"Discreditable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in being compelled to associate with them. Nor, though he had already sufficient strength of character to learn to do his work well, did he ever regard the work itself as anything but unsuitable, and almost discreditable. Indeed it may be doubted whether the iron of that time did not unduly rankle and fester as it entered into his soul, and whether the scar caused by the wound was altogether quite honourable. He seems to have felt, in connection with his early employment in a warehouse, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... since reason accompanies all honorable action. How often do we hear men reproaching themselves for some thoughtless gift, and saying, "I had rather have thrown it away than have given it to him!" What is thoughtlessly given away is lost in the most discreditable manner, and it is much worse to have bestowed a benefit badly than to have received no return for it; that we receive no return is the fault of another; that we did not choose upon whom we should bestow it, is our own. In choosing a fit person, I shall not, as you expect, pay the least ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... had been repealed in the time of Galba, he imposed new and onerous taxes, augmented the tribute of the provinces, and doubled that of some of them. He likewise openly engaged in a traffic, which is discreditable [758] even to a private individual, buying great quantities of goods, for the purpose of retailing them again to advantage. Nay, he made no scruple of selling the great offices of the state to candidates, and pardons to persons under prosecution, whether they were innocent or ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... might, at first, seem discreditable to Washington, as exhibiting the mighty strength of his passions when aroused. But upon mature consideration it does him great honor, affording equal evidence of his power of self-control, his public spirit, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... them. His comrades teased him about his melancholy looks, and made him the butt of all their jokes in the cockpit. He resolved, however, to get over it, and at the next port they put into, Jacqueline's letter was the cause of his entering for the first time some discreditable ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... at Glenranald, however, he found that substantial township shaking with laughter over the outlaw's latest and least discreditable exploit, at the back-block hamlet of Yallarook; and then it was that young Carrick first conceived an ambition to open his Colonial career with the capture of Stingaree; for he was a serious immigrant, who had come out in his teens, to stay out, ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... Convention in Paoli's behalf, the other a demand addressed to the municipality of Ajaccio that the people should renew their oath of allegiance to France. The explanation is somewhat recondite, perhaps, but not discreditable. Salicetti, as chairman of a committee of the convention on Corsican affairs, had conferred with Paoli on April thirteenth. The result was so satisfactory that on the sixteenth the latter was urged to attend a second meeting at ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... was, had accidentally seen the footman smile rudely when he spoke of "master coming home last night;" and a vague thought struck her, that such late hours were discreditable in the head of a family. Her father should not be despised in ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... to be no reply. But now we know the actual and discreditable truth. The Government was, in fact, engaged in a shameful scheme to which Archbishops were better not admitted. They meant to use this letter (IV) on a later occasion, but they also meant to use some of the other letters which Sprot (unknown to Spottiswoode) had confessed to be forgeries. ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... the imitations. Indeed, the character of Alcmena, as drawn by Plautus, so truly innocent, simple, and loving, her distress on being suspected by her husband, and his agony at finding her, as he believes, dishonest, immediately suggest, as the accomplished translator has observed, a not discreditable comparison with our 'Othello.' We may add, too, that the conclusion of the fourth act, where Amphitryon, 'perplexed in the extreme,' and defying the gods in the intensity of his despair, rushes to the house to wreak his vengeance on ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... to accept such resignations, even when it knew or suspected the purpose for which they were tendered. Lieut. Julius A. De Lagnel, of the artillery, a Virginian, who remained long enough in the Union to be surrendered to Secession authorities (not discreditable to himself) at Fayetteville, North Carolina, with the North Carolina arsenal (April 22, 1861) informed the writer since the war that, on sending his resignation to the War Department, he followed it to the Adjutant-General's office, taking with him some bags of coin he had in the capacity ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... more myself," he went on. "It produces a kind of mutual confidence and that sort of thing. I hardly feel inclined to explain the cause of this improvement yet, Frank; but you may take my word that there is nothing in the least discreditable about it. In fact, when one comes to think of it, there's nothing so very extraordinary either. It's a perfectly sound scientific idea, perfectly sound; so you can make your mind at ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... After some discreditable scenes, on which a recently published correspondence has thrown a painful though somewhat doubtful light, the connection of Madame de Stael with Benjamin Constant was broken. The two continued occasionally to correspond, and as late as 1815 we find her lending him a large ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... right to cancel entirely the mortgage on the minerals, so long as money due to others on that mortgage was yet unpaid. Was it conceivable that one so strict and scrupulous in all monetary transactions as Parkman would have settled his own personal claim, and then sacrificed in so discreditable a manner the claims of others, for the satisfaction of which he had ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... once Cranmer's chaplain, held his see. As the author of "On Politique Power" (1558), where he pleads that "it is lawful to kill a tyrant," and uses some very immoderate language, Poynet may be remembered, but as an ecclesiastic he has left only a discreditable record in his short term of office. He died in 1556 in Germany, whither he had retired on the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... this account of the affair and Chevalier's; not so much, however, considering that one writer was before, while the other was behind the scenes. The two narratives combined complete the history of the Jersey mint—a history evidently discreditable to certain personages, and therefore never intended to meet the public eye. Even the unsophisticated chronicler is intuitively aware that some mystery attaches to the transaction, which prevents him from writing with his usual unreserve."—Hoskins, ...
— The Coinages of the Channel Islands • B. Lowsley
... discount; under a cloud, under an eclipse; unable to show one's face; in the shade, in the background; out at elbows, down at the elbows, down in the world. inglorious; nameless, renownless[obs3]; obscure; unknown to fame; unnoticed, unnoted[obs3], unhonored, unglorified[obs3]. shameful; disgraceful, discreditable, disreputable; despicable; questionable; unbecoming, unworthy; derogatory; degrading, humiliating, infra dignitatem[Lat], dedecorous[obs3]; scandalous, infamous, too bad, unmentionable; ribald, opprobrious; errant, shocking, outrageous, notorious. ignominious, scrubby, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... floating population, comprised of all sorts and conditions, the Marquis de Ligne. The blood of the patroons flowed sluggishly through the land baron's veins, but his French extraction danced in every fiber of his being. After learning the more important and not altogether discreditable circumstances about the land baron's ancestors—for if every gentleman were whipped for godlessness, how many striped backs would there be!—the marquis, who declined intimacy with Tom, Dick and Harry, and their honest butchers, bakers ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... that had been lavishly flung upon her by every country in Europe throughout a long, disastrous, and most perplexing civil war. Gloriously did he retrieve the credit that had been mouldering and decaying during two weak and discreditable reigns of nearly fifty years' continuance—gloriously did he establish and extend his country's authority and influence in remote nations—gloriously acquire the real mastery of the British Channel—gloriously send forth fleets that went ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... it. He also reproved the citizens for choosing still the same men as their magistrates: "For you will seem," said he, "either not to esteem government worth much, or to think few worthy to hold it." Speaking, too, of a certain enemy of his, who lived a very base and discreditable life: "It is considered," he said, "rather as a curse than a blessing on him, that this fellow's mother prays that she may leave him behind her." Pointing at one who had sold the land which his father had left him, and which lay near the sea-side, he pretended ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... 'plates or drawings of ships, temples, houses, altars, domestic and sacred utensils, robes, and of every object of which they are likely to read.' 'It is,' as he says, 'impossible to calculate the injury which the minds of children suffer from the habit of receiving imperfect ideas:' and it is discreditable in the highest degree to the majority of good classical scholars that they have no accurate knowledge of the Roman calendar, and no knowledge at all of the classical coinage, &c.: not one out of every twenty scholars can state the relation of the sestertius to the denarius, of the Roman ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... on the staring wooden faces waiting to hear her try and persuade them to contribute to the alleviation of the urgent needs of the Hampstead poor, each one convinced that they needed contributions themselves. She looked as though she were hiding something discreditable but delightful. Certainly her customary clear expression of candor was not there, and its place was taken by a kind of suppressed and frightened pleasedness, which would have led a more worldly-minded audience to the instant conviction of ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... men and women who would go unflinchingly to the stake in vindication of a principle, whose resolution, somewhere in the course of a long, solitary, and indefinite imprisonment, would break down into a discreditable compromise of opinions for which they were ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... it is not my fault,' said Lady Clonbrony; 'for I brought my lord a large fortune; and I am confident I have not, after all, spent more any season, in the best company, than he has among a set of low people, in his muddling, discreditable way.' ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... at the most, did my labours meet with the slightest recognition beyond payment. Once I remember that I accused a member of a discreditable manoeuvre to consume the time of the House, and as he represented a borough in my district, he wrote to the editor denying the charge. The editor without any inquiry—and I believe I was mistaken—instantly ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... the thirteenth century, fed the popular belief. Miracles so commemorated often occurred in connection with relics; and the traffic in relics and so styled "pious" frauds, not to say the forcible means used to procure reputed relics of authentic or supposititious saints, forms a curious if a discreditable feature in mediaval history. An occasional protest was uttered against the manner in which credit was often obtained for relics of more than doubtful authenticity; but the manufacture of them was easy and profitable, ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... foretells that discreditable dealings will lose you many friends. if you fail to rectify the mistakes you ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... went on the blood-stained George, "how I allowed myself to be drawn into such a brutal affair, and one so discreditable to your house. I can only say that I am very sorry,"— which indeed he was—"and that I should never have taken any notice of his words—knowing that he would regret them on reflection—had he not in an unguarded moment allowed himself to taunt me ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... when the Rev. Faker was called, there was nothing to cross-examine about. I knew nothing of the parties, the witnesses, the solicitors, or any one except my learned friends. It would not have been discreditable to my advocacy if I had submitted to a verdict. I will, therefore, give the points of the questions which elicited the truth from the Christian warrior; and probably the non-legal reader of these memoirs may ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... that he had a somewhat sly, unprepossessing face and a greasy, red moustache that seemed out of character with his rather perfunctory livery; though this was mere prejudice. He wore a wig, too—not that there was anything discreditable in that—and the thumb-nail of the hand that held his hat bore disfiguring traces of some injury—which, again, though unsightly, in no wise reflected on his moral character. Lastly, he watched me keenly with a mixture of anxiety and sly complacency that I found distinctly ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... was the only one consistent with either propriety or common sense. However plausible may be the arguments which in this or that case may be adduced for concealment, the common instinct of mankind, which rarely errs in such matters, always conceives a suspicion that it is dictated by secret and discreditable motives; and that he who screens manifest guilt from exposure and punishment makes himself an accomplice in the wrong-doing, if he was not so before. But, though Louis judged rightly for his own and his queen's character in bringing those who were ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... the peculiarity of the Frisian language. "Why can't they speak properly, and say Kone?" says the Dane. "Weib is the right word," says the German. "Who ever says woman?" cry both. The language has not been reduced to writing; indeed, the little that has been done with it is highly discreditable to the Sleswick-Holstein Church Establishment. It is spoken by upwards of thirty thousand individuals; and when we remember that the whole population of Denmark is less than that of London and the suburbs, we see at once that a large proportion of it has been less ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... of his own constitution; which work with more energy than we believe whilst we depend on artificial restraints. The movement in this direction has been very marked in modern history. Much has been blind and discreditable, but the nature of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the revolters; for this is a purely moral force. It was never adopted by any party in history, neither can be. It separates the individual from all party, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... proclaiming him an ambitious, cunning, and deceitful demagogue, ridicule his scientific theories, shudder at his irreligion, sneer at his courage, and allude coarsely to his private morals in a manner more discreditable to themselves than to him; crowning all their accusations and innuendoes with a reckless profusion of epithet. While at the same times and places the whole company of the Democratic press, led by Bache, Duane, Cheetham, Freneau, asserted with equal energy that he was the greatest ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... he believed he was on the track of some discreditable incident in the past of their rival which would banish him from their path. And no more handkerchiefs had been found, ownerless, in their hall. It ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... whole history of controversy, we venture to affirm, there never was an instance of so triumphant a refutation as that by which these slanderous aspersions were instantly refuted, and their authors and their accomplices reduced to a silence as prudent as discreditable. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... impartial suffrage in the Reconstruction laws. The Republican victory of 1868, it was now resolved in the councils of the party, should lead to the incorporation of impartial suffrage in the Constitution of the United States. The evasive and discreditable position in regard to suffrage, taken by the National Republican Convention that nominated General Grant in 1868, was keenly felt and appreciated by the members of the party when subjected to popular discussion. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... piece of sandstone may be almost anywhere in the ground—in the first place—but, by our more or less discreditable habit of prying and snooping, we find that this object was rather more complex and of material less commonplace. In snooping through Knowledge, Oct. 9, 1885, we read that this "thunderstone" was in the ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... story. Meanness and wickedness are made unattractive and bring punishment. The punishment grows logically out of the offense and has a direct relation to the misdeed. Persons are not rewarded for their good deeds but they are happy in being good. It is not a credit to do right, but wrongdoing is discreditable. Little meannesses stand in the way of happiness though they may not bring any definite punishments. Evil is ugliness, goodness is beauty. Friendship is made attractive and filial love is strongly inculcated. The strong appeal made to the sympathy of the reader by the very real and very ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... allowed you to bring me to utter and discreditable financial ruin. I remember one morning in the early October of '92, sitting in the yellowing woods at Bracknell with your mother. At that time I knew very little of your real nature. I had stayed from a Saturday to Monday with you at Oxford. You had stayed ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... daffodil then, and Julia went to them for some purpose besides earning a pittance as companion. She had not taken a blue daffodil; she said so; she also said at another time she had failed in the object of her coming and that failure and success would have been alike discreditable. Poor Julia! And now here was some one in Norfolk exhibiting a daffodil of mixed blue and yellow called, by a strange coincidence, "The Good Comrade." Of course, it was only a coincidence and yet, when reason is not helping as much as it ought, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... it. What she thought is not revealed, but they returned home in somewhat gloomy silence. And it is a comfort to the narrator, and it is to be hoped to the reader, to think that Mr. Eugene Lane got something besides pleasure out of his discreditable performance and his ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... was to be done? Jackeymo was much too proud to exhibit his person to the eyes of the squire's butler in habiliments discreditable to himself and the padrone. In the midst of his perplexity the bell rang, and he went down ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which goes on not less in Europe than in America, and must, of course, go on everywhere as long as competitive conditions endure, but is the result of chances and preferences which mean nothing nationally calamitous or discreditable. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in immense sums. He frequented the clubs, where play was then almost universal; and, as it was known his debts of honour were sacred, whilst he was gambling Jews waited outside to purchase his notes of hand. His transactions on the turf were unlucky as well as discreditable: though I believe he, and his jockey, and his horse Escape, were all innocent in that affair which ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pedigree of an idea is not a bad means of roughly estimating its value. To have come of respectable ancestry, is prima facie evidence of worth in a belief as in a person; while to be descended from a discreditable stock is, in the one case as in the other, an unfavourable index. The analogy is not a mere fancy. Beliefs, together with those who hold them, are modified little by little in successive generations; and ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... published his address to the electors, has occasionally got into the House of Commons. The vulgar half-educated preacher, who without any introduction asked a patron for a vacant living in the Church, has now and then got the living. And however unfit you may be for a place, and however discreditable may have been the means by which you got it, once you have actually held it for two or three years people come to acquiesce in your holding it. They accept the fact that you are there, just as we accept the fact that any other evil exists in this world, without asking why, except on very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... is a perpetual curacy or vicarage, worth at that time only 35 per annum! forming one of the discreditable anomalies of the church, in the division of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... how you came to be connected with so discreditable a project? Do you know that it is enough to blast your own reputation ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... contingencies a mediating power steps in, and brings things to an equilibrium."[25] These great and obvious advantages of the new tariff, the opponents of Ministers, and especially their reckless and discreditable allies called the "Anti-corn-law League," see as plainly as we do; but their anxious aim is to conceal these advantages as much as possible from public view; and for this purpose they never willingly make any allusion to the tariff, or if forced to do so, underrate its value, or grossly misrepresent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... most general interest. Others were puerile, and as unfit in subject as in ability for presentation in such an assembly. It is to be regretted that the Association does not adopt the only protection against such discreditable annoyances, by insisting upon the submission of everything offered for its consideration to a competent ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... confidence placed in her if she makes a discreditable use of any information coming to her through her association with her husband's family. There are skeletons in every closet, and she may not tell even her own mother of what she has seen in the other house. A single word breathed ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... told me that you haven't given Stanley anything at all for his money—that you've cheated him outright. The thing itself is discreditable, but your tone suggests that you think I'll ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Francis moved a resolution for expunging that of the 8th of June preceding, by which it was authorised, he was left in a minority of one hundred and thirty-seven against one hundred and forty-two. It is said that Mr. Pitt engaged in this discreditable affair from the conviction, that, within a reasonable time, a decided majority of legal votes would be substantiated in favour of Sir Cecil Wray; but it would rather appear that it was from the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... made such a discreditable career," she murmured, "who has never been able to get a roof of his own over his head! I can very well understand his partiality for bullets! He can go and stand in their way if he chooses; but let him leave honest folks to their families! And then, he isn't pleasant ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... am free. This worship subdued the world to my laws, these sacred rites repelled Hannibal from the walls, and the Senones from the capitol. Have I been reserved for this, that when aged I should be blamed? I will consider what it is thought should be set in order, but tardy and discreditable is the reformation of ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... whether in dress or in thought, and intolerant alike of regulations and of duty. Gabriel Harvey, who nursed a grudge against Lyly, even speaks of "horning, gaming, fooling and knaving," words which convey a distinct sense of something discreditable, whatever may be their exact significance. It is necessary to lay stress upon this period of Lyly's life, because, as I hope to show, his residence at Oxford, and the friends he made there, had a profound influence upon his later development, and ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... themselves, and gave the scoffers food for merriment. Judges who that day might have sentenced some unfortunate to imprisonment for drinking, drank with a gusto equalled only by lawyers who would talk an hour in court to prove a man discreditable evidence because he was known to visit bar-rooms! It was the influence of these, and such like, that made James drink, and caused the labor of George to prove all unavailing. It is the example of the rich that impedes the progress of ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... marriage itself, thinking that not politic, but directed their hostility chiefly against the plan of making peace with France just at the time, they said, when the glory of the English arms and the progress of the English power in that country were at their height. It was very discreditable to the advisers of the king, they said, that they should counsel him to stop short in the career of conquest which his armies were pursuing, and thus sacrifice the grand advantages for the realm of England which were just ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... in the rebellious spirit that reckless agitators had aroused in colonies for which England had sacrificed so much of her blood and treasure when their integrity and dearest interests were threatened by France. The port of Boston, where the agitators were most influential and the most discreditable acts of violence had taken place, was closed to trade; and important modifications were made in the charter granted to Massachusetts by William III in 1692. Another obnoxious act provided that persons "questioned for any acts in execution of the laws" should be ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... know her) was simply repeating the impressions of Sir William Pepys, one of the bitterest opponents of the marriage, to whom she certainly never said anything derogatory to her second husband. The uniform tenor of her letters and her conduct shew that she never regarded her second marriage as discreditable, and always took a high and independent, instead of a subdued or deprecating, tone with her alienated friends. A bare statement of the treatment she received from them is surely ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... and discreditable way, and the woman Sally Haggard, of the cottage in the hollow, gained by virtue of a certain harsh beauty what the ladies Clomber would have given all their ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... all a most discreditable business, and I don't see how you propose to better it by cutting my throat. Of course if he's going to marry her, it's a different thing; but I don't believe he is, or he'd have asked me. You think me a fool? Well see they marry, or they'll find ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... Napoleon." On the sideboard, between fluted Sheraton knife-cases, stood a decanter of Haut Brion, and another of the old Lanning port (the gift of a client), which the wastrel Tom Lanning had sold off a year or two before his mysterious and discreditable death in San Francisco—an incident less publicly humiliating to the family than ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... long since ceased to be considered disgraceful, or even discreditable, among the patrician order in Rome before the soldiers ventured to break their oaths of allegiance. Military service had, from the ignorance and selfishness of this order, been rendered extremely odious to free-born Romans; and they frequently ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... housekeeper, "that this seems a very discreditable conspiracy against my stepson. I am sure, Mr. Reynolds, you won't allow his reputation to be injured ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... of it was used for the benefit of the estate—his deformed boy's estate. Advice, dignified remonstrance, resulted only in most disagreeable scenes. Messrs. Townlinson & Sheppard could not exceed certain limits. The manner in which the money was spent was discreditable. There were avenues a respectable firm knew only by rumour, there were insane gambling speculations, which could only end in disaster, there were things one could not decently concern one's self with. Lady Anstruthers' family had doubtless become ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... freely used in public controversy; that Defoe was continuously occupied with public controversy during these twenty-eight years, and managed to make as many enemies as any man within the four seas; and I think the silence of his adversaries upon a matter which, if proved, would be discreditable in the extreme, is the best of all evidence that Mr. Wright's hypothesis cannot be sustained. Nor do I see how Mr. Wright makes it square with his own conception of Defoe's character. "Of a forgiving temper himself," says Mr. Wright on p. 86, "he (Defoe) was quite incapable of understanding ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with the Modena scheme) wrote a letter to the King on this subject, in which he stated it as his belief that the Austrian plan was to get Charles Albert accidentally killed, or to plunge him in vice, or to make him contract a discreditable marriage. This was why they had invited him to their camp. He adds the characteristic remark that their nephew would be in no less danger at the headquarters of the Duke of Wellington 'a cause de la religion.' Have him home and have him married, is his advice. 'We are well treated, ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... and that the basis of a successful marriage—which was her people's phrase for a happy marriage—is equality of position, combined with business instincts on the part of the man. People in her world lived to get on; it was a sacred duty with them; failure to do so was discreditable, almost criminal, as she had often heard her mother say when engaged in district visiting amongst the homes of the improvident poor. Jimmy would get on, she fully believed that, especially when he had a sensible wife to help him; moreover, he was both good ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... 'The ineequity o' man's beyond belief. But it's awfu' discreditable to Holdock, Steiner & Chase, if that ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... painting in the Royal Academy; and hundreds of other distinguished men commenced their career in business no more respectable; but not one of them felt that dignity was compromised by their humble vocation. They believed that honor crowned all the various branches of industry, however discreditable they might appear to some, and that disgrace would eventually attach to any one who did not act well his part in the most popular pursuit. Like them, Nat was never troubled with mortification on account of his poverty, ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... the poor boy was lost—lost in London! His disreputable face and discreditable coat argued a dissipated character— hence no one would employ him. Ere long necessity compelled him to accept the society of street arabs, and soon he became quite as sharp, though not quite as wicked, ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... going to make my meaning very clear, Mr. Ferrers. To-day's conduct is merely the winding up affair of many discreditable pieces of conduct in your part. You have proved, conclusively, that you are not fit to be an ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... his literary history must be for him a painful memory. He was a writer of anti-clerical romances and the editor of an anti-clerical newspaper—legitimate occupations in one sense, but in this instance too frequently connected with literary methods of a gravely discreditable kind. A catalogue of the defunct Libraire Anti-Clericale is added to one of the romances, and advertises, among other productions from the same pen, the following contributions made by Leo Taxil ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... them well fixed in our memories. There was a Sabbath class taught in the parish church at the time by one of the elders; but Sabbath-schools my uncles regarded as merely compensatory institutions, highly creditable to the teachers, but very discreditable indeed to the parents and relatives of the taught; and so they of course never thought of sending us there. Later in the evening, after a short twilight walk, for which the sedentary occupation of my Uncle James formed an apology, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... condemned, but not executed: all the rest were acquitted. Considering that the "spectral evidence" was wholly thrown out at these trials, the facts that the grand jury, under the advice of the Court, brought in so many indictments, and that three were actually convicted, are as discreditable to the regular Court as the convictions at the Special Court are to that body. It has been said that the Special Court had not an adequate representation of lawyers in its composition; and the results ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... reasonable evidence tending to show that persecution was less severe than had been once believed, and they have slowly learned that they can afford to concede the validity of all the secondary causes assigned by Gibbon and even of others still more discreditable. The fact is, as the historian has again and again admitted, that his account of the secondary causes which contributed to the progress and establishment of Christianity leaves the question as to the natural or supernatural origin of Christianity practically ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... heart Could be inspected to its inmost folds, By sight undazzled with the glare of praise, Who shall be named—in the resplendent line Of sages, martyrs, confessors—the man Whom the best might of conscience, truth and hope, For one day's little compass, has preserved From painful and discreditable shocks Of contradiction from some vague desire Culpably cherished, or corrupt relapse To some ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... religious processions that is more appropriate. De Ribaumont, our governor, will give orders for the supply of your state costume. He is a good fellow. Of course, he has to be rather strict with us; but so long as there is nothing done that he considers discreditable to our position, he lets us do pretty ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... party in those delicious English days considered fourteen quotidian miles not discreditable to us, particularly when taking into consideration the bleats and baas and whimpering laggardness with which we returned from three-mile excursions during the first few days we were in the tramping-line. By degrees we thus explored the whole country ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... not deny for a moment that if proceedings of this kind, such as took place on December 13 last year, were normal or frequent, if they took place every day of the week or every week of the month, it would be dangerous and in the highest degree discreditable to our whole Government in India. It would be detestable and dangerous. But is there to be no such thing as an Emergency power? I am not talking about England, Scotland, or Ireland. I am talking about India. Is there to be no such thing as an emergency power? My view ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... all situations which an admiral can be placed in." In the judgment of the present writer, this estimate of Hood is as accurate as it is moderate in expression. It was nothing less than providential for the French that he was not in command on the 14th of March, or in the yet more trivial and discreditable affair of July 13th, when, to use again Nelson's words, "To say how much we wanted Lord Hood at that time, is to say, will you have all the French fleet or ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... sight was not pleasant. Drenched with rain, his collar pulled up, and his hat slouched, so as in some measure to act as a disguise, breathless and trembling—hardly any body would have recognized in this discreditable object that gentlemanly young man, Mr. ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... change in the habit of mind on our part as physicians; for do we not tend to translate too much, the whole of a woman's life into terms of menstruation? If every young girl were taught that menstruation is not normally a "bad time" and that pain or incapacity at that period is as discreditable and unnecessary as bad breath due to decaying teeth, we might almost look for a revolution in the physical life of women.... In my experience the traditional treatment of rest in bed, directing the attention solely ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... protect her, careless whether I involved myself in a discreditable quarrel with a blackguard or not. As a matter of course, the fellow resented my interference, and my temper gave way. Fortunately for me, just as I lifted my hand to knock him down, at policeman appeared who had noticed that he was drunk, and who settled the dispute officially by ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... this demand was received by the leading men of the Liberal Party and by the more prominent Liberals among their supporters in the House; with evasions, silences, sneers, angry refusals, hasty promises given to-day (when Ministers were frightened) and broken to-morrow; with a whole series of discreditable tongue-in-the-cheek tricks of Parliamentary procedure; till at last the onlooker must have wondered at and felt grateful for our British phlegm; surprised that so little actual harm was done (except to the bodies of the Suffragists), ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... heat of a quarrel, or had avenged his honor by the assassination of a sister convicted of light love, only established a reputation for bravery, which stood him in good stead. He was likely to make a stout soldier, and he had done nothing socially discreditable. On the contrary, if he had been useful in ridding the world of an outlaw some prince wished to kill, this murder made him a hero. In addition to the blood-money, he not unfrequently received lucrative office, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... this exercise, which I have not corrected, or allowed to be touched in any way, is not discreditable to B. F. You observe that he is acquiring a knowledge of zoology at the same time that he is learning French. Fathers of families in moderate circumstances will find it profitable to their children, and an economical mode of instruction, to set them to revising and amending this ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... is mentioned with three beloveds, established the Holy Regiment composed of mutual lovers, testifying the majesty of Eros and preferring to a discreditable life a glorious death. Philip's redactions on the fatal field of Chaeroneia form their fittest epitaph. At last the Athenians, according to AEschines, officially punished Sodomy with death; but the threat did not abolish bordels of boys, like those of Karachi; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... more out of pity for his employer in his plight than for any other reason. But he remembered that it usually required a guilty conscience to make blackmail possible and that the man who paid always paid because of something discreditable ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... ill, took to his bed; was unable to attend to his business, some one else attended to it; and the consequence was, that the house stopped payment, and was discovered to have been insolvent for the last ten years. Not a discreditable bankruptcy. There might perhaps be seven shillings in the pound ultimately paid, and not more than forty families irretrievably ruined. Old Fossett, safe in his bed, bore the affliction with philosophical composure; observed to Arabella ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... family of Montague; and Cutts was Dean of Bristol under Bishop Montague. And Montague obtained preferment from Mr. Conduit. Neither the family of Montague, nor that of Barton, seem to have thought the connexion discreditable. Moreover, the births of these children of Geoffrey Barton, a clergyman, occurred at the very period when the name of Catherine should have been most distasteful, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... persons and others, a portion of the rescued slaves, who had been taken under the charge of the Mission, and could not be abandoned. The fear of the Portuguese seemed likely to lead to their being left behind. But Livingstone could not bear the idea. He thought it would be highly discreditable to the good name of England, and an affront to the memory of Bishop Mackenzie, to "repudiate" his act in taking them under his protection. Therefore, when Bishop Tozer would not accept the charge, he himself took them in hand, giving ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... female sex was, in fact, without principle and without love; they fought, from vanity and fashion, for persons whom they had basely dishonoured and secretly despised; and while their flattery and folly were sufficiently discreditable to their own understandings and hearts, they tended in a deplorable degree to corrupt the principles of those ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... So discreditable was this occurrence thought, that although another closely contested election took place the following year, we do not find any other than male votes deposited then, in Essex County, or elsewhere, until the Presidential election of 1800, between Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson, at which females voted ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... however, had cordially liked the other, and Billings would have been slow to believe the statement as told him for a single instant except for two things,—one was that Gleason was a new acquaintance of whom up to that time he knew nothing really discreditable; the other was that just before the regiment came East from Arizona the adjutancy became vacant, Lieutenant Truscott, who had long held the position, was detailed for duty at West Point and speedily ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... many of which he claims were told him by President Lincoln. From this we might infer that the President has very little to do but entertain and amuse gentlemen, who apply to him for appointments, with conversation so coarse that it would be discreditable to ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... another for the use of discreditable tactics, but it will have no hesitation in using such itself if it can thereby snatch a discreditable victory. So, clear speaking is needed: a fight that is not clean-handed will make victory more disgraceful than any defeat. ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... it is no more than justice to rank him far above those mere charlatans of science, and hunters for marvels by means of isolated observation and experiment, with whom many would place him. That the 'Century' contains much which would be very discreditable to any man of science at the present day, is very true. Perpetual motion, perfect aerostation, devices for idle tricks and mere thaumaturgy, appear in company with schemes to take unfair advantages at card playing, and for the construction ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was to be done? Jackeymo was much too proud to exhibit his person, to the eyes of the Squire's butler, in habiliments discreditable to himself and the Padrone. In the midst of his perplexity, the bell rang, and he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... over some of her old sketches. She could see their shortcomings and defects, which were glaring in her eyes. She tried to work a little, but found she was not in the humor. Finally she gathered together a few of the sketches—those which she considered the least discreditable; and she carried them with her when, a little later, she dressed and left the house. She looked handsome and distinguished in her street gown. The tan of the seashore had left her face, and her forehead was smooth, white, and polished beneath her heavy, ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... Rosser and Sancher who he was before we played him this horrible trick. When Rosser left this dark room at our heels, forgetting his outer clothing in the excitement, and driving away with us in his shirt sleeves—all through the discreditable proceedings we knew with whom we were dealing, murderer and ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... doubt, and that the efforts of French and Russians to reach the Upper Nile from the French Congo and Southern Abyssinia compelled Ministers to concentrate their attention on that great enterprise. But this excuse will not bear examination. Strength at any one point of an Empire is not increased by discreditable surrenders at other points. No great statesman would have proceeded on ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... so diplomatically that there was no chance for an indignant denial of the possibility of Mr. Bradshaw's being involved in any discreditable transaction. ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Stefansson stunt of living a year on an exclusive meat diet was a discreditable fake. Stefansson did not live on a meat diet, but on a diet consisting of one-fifth protein and four-fifths fat (caloric intake). When compelled against his protest to eat steaks and chops, he was made very ill with acidosis within two days, vomiting ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... be less justifiable, or indeed more nefarious, than these arrangements. They were discreditable to George the First, and they were disgraceful to the King of Denmark. Yet the general policy of that time seems to have approved of the whole transaction, and regarded it merely as a good stroke of business for Hanover and for England. Alberoni, having secured the help of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... inspire her with the most horrible resolutions. He spoke to her about M. G—— M——, an old voluptuary, who paid prodigally for his pleasures; he so glowingly described the advantages of such a connection, that she entered into all his plans. This discreditable arrangement was all concluded before my return, and the execution of it only postponed till the next morning, after Lescaut should have apprised ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... description resembles or approaches the truth, I can but say that to have thus abandoned to want their most distinguished pastor and his family was intensely discreditable to the Baptist community. English prisons in the seventeenth century were not models of good management. But prisoners, whose friends could pay for them, were not consigned to damp and dreary cells; and in default of ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... dormant. She breaks off her engagement to Captain Caleb Williams on the eve of her wedding because she is informed of the episodes of a sex affair he was involved in on his last voyage, under circumstances not discreditable to him. The next act shows her thirty years later when, as an elderly spinster, she is passing through the climacteric, and is in the state of sexual hyperesthesia some women are afflicted with before the menopause. It is as if the ovaries and the accessory sex internal ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... made the acquaintance of a pony of a very different sort. How, indeed, it came to have this name does not seem to be very clear, for what natural connection can be established between a diminutive horse, and a discreditable method of reducing the difficulties of a lesson in Latin or Greek? It would appear to be a very unjust slur upon a very worthy little animal, to say ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... story of Henry VIII., Catharine, and Anne Boleyn. "Bluff King Hal," although a well-loved monarch, was none too good a one in many ways. Of all his selfishness and unwarrantable acts, none was more discreditable than his divorce from Catharine, and his marriage to the beautiful Anne Boleyn. The King's love was as brief as it was vehement. Jane Seymour, waiting maid on the Queen, attracted him, and Anne Boleyn was forced to the block to make room for her successor. This romance ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... was chiefly occupied in curbing the violence which that Minister had denounced, in bringing to justice the criminals whom he had not been allowed to reach. We recollect that the new Viceroy was exposed to a storm of unpopularity so violent and outrageous, that the public readily forgot the discreditable folly of his original enterprise, and honoured the resolution and dignity with which he discharged the laborious duties ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... overstrained, from impulses honourable to mankind, to meet the demands of the faculty which is perhaps the noblest of our nature. In the instance of Taste, the process has been reversed; and from the prevalence of dispositions at once injurious and discreditable, being no other than that selfishness which is the child of apathy,—which, as Nations decline in productive and creative power, makes them value themselves upon a presumed refinement of judging. Poverty of language is the primary cause of the use which we make ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the paper, and read what was indicated. It was the report of a discreditable affair—in journalistic language, a fracas—that had happened the previous night at Notting Hill. A certain music-hall singer, a lady who had of late achieved popularity, drove home about midnight, accompanied by a gentleman whose name was also familiar ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... discreditable circumstances under which he had made Karl's acquaintance, before bringing him into his home, tormented the old centaur with remorse. Some afternoons, he would have a horse saddled, going full gallop toward the neighboring village. But he was no ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Blaine, of Maine. The independent element hoped to nominate Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, and was particularly disturbed at the character of the workers for the "Man from Maine." His campaign manager, Stephen B. Elkins, had been charged with a discreditable connection with the star-route scandals; men of the Platt type were urging that it was now Blaine's "turn"; and Powell Clayton, an Arkansas carpet-bagger of ill-repute, was the Blaine candidate for the position of temporary ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... the employment of Bozzle was discreditable, and whose affairs in Devonshire were now in the hands of, at any rate, a more honourable ally, was at present mainly anxious to get rid of the ex-policeman. "I have no doubt you've been very careful, Mr. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... that, as I am sure of you," she replied. Then added with a change of tone, "You were certain for a while that Muriel Tredworth had not only been guilty of something discreditable in her past but had stabbed to death in your presence the man who ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... THE FOURTEENTH, King of France. His brother JAMES, DUKE OF YORK, was made High Admiral, and by-and-by became a Catholic. He was a gloomy, sullen, bilious sort of man, with a remarkable partiality for the ugliest women in the country. He married, under very discreditable circumstances, ANNE HYDE, the daughter of LORD CLARENDON, then the King's principal Minister—not at all a delicate minister either, but doing much of the dirty work of a very dirty palace. It became important now that the King himself should be married; ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... wrongs inflicted on him in his dearest and nearest family relations. That the unfortunate gentleman is now insane we believe we may state as a fact. It had become our special duty to refer to this most discreditable transaction, from the fact that a paper, still in our hands, had been confided to us for publication by the wretched husband before his senses had become impaired,—which, however, we were debarred from giving to the public by ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... single-stick. From this demonstration Sir Bingo thought it prudent somewhat to recoil, though backed by a party of friends, who, in their zeal for his honour, would rather have seen his bones broken in conflict bold, than his honour injured by a discreditable retreat; and Tyrrel seemed to have some inclination to indulge them. But, at the very instant when his hand was raised with a motion of no doubtful import, a whispering voice, close to his ear, pronounced the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... these good qualities were clouded by one vice which, though not injurious to the commonwealth, was very discreditable to a judge of high rank; namely, that his private life was one of great luxury, devoted to theatrical exhibitions, and to amours, though not such as were either ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... from the middle of last century. Its condition, internally and externally, was at that time certainly discreditable to everybody concerned in its welfare. In 1856 a National Committee placed the matter in the hands of Sir Gilbert Scott, under whose direction the building was in part restored; but public funds presently ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... he said, "a discreditable but incontrovertible fact that saints have always been reviled. I suppose it's jealousy." He turned to his wife. "By the way, did you pack my aureola? I left it hanging on ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... willing to make great sacrifices in order to render them kind. What the inner circle would do about this cook he had no idea; he must talk to Lucia about it, before the advanced class tomorrow morning. But anything was better than letting Hermy and Ursy loose in Riseholme with their rude laughs and discreditable exposures. This evening safely over, he could discuss with Lucia what was to be done, for Hermy and Ursy would have vanished at cock-crow as they were going in for some golf-competition at a safe distance. Lucia might recommend doing nothing ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... your conduct is by no means what it should be. What is all this disturbance that has been going on, and how came you to allow a stranger to be so disgracefully ill-treated? What would have happened if he had suffered serious injury while a suppliant in our house? Surely this would have been very discreditable ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... Marie Gessler found nothing discreditable. Of herself her opinion was not high, and her opinion of men was lower. For her smiles she had watched several sacrifice honor, duty, loyalty; and she held them and their kind in contempt. To lie, to cajole, to rob men of secrets they thought important, and of secrets the ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... blamed his countrymen for often electing the same men to public offices. "You will appear," said he, "either to think that the office is not worth much, or else that there are not many worthy to fill it." Alluding to one of his enemies who led a dissolute and discreditable life, he said: "That man's mother takes it as a curse rather than a blessing if any one hopes that her son will survive her." When a certain man sold his ancestral estate, which was situated by the seashore, Cato pretended ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... Cyprus only, they had appropriated a great deal more—if they had taken Candia too, if they had taken whatever they could lay their hands upon—that majority, equally patient, and equally docile, and not only patient and docile, but exulting in the discreditable obedience with which it obeyed all the behests of the Administration—that majority never would have shrunk, but would have walked into the lobby as cheerfully as it did upon the occasions of which you have heard so much, and would have chuckled the next day over the glorious triumph they had ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... do as to error, (remarks Dr. Pusey,) what scorn we should be held up to!) ... The Reverend author insolently adds,—"It is time for divines to recognize these things, since with their opportunities of study, the current error is as discreditable to them, as for the well-meaning crowd, who are taught to identify it with their creed, it is a matter of grave compassion." (p. 77.) "When so vast an induction on the destructive side has been gone through, it avails little that some passages may be doubtful; one ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... are positivists, only recognizing those things that can be weighed and measured. Anything beyond that they consider as rather discreditable nonsense, that same nonsense about which they held yesterday the ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... the war was so discreditable to the Americans as this. In the loss of the "Chesapeake" and in the loss of the "Essex," there were certain features of the action that redounded greatly to the honor of the defeated party. But in the action between the "Argus" and the "Pelican," the Americans were simply outfought. The vessels ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... in the Act," said J. M. Earle, "making a discrimination so odious and unjust, between themselves and other prisoners, the Indians would have been greatly wanting in self-respect had they accepted it. It is a provision disgraceful to the statute book of the State, and discreditable to the civilization of the age. Yet two tribes, the Chappequiddick and the Christiantown, were made subject to the provisions of this law, without the power to accept or reject it, and are governed by it to this ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... floated out on the breeze, and soon a boat brought a friendly message from the commander, the famous Sir John Hawkins. Being a strenuous Puritan, he was a warm sympathizer with the Protestants of France. Returning from selling a cargo of Guinea negroes to the Spaniards of Hispaniola—not at all a discreditable transaction in those days—he had run short of water and had put into the River of May, ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... genealogy in this country has been largely social, it is to be feared that in too many cases discreditable data have been tacitly omitted from the records. The anti-social individual, the feeble-minded, the insane, the alcoholic, the "generally no-count," has been glossed over. Such a lack of candor is not in accord ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... Not necessarily discreditable to Cayley, even though he were hiding something. All that could be said against him at the moment was that he had gone the longest way round to get into the locked office and that this did not fit ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... a high or an elevated character should, or at least need be connected. It is a reflection upon the integrity of the great agricultural interest of the country, that any such opinion should prevail; and discreditable to that interest, that its condition or example should for a moment justify, or even ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... the discreditable conduct of physicians at consultations. Sometimes several doctors would hold a consultation, and, apparently forgetting the patient for the time, would hold violent disputations. Their main object was ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... somewhere in the glowing logic of the proposition—as he saw it—even though she mightn't put her very finest finger-point on it; and to inflict upon a man who offered so much a wife with a tendency to criticise would be a peculiarly discreditable act. She had promised him she would consider his question, and when, after he had left her, she wandered back to the bench where he had found her and lost herself in meditation, it might have seemed ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... have discovered about him is eminently discreditable," he said. "He seems to have had an ambition to occupy a very important position in Albania. To this end he had bribed and subsidized the Turkish and Albanian officials and had a fairly large following in that country. Bartholomew tells me that Kara had already sounded him as to the ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... painting, and languages; Swiss artificers in steady work; Swiss couriers, and other Swiss servants chronically out of place; industrious Swiss laundresses and clear-starchers; mysteriously existing Swiss of both sexes; Swiss creditable and Swiss discreditable; Swiss to be trusted by all means, and Swiss to be trusted by no means; these diverse Swiss particles are attracted to a centre in the district of Soho. Shabby Swiss eating-houses, coffee-houses, and lodging-houses, Swiss drinks and dishes, Swiss service for Sundays, and ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... driven into his convictions by his party. On the other, a party is extolled for its political tact, in suffering itself to be forced out of its convictions by its leader. It is hard to decide which is the more discreditable and demoralising sight. The education of chiefs by followers, and of followers by chiefs, into the abandonment in a month of the traditions of centuries or the principles of a lifetime may conduce to the rapid and easy working ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... coloured person or bastard, nor persons of public bad conduct, or those who have had a discreditable criminal sentence passed on them, nor any non-rehabilitated bankrupts or insolvents whatsoever shall be eligible ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... relevancy of this rather startling query was a little obscure, but somebody replied: "He was visiting the Kaiser." This was too much for our interlocutor; he pitied our ignorance of the world, lamented our neglected education, and, as if our weakness in arithmetic was peculiarly discreditable, deplored our inability to ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... There are some discrepancies in detail, but nothing that matters. The murder of M. Odent, of the other hostages, of the civilians placed in front of the German troops, and of four or five other victims; the burning out by torch and explosive of half a flourishing town, because of a discreditable mistake, the fruit of panic and passion,—these crimes are indelibly marked on the record of Germany. She has done worse elsewhere. All the same, this too she will never efface. Let us imagine such things happening at Guildford, or ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... never going to tell her." "You ass," again. After all, it was not a practical question; Agnes would never hear of his fall. If his friend had been, as he expressed it, "labelled"; if he had been a father, or still better a brother, one might tell him of the discreditable passion. But why irritate him for no reason? Thinking "I am always angling for sympathy; I must stop myself," he hurried ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... authorship was well known to him. While severe in most of his strictures on Wordsworth, Southey reserved his special malice for The Ancient Mariner. He called it "a Dutch attempt at German sublimity"; and in a letter written to William Taylor on September 5, 1798—probably while he was writing his discreditable critique—he characterized the poem as "the clumsiest attempt at German sublimity I ever saw." Southey's responsibility for the article became known to Cottle, who communicated the fact to the poets on their return a year later. Wordsworth declared that "if Southey ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... marked a departure from ordinary procedure could not possibly be construed except as a severe reflection on Jackson's judgment. Nor could it have other than a most fatal effect on the discipline of the Valley troops. It had been brought about by most discreditable means. Loring's officers had sat in judgment on their commander. Those who had been granted leave at the close of the expedition had repaired to Richmond, and had filled the ears of the Government and the columns of the newspapers with complaints. Those who remained ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... no doubt that the atrocities of which Montreal was the scene constitute the most discreditable features in modern Canadian history, and which, it is to be hoped, the instigators to and actors in are long since fully ashamed of; nor can the temper and judgment of the Governor-General on this trying occasion be too ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... for conquest for its own sake, though he had no personal ambition. The love of adventure was deep in him; he adored sport for its own sake; he had had a long range of experiences—some discreditable—and now he had determined on a new field for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... our Government—and who, with whatever faults he had, was a strong and wise ruler, and accepted by his people—in order to force upon the Afghans a mere nominee of the British, and one whose authority could only be supported by the bayonets of an alien race. Such an enterprise was as discreditable to our councillors as it proved to be ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... Leslie took that castle for the Covenanters; they took Dumbarton; they fortified Leith; Argyll ravaged Huntly's lands; Montrose and Leslie occupied Aberdeen; and their party, in circumstances supposed to be discreditable to Montrose, carried Huntly to Edinburgh. (The evidence is confused. Was Huntly unwilling to go? Charles (York, April 23, 1639) calls him "feeble and false." Mr Gardiner says that, in this case, and in this alone, Montrose ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... delegates themselves who all sat as judges on one another's cases.... The Convention as now composed has no claim to represent the voters of the Republican party.... Any man nominated by the Convention as now constituted would merely be the beneficiary of this successful fraud; it would be deeply discreditable for any man to accept the Convention's nomination under these circumstances; and any man thus accepting it would have no claim to the support of any Republican on party grounds and would have forfeited the right to ask the support ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... for Hal to be a main feature in her life, blessing it with her friendship, while she turned kindly, unseeing eyes away from the corners where the murky shadows lay: Hal, who knew about the mad, discreditable marriage and its violent termination, and probably also of her mother's insatiable thirst for admiration and ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... a little startled that you should make such totally groundless assumptions of fact, and then leave a discreditable inference to be drawn from them. He directs me not only to repel this inference as it ought to be repelled, but also to bring to your serious consideration and reflection the propriety of such an assumed narration of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... clausum close, shut conclude, recluse, cloister, sluice Cognosco (see Nosco) *Coquo, coxi, coctum cook decoction, precocious *Cor, cordis heart core, discord, courage Corpus body corpse, incorporate Credo, credituin believe creed, discreditable Cresco, cretum grow crescendo, concrete, accrue *Crux, crucis cross crucifix, excruciating Cura care curate, sinecure Curro, cursum run occur, concourse *Derigo, directum direct dirge, dirigible, address *Dexter right, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor |
