"Belittling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... persistence of a poll-parrot praising its own personal pulchritude. The editor of Puck should avoid political economy as a subject a trifle too large for the knot on the end of his neck, and confine himself to his threadbare specialty, that of belittling the Jews with his watery wit and atribilarious art. The only funny thing I find in his paper is its solemn "notice to publishers" that all its raccous rot is copyrighted, that infringement will be "promptly and vigorously prosecuted." The editor who would steal ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... worry as well as of its frequent associate, anger, have been dwelt upon by writers philosophical, religious, and medical. "Worry," says one author, "is the root of all cowardly passions,—jealousy, fear, the belittling of self, and all the introspective forms of depression are the children of worry." The symptoms and the evil results seem to receive more elaborate and detailed attention than the treatment. "Eliminate it," counsels this writer; "Don't worry," advises ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... was clear that he did not intend to leave yet awhile. There was no way out except by going through the inn taproom, and I was not inclined to face Dick Cludde there, for he would of a certainty make some sneering or belittling remark, and my temper being not of the meekest I feared things might come to a brawl. Not that I cared a fig's end for Cludde, or feared any ill result from a personal encounter; but I knew the inn was a property of Sir Richard's, who would speedily ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... like belittling the greatest of marvels to call it a stroke of genius. He made it possible for the most ordinary laborer to accomplish a hundred times as much in an hour, and with the most exquisite perfection, as a skilled laborer could accomplish ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... narrative as Cooper in the famous passage of Paul Jones's ship through the shoals. Such comparisons are, of course, rather futile. They differentiate among excellences, where taste is a factor. Nevertheless, it is belittling to a man who, above almost all others in our language, has brooded upon the mysteries of the mind's action, to say that he is great because he describes ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... list of my acquaintance with them, will disappoint the reader who does not raise his expectation too high. Olivier Maugant is perhaps the strongest. But the expression just used must not be taken as belittling. In both France and England such novel-writing had become almost a trade—certainly a profession: and the turning out of workmanlike and fairly satisfying articles for daily consumption is, if not a noble ambition, a quite respectable aim. M. Cherbuliez did something more than this: there are ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... impractical. They were desperately hard up for water and air, and while they had a lot of wonderful ideas and theories, they couldn't overcome the practical technical difficulties in the way of making their ideas work. Now putting other peoples' ideas to work was Roeser's long suit—don't think that I'm belittling Roeser at all, either, for he was a brave and far-sighted man, was no mean scientist, and was certainly one of the best organizers and synchronizers the world has ever known—and since Martian and Tellurian science complemented each other, so that one filled ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... a great conflict of opinion as to the number of troops engaged in every battle, or all important battles, fought between the sections, the South magnifying the number of Union troops engaged and belittling their own. Northern writers have fallen, in many instances, into the same error. I have often heard gentlemen, who were thoroughly loyal to the Union, speak of what a splendid fight the South had made and successfully continued for four years before yielding, ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... program: /n./ North American equivalent of a {noddy} (that is, trivial) program. Doesn't necessarily have the belittling connotations of mainstream slang "Oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial programs can be ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... and glimmer of romance" which was to invest the tin pan are forgotten, and he uses it as a belittling object for comparison. He himself was not often betrayed into the mistake of confounding the prosaic with the poetical, but his followers, so far as the "realists" have taken their hint from him, have done it most thoroughly. Mr. Whitman ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... could check Miss Joan's propensity for belittling her benefactress. And I remember that once she had been tittle-tattling as usual, and had said something more indefensible than usual of her benefactress, when looking up suddenly we found Miss Champion ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... acquaintance with her mental habits, a certainty that her outbursts of feeling generally did quiet down if one waited: and across her genuine absorption in the story she was telling there flitted, bat-like, a distaste far being known so well as all that! There was something indiscreet and belittling in it, she thought, with an inward fastidious recoil. But this had gone, entirely, in a moment, and she was rushing on, "And, Neale, what do you think? She has worked on him, and he has worked on himself till he's got ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Jews, priests, ministers and rabbis, that is what they write. It is a belittling, a profanation, that, in spite of myself, I have separated and differentiated among them. For down there, in the bloody mud of the trenches, they are one body which ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... from belittling the effort of the men of Icaria. They have shown, as I have said, astonishing courage and perseverance. They have proved their faith in the communistic idea by labors and sufferings which seem to me pitiful. In ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... who always seemed to find a peculiar pleasure in belittling any opinion that I might express. "What we are in for is a thunderstorm that will make some of ye sit up and take notice. I guess it will bring with it some pretty considerable squalls, so it will be a good plan to stow a few of them flyin' kites of ours. They're doin' ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... rules of any game when an innocent girl's happiness was at stake? Did he care for conventions, or even the contempt she herself might feel for him for apparently belittling her lover? He could stand that, so that her eyes were opened and the fellow's yellow heart made plain. At the proper time he should act, view his part as she might. A snap of his fingers for being misunderstood! He would go ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... to it the better...But no! Life was not like that. Her adventure was a hideous accident. She dreaded above all the temptation to generalise from her own case, to doubt the high things she had lived by and seek a cheap solace in belittling what fate had refused her. There was such love as she had dreamed, and she meant to go on believing in it, and cherishing the thought that she was worthy of it. What had happened to her was grotesque and mean and miserable; but she herself was none of these things, and never, never would ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the Negro in America, however, it is important to observe in passing that already, even in burlesque, the Negro element was beginning to enthrall the popular mind. About the same time as minstrelsy also developed the habit of belittling the race by making the name of some prominent and worthy Negro a term of contempt; thus "cuffy" (corrupted from Paul Cuffe) ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... Piedras Negras took a liking to him; the women wanted to get acquainted with him. He was invited to places, and he accepted the invitations without either belittling or magnifying their importance. He got on ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... is not equal to its power to contribute to the world with which its destiny is bound up. It is only at its best when it is a part of the vital current of movement, of sympathy, of hope, of enthusiasm of the world at large. There is no doctrine so belittling, so withering to our national life, as that which conceives our destiny to be a life of exclusion of the affairs and interests of the whole globe, hemmed in to the selfish development of our material ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... remarked that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel he was not belittling the value of love of country as a force in the lives of men, but to the contrary, was pointing out that a profession of patriotism, unaccompanied by good works, was the mark of a man not to be trusted. In no other institution in the land will flag-waving fall as flat as in the ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... that singular family of fungi which cover fallen leaves and dead twigs with their blackish fructifications; a remarkable piece of work, full of the most valuable documentation, as were the theses whose subjects I have just detailed; but without belittling the fame of their author, one may say that another, in his place, might ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... pick a quarrel with him, and kill him for you in a duel. All blood is red when it is shed, the lowly as well as the lofty, though they do pretend that the blood of the nobles is blue. I come of a good and ancient family, if not so high in rank as yours, and I have no fear of belittling myself in this affair. Only say the word, and I will go this instant, for this histrionic captain is, it seems to me, more worthy of the sword of a gentleman than the cudgels of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... working nearer to the cradle, a new sense is wakening of the importance of the period of infancy, and its wiser treatment; yet those who know of such a movement are few, and of them some are content to earn easy praise—and pay—by belittling right progress to gratify ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... name. They are identified by their order and their side, as "The first speaker on the affirmative" or "The speaker who preceded me," or "My colleague," or "My opponent." Avoid using these with tones and phrases of sarcasm and bitterness. Be fair and courteous in every way. Never indulge in such belittling expressions as "No one understands what he is trying to prove. He reels off a string of figures which mean nothing." Never indulge in cheap wit ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... embittered foe against whom this last decisive struggle is aimed. France is fighting for her existence. She is no weaker than we are in men, guns, or munitions. Only one thing decides between us—will and nerves. Every doubting, belittling word is a creeping poison which kills joyful, strong hope and does more damage than a thousand foes. Only if we are convinced to our marrow that we shall ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... this kind for years. The fact that they are generally pointedly true does not make them less objectionable. Some wives who are in reality devoted to their husbands, nevertheless make a point of invariably belittling them in private and public, and, though he would rarely admit it, this takes the heart out of a man more than one unversed in the hearts of men could possibly believe. The truth is, men like admiration and praise just as much as women ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... be remembered as that of the period of the Crimean War, and it was in connection with that great struggle and his wish to serve his country afloat that Lord Hardwicke found just reason to complain of more than the mere belittling of his services at Genoa which had been his sole reward upon his return to England ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... would not fire an artist's eye, This View whereof I sing; Poets, no doubt, would pass it by As quite a common thing; The Tourist with belittling sniff Would find no beauties there— He couldn't if he would, and if He ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... several had special reasons for viewing the progress of the Revolution with misgiving. The Bourbons of Spain and of the Two Sicilies were united by blood and family compacts with the ruling dynasty of France: any belittling of the latter's power was bound to affect disastrously the domestic position and foreign policy of the former. Then, too, the French queen, Marie Antoinette, was an Austrian Habsburg. Her family interests were in measure at stake. In the Austrian dominions, the visionary and unpractical Joseph ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... a greater man than Homer (I mean the author of the Iliad); but the very people who are most angry with me for (as they incorrectly suppose) sneering at Homer are generally the ones who never miss an opportunity of cheapening and belittling Handel, and, which is very painful to myself, they say I was laughing at him in Narcissus. Perhaps—but surely one can laugh at a person and adore ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... any comment. It is a satire on modern man and his belittling virtues. In verses 23 and 24 of the second part of the discourse we are reminded of Nietzsche's powerful indictment of the great of to-day, in the Antichrist (Aphorism 43):—"At present nobody has any longer the courage for separate rights, for rights of domination, for a feeling ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... a woman's birth to her death, there is a continuous system of belittling her, which, if it does not succeed in destroying her self-respect, thus teaching her that she may, as her only means of retaliation, allow herself in any little meanness which may occur to her, is so galling to that self-respect, that the ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... "car fares" traveling expenses, for he was familiar with Doctor Kane's habit of belittling his many charitable acts. He knew also that, if necessary, the doctor would gladly lend him the sum of money which stood, a tangible barrier, between his mother and total darkness; but with a sense of indomitable hope and modest pride, he had ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... not abstract or concrete probability, and still less literal faithfulness to recorded fact, is what the dramatist is bound to aim at. To understand this as a belittling of his art is to misunderstand the nature of art in general. The plausibility of bad art is doubtless contemptible and may be harmful. But to say that good art must be plausible is only to say that not every sort of truth, or every aspect of truth, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... himself. The picture he sees will fit the frame his mind can give, and no one ever has, no one ever will, see there exactly what he sees. If a man's mind cannot create a beautiful frame, then the picture must have but a poor effect for him, and he will go away belittling it. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the "old war-horse began once more to sniff the battle from afar." Admitting to his friends that the situation looked "a little dubious," he exerted himself powerfully to bring about the reelection of the New Yorker. He wrote a letter belittling the military qualities of the Whig candidate, thereby probably doing the Democratic cause more harm than good; and finally, to avert the humiliation of a Whig victory in Tennessee, he "took the stump" and denounced the enemy up and down through all western Tennessee ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg |
