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... for the benefit of the general prosperity. So he imposed as a penance on every woman who had gone wrong that she should plant a walnut tree on the common. And every night lanterns were seen moving about like will-o'-the-wisps on the hillock, for the erring ones scarcely like to perform ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... happen when 4,000 met together to beseech the Holy Ghost! Why not? You say He has not changed. Your creed says so. You say He is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. You say the needs of the world are as great. You say His great, benevolent heart beats for His fallen, sinful, erring human family. You say He loves us. You are always telling about His love. What is the reason He does not do something for us, and come down in the same plentitude of spiritual power as He did at Pentecost? Why? Only because you are not ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth

... more advice That thus without advice begin to love her? 'Tis but her picture I have yet beheld, And that hath dazzled my reason's light; But when I look on her perfections, There is no reason but I shall be blind. If I can check my erring love, I will; If not, to compass ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... which Dick Cludde got a severe hurt) luff out of gunshot, so that the two sternmost ships of the French were free to lay upon the Breda. I think I never saw a man in such a passion of anger as Mr. Benbow was then. He mingled hot reproaches of the erring captains with words of cheer to our gunners, and though we were the target for three of the enemy's ships, he bade Captain Fogg keep us in touch with them and swore that he would ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... speak very firmly; but as sentence followed sentence, her voice lost more and more of its even tone. With the closing words all self-control vanished; and she wept bitterly. What could her feeble, erring husband do, but weep ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... literal translation of this long sentence? "This exceeding trifling witling, considering ranting criticising concerning adopting fitting wording being exhibiting transcending learning, was displaying, notwithstanding ridiculing, surpassing boasting swelling reasoning, respecting correcting erring writing, and touching detecting deceiving arguing during debating." Here are not all the uses to which our writers apply the participle in ing, but there would seem to be enough, without adding others that ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... cliffs, or Pambamarca's side, Whether where equinoctial fervours glow, Or winter wraps the polar world in snow, 420 Still let thy voice, prevailing over time, Redress the rigours of th' inclement clime; Aid slighted truth; with thy persuasive strain Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain; Teach him, that states of native strength possess'd, Though very poor, may still be very bless'd; 426 That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away; While self-dependent power can time defy, As rocks resist ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... done I discern a field broad enough to prevent collision and dispute—broad enough to employ the means and the generous energies of thousands. With equal pleasure I refer to that "Juvenile Asylum," with its noble interposition ere the feet of the erring boy shall take the second step in crime, and which has recently rendered still more efficient its system of labor and relief by extending the benefit to girls. But as I wish this evening to concentrate your sympathies, I call your attention especially to the institution known ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... systematic training of young men to serve as evangelists—any attempt to educate them directly as preachers well furnished with arguments to confute the erring, and carefully taught to practise the graces of oratory—had never been made in England. These Dominicans were already the Sophists of their age, masters of dialectic methods then in vogue, whereby disputation had been raised to the dignity of a science. Then a scholar was looked upon as a mere ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... of the most retired benches, with his eyes for some time thrown up in contemplation of the fleecy clouds, beyond which kind spirits are supposed to look down, and weep over the follies and inconsistencies of an erring world. Casting his eyes to earth, he beheld—horror upon horrors—the detested bullock's heart, which his great Polygar dog had seized during the confusion of the dinner scene, and had followed him out with it in his mouth. Finding ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... scrap of prose said to be the translation, verbatim, of a Gaelic song, and to a Gaelic air, sung by one of the sweetest singers and most accomplished and angelic beings of the human race. But, alas! earthly happiness is not always the lot of those who, in our erring estimation, most deserve it. She is now no more, and many a strain have I poured to her memory. The air is arranged ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... have calmly taken off his coat, and help to defend the bearer of It against all assailants as stoutly, and, to all appearance, imperturbably, as he had fought that other bitter battle at home. For there was something heroic in this erring man, though ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... thing that I intended to mention, and which makes me feel that our situation is a critical one," continued Mrs. West, "was a letter that came this morning from Molly Pierrepont." "Molly Pierrepont!" echo every one almost in one breath. "Poor erring girl!" said Mrs. Wise slowly. "What has happened her?" "Molly has written me a long and even affectionate letter. She writes, 'Ben Hartright confided to me the other night the ghastly plans of the ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton



Words linked to "Erring" :   fallible, error-prone



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