"Belittle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Philosophy is indeed, as Gibbon called it, "a golden volume, not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or of Tully." To belittle its originality and sincerity, as is sometimes done, with a view to saving the Christianity of the writer, is to misunderstand his mind and his method. The Consolatio is not, as has been maintained, a mere patchwork of ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... would belittle my own sense of Osgood's real worth if I confined myself to expatiating on his brilliant physical achievements. His moral worth and gentle bravery were to me the chief points in him that arouse true admiration. ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... 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
... 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 ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... may try to analyse man's love for woman, to explain it, or explain it away, belittle it, nay, even resent and befoul it, it remains an unaccountable phenomenon, a "mystery we make darker with a name." Biology, cynically pointing at certain of its processes, makes the miracle rather more miraculous than otherwise. Musical instruments are no explanation ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... by the grave and learned lawyer, ex-Judge Garland, who conducted her case, and by the street-loungers who respectfully hastened to make way for her passage. It was the high character that radiated from her, scorning the conventionalities that conspire to belittle her sex, determined to be free and not afraid of being a pioneer in baffling the barbarism of her native laws. A singular story hers, that demands to be told in full, since it is full of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... another as 'I,' and 'the other.' They converse together in their language, not by necessity according to our thoughts, but what they will. And note, too, that there may be anger between them, and one may belittle or injure the other; this injury is in the Soul, the Soul in the body. Then the body suffers and is ill— not materially or from a material Ens, but from the Soul. For this we need spiritual remedy. Ye are two ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... as a war between rival sheepmen an' cattlemen. Same old fight over water an' grass! ... Jean, my son, that is wrong. It 'll not be a war between sheepmen an' cattlemen. But a war of honest ranchers against rustlers maskin' as sheep-raisers! ... Mind you, I don't belittle the trouble between sheepmen an' cattlemen in Arizona. It's real an' it's vital an' it's serious. It 'll take law an' order to straighten out the grazin' question. Some day the government will keep sheep off of cattle ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... as a German professor is at the head of affairs and can do something for his pupils, his pupils are very loud in their encomiums, both in public and in private. They not only exalt him, but help to belittle all who differ from him. So it was with Hegel, so it was at a later time with Bopp, and Curtius, and other professors, particularly if they had the ear of the Minister of Education. But soon after ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... Columbus. This memoir may not be exact. Irving may have idealized this pathfinder of the ocean; though if he has, he has observed the proprieties, literary and imaginative, as many successors have not. Some writers are seemingly bent on making every great soul commonplace, thinking that if they fail to belittle a distinguished benefactor of the race, if they have not played the Vandal with a swagger and conceit like Jack Falstaff, they have ignominiously failed; when the plain truth is, that if they succeeded in taking the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... coming to that," she responded. "It was just at this point that, goaded into secret fury by my innocent speech about cattle-stealing, he began to belittle American literature, the poetry especially. Of course he waxed eloquent about the royal line of poet-kings that had made his country famous, and said the people who could claim Shakespeare had reason to be the proudest nation on earth. 'Doubtless,' I said. ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... going to say grace." As this was an official function in John's eyes, that worthy man allowed himself to take a general view, and he was pleased to express his high approval of the company, enlarging especially on Carmichael, whom, as a Free Kirkman, he had been accustomed rather to belittle. ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... 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 ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... and raven locks, that she really looked 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 ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... 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 ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... most successful monument of the Victorian Gothic style. It suffers, however, from the want of proper relation of scale between its decorative elements and the vast proportions of the edifice, which belittle its component elements. It cannot, on the whole, be claimed as a successful vindication of the claims of the promoters of the style as to the adaptability of Gothic forms to structures planned and built after the modern fashion. The Assize Courts ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... thinking of one of the most serious obstacles to the furtherance of his enterprise: the stubborn hostility of the Sandstone County mountaineers. To the gentlest of them it meant changes that would make game scarcer and circumscribe and belittle their consciously small and circumscribed lives; to the wilder sort it meant an invasion of aliens who had never come before for other purpose than to break up their stills and drag them to jail. As he came out into the Susie and ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... use up, a literary force of the motive power of ten pens to employ. Massol, one of those lawyers who mistake the faculty of endless speech for eloquence, who possess the art of boring by diffusiveness, the torment of all meetings and assemblies where they belittle everything, and who desire to become personages at any cost,—Massol no longer wanted the place as Keeper of the Seals; he had seen some five or six different men go through that office in four years, and the robes disgusted him. In exchange, his mind was now set on obtaining ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... bon"? It is something exceedingly difficult to produce. We do not wish to belittle it; we wish to make plain its nature. If we succeed, we shall show also how choice and rare a thing this OEdipus is. At any rate, it keeps good company. The plays of Mr. Stephen Phillips are classical examples of the "faux bon," and, to remove a suspicion of disparagement, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... said, with a kind glance towards her. "Come, we mustn't any of us belittle our share ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... has spread from cellar to garret, neither blame nor disparagement must be placed upon the fire department if it failed to save the burning house. So with cancer; if the public refuses or neglects to operate for cancer at the time when it can be eradicated, the public cannot censure or belittle surgery. A cancer is like a green and ripe thistle. Pull up the green thistle and you have gotten rid of it. But if you wait until the thistle is ripe, and the winds have blown away the seeds, there is no use of pulling up that thistle. Early operations ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... respects this result 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
... ruthlessly belittle my tenderest hope, my fondest ambitions? What do you know about my future career as a brakeman? I intend to be touchingly faithful to my duty, kind and considerate to the public. In time the world will hear of me and I ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... must go and do likewise. Reforms which were steps in capitalism thus become to them steps in Socialism. It is not the fashion of "reformists" to try to claim that they are very great steps—on the contrary, they usually belittle them, but it is believed that agitation for such reforms as capitalist governments allow, is the best way to gain the public ear, the best kind of political practice, the most fruitful ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... not seem to worry the princess in the least; nor did her father's appeal not to belittle him in the eyes of his fellow monarchs have the slightest effect ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... finance and the war finance will differ in one most important respect. The war finance was purely destructive. From it came national security and the triumph of right over wrong. No one would belittle the worth of the sacrifice. But in the narrower sense of production, of bread winning, there came nothing; or nothing except a new power of organization, a new technical skill and a new aspiration towards better things. But the burden of peace ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... wife, and children is shown 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 ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... 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 ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... place which had far-reaching consequences: the first interview between Cavour and Garibaldi. Cavour was one of Garibaldi's earliest admirers; he applauded his exploits at Montevideo and at Rome, when the old Piedmontese party tried to belittle him and obliged Charles Albert to decline his services. In one way the hero was a man after the minister's own heart: he was absolutely practical; he might be obstinate or rash, but he was no doctrinaire. Cavour never changed his opinion of people, and even after the General became his enemy he ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... 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 to ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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
... laughter is a gift of God, there is no other gift of His which is more frequently abused and converted from a blessing into a curse. When laughter is directed against sacred things and holy persons; when it is used to belittle and degrade what is great and reverend; when it is employed as a weapon with which to torture weakness and cover innocence with ridicule—then, instead of being the foam on the cup at the banquet of life, it becomes a deadly ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... "I don't belittle it," was the quick response. "In some of its phases it is grand—magnificent. We can't always be prying into the cause; the effect is what counts. And there is no denying that the fairy tale which we call Christianity has built some of the most godlike ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... resorted to,—or even to escape "the lake of fire and brimstone." Neither should 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 ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... 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 of 'the snatches of excellent ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... for facts will not again speak lightly of an order having such ancestors as the great Comacine Masters. Had Fergusson known their story, he would not have paused in his History of Architecture to belittle the Free-masons as incapable of designing a cathedral, while puzzling the while as to who did draw the plans for those dreams of beauty and prayer. Hereafter, if any one asks to know who uplifted those massive piles in which ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... Englishman was freedom of speech, and the more that freedom became licence the finer the Englishman. (Cheers.) By freedom of speech he meant the right to say instantly whatever came into one's head, particularly if it appeared to belittle one's own country. Because one could not belittle England really. England was too great for that. But it was salutary to try. It was also valuable to our Allies, because it tended to prove to them how much in earnest and how united we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... 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 ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... themselves in a state of 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 can penetrate. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... abuse it poured upon my work a number of years ago." This is the well-known review by 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
... the water at all. It happened to be a foggy morning and the disciples were deceived; he was really walking on the shore. Where it says "one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side," we were informed that the Greek word here means primarily to prick as with a pin, to pave the way to belittle the wound of Jesus, despite the fact that the narrative adds, "straightway there came out blood and water." The purpose of this was to make way for the theory that Christ did not die on the cross, but was ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... Hilyar and Porter agree substantially in all respects; the details of the fight, as seen in the Essex, are found in the "Life of Farragut." But although the British captain does full justice to his foe, British historians have universally tried to belittle Porter's conduct. It is much to be regretted that we have no British account worth paying attention to of the proceedings before the fight, when the Phoebe declined single combat with the Essex. ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... prodigal of gifts. For without going to that length of exaggerated praise which some have bestowed—for her own ear, and with an eye to profit—upon Madonna Lucrezia, yet were I less than truthful if I sought to belittle her ample claims to beauty. Some six years later than the time of which I write she was met on the occasion of her entry into Ferrara by a certain clown dressed in the scanty guise of the shepherd Paris, who proffered her the apple of beauty with the mean-souled flattery that since ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... went out of his way in his "art notes" to belittle and ridicule Sir Thomas Lawrence because he lacked what he called the "virility ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... 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 you have heard ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... 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 ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... 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. 'Tis so ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... Vandam, "could not make friends." He was wrong. This was just what she could do. She made many staunch and warm-hearted friends. It was because she snubbed him on account of his pushfulness that Vandam elected to belittle her. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... inaugurate, initiate, institute, originate, start, found. Belief, faith, persuasion, conviction, tenet, creed. Belittle, decry, depreciate, disparage. Bind, secure, fetter, shackle, gyve. Bit, jot, mite, particle, grain, atom, speck, mote, whit, iota, tittle, scintilla. Bluff, blunt, outspoken, downright, brusk, curt, crusty. Boast, brag, vaunt, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... letting of blood, 'Something leaner of body—something keener of mood. 'And the men new-freed from the levies return to the fields again, 'Matching a hundred battles, cottar and lord and thane. 'And they talk aloud in the temples where the ancient wargods are. 'They thumb and mock and belittle the holy harness of war. 'They jest at the sacred chariots, the robes and the gilded staff. 'These things fill them with laughter, they lean on their spears and laugh. 'The men grown old in the war-game, hither and thither they range— 'And scorn and laughter together are sire ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... "Do not belittle the action, Master Ormskirk," the other said, courteously. "It was a brave deed, for, if I may say so, you are but little more than boys, to pit yourselves against four rascals of this kind. There ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... 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 the sooner we would have that peace which would ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... low, 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 ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... threw the gauntlet to Europe as a lecturer, when for days and months he could have done it so authoritatively as a Senator of the United States; could have done it from his senatorial chair, and in the fulfilment of the most sacred public and patriotic duty. How could the Senator thus belittle one of the most elevated political positions in the world, that of a Senator of ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... have never yielded," it said, "to the temptation to deride or to belittle the resistance of Ulster to Home Rule.... The subjugation of Protestant Ulster by force is one of those things that do not happen in our politics.... It is, we know, a popular delusion that Ulster is a braggart whose words ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... so to reconciliation, slow fade-out, and the announcement of Next Week's Pictures. But though it is impossible not to suspect Miss BURT of having an eye to what poetic journalism calls the Shadow Stage, this is by no means to belittle her mastery of the colder medium of print; and I hasten to acknowledge that, upon me at least, The Branding Iron has left a distinct though possibly ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... 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
... Curiously enough, I see something of the same expression of feeling in the attitude of that feeble Crashaw to myself. Well, one makes an attempt at self-assertion, a kind of futile bragging; and one knows the futility of it—at the time. But, afterwards, one finds excuse and seeks to belittle the personality and attainment of the person one feared. At school we did not love the 'head,' and, as schoolboys will, we were always trying to run him down. 'Next time he rags me, I'll cheek him,' was our usual boast—but ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... patriotic chagrin Meredith produced in me was an attempt to belittle his merit. "It isn't a good novel, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... wit and humor often present themselves under aspects somewhat different from those preferred by us, we belittle their efforts unjustly. As a matter of fact, the British attainments in this direction are the best in the world, next to our own. Moreover, in the British colonies is to be found a spirit of humor that exactly parallels our own in many distinctive features. Thus, there ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... that aye cleanlier shows A bum than salt-pot cleanlier, Nor ten times cack'st in total year, 20 And harder 'tis than pebble or bean Which rubbed in hand or crumbled, e'en On finger ne'er shall make unclean. Such blessings (Furius!) such a prize Never belittle nor despise; 25 Hundred sesterces seek no more With wonted ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... make light of any mention of the public 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 a light when there is none to borrow, what then? Even in religious matters, ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... evidencing a conflict between two intellectual guides, staggered me, and it was with some curiosity that I looked subsequently, when the Index to Periodicals came out, to see who had the temerity thus to belittle Spencer—the greatest political philosopher, so some of his disciples thought, since Aristotle. I ascertained that the writer of the review was James Bryce, and whatever else might be thought, it could not be denied that the controversy was one between ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... Spain been kept in efficient condition for immediate action, the task of the United States would have been greatly prolonged and far from so easy as it has been since declared by those among our people who delight to belittle the great work our country has just achieved, and to undervalue the magnanimity of its resolution to put a stop to outrages at our doors which were well said to have become intolerable. Neither by land nor by sea was the state of the case so judged by professional men, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... Standards.—It cannot be too emphatically stated that any tendency in the community to belittle or ridicule the estate of matrimony has a definite cumulative effect on desertion. The "when a man's married" series in the comic supplements, certain comic films in the moving picture shows, the form of drama popularly called "bedroom farce" are examples of these destructive forces. ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... 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 ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... practical tact and talent, nothing more. She seemed the living representative of the years spent in strife for profit, power, and place; the petty cares that fret the soul, the mercenary schemes that waste a life, the worldly formalities, frivolities, and fears, that so belittle character. All these he saw in this daughter's shape; and with pathetic patience bore the daily trial of an over active, over anxious, ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... belittle it as much as you like, but you certainly saved me from an awfully nasty situation. And you didn't know ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... who ought to have been with their army on the firing-line. But, if my memory serves me rightly, I think that I saw quite a number of English youths doing the same thing. Every country has its slackers, and Belgium is no exception. But to attempt to belittle the glorious heroism of the Belgian nation because of a few young slackers or the ingratitude and ill-manners of some ignorant peasants, is an unworthy and despicable thing. The assertion that the Belgians are lacking in courage is as untruthful as it is cruel. Ask the Germans ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... 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
... in certain districts of Canada, might be irresistible. The harsh and powerful face of the speaker became transfigured; one divined in him some hidden motive which was driving him to contest and belittle the main currents and sympathies about him. He spoke as a prophet, but the faith which envenomed the prophecy lay far out ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... calibre, are the incidental ones,—the valuable friendships and the charming associations which it brings about. For the sake of these I would willingly endure again many passages of a life that has not been all roses; not that I would appear to belittle my own work: it does not need it. But the present generation (in America at least) does not strike me as containing much literary genius. The number of undersized persons is large and active, and we hardly believe in the possibility of heroic stature. I cannot sufficiently ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... utmost delicacy used toward others," he 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. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and be happy, and because she's showier and better-looking than they are, even though you do give her only about thirty-five cents a year to do it on! They've all done everything on earth they could to drive the young men away from her and belittle her to 'em; and this mean little Henrietta Lamb's been the worst of the whole crowd to Alice, every time she ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... officer stood at the gate as we marched out to the moor, to take "Eyes right" and a salute, for no useful purpose that we could see except to belittle a British soldier's pride. As corporal I was supposed to give that command to my squad but rather than do so I took my stripes down, although that ended my immunity as a "non-com" from the labour of cutting ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... not in this brief note propose to dwell, though it seems to me insane either to ignore them or to belittle them. The point on which I desire to insist is that they arise not from the establishment of a subordinate Parliament alone, nor from the existence of a "nationalist" sentiment alone, but from the action and reaction ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... mean at all to belittle your brains," grinned the Senior Surgeon in spite of himself. "Oh, not at all, Miss Malgregor! But you see it isn't especially brains that I'm looking for! Really what I need most," he acknowledged frankly, "is an extra pair of hands to go ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... not to belittle yourself like that. I'm ashamed of you. But I'll tell you one thing: Patty is sometimes a little perverse. She can't seem to help it. She's a perfect dear, but she is a coquette. If you ask me, I think the more glad she is to see you, the more likely ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... I 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 as means of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... "Titmouse," his "May-Day," his "Sea-Shore," his "Snow-Storm," and many other poems. But we must "quarrel" with him a little, to use one of his favorite words, for seeming to undervalue the facts of natural science, as such, and to belittle the works of the natural historian because he does not give us poetry and lessons in morals instead of botany and geology and ornithology, pure and simple. "Everything," he says, "should be treated poetically—law, politics, ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... is a voluble boastfulness; theirs is an irritating, unrestrainable, all-but-constantly manifested, satisfied self-consciousness. The same results are reached by different avenues. We praise ourselves; they belittle others.' Then he added with a smile: 'Thus even in these latter days are the Scriptures exemplified; the same spirit ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... her a great deal after that. More than I would have talked of love, but his need of an audience drove him to confidences. He felt that he must make himself worthy of her—to go back to her as anything less than a hero might seem to belittle her. I am not sure that he was braver than other men, but his feeling for effect gave him a sort of reckless courage. Applause was a part of the game—he ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... sees in Voltaire (who observed that "Hamlet" "appears the work of a drunken savage") the old-fashioned tendency to belittle Shakespeare. This tendency has one of its most amusing reflections in a criticism by Hume, who said of the great poet that "a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... like a slap in the face. He stared at her, not able to comprehend how she could belittle a present from such a source. And all at once he felt himself more in sympathy with Big Tom than he did with her, for Big Tom at least held One-Eye in high honor, and considered his visit ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... sex! You're not trying to belittle that, are you? Why, Kate, that's the beginning and the end of things. What I've always liked about you is that you look big facts in the face and aren't afraid of truth. Sex! Why, that's home and happiness and all a woman really cares ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... were fully sensible of the fact that the loss of these important points, Memphis and New Orleans, were disasters most discouraging. When they were in the presence of those to whom they knew they could speak freely, they sneered at the efforts made by their superiors to belittle the Union victories, and laughed to scorn Mayor Monroe and the "city fathers" for the attitude they had seen fit to assume while Farragut's powerful fleet held the Crescent city under its guns. If the pompous little ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... husband struggling like a mouse in the bitter cold water, could not add a pang to her torture. All that I have described happened, of course, in a few seconds; the man had barely gone under before one of the ship's butchers, in his white clothes, was in after him. Let no one belittle the race of butchers. The life-taker knew how to save life, and Master Butcher had his man in a moment, turned him on his back, and began to swim ashore; indeed, there was no fear of the man's drowning, for there were half a dozen ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... 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 her eyes grew ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... 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 ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... never seen till a few minutes ago, should be in the inner circle of knowledge of the life of her husband and herself, without her self-esteem being hurt like this. She was very woman, and the look of the thing was not nice to her eyes, while it must belittle her in theirs. Had this girl done it on purpose? Yet why should she—she who had so appealed to her to come to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... one recall obvious things like that? Would you have had me try to belittle him to you—if you must think worse of a man for such trifles as smoking and ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... the key from the lock, her eyes rested with pride on the gloss of his hair, which had gone grey in the last year, and on his figure, with its square shoulders and its look of obvious distinction, as of a man who had achieved results so emphatically that it was impossible either to overlook or to belittle them. How splendid he looked! And what a pity that, after all his triumphs, he should still be so nervous on the first night of ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... all times, the absence of ceremony, of those trivialities which obscure and belittle the one supreme fact, gave an added solemnity to the unadorned service: forced upon her a half-disturbing realisation that she was passing from an independence, dearer to her than life, into the keeping of a man:—a man ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... States Government to take affairs into its own hands. In some instances the agents of the General Government sought to stir up active strife between the people of the State and the Indians, and it was their habit to belittle the State government by speaking of it contemptuously before the Indians. In many instances the United States stepped in between the agents of the State and the Indians, and prevented settlements and treaties that would have been ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... same, and that we look at everything differently? Even your religion and the God you call to witness are not mine. They are stiff and cold; you Unitarians permit your consciences to deaden your emotions and belittle your outlook on life. When I went with Mr. Parsons the other day to the Methodist church, I could not help thinking how different it was. I was thrilled and I felt I could do anything and be anything. My mother was a Methodist. They sang 'Onward Christian Soldiers,' and it was glorious." She ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... 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 ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... The Senator spoke with a clear, sonorous voice, no doubt with a twang, but so audibly as to satisfy the room in general. "I shall not," he said, "dwell much on your form of government. Were I to praise a republic I might seem to belittle your throne and the lady who sits on it,—an offence which would not be endured for a moment by English ears. I will take the monarchy as it is, simply remarking that its recondite forms are very hard ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... A brain that could do that," she waved at the chart, "... well, even I am not enough of a heel to belittle one of the most tremendous intuitions ever achieved by man. Not that I like it. It's horrible. It denies mankind everything that made him come up from the slime—everything ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... women and I go to him of my own accord designing to acquaint him with the means of deliverance, he will assuredly give orders to slay me, even as he slew those his Wazirs, and my courtesy to him will be the cause of my destruction. Wherefore the folk will think slightly of me and belittle my wit and I shall be of those of whom it is said, 'He whose science excelleth his sense perisheth by his ignorance.'" When the King heard the boy's words, he was assured of his sagacity, and the excellence of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... events that he had witnessed with his own eyes and had special opportunities of studying accurately. "The writings of my predecessors contain sometimes slanders, sometimes eulogies, but nowhere the accurate truth of the facts." He goes on to complain of the way in which they belittle the action of the Jews in order to aggrandize the Romans, which defeats its own purpose; and he contrasts the merit of one who composes by his own industry a history of events not hitherto faithfully recorded, with the more popular and the easier fashion ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... so, and it was a very mild confession that she heard, involving a great deal of unnecessary sacrifice in helping a pauper uncle. Hope strove to belittle his good deeds as much as possible, but Lucy saw plainly the good heart that had dictated the giving up of his small income for some years. When in possession of all the facts, she threw her arms around his neck ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... come. He plead with languishing eyes for a few moments more at the side of the lady he desired to fascinate, but Miss Sanford was still looking at the photographs and would not return his glance. Go he had to, and it was plain to him that in striving to belittle Ray he had damaged his own cause. It made him bitterer still as he strode through the darkness down to the beacon-lights of the store. Gleason drank more and talked more before he went to bed ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... the supreme merit of Columbus that he was the first to cut loose from one continent to find another, and to steer boldly across an unknown sea, in search of an unknown world. We need not belittle (still less need we deny) the finding of Greenland and of other parts of North America by the Norsemen in the ninth and tenth centuries. We may hail Eric the Red and his stout son, Leif Ericson, as pioneers in what may be ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... of science to the examination of our princely pretensions, it is but fair to look in both directions. And then what we lose above we gain below. The revelations of the microscope balance those of the telescope. The animalcula magnify man as much as the nebulsa belittle him. We cannot help believing that He who frames and provides for those infinitesimal animals quadrillions of whom might inhabit a drop of water or a leaf and have ample room and verge enough, and whose vital and muscular organization is as ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... and there a fish stranded on the sand or strangled in the sea-weed. Let us remember, then, that in the Silurian period the world, so far as it was raised above the ocean, was a beach; and let us seek there for such creatures as God has made to live on seashores, and not belittle the Creative work, or say that He first scattered the seeds of life in meagre or stinted measure, because we do not find air-breathing animals when there was no fitting atmosphere to feed their lungs, insects with no terrestrial plants to live upon, reptiles without marshes, birds without ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... English language, it has been so written that it would not have offended the author had he lived to read it, nor does it disgust or annoy those who most love the original. There is not a word in it having an intention to belittle Scott. It has sprung from the genuine humour created in Thackeray's mind by his aspect of the romantic. We remember how reticent, how dignified was Rowena,—how cold we perhaps thought her, whether there was so little of that billing and cooing, that ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... down to the springs of fundamental social and political changes at the South in relation to its race question, and sets in motion the healing waters of its pool of Bethesda, which will in time heal it of its sickness and cleanse it of its sins against law, justice and democracy. I do not mean to belittle in any way other agencies now at work on the solution of our terrible race problem, such as education or wealth or agitation. Not at all, for they are most important, but without the ballot they are impotent to give the relief so much needed in ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... establish the falsity of the charges, but he 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 eyes ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the Universe," shows, I think, indications of the vast importance of that Universe as the producer of Man which so many scientific men to-day try to belittle, because of what may be, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... from my thought or wish to ignore or belittle the labors of earnest students and writers ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... talk after her; gossip is liable to degenerate into evil speaking and then I think it tends to degrade and belittle the mind to dwell on the defects and imperfections of our neighbors. Learn to dwell on the things that are just and true and of good report, but I am sorry for ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... 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 ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... need just now." After the words were out, Good Indian wanted to swear at himself for seeming to belittle Evadna. "I mean," he corrected quickly—"do you know what I mean? I'll tell you what has happened, and if you don't know then, and can't help me, I'll just have to apologize for ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower |
