I Was Mistaken Quotes & Sayings

I asked for so little! she kept saying, as though her diminished demands alone should have protected her against any disappointments. But I think she was mistaken; she had actually asked for a lot. She had dared to ask for happiness, and she had dared to expect that happiness out of her marriage. You can't possibly ask for more than that. — Elizabeth Gilbert

There was not one witness to accuse me, there was no one to identify me, there was not a single piece of evidence against me. I was found guilty, simply out of the mistaken "conviction" held by the Political Police. And sadly, my case was no exception. — Armando Valladares

I ... um ... couldn't sleep." She swallowed ...
When Amelia saw his eyes soften, she was surprised when he leaned down and gave her a kiss on the lips. It was a warm delectable kiss, a kiss that took her breath away ...
As he gazed into her eyes, Rick said softly. "If you think you can fall into my bed and get away with not being kissed, you're sadly mistaken, lady. — Linda Weaver Clarke

I could barely move my left arm, and it hurt like fire. I tried to stretch out my wing, only to suck my breath in hard as I found out it had been hit too. I couldn't see it well over my shoulder, but my big clue was the screaming pain. I was scraped all over, had lost my windbreaker, and, if I wasn't mistaken, I was sitting in a patch of poison ivy. — James Patterson

Why," they say to me, "suppose all this should turn out to be true, and you should come to the day of judgment and find all these things to be true. What would you do then?" I would walk up like a man, and say, "I was mistaken." "And suppose God was about to pass judgment upon you, what would you say?" I would say to him, "Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you." Why not? I am told that I must render good for evil. I am told that if smitten on one cheek I must turn the other. I am told that I must overcome evil with good. I am told that I must love my enemies; and will it do for this God who tells me to love my enemies to damn his? No, it will not do. It will not do. — Robert G. Ingersoll

The only time I've ever been mistaken for someone else is - and this arguable still - when a person came up to me on the boardwalk of Ocean City, New Jersey and said, "You look a lot like that guy from computer ads" and I said, "There is a reason because I am that guy," and the guy looked at me for a minute, laughed and said, "That's a funny joke, but you really do look like him." He thought I was not me. — John Hodgman

Have I told you, Chloe-lass, that you're beautiful?" he said softly. She narrowed her eyes. If he thought a generic compliment would buy him a kiss, he was sadly mistaken. — Karen Marie Moning

I got up and walked back to my roominghouse. The moonlight was bright. My footsteps echoed in the empty street and it sounded as if somebody was following me, I looked around. I was mistaken. I was quite alone. — Charles Bukowski

When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed to me. - John Wesley — John Wesley

I think she was mistaken when she said I was torturing myself. I think that she interpreted me fragmentarily, which is worse than not to interpret at all. — Leonora Carrington

To many, I was myth incarnate, the embodiment of a most superb legend, a fairy tale. Some considered me a monster, a mutation. To my great misfortune, I was once mistaken for an angel. To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost. But I knew the truth - deep down, I always did.
I was just a girl. — Leslye Walton

A source told me that you don't do girlfriends."
"Your source was mistaken. I do my girlfriend quite frequently. — Elena Kincaid

I was occupied so entirely by each day, I felt detached from anything so large as a month or a year. History didn't cross my mind. Now it does. Now I know, whatever your burdens, to hold yourself apart from the lot of more powerful men is an illusion. On that awful day in January 1961, Lumumba paid with a life and so did I. On the wings of an owl the fallen Congo came to haunt even our little family, we messengers of goodwill adrift on a sea of mistaken intentions. — Barbara Kingsolver

That was excellently observed', say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken. — Jonathan Swift

He'd done his walls with paint from Holy Basil. God, I yearned for their colors. I hadn't been able to afford them myself but I knew their color chart like the back of my hand. His hall was done in Gangrene, his stairs in Agony and his living room
unless I was very much mistaken
in Dead Whale. Colors I personally very much approved of. — Marian Keyes

Chose? If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid. — Joe Abercrombie

It upset me that, five days after the hurricane hit down in New Orleans, the President's plan was for a day of prayer. I would have thought a truck of food. A day of prayer. Now, maybe I'm mistaken here and, again, I'm not a scientific expert, but isn't a hurricane officially an act of God? Isn't a day of prayer kind of redundant? Hasn't God already made up his mind on that sort of thing? So we do a day of prayer. The President has his stupid day of prayer. Three days later, Hurricane Rita hits. Somebody must have said something ... something like, is that all you got? — Jon Stewart

I have undertaken to translate the Bible into German. This was good for me; otherwise I might have died in the mistaken notion that I was a learned fellow. — Martin Luther

If he comes back," she nodded. I thought I saw tears in her eyes but I was mistaken. In all my life, I was never to see her cry. And also he was never to come back. Without interrupting each other, we both said at the same time, "Let's never get out of touch with each other." And we never have, although her death has come between us. — Norman Maclean

Folks who have lived the cornered sort of life most scholars, teachers, and storekeepers live seldom realize what they've missed in the way of conversation. Some of the best talk and the wisest talk I've ever heard was around campfires, in saloons, bunkhouses, and the like. The idea that all the knowledge of the world is bound up in schools and schoolteachers is a mistaken one. — Louis L'Amour

Possibly I was mistaken, but it seemed to me that he went pale. At last he muttered, It isn't much of a ghost story, I'm afraid, but then I didn't make it up. — Gene Wolfe

More than once I should have lost my soul to radicalism if it had been the originality it was mistaken for by its young converts. — Robert Frost

Were you in the military?"
"Are you kidding me? I was in high school."
"High school," he said quietly. "You're American. And a civilian?"
"Uh, yes. An American civilian."
"Lovely. A straight answer. Keep it up. Did somebody train you?"
"No, nobody trained me. Unless you count the Rhode Island child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Why?"
Malachi held up his hand and ticked off the reasons with his fingers. "You stole a Guard's weapon. If I'm not mistaken, it belonged to a Gate Guard. Which means you managed to do it on your way into the city. You escaped Amid even after he had you in hand. You slashed his leg in just the right place, preventing him from chasing you. Under extreme duress, injured and cornered, you threw a knife and hit a target-"
"It's not like I hit something vital. — Sarah Fine

The paper was made in Bohemia," I said. "Precisely. And the man who wrote the note is a German. Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence - 'This account of you we have from all quarters received.' A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs. It only remains, therefore, to discover what is wanted by this German who writes upon Bohemian paper and prefers wearing a mask to showing his face. And here he comes, if I am not mistaken, to resolve all our doubts. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I always had short hair, and I hated my short hair. I was always mistaken for a boy, but my mom wouldn't let me change my hair because she was always chasing me around with a hairbrush, and it was always tangled, so she just would cut it off, and she's right: short hair did suit me. — Dorothy Hamill

Catherine" she paused. I waited, tapping my finger on my desk. Then she spoke words that had me almost falling out of my chair. "I've decided to come to your wedding."
I actually glanced at my phone again to see if I'd been mistaken and it was someone else who'd called me.
"Are you drunk?" I got out when I could speak.
She signed. "I wish you wouldn't marry that vampire, but I'm tired of him coming between us."
Aliens replaced her with a pod person, I found myself thinking. That's the only explanation — Jeaniene Frost

John!" cried Lady Greystoke, running toward him, "how could I have been mistaken? I-" but the rest of the sentence was lost as Tarzan of the Apes sprang into the room and taking his mate in his arms covered her lips with kisses. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

Taking notes at a pub in Salisbury, I was mistaken for a health inspector! — Sarah Rees Brennan

I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on. — Stephen Sondheim

As the virtual world of electronic communication becomes the world many of us inhabit all the time, in turning to imaginative literature we may not be seeking mere reassurance nor be impelled by mere nostalgia. To enter with heart and mind into the world of the imagination may be to head deliberately and directly toward, or back toward, engagement with the real world. In one of T. S. Eliot's poems a bird sings, "Mankind cannot bear very much reality." I've always thought that bird was mistaken, or was talking only about some people. I find it amazing how much of the real world most of us can endure. Not only endure, but need, desire, crave. Reality is life. Where we suffocate is in the half-life of unreality, untruth, imitation, fakery, the almost-true that is not true. To be human is to live both within and beyond the narrow band of what-happens-now, in the vast regions of the past and the possible, the known and the imagined: our real world, our true Now. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Albus never attempted to deny that his father (who was to die in Azkaban) had committed this crime; on the contrary, when I plucked up courage to ask him, he assured me that he knew his father to be guilty. Beyond that, Dumbledore refused to speak of the sad business, though many attempted to make him do so. Some, indeed, were disposed to praise his father's action and assumed that Albus too was a Muggle-hater. They could not have been more mistaken: As anybody who knew Albus would attest, he never revealed the remotest anti-Muggle tendency. Indeed, his determined support for Muggle rights gained him many enemies in subsequent years. In — J.K. Rowling

No one knows better than I how unworthy I am.'
A sentimental sigh and an inarticulate murmur from Selina showed that this frank avowal had moved her profoundly. Upon Abby it had a different effect. 'Trying to take the wind out of my eye, Mr Calverleigh?' she said.
If he was disconcerted he did not betray it, but answered immediately: 'No, but, perhaps - the words out of your mouth?'
Privately, she gave him credit for considerable adroitness, but all she said was: 'You are mistaken: I am not so uncivil!'
'And it isn't true!' Fanny declared passionately. 'I won't permit anyone to say such a thing - not even you, Abby!'
'Well, I haven't said it, my dear, nor am I likely to, so there is really no need for you to fly up into the boughs! — Georgette Heyer

As Mary delivered what was to be her last lecture about the Galapagos Islands, she would be stopped mid-sentence for five seconds by a doubt which, if expressed in words, might have come out something like this: "Maybe I'm just a crazy lady who had wandered off the street and into this classroom and started explaining the mysteries of life to these people. And they believe me, although I am utterly mistaken about simply everything."
She had to wonder, too, about all the supposedly great teachers of the past, who, although their brains were healthy, had turned out to be as wrong as Roy about what was really going on. — Kurt Vonnegut

If I am not mistaken, it was a British poet who said that 'no one is properly dressed unless he wears a smile.' — Sukarno

You can't go."
"Give me a reason why I shouldn't."
"Because I'll miss you, damn it!" she hissed, splaying her arms. "Because what's the point in anything if you just disappear forever?"
"The point in what, Celaena?" How could he be so calm when she was so frantic?
"The point in Skull's Bay, and the point in getting me that music, and the point in ... the point in telling Arobynn that you'd forgive him if he never hurt me again."
"You said you didn't care what I thought. Or what I did. Or if I died, if I'm not mistaken."
"I lied! And you know I lied you stupid bastard! — Sarah J. Maas

I think you are a very good tiger," said Dorothy, patting the huge head of the beast. "In that you are mistaken," was the reply. "I am a good beast, perhaps, but a disgracefully bad tiger. For it is the nature of tigers to be cruel and ferocious, and in refusing to eat harmless living creatures I am acting as no good tiger has ever before acted. That is why I left the forest and joined my friend the Cowardly Lion. — L. Frank Baum

Bombs Away!" he yelled, swooping low over StregaSchloss. He saw little figures on the ground fleeing from the large green projectile that was speeding their way. "And a direct hit, if I'm not mistaken," he observed to himself. With a tremendous slapping sound, Ffup's digestive overload landed on a human target. There was a scream, a ghastly choking sound, and then silence. — Debi Gliori

God puts you where God needs you. You are where you are supposed to be. The job you are doing may not be any easier on account of this, indeed it may be harder, even more urgent, but now you are centered, focused, clear. So this is where I am supposed to be. I always thought I was supposed to be somewhere else, doing something else, being someone else. But I realize now that I was mistaken. This does not mean that I can't or will not be doing something else. Just right now, I am where God wants me. — Lawrence Kushner

I dont know why, but I feel some pain when she knew I was writing a lot of writing for her and when she suddenly wrote one, it's not for me. You can't go on with the situation like that, it could have kill you at the exact moment. — Ariel Seraphino

I was just finishing high school and entering college in 1988, when the Creator's Bill of Rights was drafted, and had already set my sights on building a career as a writer of comics. Discovering the Creator's Bill of Rights - in an issue of 'The Comics Journal,' if I'm not mistaken - I accepted it as gospel. — Chris Roberson

Since I was in flight from religion, I assumed that my classmates had to be in flight from religion too, albeit in a quieter, savvier way than I had as yet been able to discover. Only today do I realize how mistaken I was. They were never in flight at all. Nor are their children in flight, or their grandchildren. By the time I reached by seventieth year, I used to predict, all the churches in the world would have been turned into barns or museums or potteries. But I was wrong. Behold, new churches spring up every day, all over the place, to say nothing of mosques. So Nietzsche's dictum needs to be amended: while it may be so that only the higher animals are capable of boredom, man proves himself highest of all by domesticating boredom, giving it a home. — J.M. Coetzee

Tyrion: My gentle sister seems to have mistaken me for Ned Stark.
Bronn: I hear he was taller.
Tyrion: Not after Joff took off his head. — George R R Martin

I have been thinking over what she said about knowing as distinct from remembering. Perhaps all it amounts to is that as we talked and I trotted out these little bits of information I gave the impression, common in elderly people, not only of having a long full life behind me that I could dip into more or less at random for the benefit of a younger listener, but also of being undisturbed by any doubts about the meaning and value of that life and the opinions I'd formed while leading it; although that suggests knowingness, and when she said, 'What a lot you know' she made it sound like a state of grace, one that she envied me in the mistaken belief that I was in it, while she was not and didn't understand how, things being as she finds them, one ever achieved it. — Paul Scott

I was a tomboy as a kid - I was skinny and had cropped hair and was often mistaken for a boy - and up until I was about six, I had my own very fluid ideas of gender in that I believed that, somehow, an individual could choose whether or not s/he wanted to be a boy or a girl. — Elizabeth Hand

Moving heavy objects allowed me to feel manly in the eyes of other men. With the women it didn't matter, but I enjoyed subtly intimidating the guys with bad backs who thought they were helping out by telling us how to pack the truck. The thinking was that because we were furniture movers, we obviously weren't too bright. In addition to being strong and stupid, we were also thought of as dangerous. It might have been an old story to Patrick and the others, but I got a kick out of being mistaken as volatile. All I had to do was throw down my dolly with a little extra force, and a bossy customer would say, Let's just all calm down and try to work this out. — David Sedaris

Do you recall the last time you and I danced? I am afraid I was rude to you." She ducked her head, embarrassed. "You didn't like being forced to dance with me then any more than now, I imagine." It was his turn to be taken aback. "Miss Smallwood, you are mistaken. I am very much enjoying dancing with you. I only hesitated because I thought you would prefer to dance with Phillip. — Julie Klassen

Who knows what Yale thought it was getting when it hired Richard Rodriguez? The people who offered me the job thought there was nothing wrong with that. I thought there was something very wrong. I still do. I think race-based affirmative action is crude and absolutely mistaken. — Richard Rodriguez

If I'm not mistaken, I believe it was written beforehand. And it just happened in rehearsals Basically giving each person their vocal-line and I ended up getting that line! I'm so grateful I did because it was really special to sing that and you feel something when you sing it it's a very distinct piece that fits perfectly in the production. — Kendra Kassebaum

In a segment of the Sermon on the Mount, appearing in Matthew 5, Jesus is reported to have set six new teachings of his against six old Jewish teachings. The latter are introduced by such words as 'You have heard that it was said by them of old time' and the former by 'But I say unto you.'
Since both the teachings of old time and Jesus' new teachings are predicated on the same profoundly mistaken views of human nature and of the world in general, it is unimportant for us here today to compare and contrast these teachings or to determine which is better or worse in some way or other. The point is that whether better or worse, in this way or that, both are lodged in an egregiously mistaken mythology
but in a mythology of enormous importance for us, because it is one of the wellsprings of Western culture. — Delos McKown

I and others were mistaken early on in saying that the subprime crisis would be contained. The causal relationship between the housing problem and the broad financial system was very complex and difficult to predict. — Ben Bernanke

The greatest thing I learned while taking classes at Second City was the very first thing they taught: 'Yes, and ... '. In improv, you keep scenes alive but accepting whatever you are given and then adding to it or amplifying it. There is no space on stage for 'No,' 'I'm sorry, you're mistaken,' or 'Yes, but ... '. Those transitions kill energy, set up interpersonal conflict, engage the ego in a defensive posture, and stymie the flow of conversation onstage. — Jason Seiden

Someone told me I'd find a princess of great worth here. One with the strength to be the hero this realm needs."
He stared at me with those unsettling blue eyes. They were cold, like ice water - made me shiver from head to toe. Then his gaze seemed to search even deeper. Finally, he looked through me, like I was nothing. In brisk steps, he strode across the marble to the courtyard. But before crossing the threshold, he turned back to glare at me with his lip curled ever so slightly. "It seems she was mistaken."...
I felt my own lip curl in response. How rude! Who the Grimm was this peasant to judge me? I was wearing a Glenda original. Original! Not some fairy-godmother knockoff worn by those servant girls turned royal. I was a crown princess, for the love of fairy, and no one dismissed me. — Betsy Schow

...if we do not know how to defend ourselves, our women and our places of worship by force of suffering, i.e., nonviolence, we must, if we are men, be at least able to defend all these by fighting." (MLK)
"...If given a choice between violent resistance and passive acceptance, King and Gandhi both accepted violence..."
"...like violence, it [non-violent resistance] was aggressive, but it was spiritually, bot physically, so."

"...At the same time the mind and the emotions are active, actively trying to persuade the opponent to change his ways and convince him that he is mistaken and to lift him to a higher level of existence. — S. Nassir Ghaemi

Maybe there's something mistaken in this desire men have to instruct us; I was young at the time, and I didn't realize that in his wish to transform me was the proof that he didn't like me as I was, he wanted me to be different, or, rather, he didn't want just a woman, he wanted the woman he imagined he himself would be if he were a woman. For Franco, I said, I was an opportunity for him to expand into the feminine, to take possession of it: I constituted the proof of his omnipotence, the demonstration that he knew how to be not only a man in the right way but also a woman. And today when he no longer senses me as part of himself, he feels betrayed. I — Elena Ferrante

A sheriff arrested me. I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure my men-in-uniform fetish began that day. The sheriff was hot. And he handcuffed me. I've never been the same. — Darynda Jones

Where did you get that assault weapon?"
"Assault weapon?" Zach turned his head to look at her. "Well, lookey there. You're cute when you blush."
Maddie's face grew hotter, but at least he'd mistaken the reason for her embarrassment.
Zach turned his face back toward the ceiling. "That there's standard equipment, darlin'."
"There's nothing standard about that."
"I didn't hear you complaining."
"Of course not. You sprang it on me when I was mentally incompetent."
Zach laughed out loud. "That you were, sweet Maddie that you were."
Maddie and Zach — Suzie Quint

Didn't they know who I was, what they'd trained me for? I was Eadlyn Schreave. No one was more powerful than me.
So if they thought I was going down without a fight, they were sadly mistaken. — Kiera Cass

I do not mean to say that I viewed those desires of mine that deviated from accepted standards as normal and orthodox; nor do I mean that I labored under the mistaken impression that my friends possessed the same desires. Surprisingly enough, I was so engrossed in tales of romance that I devoted all my elegant dreams to thoughts of love between man and maid, and to marriage, exactly as though I were a young girl who knew nothing of the world. I tossed my love for Omi onto the rubbish heap of neglected riddles, never once searching deeply for its meaning. Now when I write the word love, when I write affection, my meaning is totally different from my understanding of the words at that time. I never even dreamed that such desires as I had felt toward Omi might have a significant connection with the realities of my life. — Yukio Mishima

The idea that the Lord our God is not a personage of tabernacle is entirely a mistaken notion. He was once a man. Brother Kimball quoted a saying of Joseph the Prophet, that he would not worship a God who had not a Father; and I do not know that he would if be had not a mother; the one would be as absurd as the other. If he had a Father, he was made in his likeness. And if he is our Father we are made after his image and likeness. — Brigham Young

Up until two years ago, I was one of the top-selling real estate agents in the tricounty area. I went to a convention in Boca Raton. I had one too many margaritas, met a tall, pale, and handsome man in the bar, and woke up a vampire."
"I was mistaken for a deer and got shot," I offered."
"Oh. — Molly Harper

I get constantly mistaken for Elijah Wood. I was in Japan and someone held out a photo of him for me to sign. — Daniel Radcliffe

I am an ambassador," Akretenesh warned me, anger bringing his confidence back. "You cannot shoot."
"I don't mean to," I reassured him, still smiling. I adopted his soothing tones. "Indeed, you are the only man I won't shoot. But if I aimed at anyone else, it might give others a dangerously mistaken sense of their own safety." I raised my voice a trifle, though it wasn't really necessary. "We will have another vote, Xorcheus."
They elected me Sounis. It was unanimous. — Megan Whalen Turner

Obviously I was mistaken. — Anna Quindlen

They are surely gods who speak to him
With steady voices
A glance from him drives men to their
knees
His sigh brings cities to ruin
I wonder if he dreams of surrender
On a bed of white flowers
Or is that the mistaken hope
Of every would-be conqueror?
The world was not made for beauty like
his. — C.S. Pacat

As for the young man carrying the groceries, he was a thin, fair-skinned young man, and I would have said that he had been born in the house. He had the vacant, dog-like expressions that house-born slaves, as I remembered, liked to put on when they were in public with their masters and performing some simple task. This fellow was pretending that the Waitrose groceries were a great burden, but this was just an act, to draw attention to himself and the lady he served. He, too, had mistaken me for an Arab, and when we crossed he had dropped the burdened-down expression and given me a look of wistful inquisitiveness, like a puppy that wanted to play but had just been made to understand that it wasn't playtime. — V.S. Naipaul

He was under the mistaken impression that I didn't have enough tact.
The truth was, I had no tact. — Caroline Hanson

What happened to you? (Sin)
Was mistaken for a punching bag again. But what the hell, I'm used to it. (Xypher) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid." "The — Joe Abercrombie

God of the battlefield, eh? Gods and devils can look much alike to us little people. You went to a ford, and a bridge, and a hill, and what did you do there except kill? What have you made? Who have you helped?" He stood there for a moment, all his bravado slithering out. She is right. And no one knows it better than me. "Nothing and no one," he whispered. "So you love war. I used to think you were a decent man. But I see now I was mistaken." She stabbed at his chest with her forefinger. "You're a hero. — Joe Abercrombie

I lied to you,' she said, hanging her head in shame, 'more than once. In fact, I swore that my lies were truth. I can't understand how it could have happened. It just came out of my mouth and by the time I realised what I'd done, it was too late.
'It's never too late to realise that you were mistaken, Sophiel. — A.O. Esther

See, whoever said I was an autocrat was clearly mistaken. I represented the height of representative democracy where everyone gets a vote. Mine just counted for more than all the other ones combined, when you read the final tally; that's all. — Luke Sky Wachter

What I had done was nothing so extraordinary. I had simply taken [the prisoners] as human beings and not mistaken them for mechanisms to repair. I had interpreted them in the same way they had interpreted themselves all along, that is to say, as free and responsible. I had not offered them a cheap escape from guilt feelings by conceiving of them as victims of biological, psychological, or sociological conditioning processes. Nor had I taken them as helpless pawns on the battleground of id, ego, and superego. — Viktor E. Frankl

There are other kinds of emotional pain that emerge from our own mistaken thinking. As we surrender that pain, we are inviting into our thought system a guide who will lead us to different thoughts. It's like the song "Amazing Grace": I was blind and now I see. — Marianne Williamson

He took a step toward her, his clothing slipping from his fingers. 'There has been a terrible mistake.'
'Yes, there has,' she said, her entire body shaking with emotion. 'I was mistaken to think I could ever be enough of a woman to please you, to ever think that I could learn what it means to be anyone else but me. — Julia Quinn

But that's not the name of a man, it's the name of a mountain! ( ... )
"It is my name," Athos said calmly.
"But you said your name was d'Artagnan."
"I?"
"Yes, you."
"That is to say, someone said to me: 'You are M. d'Artagnan?' I replied: 'You think so?' My guards shouted that they were sure of it. I did not want to vex them. Besides, I might have been mistaken. — Alexandre Dumas

At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things; and in this I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom — Plato

I loved county fairs in the South. It was hard to believe that anything could be so consistently cheap and showy and vulgar year after year. each year I thought that at least one class act would force its way into a booth or sideshow, but I was always mistaken. The lure of the fair was the perfect harmony of its joyous decadence, its burned-out dishonored vulgarity, its riot of colors and smells, its jangling, tawdry music, and its wicked glimpse into the outlaw life of hucksters, tattoo parlors, monstrous freaks, and strippers. — Pat Conroy

Tell me if I'm mistaken, but isnt't that my girlfriend in the graveyard?"
"You are not mistaken."
"And she's straddling some guy."
"That's correct," said Colin.
Hassan pursed his lips and nodded. "And- I just want to make sure we have our facts straight here- she's naked."
"She certainly is."
...
And then he raced forward about ten paces, cupped his hands over his mouth, and screamed, "I AM BREAKING UP WITH YOU!" Still, though, a goofy grin was on his face. — John Green

Once when I was givin' th' children a bit of a preach after they'd been fightin' I ses to 'em all, When I was at school my jography told as th' world was shaped like a orange an' I found out before I was ten that th' whole orange doesn't belong to nobody. No one owns more than his bit of a quarter an' there's times it seems like there's not enow quarters to go round. But don't you - none o' you - think as you own th' whole orange or you'll find out you're mistaken, an' you won't find it out without hard knocks. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Xas sighed. "But I don't want to talk about God. Why do I? Sometimes I feel God is all over me like a pollen and I go about pollinating things with God."
Sobran opened his eyes and Xas smiled at him. Soban said, "I did think that you talked about God to persuade me you weren't evil. But I've decided that, for you, everything is somehow to the glory of God, whether you like it or not."
"I feel that, yes. My imagination was first formed in God's glory. But I think God didn't make the world, so I think my feelings are mistaken."
This was the heresy for which Xas was thrown out of Heaven. Sobran was happy it had finally appeared. It was like a clearing. Sobran could almost see this clearing - a silent, sunny, green space into which not a thing was falling, not even the call of a cuckoo. Xas thought the world was like this, an empty clearing into which God had wandered. — Elizabeth Knox

If I didn't fear I'd do you harm...I'd try to make you an atheist. I really do think that you are a deluded follower of mistaken and superstitious and cowardly theories. That's as far as I'll go....Everyone who worships a god worships a force back of all nature, no matter what they call him or it and even if they call his aspects by different names & have many "gods." If there really is such a force, then all people who worship any god or gods, worship the same god. I'd just as soon call him Ishtar or Baal or Jehovah. They're merely names for the same idea. (Letter from Simpson to Anne Roe, written ca. 1920-21, when Anne was briefly flirting with fundamentalist Christianity, American Philosophical Society archives.) — George Gaylord Simpson

Let me tell you a little story. There was once a boy who wasn't even old enough to shave. Beaten. Naked. He was sent out into the great desert with only a small dagger for protection. I have killed cobras with my bare hands and I have lived through conditions so horrendous, not even hell itself scares me. If any of you think for one minute that I have any soul left to prevent me from killing you, you're sadly mistaken. If you think for one minute, any of you are capable of killing me, then I say try it. But make sure you've had a good confession beforehand, because I assure you it will be the very last mistake you make in this lifetime. (Sin) — Kinley MacGregor

Strangely, it was Athena who spoke up: 'The boy is correct. We have been unwise to ignore our children. It proved a strategic weakness in this war and almost caused our destruction. Percy Jackson - I have had my doubts about you, but perhaps -' she glanced at Annabeth, and then spoke as if the words had a sour taste - 'perhaps I was mistaken. — Rick Riordan

I get mistaken for Amanda Holden; I've had that since I was 12. I get Carey Mulligan, too. We look quite similar, and she does 'Bleak House' and I do 'Cranford,' so people mix us up. I'm sure we'll play sisters at some point. — Kimberley Nixon

That night at Dumbarton was a classic of its kind. She had hopes still, I think, of enslaving me despite myself with her charms. And I probably thought the same. We both found we were mistaken. It had its moments; but she has the mind and morals of a jungle cat. She didn't enjoy meeting ... another of the same. — Dorothy Dunnett

Even when the universe made it quite clear to me that I was mistaken in my certainties ... I did not break. The shattering of my sureties did not shatter me. — Lucille Clifton

I would have far more fear of being mistaken, and of finding that the Christian religion was true, than of not being mistaken in believing it true. — Blaise Pascal

I wondered again if I might not actually be dead-if this was some terrible version of death, which I had momentarily mistaken for a continuation of life. — Elizabeth Kostova

I think those who say that you can't tango if you are not Argentine are mistaken. Tango was an immigrant music ... so it does not have a nationality. It's only passport is feeling. — Carlos Gavito

I thought he was someone I wanted to know. As it turns out, it was a case of
mistaken identity. — Jodi Livon

All that sultry May evening I danced physically with Christie, but in spirit with Tina. That special duality of the Davenports, of being able to haunt in absence, was so manifestly strong that several times I only saved myself by the sheerest miracle from calling the girl in the pale primrose dress by the wrong name. — H.E. Bates

I turned on Fox News and jumped when I saw that they had one of those things in their studio. "Are you people crazy?" I screamed at the television. "Get out of there. Somebody shoot it!" Then I realized I was watching Special Report and had mistaken Charles Krauthammer for a zombie. — Ian McClellan

When I was a kid, I was always mistaken for a girl. — Bradley Cooper

I began attempting to write for children under the mistaken assumption that writing for children was easy. — Robin Hobb

For twenty-one years, I have been paralyzed by the fear of what this society will do with me if they ever were to know of the thoughts that I continually push away. For more than two decades, I have made a choice to be straight. After all, it's as easy as making a choice, isn't it? This culture has made sure that I know that. Anyone who is anything other than straight was just someone deceived by the devil. He is unnatural. He is confused. He is mistaken. He is weak. He can control it if he desires to control it. Such a compelling and ongoing argument has been made that I have always trusted it.
I believed that if I hid it long enough, and ran from it long enough, and refused to acknowledge it for long enough, I could indeed succeed at living up to their decrees. I believed that I could force myself to never be anything else. — Dan Pearce

I think there's a level at which you think that there's a reason that you're being singled out, that you're being chosen. As a kid, I was always mistaken for a girl. Before you reach that age where your sexuality starts to display itself, kids can look very androgynous, and I guess I leaned more toward the feminine. All those things were very hard, growing up, because you're trying to create an identity, and you're feeling shameful about the one that you're making. So, I identified with it a lot. — Matt Reeves

Twenty-four years ago I was strangely handsome; in San Francisco in the rainy season I was often mistaken for fair weather. — Mark Twain

She said it was different, because the balance of power was equal between women so sex was an even-steven transaction. I said "even-steven" was a sexist phrase, if she was going to be like that, and anyway that argument was outdated. She said I had trivialized the issue and if I thought it was outdated, I was living with my head in the sand.
(...)
I said there was more than one way of living with your head in the sand and that if Moira thought she could create Utopia by shutting herself up in a women-only enclave she was sadly mistaken. Men were not just going to go away, I said. You couldn't just ignore them . — Margaret Atwood

There was a time I could have been mistaken for Burt Reynolds. I had a moustache and so did he. But he was the number one star in the world, so there wasn't really much confusion. — Tom Selleck

So you love war. I used to think you were a decent man. But I see now I was mistaken. You're a hero. — Joe Abercrombie