misemployment

Updated: April 30, 2025

Here is a culprit who entirely mistakes the nature of his offence and instead of apologizing for what he has done apologizes for not having done more. Nor so far as we are aware is there in Milton's writings the slightest trace of sorrow for the misemployment of his best years or consciousness of the ruin which it had wrought in his genius as a poet. In the same spirit Mr.

Goldwin Smith - Lectures and Essays

Of all the "talents" committed to our stewardship, none will require to be so strictly accounted for as those of intellect. The influence that we might have acquired over our fellow-men, thus winning them over to think of and practise "all things lovely and of good report," if it be neglected, is surely a sin of deeper dye than the misemployment of mere money.

Anonymous - The Young Lady's Mentor: A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends

But I do not think that a democratic power is naturally without resources: say rather, that it is almost always by the abuse of its force, and the misemployment of its resources, that a democratic government fails. Anarchy is almost always produced by its tyranny or its mistakes, but not by its want of strength.

Alexis de Tocqueville - American Institutions and Their Influence

Sometimes words have no right at all to be considered synonyms, and yet are continually used one for the other; having through this constant misemployment more need than synonyms themselves to be discriminated. Thus, what confusion is often made between 'genuine' and 'authentic'; what inaccuracy exists in their employment. And yet the distinction is a very plain one.

Richard Chenevix Trench - On the Study of Words

It is first supposed by the learned counsel who made the observation, that it was a public, allowed, and acknowledged thing; then, that he had not charged the Company anything for it. I have looked into that business. In the first place, I see no such custom; and if there was such a custom, there was the most abusive misemployment of it.

Edmund Burke - The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 10 (of 12)

For these reasons, I think it could not justly be considered as either a misemployment or profanation of the Sabbath-day.

Samuel Wilderspin - The Infant System: For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, from One to Seven years of Age

Of the Ultimate End of the Natural Dialectic of Human Reason. The ideas of pure reason cannot be, of themselves and in their own nature, dialectical; it is from their misemployment alone that fallacies and illusions arise.

Immanuel Kant - The Critique of Pure Reason