"Belittle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it was the fashion in most European countries to question the motives as well as to belittle the qualifications of the delegates. Now that political passion has somewhat abated and the atmosphere is becoming lighter and clearer, one may without provoking contradiction pay a well-deserved tribute to their sincerity, high purpose, and quick response to the calls of public duty ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of Caesar, with statements made about him, tend to belittle him in our eyes? What do Brutus and Antony say of Caesar when they are alone, speaking freely and without disguise? What words or acts of Caesar mentioned in the play are expressive ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... destined always to escape human comprehension; finally, by referring us more necessarily than ever to the unfathomable problem of our origins, Fabre has reopened the door of mystery, the door of the divine Unknown, in which the religion of men must always renew itself. We should belittle his thought, we should dwarf the man himself, were we to seek to confine to any particular thesis his spiritualistic ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... desires of her life, this desire to save her father, to share his sorrows, to stand by him to the end, prevailed. The riches of the world could not purchase a devotion as precious, or any fine philosophy belittle it. He knew that she would go to Petersburg because Paul Boriskoff, her father, had need of her. This was her answer to his selfish complaints during the years of ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... I would, Thoreau-like, set down in details and in figures the exact character and cost of every designed alteration to this scene; but the idea, as soon as it occurred, was sternly suppressed, for however cheerful a disciple I am of that philosopher, far be it from me to belittle ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... election in a moral land involving the expenditure of a dime, and though you pass for the closest man west of the mountains. And here we are, going upon errands of duty, as little worldly as we can be, yet not anxious to belittle ourselves or our district." ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... place for the development of the human will, attacking the obstacles opposed to it by destiny, fortune, or circumstances." And again: "Drama is a representation of the will of man in conflict with the mysterious powers or natural forces which limit and belittle us; it is one of us thrown living upon the stage, there to struggle against fatality, against social law, against one of his fellow-mortals, against himself, if need be, against the ambitions, the interests, the prejudices, the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... unstable equilibrium. They may topple at any moment, and then the correspondence that eager devotees have found between them and the Bible is a slur that falls altogether on the religion and not on the science. This is a great error, and those who are drawn into it belittle the cause that is dear to them. While our author is catholic in his reading, he does not seem to assign to all writers in his field their just value. His quotations, the fresh, the obsolete, the trustworthy, and the doubtful, are mingled in a confusion that only the experienced ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... like an angel of light compared with the dark child of Nature. Agnes was tall and slender, and moved with a great air of dignity and calm self-possession, and this to the uncontrolled Chaldea was also a matter of offence. She inwardly tried to belittle her rival by thinking what a milk-and-water useless person she was, but the steady and resolute look in the lady's brown eyes gave the lie to this mental assertion. Lady Agnes had an air of breeding and command, which, with all her beauty, ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... make sure that you'll get it," sneered Gresham, and laughed. He was anxious to belittle Gamble in the eyes ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... wrote to a friend, "but my feelings have never been regarded." He knew that Hamilton believed him to have been in sympathy with the Conway Cabal,—a suspicion of which he never cleared himself,—and attributed to the Federal leader the motive of wishing to belittle his political significance, lest he should endeavour to use his power as President of the Senate to hamper and annoy the Administration. Perhaps he was right. Far be it from anyone to attempt a journey through the utmost recesses of Hamilton's mind. He ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... they be constantly coaxed to right-doing by promised rewards,—a new toy, a book, an excursion, nor even the pleasures of Heaven. All of these incentives are selfish, and invariably narrow the character and belittle life when made the chief motives of action. But rather begin at the earliest possible moment to instill into the mind a love for right, and truth, and purity, and virtue, and an abhorrence for their contraries; then will he have a worthy principle by which to square his ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... exposures, the gnawing jealousies, of overmuch fashionable society, with its shallow and bitter emulations, do far more to contract and sour the spirit of woman, to falsify and deprave her heart, to belittle and spoil her mind, to degrade and veneer her character, than any professional career can well be supposed to do. It cannot be doubted, that many a woman, who displays herself, as good as naked, in brilliant drawing-room assemblies, spends half her existence ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... performance, is simply amateurish, void of contents, and disagreeable; and it is a sad proof of corrupt taste that, in the face of the many dramatic master-works which Germany has produced, some persons have the presumption to belittle these in favor of Wagner's. Yet enough of this. The future will pronounce judgment in this matter, too." Poor Schumann! His own opera, "Genoveva," was a failure, while "Tannhaeuser" and "Lohengrin" were everywhere received with enthusiasm. ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... long as tens of thousands of Bibles are printed every year, and circulated over the whole habitable globe, and the masses in all English-speaking nations revere it as the word of God, it is vain to belittle its influence. The sentimental feelings we all have for those things we were educated to believe sacred, do not readily yield to pure reason. I distinctly remember the shudder that passed over me on seeing a mother take our family Bible to make ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... him, her eyes alight with mischief. That day on the edge of the butte overlooking the river, when Duncan had talked about Dakota, she had detected in his manner an inclination to belittle the latter; several times since then she had heard him speak venomously of him, and she had suspected that all was not smooth between them. And now since Duncan had related the story of the calf incident ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... to belittle the part that I played in our reduced domestic economy. Indeed, I am very particular to get all the credit due me. I always remind my sister Deborah, who was the baby of those humble days, that it was ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... not even complain that peace was sacrificed to the cause of liberty."[21] This is an animated picture by an eye-witness. But all authorities concur in its truthfulness. Even Capefigue—whose business is to belittle all that is truly great, and especially to efface those names which are associated with human liberty, while, like another Old Mortality, he furbishes the tombstones of royal mistresses—is yet constrained to bear witness to the popularity and influence which Franklin achieved. The critic dwells ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... were "old stagers" with faces lined and seamed by the storms of half a century, and they were even more interested in the story of our voyage from Elephant Island than the younger generation was. They congratulated us on having accomplished a remarkable boat journey. I do not wish to belittle our success with the pride that apes humility. Under Providence we had overcome great difficulties and dangers, and it was pleasant to tell the tale to men who knew those sullen and ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... later he published Alton Locke, describing the life of a young tailor whose mind and whose fortunes are profoundly influenced by the Chartist movement. From a literary point of view it is far from being his best work; and the critics agreed to belittle it at the time and to pass it over with apology at his death. But it received a warm welcome from others. While it roused the imagination of many young men and set them thinking, the veteran Carlyle could speak ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... directly into our drinking-water. There was not even a pretence at decency. The people bathed and washed their dogs in the streams. The public town dumps were on their banks. The rival newspapers tried to belittle the evil because their reporters were beaten. Running water purifies itself, they said. So it does, if it runs far enough and long enough. I put that matter to the test. Taking the case of a town some sixty miles out of New York, one of the worst offenders, I ascertained from the engineer ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... behind it! But would they? It was a question which was forever popping up to obscure the future. Many tongues were busy with inuendo to belittle what the farmers had accomplished already and to befog their efforts to advance still farther. At every shipping point in the West industrious little mallets were knocking away on the Xylophone of Doubt, all playing the same tune: "Just Kiss Yourself Good-Bye!" No farmers' business organization ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... belittle his courage, and you say you're his dearest friend." She paused for a moment, then went closer to the young man and said in ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... jangling between the two women belittle them as heroines, and is it, therefore, a blot upon ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... labors of these women. Sometimes, indeed, the talents and usefulness of these women, and of the earnest women of our own day, are admitted after a fashion; but it is done in such a way as, in reality, to belittle the sex as much as possible. They are considered as occupying the same relation to men that the moon does to the sun, and all that is desired of them is to reflect a borrowed light. If she be unable to reflect ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... and these darkened souls brought to the Light of the World. But to-night he felt strangely fearful, almost cowardly, for the whole tribe had gathered to pay tribute to their god, and it is a dangerous thing to belittle the god or the faith of any nation that is in earnest in ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... Owen, to which references occur in the "Life and Letters," II., page 300. The amende to the "Vestiges" is not so full as the author felt it to be; but it was clearly in place in a paper intended to belittle the "Origin"; it also gave the reviewer (page 511) an opportunity for a hit at Sedgwick and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... wanted to place the blame for the whole matter where it belonged. He wanted to track the man who had conferred with known conspirators back to his home. He wanted to be able to point out the treacherous government which had so sought to belittle the United States in the ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... SOC. C. E. (by letter).—As was to be expected, this paper has brought out discussion, some of which is favorable and flattering; some is in the nature of dust-throwing to obscure the force of the points made; some would attempt to belittle the importance of these points; and some simply brings out the old and over-worked argument which can be paraphrased about as follows: "The structures stand up and perform their duty, is this ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... it's French and blinded by its hate. It says they're poisoning me; hints at Locusta Who poisoned Claudius. If thy Prince is dying, Wherefore, O France, belittle his disease? It is no poisoned cup of melodrama That kills the Duke of ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... distinction has been overshadowed by his fame as the leader of the Church in one of the most momentous struggles in her history, but it was equally great in its own sphere. A Scottish historian—John Hill Burton—has sought, with a singular perversity, to belittle Melville as a scholar, and speaks of M'Crie as having endeavoured to make out his title to distinction in this respect from the natural ambition to claim such an honour for one of his own ecclesiastical forebears. The chapter which follows ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... his face a false black beard of huge dimensions. Not that they were averse to recognition among themselves, but in the fear that by some hook or crook Dangloss or his agents might be able to look in upon them—through stone walls, as it were. They were not men to belittle the powers of the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... commerce, and international relations. Washington brought it to the attention of our leading men, educating them on this as on other points, and showing, too, the stupidity of Great Britain in her attempt to belittle the trade of a country which, as he wrote Lafayette in prophetic vein, would one day "have weight in the ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... become the modern fashion somewhat to belittle Puritanism. It is easy to emphasize its absurdities, to ridicule the almost fanatical fervor which goaded men to harshness and inconsistency. The fact remains that a tremendous selective force was needed to tear the Puritans away from the mother church and the ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... love have to do with Ruth's divergent views on art, right conduct, the French Revolution, or equal suffrage? They were mental processes, but love was beyond reason; it was superrational. He could not belittle love. He worshipped it. Love lay on the mountain-tops beyond the valley-land of reason. It was a sublimates condition of existence, the topmost peak of living, and it came rarely. Thanks to the school of scientific philosophers he favored, he knew the biological significance of love; but ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... in his published letters, written while in Canada, and he was ever looking forward to the time when he could rejoin them in his beloved chateau of Candiac, and resume the studies he liked so well. Some Canadian writers have endeavoured to belittle Montcalm, that they may more easily explain away the failings of Vaudreuil, a native Canadian, who thwarted constantly the plans of a greater man; but an impartial historian can never place these two men on the same high level. Wolfe's family was of respectable ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... moulded public opinion. The fact is that the formation of opinion to-day is by no means confined to the educated classes, but the masses have taken it upon themselves not only to formulate opinion but to enforce it. It would be a mistake to belittle or ignore this opinion, or to ascribe it to a temporary upheaval. It would be equally a mistake to suppose that this awakening amongst the masses is due either to the activity of the Ali Brothers or myself. For the time being we have the ear of the masses because we voice their sentiments. ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... tinned-food habit, nor, on reading the chap's screed, did they impress me as being fraught with vital interest to thinking people; in truth, I was more concerned with the comparison of myself to a restaurateur of the crude new city of New York, which might belittle rather than distinguish me, I suspected. But what was my astonishment to perceive in the course of a few days that I had created rather a sensation, with attending newspaper publicity which, although bizarre enough, I am bound ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... political and particularly upon the economic causes need not belittle the strictly religious factor in the movement. The success of the revolt was due to the fact that many kings, nobles, and commoners, for financial and political advantages to themselves, became the valuable allies of real religious reformers. It required ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... mystery of the other's personality and mind, and as the lower lights were switched off and the alcove grew dimmer, the talk became increasingly intimate. A vein of poetry, of unsuspected romance, developed in Rimrock's mind and, far from discouraging it or seeming to belittle it, Mrs. Hardesty responded in kind. It was a rare experience in people so different, this exchange of innermost thoughts, and as their voices grew lower and all the world seemed far away, they took no notice ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... agriculture, I am firmly of the belief that it diverts one from economic work, but where pursued for a definite economic purpose it cannot be too careful or too thorough and I know of no instances better calculated to appeal to and modify the views of those inclined to belittle such structural study than Phylloxera and Icerya. On the careful comparison of the European and American specimens of Phylloxera vastatrix, involving the most minute structures and details, depended originally ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... appetites must end in pain. They are 536:21 "of few days, and full of trouble." Their supposed joys are cheats. Their narrow limits belittle their gratifica- tions, and hedge about their achievements with thorns. 536:24 Mortal mind accepts the erroneous, material concep- tion of life and joy, but the true idea is gained from the immortal side. Through toil, struggle, and sor- 536:27 ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the Spaniard said. "You are one of those who belittle your own good deeds. I feel indeed more grateful than I can express to you as well as to ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... find still another mode of defence, entirely personal, seldom employed by husbands, but the men of superiority will not fear to attempt it. It is to belittle the lover without letting your wife suspect your intention. You ought to be able to bring it about so that she will say to herself some evening while she is putting her hair in curl-papers, "My husband is superior ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... into the family of nations in these latter times is the highest billow in humanity's evolution, the crowning effort of ages in the aggrandizement of man. Unless we take her in this altitude, we do not comprehend her; we belittle her towering stature and conceal the singular design ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... other than in the way which you anticipate. For instance, if you say to Roxi, "Wasn't that a grey goose we heard overhead?" Roxi will readily assent, though he well knows it to have been a mallard duck, but he would spare your ignorance. Again, it is Eskimo etiquette to belittle your own success in hunting and, in so doing, be not literally truthful. When we place this delightful trait alongside the fish-stories we are familiar with, who would seek to change ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... welcome to believe anything they like about me," Mead went on, "and I don't intend to belittle myself askin' 'em not to. It's all right, boys. I didn't blame you for believin' I'd done it But I did think you'd notice he'd been shot in the back. I'm goin' out now. I'll see you later." And he hurried off down Main street ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... seem bright enough, but they bring in another disquieting group of associations. The rainbow is almost, if not quite, a universal symbol of failure. We all know the old story of going to the end of the rainbow for a pot of gold, and if we want to belittle any effort we say that the individual is chasing the rainbow. So here I am again on the downhill road between two failures, following the rainbow to a hopeless condition of muddy uselessness. And if it were not bad enough to be following one rainbow, I am following a great number ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... right to demand this sacrifice of him? Was it not a devilish temptation to take him from his calling, from that work in which God had evidently intended him to work for the world? Had he a right to spoil his life, to belittle his soul, for any consideration? If Hepsy Ann Nickerson had claims, had not he also, and his Art? If he were willing, in this dire extremity, to sacrifice his love, his prospects of married bliss, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... there, whether it be death or glory or just hard work; and to new friends whom he would meet and part with, who doubtless would "josh" him and make fun of his hair and tell him extravagant yarns and belittle and discredit his soberly and simply told "adventures," and yet ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... have demanded, he will indicate a weakness of character which augurs ill for the future: and if you insist upon the sacrifice, you will establish a selfish precedent which can only make you a tyrant in your own domain, and at the same time belittle your husband ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... character of Jesus, it is freely admitted that many of the thoughts attributed to the son of Mary are superlatively fine. They will live forever whether the personality of Jesus be rejected as a divinity or not. That these beautiful preachments are ignored here is not due to any desire to belittle admirable sentiments or to disparage right living. The loving side of Jesus has been emphasized again and again and will be borne in mind by the reader when other less admirable traits are criticized. The intent of this criticism is not to ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... give an explanation of what is taking place." "There are many men," he says, "who could do the same thing." On this point we cannot argue with Mr. Belloc. He may know them: we do not. What we do know is that there are many men who are trying to do the same thing. In saying this we have no wish to belittle either individuals or as a class those courageous gentlemen, among whom the best-known, perhaps, are Colonel Repington and Colonel Maude, who are striving, and striving honestly, we believe, to provide the readers of various papers with an intelligent explanation of the courses taken by ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... that would be offered to her. But the practical resolve needed a greater effort than she had imagined. Above all, she feared an ignominious failure of purpose after her word was given; that would belittle her in Everard's eyes, and so shame her in her own that all hope of happiness in marriage must be at ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... opulence of natural power, a man's life may possess all that majesty which the imagination pictures in archangels and in gods. Indeed, it is but simple statement of fact to say, that he who rests utterly in his action shall belittle not only whatsoever history has recorded, but all which that poet of poets, Mankind, has ever dreamed or fabled of grace and greatness. He shall not peer about with curiosity to spy approbation, or with zeal to defy censure; he shall not know if there be a spectator in the world; his most public ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... had merely saved my life," I continued, "I might, perhaps, find words to express my gratitude, but it was my reason you saved, and there are no words that would not belittle my debt to you." I spoke with emotion, and ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... let um go out av his way to belittle himsilf an' phwat he knows, an' Oi w'udn't trust him wid a bent penny as far as Oi cud t'row a bull be th' tail fer 'tis done wid a purpose. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... extension of commerce, to the marvelously increased facilities for travel, transportation and intercommunication; to the innumerable and wonderful inventions that in their application have brightened our civilization. They exalt present conditions and they belittle the long past conditions ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... that now. The courts, where I have been a frequent spectator, seem to me full of talented men who fine down and belittle their talents in the practice of law. Nothing uses up the nobler virtues more quickly than a practice at the bar. Generosity, enthusiasm, sensibility, true and ready sympathy—all are taken, leaving the man, in many instances nothing but a skilful actor, who apes all the emotions ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... wife, of the power of exercising her warm sympathies for the good of others, is to deprive her of the greatest happiness of which she is capable; to rob her highest faculties of their legitimate operation and reward; to belittle and narrow her mind; to dwarf her affections; to turn the harmonies of her nature to discord; and, as the human mind must be active, to compel her to employ hers with low and grovelling thoughts, which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of the Boers, favourable and unfavourable, are consistent with the records established in the War of Independence. None dare belittle the spirit which moved them to take up arms against the greatest Power in the world. Their ignorance may have been great, but not so great as to blind them to the fact that they were undertaking an unequal contest. It is not possible to say, with due regard to their records, that they are not ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... for the most part, in a disgusting caricaturing ostensibly of the speech and action of the more unfortunate members of the colored race, but which are really made to reflect against the whole; that these public performances do much to belittle their race generally, arouse and keep alive in the breasts of other races a feeling of contempt for it; and that these effects are greatly enhanced when colored men themselves engage in such performances, as they thus give "aid and comfort to the enemy." I shall not attempt ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... virtue we must fix our eyes. I remember having found much entertainment in Voltaire's SAUL, and telling him what seemed to me the drollest touches. He heard me out, as usual when displeased, and then opened fire on me with red-hot shot. To belittle a noble story was easy; it was not literature, it was not art, it was not morality; there was no sustenance in such a form of jesting, there was (in his favourite phrase) 'no nitrogenous food' in such literature. And then he proceeded ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in Italy, he described Lake Como and compared it with Tahoe in Innocents Abroad, and while his prejudices against the Indians led him to belittle the Indian name—Tahoe—and in so doing to make several errors of statement, the descriptions are excellent and the interested reader is referred to them as being well worthy ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... than all) of the peoples of Europe. What I am denying is that Americans have any greater reverence for women, any higher chivalrousness, than Englishmen. And this denial I make not with any desire to belittle the chivalry of American men but only in the endeavour to correct the popular American impression about Englishmen, which does not contribute to the promotion of that good-will which ought to exist between the peoples. I am not suggesting ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... not even for pride's sake, and retort's sake, will she desecrate the past, belittle her own ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... course, and Martin knew it. Rather it was the city person's point of view he was inclined to belittle. He had the confidence in his superiority that comes from complete economic security and his pride of place was even more deeply rooted. Men of Martin's class who are able to gaze, in at least one direction, as far as eye ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... more because of my good taste, than because of my affection for you. I did not think that several of your friends were warm enough towards you. "My God! my God! how mean literary men are!" A bit out of the correspondence of the first Napoleon. What a nice bit, eh? Doesn't it seem to you that they belittle ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... the attitude of the religious to belittle anything that is designed for human betterment. Their philosophy is, the more you suffer here, the less you will suffer "hereafter." Their humility to and fear of this "unseen" power is the most degrading trait in human beings. It is a frame of mind not only despicable ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... consciously or unconsciously to belittle the seclusion and security of a country cottage, she did not succeed; for Ralph's determination was genuine. But she made him visualize her in her own character, so that he looked quickly at her, as she walked a little in front of him across the plowed field; ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... perfected."(811) Here is the test of every man's profession. We cannot accord holiness to any man without bringing him to the measurement of God's only standard of holiness in heaven and in earth. If men feel no weight of the moral law, if they belittle and make light of God's precepts, if they break one of the least of these commandments, and teach men so, they shall be of no esteem in the sight of Heaven, and we may know that their claims are ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... they are. Now that I know the English a little I have been agitating to revisit them. It all seems so damned cheap and petty for a big country to belittle a great nation through the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... Two-Paws, both of them. You, poor thing, belittle yourself by seeking to imitate them. You stand on your hind legs, wear a coat when it rains, eat plums—for shame!—and those big green balls, the malicious trees let fall sometimes, when ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... proportion far enough, lo! he is back at the point from which he started. He knows that eternity, as conceived by him, is but an instant in eternity, and infinity but a speck in infinity. How should they belittle the things near to him?... Oxford was venerable and magical, after all, and enduring. Aye, and not because she would endure was it the less lamentable that the young lives within her walls were like to be taken. My equanimity was gone; and a tear ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... able to do so, I should in no degree belittle the achievements of the physical sciences and their technologies, for I believe whole-heartedly in their value, and long for the steady increase of our power to control our environment. But when these achievements are offered ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... become unnecessary and obsolete. I invite the attention, not of Congress, but of the people of the United States, to the causes and effects of these unhappy questions. Is there not a disposition on one side to magnify wrongs and outrages, and on the other side to belittle them or justify them? If public opinion could be directed to a correct survey of what is and to rebuking wrong and aiding the proper authorities in punishing it, a better state of feeling would be inculcated, and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... hearing, his talents, his performances, his character, his motives, or something else that belongs to your neighbour. Some one does that in your hearing who either does not know you, or who wishes to torture and expose you, and you fall straight into the snare thus set for you, and begin at once to belittle, depreciate, detract from, and run down your neighbour, who has been too much praised for your peace of mind and your self-control. You insinuate something to his disadvantage and dishonour. You quote some authority ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... has already been realized. Lincoln is no longer a local hero. He is a national heritage. To distort or belittle the characters of other men who strove to the end that their land "might have a new birth of freedom," is to deprive the younger generations of part of their birthright. They are entitled to the facts from which to form a just estimate ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... appealing to reason so that they may be led to see that inflicting pain can never bring them anything but a low degree of pleasure? No human creature was ever made better or more useful by a shrew, for the very means by which the acrid woman tries to secure notice or power only serves to belittle her. Take the case of a vulgar schoolmistress who is continually scolding. What happens in her school? She is mocked, hated, tricked, and despised; real discipline is non-existent; the bullied assistants go about their work without heart; and the whole organisation—or ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... were the nucleus of her summer library; she said that they gained tang and vigor from their winter hibernation at the cottage. Her references to nature were a little self-conscious, as seems inevitable with such devotees, but we cannot belittle the accuracy of her knowledge or the cleverness of her detective skill in apprehending the native flora. She found red and yellow columbines tucked away in odd corners, and the blue-eyed-Mary with its four petals—two blue and two white—as readily as Sylvia's ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... I think that historians belittle Columbus when they would excite our pity for his misfortunes. They insult the dignity of all struggling souls, and make utilitarians of all benefactors, and give false views of success. Few benefactors, on the whole, were ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... future is to be, it is certain not to be the painting of Monet. For the present, no doubt, Monet is the last word in painting. To belittle him is not only whimsical, but ridiculous. He has plainly worked a revolution in his art. He has taken it out of the vicious circle of conformity to, departure from, and return to abstractions and ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... impression which great objects would fain make upon us, and to embody that impression in worthy language. It is rare to meet now even with young people who will abandon themselves to a heroic emotion, or who, if they really feel it, do not try to belittle it in expression. Byron's poetry, above most, tempts and almost compels surrender to that which ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... put there to play the bully and the buffoon, to show their activity of face and muscles. They are to play a prize, a trial of skill and hugging and swaggering, like two drunken Hectors, for a two-penny reckoning." Shakespeare's contemporaries—or, at least, many of them—sought to belittle his work in this wise. Why, even in later years so acute a critic as John Dennis declared that "his lines are utterly void of celestial fire," and Shaftesbury spoke of his "rude, unpolished style ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... that gave me dove-cotes gave me honour, and 'tis not for the Earl of Leicester to belittle it." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... record of the adventure that this book relates, this strange passion of his temperament remains the vital clue. For it happened in, as well as to, himself. His Being could include the Earth by feeling with her, whereas his intellect could merely criticize, and so belittle, ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... all, remain at the helm? Great Heaven! the very idea maddens me! For I know them! I know that they will ruin every thing. At the decisive moment they are vacillating, and, in order to dishearten others, too, they exaggerate the strength of the enemy a hundred-fold, and belittle our own resources in the same proportion. Would that Heaven were to decree, 'Blucher shall command the Prussians!' Good Lord, I pledge Thee my head that I would expel Bonaparte with all his French from Germany, though I had but thirty thousand soldiers behind me!" ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... element of equality and opportunity caused by pioneer settlement. It is the expression of the world's highest race under the most favourable social, political, and geographical conditions. Those who endeavour to belittle the importance of our British ancestry, are invited to consider the other nations of this continent. All these are equally "American" in every particular, differing only in race-stock and heritage; yet of them all, none save British Canada will even bear comparison with us. We are great because ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... give me some of the arguments—you were probably unable to state them all in court—that convinced you? Let me have something wherewith to meet my mother. She won't look at this altogether from the worldly point of view. She will have a standard of her own. Merely to belittle the thing, as long past and forgotten, won't help me. But if I could awaken her pity!—if you could give ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said to a child, who has done something wrong or annoying: "I don't love you any more. I don't like you now at all." And I have known countless cases where mothers, themselves, have said and acted the same thing. And the effect of that is to belittle and corrupt in the child's heart a bigger and deeper conception of love, as a loyal and steadfast thing, with no string attached to it. If a nurse, or a mother, can withdraw her love, for a slight cause, then a child when it grows up can expect to do the ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... the opening of the debate, much may be gained by an attitude which will win the favor of the hearers toward the speaker and his ideas. An attitude of petty criticism, of narrowness of view, is undesirable at any stage of the debate. The debater who is inclined to belittle his opponents will only belittle himself. To the judges it will appear that the speaker who has time to ridicule his adversaries must be a little short of arguments. Insinuations of dishonesty and attempts to be sarcastic should be carefully avoided. These weapons are sharp but ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... years, looking to the emancipation of the negro and the protection of his rights, that the Senator from Pennsylvania has not sturdily opposed. He has hardly ever uttered a word upon this floor the tendency of which was not to degrade and to belittle a weak and struggling race. He comes here to-day and thanks God that they are free, when his vote and his voice for five years, with hardly an exception, have been against making them free. He thanks God, sir, that your work and mine, our ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... he was no boaster. His great deeds came of his eagerness in all matters, and not from a desire to belittle his companions. He was kind and lowly hearted, bountiful of gifts, very glorious of attire, and before all men for high heart in battle. It may be that he also was cruel, for it is told that he was stern and wrathful with all who offended ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... In Russia and out of it Mr. Chertkov has been the subject of violent attack. Many of the misunderstandings of Tolstoy's later years have also been attributed by critics, and by those who hate or belittle his ideas, to the influence of this friend. These attacks are very regrettable and require a word of protest. From tales, suited to the means and intelligence of the humblest peasant. The undertaking was initiated in 1885, ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... not attempt to analyze the twisted motives that made Clare belittle what she professed to love. And she did not ask what the gossip was. Half way up Palmer Lane she turned in at the cement path between borders of early perennials which led to the white Wheeler house. She was ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... things used to distress his mother when she was old and much alone. She attempted to belittle the luxury of Clarence's boyhood. She told Rachael that he was treated just as the other boys were. Her conscience was never quite easy about ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... makes no difference who holds the country, but I'm a little disappointed in the Moritos. As for San Diego, Colonel Booth of your old regiment is in command, and I half think he didn't back up the Morito garrison out of jealousy toward you. He wanted to have the Morito country go back, so as to belittle our exploit. But we'll get even with him. I've seen the cable-censor, and not a word about it will go home. I have just sent a despatch saying that the whole island is entirely in our hands and that the natives are swearing allegiance ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... to custom, set aside, in deciding to leave London that day, all logical methods of reasoning and acted on what was nothing more than an irresistible impulse, he did not attempt to belittle to himself the possible consequences that might accrue from his action. He was not following the course intelligence had directed; he was not embarking on a journey his best interests would have prompted; on the contrary, he knew himself mad, foolish. But not for one moment did he regret ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... than John Gilbert? No one denies that the English actors and actresses are great. No one will deny that the plays of Shakespeare are the greatest that have been produced, and no one wishes in any way to belittle the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... a mask, or, more properly speaking, a screen that hides a baboon. Thiers is behind it. This is beginning to bother Louis Bonaparte. He has to contend against eight Ministers, all of whom seek to belittle him. Each is pulling his own way. Among these Ministers some are his avowed enemies. Nominations, promotions, and lists arrive all made out from the Place Saint Georges. They have to be accepted, signed ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo |
