It is not your fault that I have had all my energies
misdirected by others -- it is not your fault that I have never had a fair chance of getting on in life.
Let me carry through the rest of my
misdirected life, the remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the world; and that there was something left in me at this time which you could deplore and pity."
'Hardened, I fear - hardened!' he replied, with a despondent shake of the head; 'and, at the same time, there was a strong display of unchastened,
misdirected passions.
He maintained that the poverty of Russia arises not merely from the anomalous distribution of landed property and
misdirected reforms, but that what had contributed of late years to this result was the civilization from without abnormally grafted upon Russia, especially facilities of communication, as railways, leading to centralization in towns, the development of luxury, and the consequent development of manufactures, credit and its accompaniment of speculation--all to the detriment of agriculture.
The dinner was put back an hour, and we were sitting round the fire with no light but the blaze when the hall-door suddenly burst open and the hall resounded with these words, uttered with the greatest vehemence and in a stentorian tone: "We have been
misdirected, Jarndyce, by a most abandoned ruffian, who told us to take the turning to the right instead of to the left.
Two were
misdirected and the shot went too high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of hussars and knocked three of them over.
Some strength came to him finally from the mere struggle, undirected and
misdirected as it often was, and such mental fibre as he had was toughened by the prolonged stress.
But no law--not public opinion even--punishes those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of
misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable.
Shakspere, like every other great man, has been the object of much unintelligent, and
misdirected adulation, but his greatness, so far from suffering diminution, grows more apparent with the passage of time and the increase of study.
If I might venture to remark that it is the least in the world deficient in that delicacy to which a youth mistaken, a character misconceived, and abilities
misdirected, would turn for relief and guidance, I should express what it presents to my own view.'
How often so dragged down by hands that should have raised her up; how often so
misdirected when losing her way on the eternal road, and asking guidance!
[The unhappy man whose ravings are recorded above, was a melancholy instance of the baneful results of energies
misdirected in early life, and excesses prolonged until their consequences could never be repaired.