"Contumely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he simply remarks: "You need not be concerned: I will engage you will lose nothing by that paper." Swift, however, lost more than the Archbishop thought; for "that paper" led to his severance from the Whigs, and, in after life, to much contumely cast on his character for being a political renegade. Because "he was not Whig enough;" because he would not forsake his Church for his party, critics and biographers have thought fit to make little of him, and to compare him to his discredit with contemporaries whose intellects he held in ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... the opposers of our most holy religion. We are soldiers, and should unite together under the Captain of Salvation, to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints, by every method authorized by the Word of God; nor must we shrink from danger and contumely ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... seem a matter for surprise that the Church which, as we know, had shown an ever greater tendency to reverence virginity and to cast contumely on the sexual relationship, should yet, parallel with that movement and with the growing influence of asceticism, have shown so great an anxiety to capture marriage and to confer on it a public, dignified, and religious character. There was, however, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... delivered an animated discourse against the high pretensions of the see of Rome. Some of his expressions were exaggerated, distorted, and carried by talebearers to Whitehall. It was falsely said that he had spoken with contumely of the theological disquisitions which had been found in the strong box of the late King, and which the present King had published. Compton, the Bishop of London, received orders from Sunderland to suspend Sharp till the royal pleasure ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... anything different? What becomes of Confucianists and Shintoists, who have never heard of the historic Christ? And all the while we have the sense of a query in our minds. Is it open to any man to repudiate mysticism absolutely and with contumely, and then leave us to discover that he does not mean mysticism as historians of every faith have understood it, but only the margin of evil which is apparently inseparable from it? That margin of evil others ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... eager efforts by a sign. Then thus the royal youth to all around— Gods! either I shall prove of little force Hereafter, and for manly feats unapt, Or I am yet too young, and have not strength 160 To quell the aggressor's contumely. But come— (For ye have strength surpassing mine) try ye The bow, and bring this contest to an end. He ceas'd, and set the bow down on the floor, Reclining it against the shaven pannels smooth That lined the wall; the arrow next he placed, Leaning ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... representing that banking-house, would inspire confidence, and must extend the connexion. But if the various banking-houses refuse to avail themselves of Mr. Micawber's abilities, or receive the offer of them with contumely, what is the use of dwelling upon THAT idea? None. As to originating a banking-business, I may know that there are members of my family who, if they chose to place their money in Mr. Micawber's hands, might found an establishment ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... long struggle. But The Army was still regarded as something of a nuisance by the majority of educated people, a good thing for the very worst by a few, with indifference or hostility by the mass. To wear the uniform was to bring upon one contumely, often persecution. Salvation Army officers were sometimes perhaps ill fed and poorly clad; nevertheless, because of the opportunity their position afforded to seek and find the lost, Kate Lee counted herself blessed above ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... in our public labors better informed. The Standard has done much; and I find in many other papers a disposition to do justice, to a great extent, to our cause. It is not ridiculed as it was in the beginning. We do not have the difficulties, the opposition, and the contumely to confront that we had at an early day. I am very glad to find such an audience here to-day; and far be it from me to occupy the time so as to prevent Mr. May, Mr. Burleigh, and others, from having their ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... free America was sold at auction. In those days a few earnest men dreamed of a time when our flag should no longer unfurl itself over a slave. Inspired by this great vision they bore the persecution and contumely of their fellows. In season and out of season they preached their glorious gospel of immediate and unconditional emancipation. Wild visionaries they, incendiaries whose very writings, like the heresies of old, must ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... danger, our toil—and conveniently forgot our horrible scare. We decried our officers—who had done nothing—and listened to the fascinating Donkin. His care for our rights, his disinterested concern for our dignity, were not discouraged by the invariable contumely of our words, by the disdain of our looks. Our contempt for him was unbounded—and we could not but listen with interest to that consummate artist. He told us we were good men—a "bloomin' condemned lot ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... and Infidelity are classic accusations. The gentle Burne-Jones was stoutly denounced by his enemies as a Pagan Greek. I think he rather gloried in the contumely, but fifty years earlier he might have been visited by a "lettre de cachet," instead of a knighthood; for we can not forget how, in Eighteen Hundred Fifteen, Parliament refused to pay for the Elgin Marbles because, as Lord Falmouth put it, "These relics will tend to prostitute ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... He understands nothing of the solemn happenings which he has witnessed, nor does he ask their meaning, though his own heart had been lacerated with pain at sight of the king's sufferings. He is driven from the sanctuary with contumely. ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... had borne; a single drop will make the cup run over, when filled up to the brim; a single spark will ignite the mine, that, by its explosion, will scatter destruction around it; and may not one foolish indiscretion, one thoughtless act of contumely or wrong, arouse to vengeance the passions that have long been burning, though concealed? With the same dispositions and tempers as ourselves, they are subject to the same impulses and infirmities. Little accustomed to restrain their feelings, it is ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... love, He listened not—though He could have done so—to the voices that at the end taunted Him with their proffered allegiance if He would come down from the Cross; because of that love, He gave up His spirit. And through all the weariness and contumely and pain, that love held His will fixed to its purpose, and bore Him over every hindrance that barred His path. Many waters quench it not. That love is stronger than death; mightier than all opposing powers; deep and great ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... surprised at my own action. The old lady also stared, her teacup suspended under her nose. The whole thing was so ridiculous! I had come on such a grand mission, ready to dictate the terms of a noble peace. I was met with anger and contumely; the dignity of the ambassador of peace rubbed off at a touch, like the golden dust from the butterfly's wing. I took my scolding like a meek child; and then, when she was in the middle of a trenchant phrase, her eye fixed daggerlike on mine, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... sent an embassy to Pekin in 1795, but it was treated with such contumely that it does not reflect much credit on those who sent it. The Spaniards never held any relations with the central government, all their business being conducted with the Viceroy of Fuhkien; and the successive massacres of Manila completely excluded them from any good understanding with ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... service of love the purest, and within a sphere visited by little of contemporary applause. Even his intellectual displays won but a narrow sympathy at any time, and in his earlier period were saluted with positive derision and contumely on the few occasions when they were not oppressed by entire neglect. But slowly all things right themselves. All merit, which is founded in truth, and is strong enough, reaches by sweet exhalations in the end a higher sensory; reaches higher organs of discernment, lodged in ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... antechamber at St. Jean d'Angely, I remembered the jest which Mathurine had uttered at our joint expense. Doubtless it had dwelt in mademoiselle's mind, and exciting her animosity against me had prepared her to treat me with contumely when, contrary to all probability, we met again, and she found herself placed in a manner in my hands. It had inspired her harsh words and harsher looks on our journey northwards, and contributed with her native ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion, as is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose: Surely (saith he) I had rather a great deal, men should say, there was no such man at all, as Plutarch, than that they should say, that there was one ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... being dead, or anything at all like it. After a time she lapsed into a state of dreadful calmness, and observed that, when that unfortunate train of circumstances had occurred in the Indigo Trade, she had foreseen that she would be exposed, during her whole life, to every species of insult and contumely; and that she was glad to find it was the case; and begged they wouldn't trouble themselves about her,—for what was she?—oh dear! a nobody!—but would forget that such a being lived, and would take their course in life without her. From this bitterly sarcastic mood she passed into ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... found the address of the San Francisco office of the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company. You have a mean man in charge there. I called on him, told him I was an old college pal of yours, and tried to borrow a dollar. He spurned me with contumely—so much of it, in fact, that I imagine you have a number of such friends. While he was abusing me, I stole from his desk the stamped envelope which bears to you these tidings of great woe; and while awaiting your reply, be advised that I subsist on the bitter cud of reflection, ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... said the other, resuming his seat by the table and wiping the cards which had been splashed by the wine.' Had the comparison been made by an officer of Louis's guard for the purpose of contumely and braggadocio, it would then indeed have become us to venture a passado. But when spoken by an Englishman of ripe experience it becomes a matter of instructive criticism, which should ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... indeed, you are always complaining against them. Zeno wrangled. Why need I mention Albutius? Nothing could be more elegant or humane than Phaedrus; yet a sharp expression would disgust the old man. Epicurus treated Aristotle with great contumely. He foully slandered Phaedo, the disciple of Socrates. He pelted Timocrates, the brother of his companion Metrodorus, with whole volumes, because he disagreed with him in some trifling point of philosophy. He was ungrateful even to Democritus, whose follower ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Marquis de Henares. I must unquestionably do something to raise his spirits. My mother's advice coincided with my own feelings. I allowed the count a secret interview, and he had permission to ask my father for my hand. He did so in fear and trembling. He was dismissed with scorn and contumely. My mother and I then used all our influence to turn my father, and—I was married to Count Pozaldez before I ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Garfield's, the last time I met him. It seemed a great relief to him to turn to talk to my child, who was with me. He had suffered enough abuse in his political campaign to suffice for one lifetime. He was then facing three or four years of insult and contumely greater than any that had been heaped upon his predecessors. He had proposed greater reforms, and by so much he was threatened to endure worse outrages. His term of office was just six months, but he accomplished what forty years of his predecessors had failed to do—the complete and ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... philosophers, when they would give drunkenness a vile name, call it doting by wine. Now doting is to use vain and trifling discourse; and when such babbling is accompanied by wine, it usually ends in most disagreeable and rude contumely and reproach. It is a good custom therefore of our women, who in their feasts called Agrionia seek after Bacchus as if he were run away, but in a little time give over the search, and cry that he is fled to the Muses and ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... sensitive to a degree; denunciation or malice, begotten of envy that Johnson would have passed unheeded, wounded him to the quick. "The insults to which he had to submit," Thackeray wrote with a quick and warm sympathy, "are shocking to read of—slander, contumely, vulgar satire, brutal malignity perverting his commonest motives and actions: he had his share of these, and one's anger is roused at reading of them, as it is at seeing a woman insulted or a child assaulted, at the notion ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... and are seen no more; all is mystery, mystery, mystery; we know not whence we came, nor why; we know not whither we go, nor why we go. We only know we were not made in vain, we only know we were made for a wise purpose, and that all is well! We shall not be cast aside in contumely and unblest after all we have suffered. Let us be patient, let us not repine, let us trust. The humblest of us is cared for—oh, believe it!—and this fleeting ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... They despised him; they loathed him; they said and believed that he was false, selfish, designing, a traitor, an apostate, that he had run away from a failing cause, that he had sold himself. The language of contumely was exhausted in vain efforts to describe his baseness. Not even yet has the echo of the hard names which he was called quite died away in the land; and there are still families in New England with whom his dishonest tergiversation remains a ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... my mind; and, if to have it, if to have betrayed it, before now, involuntarily by my words or my deeds, if on a fitting occasion, as now, to have avowed it, if all this be a proof of the justice of the charge brought against me by my accuser of having "turned round upon my Mother-Church with contumely and slander," in this sense, but in no other sense, do I plead guilty to it without a ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... were brightly conspicuous, and in them, if wisely appealed to, lies the strongest hope of amity between the two races whose destiny seems bound up together in the Western world. Even a dumb brute can be won by kindness. Surely it were worth while to try some other weapon than scorn and contumely and hard words upon people of our common race,—the human race, which is bigger and broader than Celt or Saxon, barbarian or Greek, Jew or Gentile, black or white; for we are all children of a common Father, forget it as we may, and each ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Cato with Phocion, Demosthenes with Cicero, Brutus with Dion—the Dion whose history inspired the poem of Wordsworth. Greek republicanism, too, had its fatal hour; but we do not pour scorn and contumely on those who strove to prolong the life of Athens beyond the term assigned by fate. The case of Athens, a single independent state, was no doubt different from that of Rome with so many subject nations under her sway. Still in each case there was the commonwealth, standing ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... he began, raising his voice above the tempest, which poured gust after gust against the house. "I swear to win the affections of Eva Poindexter, and then, when her heart is all mine, to cast her back in anguish and contumely on the breast of ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... is no malice to resist a more conciliatory mode of settlement, and where it is difficult to imagine any deliberate insult except such as is palliated by intoxication—conceding this, I have yet supposed it possible that cases may arise, with circumstances of contumely and outrage, growing out of deep inexorable malice, which cannot be redressed, as things now are, without an appeal to the voye de fait. 'But this is so barbarous an expedient in days of high civilisation.' ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... mingle, and which will regard even me as—no matter what!—it shall not scorn me as your bride. I will not bring shame and reproach upon you. Oh! if for me, dear Luke, the proud ones of the earth were to treat you with contumely, this heart would break with agony. For myself, I have pride sufficient—perchance too much. Perchance 'tis pride that actuates me now. I know not. But for you I am all weakness. As you were heretofore, I would have been to you the tenderest and truest ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... prcieuses had been several times attacked before, it remained for Molire to give them their death blow, and after the performance of his comedy the name became a term of ridicule and contumely. What enhanced the bitterness of the attack was the difference between Molire's natural style and the affected tone of the would-be elegants he brought ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... time the name given to the leaders fell also to those who followed—an honourable name surely, but in those days it was spoken contemptuously enough sometimes, by both the wise and the foolish, and Mr Hume, during the first years of his ministry in Nethermuir, had his share of contumely to meet or to ignore ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... directed continued. When Christ came it was still in its vitality. Nay, as we saw, it is alive, or in a sort of mock life, among us at this very day. But even those who retained their imperfect belief had received into their canon a book which treated it with contumely and scorn, so irresistible was the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... the Irish Catholics perceived, from the manner in which their petition for the elective franchise was treated, that in the Irish House of Commons they were not to look for friends, they resorted to the Throne. The supplications which had met only with contumely when addressed to the Irish Commons, was received with favour by a British King, acting with the advice of a British Cabinet. In the next session, the speech from the throne recommended to the Irish Parliament to take into their consideration ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one of which understanding is the most precious, and denial the most deadly. And I assert it the more, because it has of late been repeatedly, expressly, and with contumely, denied, and that by high authority; and I hold it one of the most sorrowful facts connected with the decline of the arts among us, that English gentlemen, of high standing as scholars and artists, should have been blinded into the acceptance, and betrayed into the assertion of a fallacy which ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... have spoken in that fashion were he not quite woebegone and down-hearted; and not without reason, for the Earl had dismissed him with contumely not once but a dozen times. Medenham saw that his retainer would be more muddled than ever if he realized that Mrs. Devar had intercepted the telephone message, so he slurred over that element of the affair, and Dale quickly enlightened him as to the ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... you wish, then, dearest, bravest, and best. Your poor Matilda has yielded to you her heart long ago; she has no longer need to keep back her name. Name the hour, and I will delay no more; but seek for refuge in your arms from the contumely and insult which meet ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... foul that it is better they should be done than spoken. But they that take offence where no name, character, or signature doth blazon them seem to me like affected as women, who if they hear anything ill spoken of the ill of their sex, are presently moved, as if the contumely respected their particular; and on the contrary, when they hear good of good women, conclude that it belongs to them all. If I see anything that toucheth me, shall I come forth a betrayer of myself presently? No, if I be wise, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... parties—one wishing his death, the other inclined to show him mercy, and after infinite wrangling between the factions, he was suddenly killed by a blow from a tomahawk as he was entering a long-house, to attend a feast to which he had been invited. His body was treated with contumely, and his head affixed to a post of the palisades of the village. He was the first martyr who suffered death at the hands ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... to come by as bear's venison, father," answered Rose, bitterly, still on fire with the idea that the monk treated her nation with suspicion and contumely. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... For in that sleepe of death, what dreames may come, When we haue shuffel'd off this mortall coile, Must giue vs pawse. There's the respect That makes Calamity of so long life: For who would beare the Whips and Scornes of time, The Oppressors wrong, the poore mans Contumely, The pangs of dispriz'd Loue, the Lawes delay, The insolence of Office, and the Spurnes That patient merit of the vnworthy takes, When he himselfe might his Quietus make With a bare Bodkin? Who would these Fardles beare To grunt and sweat vnder a weary life, But that ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... can you thus shame me? You must know with what unmerited scorn and contumely Reuben was treated by poor mother when it was we who were rich and they who were (in her belief, at least) poor. She would scarce let him cross the threshold of our house. I have tingled with shame at the way in which she spoke of and to him. Frederick openly insulted him at ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,[10] Must give us pause:[11] There's the respect[12] That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,[13] The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,[14] The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make[15] With a bare bodkin?[16] Who would fardels bear,[17] To groan and sweat under a ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... occurred what is here termed "Judas Iscariot Day," when the concentrated vengeance of the Christian world is supposed to be visited upon the vile betrayer of his Master. The whole object of the occasion is to heap contumely, derision, and dishonor upon the name of Judas. Extensive preparations are made a week or more before the special day. The town presented an appearance similar to the Fourth of July in the United States. The streets were full of ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... peace rejected by England with contumely and scorn, and declined by Austria, now prepared, with his wonted energy, to repel the assaults of the allies. As he sat in his cabinet at the Tuileries, the thunders of their unrelenting onset came rolling in upon his ear from all the frontiers of France. The hostile fleets ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... with radium for two days. These I shipped to the Catskills billed as hydrogen gas. Then, accompanied by two trustworthy assistants, I went to the sanatorium and preferred my demand for payment in person. I was ejected with contumely. Before my hasty exit, however, I had the satisfaction of noticing that the building was filled with patients. Languid ladies were seated in wicker chairs upon the piazzas, and frail anemic girls filled the corridors. It was a hospital of nervous wrecks ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... audiences which did not always greet their utterances approvingly. They stood for a while near a vigorous iconoclast, who from the top of a kitchen chair laid down the Law of the Universe as revealed by one Clifford, overwhelming with contumely a Solitary opponent in the crowd who was foolish enough to attempt to raise an argument on the subject of "atoms." Near at hand, a wild-eyed religionary was trying to persuade a limited and drifting audience that a special dispensation ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... should be honored wives and happy mothers are thrown upon their own resources,—forced to choose between virtue and rags and silks and shame. The latter soon learn that honest poverty brings almost as complete social ostracism, almost as much contumely, as dishonest finery, and, despairing of ever becoming true men's wives, too many of them become false ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... more cautious about embracing the conventional hocus-pocus of the situation. They never acknowledge that they have fallen in love, as the phrase is, until the man has formally avowed the delusion, and so cut off his retreat; to do otherwise would be to bring down upon their heads the mocking and contumely of all their sisters. With them, falling in love thus appears in the light of an afterthought, or, perhaps more accurately, in the light of a contagion. The theory, it would seem, is that the love ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... she had seen him at the Richmond fete: he said that he had fallen into disgrace, that, having failed in his service to the Republic, he had been relegated to a subordinate position, pushed aside with contumely to make room for better, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Perfect truth in the midst of error; perfect love in the midst of ingratitude and coldness; perfect rectitude in the midst of perjury, violence, fraud; perfect constancy in the midst of contumely and desertion; perfect innocence, confronting every debased form of depravity and guilt; perfect patience, encountering every species of gross provocation—"oppressed and afflicted, He opened not His mouth!" "For my love" (in ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... like water in this great project. He knew full well that there was no gold to reward him; that the profit, if any, must be slow, and must accrue mainly to the nation, and not to an individual; and yet he laboured on for thirty years in the face of defeat, disaster, contumely, and disgrace, in full faith and confidence that the great continent was by God's providence ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... have respected the trust imposed on us of maintaining America's destiny. I am sorry for your empty sleeve. But let me assure you that we, also, have known suffering. Because we believe in America—first, last, and always in America—we have stayed here, enduring sneers and contumely, in order that when America speaks it will be like the sound of a rushing cataract—one voice, one heart, but the voice and heart of Humanity. In no other way can America go to war. . . . And until that moment arrives ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States into contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute, or shall wilfully utter, print, write or publish any language intended to incite, provoke or encourage resistance to the United States or to promote the cause of its enemies, or shall wilfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall wilfully, by utterance, writing, printing, ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... I began to reflect, my path was crossed—my hopes were blighted—by my uncle. I heard, too, that his tongue had been free with my name; that the blistering censure of his austere virtue had fallen upon my actions. I writhed under the contumely. My wounded spirit was insatiate for vengeance. I meditated, deeply, how I could inflict it, so as to strike the blow where he was most vulnerable. I did not brood long over my dark purpose. The love I still bore his daughter, was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... darlings' when I spoke of them." Here the poor mother sobbed, almost overcome by the contumely of the expression used towards her ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... had been in absolute solitude, saving that her countenance could hardly have kept up that expression of injured dignity had such been the case. Robert plainly saw, to his great concern, that his secret had been discovered in his absence, and that Shargar had been expelled with contumely. But, with an instinct of facing the worst at once which accompanied him through life, he went straight to his ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... from the door-step a sadder and a wiser boy, and though my guide-book had been stripped of its reputation for infallibility, I did not treat with contumely or disdain, those sacred pages which had once been ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... who had been calumniated by furious Ultras, by the base ministerial prints of England, and the venal satellites of Toryism, who had been represented as brigands or as infuriated Jacobins with red caps and poignards, these men, in spite, of the contumely and insult they met with from servile prefects, and from those who never dared to face them in the field, are a model of good conduct and they preserve the utmost subordination, tho' disbanded: they respect scrupulously the property of the inhabitants and pay for everything. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... to act fairly or kindly to their countrymen of a different religion, or from their indifference to the wants of our co-religionists, but because (in the fear of thrusting themselves before the public, where insult and contumely have too frequently awaited them) the Jews have not collectively manifested any desire for intellectual culture, nor attempted to disabuse the minds of their neighbours from the prejudices of what, as towards the Jews, ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... reputation, not confined to Ireland, as an able, fearless, and vigorous land agent, the best type of a much abused class of men who have endured contumely and faced dangers, by day and night, in order to protect the rights of property ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... learned to expose yourself to calumny, and put up with the rudeness of the rabble." He replied: "O my friend, withdraw the hand of reproach from the skirt of my fatality, for I have frequently reflected on this advice which you offer me, and find it easier to suffer contumely on his account than to forego his company; and philosophers have said: 'It is less arduous to persist in the labor of courting than to restrain the eye from contemplating a beloved object':—Whoever devotes ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... would cause not a little indignation on the part of her lord and master, was received by him, strangely enough, with considerable good-humour: he swore that the wench had served him a good trick, and was rather amused at the anger, the outbreak of fierce rage and contumely, and the wretched wretched tears of heartsick desperation, which followed her announcement of this step to him. For Mr. Brock, she repelled his offer with scorn and loathing, and treated the notion of a union with Mr. Bullock with yet fiercer contempt. Marry him indeed! ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... different reasons, yet in nearly all of them was the idea of their being despised and neglected to be found. So we ought to help those who try to get rid of anger, by removing as far as possible from them any action savouring of contempt or contumely, and by looking upon their anger as folly or necessity, or emotion, or ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... from the bottom of my heart. The contumely with which he was treated by all went to my heart even after I knew that he was misbehaving. I knew that he was misbehaving;—but how? It could only be by hiding the will, or by being conscious ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... But then he thought, "No, I will not. I will stop at the first farm-house or inn that I may find, where I can get shelter for myself and food for my horses during the night, and thence I will write him the intelligence, take it how he will. I will not expose myself to fresh contumely ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... solicitations to her son, that he would dismiss his minister. Louis, it appears, made a promise to that effect; a reluctant promise, given to get rid of her importunity. Mary calculated too securely upon his keeping it; she broke forth in bitter contumely against Richelieu; deprived him of his superintendence over her household, and treated Madame de Combalet, the cardinal's niece, who had sunk on her knees to entreat her to moderate her anger almost with insult. The king was present, and seemed to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... the supply of moist sugar at tea-time. This grocer being a bachelor and not a man who looked upon the surface for beauty, had once made honourable offers for the hand of Berry, which Mrs Pipchin had, with contumely and scorn, rejected. Everybody said how laudable this was in Mrs Pipchin, relict of a man who had died of the Peruvian mines; and what a staunch, high, independent spirit the old lady had. But nobody said anything about poor Berry, who cried for six weeks (being soundly rated by ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... with him in their cups. Every one was delighted that his turn had now come, and when at last Mike Kis let go his collar and left him lying at full length on the floor, they carried the avenger of their long years of contumely round the room, and drank his health in bumpers till ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... more than confirmed the accounts in public prints of the stringency of the martial law. The Federal officers were, perhaps, not sorry to have such a chance of repaying, with aggravated oppression, the tacit contumely which must have galled them for a year and more. The Maryland Club, whose members are Southerners to a man (for the Unionist element was eliminated long ago), is now the headquarters of a New England ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... me to meet her demands, if I wish the loving creature to take me into her good graces again. Since my doings offended Amphitryon, and this love affair of mine lately occasioned his guiltless self some consternation, it is turn about now, and my guiltless self has to suffer for the scorn and contumely he heaped on her. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... awakened by his instructor to sober reflection and to masculine exertion. Every Telemachus should have his Mentor.—But through the whole it is necessary that the spirit of the pupil should not be broken, and that he should not be treated with contumely. Stripes should in all instances be regarded as the last resort, and as a sort of problem set up for the wisdom of the wise to solve, whether the urgent case can arise in which it shall be requisite to ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... peculiarly her own; for she saw that there was a quivering in the lip, a sudden paleness in the cheek of her son, as he gazed up in her lace, when he thought they stood alone, which denoted internal emotion yet stronger than that which had inspired his previous words. "Their scorn, their contumely, I heed as little as the mountain rock the hailstones which fall upon its sides, in vain seeking to penetrate or wound. Nay, I could smile at them in very truth, were it not that compelled as I am to act alone, to throw aside as worthless and rejected those natural ties I had so joyed ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... that entertains thee Grows lofty in spirit gentleness, E'en tho' thou deignst to make it but Thy workshop. So Janishkisgan Knew thee. Fearing only to prove Unworthy of her august guest, She walked in the midst of scorn, Contempt, contumely, sneers and stern Displeasure, with that forbearance And kindly dignity, which re-won Her friends, despite themselves; so that At last they gave her pitying peace, And listened with their heart-strings tuned ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... to the quaint character whom I borrowed his books from, and who might almost have come out of his books. He lived in Dickens in a measure that I have never known another to do, and my contumely must have brought him a pang that was truly a personal grief. He forgave it, no doubt because I bowed in the Dickens worship without question on all other points. He was then a man well on towards fifty, and he had come to America early in life, and had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... could never quite escape from the shadow of his father's disgrace, or put out of his mind the stain with which his father had dimmed the honour of his family. And now a new misfortune hung over him. He had just been driven with contumely from a house where hitherto he was the most welcome of guests; he had parted, moreover, from the woman whom he loved dearly, and under circumstances which made it doubtful if their separation ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... broke upon me. So my friend's merits were to be recognized at last,—were to win him something more than contumely and insult,—and as he would have made denial, ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... with the master-cook, Ruus showed so much disobedience, and raised the anger of his superior to such a pitch, that he received chastisement severely for his contumely. At this Ruus felt wroth; and, having previously placed a cauldron of water on the fire, and perceiving the water boiled, he seized, in the apparent frenzy of the moment, the master-cook by his ankle ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... were at least less revolting than the disgustful meanness of to-day; besides, nothing is really known about the reasons for the suppression of the Templars. Men who forswear women are open to all contumely. Oh! the world is wondrous, just wondrous well satisfied with its ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... by-product of this town of marionettes—a broad, swaggering, grim, threateningly sedate fellow, with a jowl as large as a harvested wheat field, the complexion of a baptized infant and the knuckles of a prize-fighter. This type leaned against cigar signs and viewed the world with frapped contumely. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... scriptures, a certain Baptist preacher laid hold of the Irishman's mercurial sense. Daddy was awakened and converted, burnt his Byron and his Tom Paine in his three-pair back with every circumstance of insult and contumely, and looked about for an employer worthy of one of the elect. Purcell at the time had a shop in one of the main streets connecting Manchester and Salford; he was already an elder at the chapel Daddy frequented; the two made acquaintance and Lomax became Purcell's assistant. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... subdued; and the commissioners[418] were now with him who had been sent to settle the affairs of Pontus, on the supposition that the country was completely in the power of the Romans. Indeed, the commissioners were now witnesses that Lucullus was not his own master, but was treated with contumely and insult by the soldiers, who carried their audacity towards their commander so far, that, at the close of the summer, they put on their armour, and drawing their swords, challenged to battle the enemy who were no longer there, but ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... sir. I say that, through your delay, I am kept there on that wretched wharf; and when I do push off, I have—I, Her Majesty's representative, in the sight of these Chinese scoundrels—I have, I say, to suffer from the insult and contumely of being pelted, stoned, of having filth thrown at me. Look at my nearly new uniform coat, sir. Do you see this spot on the sleeve? A mark that will never come out. That was a blow, sir, made by a disgusting rotten fish's head, sir. Loathsome—loathsome! While the ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... convinced. He might lose it by undergoing an adverse petition, and paying ever so much more money,—or he might lose it in the manner that Mr. Trigger had so kindly suggested. In either way there would be disgrace, and contumely, and hours of the agony of self-reproach ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... like badinage do they hang about in the middle of that road, showering derision and contumely upon each other for full ten minutes, when, with one culminating burst of mutual abuse, they go off together fighting and the street is left ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... ship-carpenter who turned king's evidence against M'Lane, the reward was far different. Blood-money failed to solace him for the contumely heaped upon him; and, according to the historian Garneau, he was so overcome by public contempt that after some years he was reduced to begging his bread in the streets ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... although the Americans treat the negro with contumely, they have a respect for the red Indian: a well-educated half-bred Indian is not debarred from entering into society; indeed, they are generally received with great attention. The daughter of a celebrated Indian chief brings heraldry into the family, for the Indians ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... went to Doctor Prescott's. He wondered why he had been summoned there, and braced himself for almost anything in the way of contumely, but with no dread of it. The prospect of legitimate combat, where he could hit back, acted like a stimulant after his experience with ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... tumult, and proclaimed a crusade against Cesarotti as a subverter of ancient order and a mover of anarchy in the peaceful republic—it was a tyranny, and they called it a republic—of letters. Cesarotti was called corrupter, sacrilegious, profane, and assailed with titles of obscene contumely; but the poems of Ossian were read by all, and the name of the translator, till then little known, became famous in and out of Italy." In fine, Cesarotti founded a school; but, blinded by his marvelous success, he attempted ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... as these, when a sensitive nature writhes under the conception that its most cherished emotions have been treated with contumely, that the sphere-descended Maid, Music, friend of Pleasure at other times, becomes a positive enemy—racking, bewildering, unrelenting. The congregation sang the first Psalm and ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... then went immediately to the king, and narrated to him the whole affair. He, aware of the many efforts which had been made to traduce the character of Maria Antoinette, and to expose her to public contumely, was at once convinced that it was a treacherous plot of the cardinal in revenge for his ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... moments he was liable to confess that, while matrimony no doubt offered a far wider field for both general excitement and variety, as far as he himself was concerned, he felt that his bachelor condition had points of excellence too obvious to be treated with contumely. Perhaps the fact that Sarah Hunter, four years his senior, had kept so well oiled the cogs of the domestic machinery of the white place on the hill that their churnings had never been evidenced may have been in part an answer ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... connection with Goethe and Schiller, loyally accepted the idea of a free State, and brought representative institutions into actual working. In Hesse, the Elector summoned the Estates, only to dismiss them with contumely when they resisted his extortions. In most of the minor States contests or negotiations took place between the Sovereigns and the ancient Orders, which led to little or no result. The Federal Diet, which ought to have applied itself to the determination of certain principles ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... hanging by a single hinge, the windows dashed in and demolished, and the court strewed with articles of furniture broken into fragments. The accessaries of ancient distinction, to which the Baron, in the pride of his heart, had attached so much importance and veneration, were treated with peculiar contumely. The fountain was demolished, and the spring which had supplied it now flooded the court-yard. The stone basin seemed to be destined for a drinking-trough for cattle, from the manner in which it was arranged upon the ground. The whole ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... ferocity,—gave Carlyle high vantage-ground in his writings. He could meet the world with its own weapons, and was cunning enough at that fence, as the world was very shortly sensible. He was saved, therefore, from the contumely which vulgar minds are always ready to bestow upon saints and mystics who sit aloof from them, high enthroned amidst the truths and solemnities of God. The secluded and ascetic life of most scholars, highly favorable as it undoubtedly is to contemplation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... presence; and even that wonderful and mysterious person, the hired nurse, unfeelingly ordered him out of the house, and bade him "begone about his business." The miserable and conscience-stricken wretch wandered disconsolately from room to room, only to meet with fresh humiliation and contumely, and at last, in sheer despair, betook himself off to a lonely and gloomsome spot in the dark wood, and there, in penitent humility, bewailed his misfortune in being that miserably ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... this world for his soul's sake. Had he not wished to marry Linda himself, it might be very well that Linda should marry a young man. But now that Linda so openly scorned him, had treated him with such plain-spoken contumely, he thought it would be well that Linda should be crushed. Yes; and he thought also that he might probably find a ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... about him fiercely, and could he have found a single face that expressed contumely, he would have been prompt to quarrel with its owner; but meeting everywhere with looks of sobriety, and occasionally of commiseration, he very deliberately seated himself by the side of the hunter, and, placing his legs in the two vacant holes ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the leading politicians at that juncture must have given Crispi a savage satisfaction for the contumely he had had to suffer in 1891, and there is no kind of question in my mind that, if he had then insisted as a sine qua non on a dictatorship, he would have had it with the almost universal approbation of Italians out of office and the acquiesence of those who hoped to be in it. Cavalotti, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... careless warders glided the puny form of a little old Turk, poorly dressed like a marabout or santon of the desert—a sort of enthusiasts, who sometimes ventured into the camp of the Crusaders, though treated always with contumely, and often with violence. Indeed, the luxury and profligate indulgence of the Christian leaders had occasioned a motley concourse in their tents of musicians, courtesans, Jewish merchants, Copts, Turks, and all the varied refuse of the Eastern nations; so that the caftan and turban, though to ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... defiance, attendance (as on the sick and the weak), obedience (to the commands of preceptors and parents), service or ministrations, harbouring of thirst or desire, cleverness or dexterity of conduct, policy heedlessness, contumely, possessions, and diverse decorations that prevail in the world among men, women, animals, inanimate things, houses, grief, incredulousness, vows and regulations, actions with expectation (of good result), diverse acts of public charity, the rites in respect of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the rencounter with Meehaul Neil. Both subjects were therefore discussed with probably an equal interest; but it is quite certain that the rumor of Lamh Laudher's cowardice would alone have occasioned him, under the peculiar circumstances which drew it forth, to be avoided and branded with contumely. There was, in fact, then in existence among the rival factions in Ireland much of the military sense of honor which characterizes the British army at this day; nor is this spirit even yet wholly exploded, from our humble countrymen. ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... allegiance of a few followers, and their names are forgotten in a few years, but sometimes the verdict of contemporary hatred is reversed by posterity, which endeavours to compensate by legendary honours for the contempt and contumely ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... was a negro. Therefore, Terry's accusation was the acme of insult and contumely, which a Southerner's imagination could devise. Broderick read it in a morning paper as he breakfasted with friends in the International Hotel and, wounded by the thrust from one he deemed a ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Lord Shaftesbury's strength." In twenty-four months we find an aristocracy estranged, without a people being conciliated; while on two several occasions, first, the prejudices, and then the pretensions of the middle class, were alike treated with contumely. The public was astonished at hearing of statesmen of long parliamentary fame, men round whom the intelligence of the nation had gathered for years with confidence, or at least with interest, being expelled from the cabinet in a manner not unworthy of Colonel Joyce, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... Achilles, "noble son of Telamon, you have spoken much to my liking, but my blood boils when I think it all over, and remember how the son of Atreus treated me with contumely as though I were some vile tramp, and that too in the presence of the Argives. Go, then, and deliver your message; say that I will have no concern with fighting till Hector, son of noble Priam, reaches the tents of ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... had falsely taken upon him the name of a philosopher, not for the use of virtue but for vainglory, and having added that now he would know whether he were a philosopher or no by his gentle and patient bearing of injuries, the other took all patiently for a while, and having borne his contumely, as it were, triumphing, said: 'Dost thou now at length think me a philosopher?' To which he bitingly replied: 'I would have thought thee one if thou hadst holden thy peace.' But what have excellent men (for of these I speak) who seek for glory by virtue, what have we, I say, ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... glance from Isabelle put everything else out of his head, and he entered the dirty little inn at her side with an air of joyful alacrity. In the happy kingdom of France the fortunate man who escorted a pretty woman, no matter where, needed not to fear ridicule or contumely, and was sure ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... to Amos Adams, and because he was born out of his time, defeat was his common portion, and no contumely ever was his in a time when men scorned the evidence of things not seen, no failure, no apparent weakness in her husband's nature, ever put a tremor in her faith in him. For she knew his heart. She could ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... a general sense, is meant anything which is done without any right. Besides this, it has three special significations; for sometimes it is used to express outrage, the proper word for which—contumely—is derived from the verb 'to contemn,' and so is equivalent to the Greek 'ubris': sometimes it means culpable negligence, as where damage is said to be done (as in the lex Aquilia) 'with injury,' ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... shame refused to return to our fort, but anchored not far from it; there the natives cut his moorings one night, and, drawing the ship to land, entered it and pillaged whatever they wished, and treated the mandarin with contumely. In the morning, when the commandant got wind of the affair, he sent a troop of soldiers. Attacking the natives with orders not to kill them (for the soldiers shot their bullets into the sky), they captured some chiefs. Thereupon, the chiefs restored to the Chinese mandarin what they had pillaged ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... discovery and wrath were all as one save that only the discovery and wrath meant her. She saw how for two days and nights he had been putting this and that and this and that and this and that together until he had guessed her out. Sternly in his eyes she perceived contumely withholding itself, yet even while she felt the done-for cry heave through her bosom, and the floor fail like a sinking deck, she clung to her stage part, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... all the earthly enjoyment that remains to a heart that has once been happy. The late ungrateful, rebellious behaviour of his flock tended still more to circumscribe his pleasures; yet though the painful feelings of rejected kindness and undeserved contumely made his village walks and sacerdotal functions a penance instead of a gratification, he considered the probability of disappointment as no apology for relaxing his endeavours to do good. The morning and evening sacrifices were offered in the temple; the ignorant were ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... father's capital and the guards laid hands on him and searched him but found naught upon him save two gowns, one new and the other old.[FN83] So they stripped the new one from him and left him the old, after they had entreated him with contumely and contempt; whereat he complained and said, "Woe to you, O ye oppressors! I am a poor man and a pilgrim,[FN84] and what shall this gown by any means profit you? Except ye restore it to me, I will go to the King and make complaint to him of you." They replied, "We act thus by the King's command: ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... and sad, of my neighbours, at the insult and the contumely which they were obligated to endure from the irresponsible licentiousness of military domination,—but I said nothing; I was driven, with my pious wife and our simple babies, from my own hearth by the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... to leave the city forever. Then the howl of contumely could not pursue him; it would grow faint with the distance. He was no longer Military Governor, and never would he reassume that thankless burden. He would retire to private life far removed from the savage envy of these aspiring charlatans. Unhappy memories ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... pleased. Neither police nor passport officers questioned us. We might have been Hoche and Massena for aught they either knew or cared. Not a "mouchard" tracked us; none even looked after us as we went. To me this was all very agreeable and reassuring; to my companion it was contumely and insult. All the ingenious fiction he had devised of our birth, parentage, and pursuits, was a fine romance inedited, and he was left to sneer at the self-sufficiency that would not take alarm at the advent of two ragged youths ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... which brought no dishonour upon the British nation, by a senate which was courted and dreaded by the greatest part of the universe, and was drawn up by a ministry that have given their posterity no reason to treat them with derision and contumely. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... circumstances, the traveller must surely regard as simply the end of his weariness! But there is nothing to which humanity cannot attune itself. Men can live upon poison, can learn to endure absolute solitude, can bear contumely, scorn, and shame, and never show it. Carry Brattle had already become accustomed to misery, and as she walked she thought more of the wretchedness of the present hour, of her weary feet, of her hunger, and of the nature of the rest which she might purchase for herself at some ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... had given the queen an apple. As beliefs of this type are an integral part of the character of the lower orders, I am certain that the passage in Petronius is not devoid of sarcasm; and if such is the case, "contus" cannot be rendered "pole." The etymology of the word contumely is doubtful but I am of the opinion that the derivation suggested here is not unsound. A recondite rendering of "contus" would surely give a sharper point to the joke and furnish the riddle with the sting of ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... that his actual life was one of disappointment and failure. Even his discovery of America was a disappointment; he was looking for India, and utterly failed of this. He made maps and sold them to support his old father. Poverty, contumely, indignities of all sorts, met him wherever he turned. His expectations were considered extravagant, his schemes futile; the theologians exposed him with texts out of the Bible; he wasted seven ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... more popular man in the House of Commons than he who seven years ago" (it was only five) "was hooted and howled at, and was for many succeeding months the mark of contumely and scorn in all ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... suffered—was tolerated—in rising to reply; in retorting with insolence; in lecturing and reprimanding the Senate through their representative officer; in repelling just scorn by false scorn; in riveting his past offences; in adding contumely to wrong. Never more must this be repeated. Neither must the Whig policy be repeated of bringing Mr O'Connell before a tribunal of justice that had, by a secret intrigue, agreed to lay aside its terrors.[31] ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... he knew All our old ballads, all our father's tales, All the adventurous deeds of early times, The punishment of blood or sacrilege, And the reward of virtue, when it seem'd Deserted by the world, and left alone, A prey to scorn, oppression, contumely And all the ills which make the good despair. When-e'er we circled round him, one young girl Was always present, of a nicer ear, And more refin'd perception than the rest. Now she was lost in thought, while on her cheek ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... she returned to the village. Neither the Captain's contumely nor the garrison's insults had humiliated or discouraged her. Imagining that her Voices had foretold them,[346] she held them to be proofs of the truth of her mission. Like those who walk in their sleep she was calm in the face of obstacles and yet quietly persistent. In the house, in the garden, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... straightforward course. Walsingham wrote to Leicester, with his usual bitterness, of the "peril to safety and honour" from her behaviour. If she had indeed contemplated the surrender of the cities to Parma, that plan was frustrated. Still she stormed at Burghley and Walsingham, flatly and with contumely refused to ratify Leicester's arrangement, and continued to keep back the pay of the troops. Parma, though he too was starved in men and money by Philip, continued inch by inch to absorb the revolted territory. All that Leicester succeeded in accomplishing ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... arrests attention, for upon it is the touching epitaph dedicated by his admirer Tickell to the memory of Joseph Addison. We have seen Addison's statue {102} in Poets' Corner, where it was ultimately placed, after a proposal to put it up beside St. Edward's shrine had met with the contumely it deserved. Here the great master of English prose "rests in peace," with his friend James Craggs, whose memorial we have already pointed out at the entrance to the nave. Close to the grave is the mural monument of his "loved Montagu," the first Earl of Halifax, ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... Ivanovitch. Even the comfort of the bottle might conceivably fail him in this supreme crisis. At such an age nothing but a halter could cure the pangs of an unquenchable passion. And, besides, there was the wild exasperation aroused by the unjust aspersions and the contumely of the house, with the maddening impossibility to account for that mysterious thrashing, added to these simple and bitter sorrows. "Devil, eh?" Razumov exclaimed, with mental excitement, as if he had made an interesting ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... he said, his voice growing stronger in his eagerness, "this town is like unto a child of mine own, so dear is it to me. I have spent sleepless nights and weary days, I have suffered cold and hunger and the contumely of jealous men in its behalf; nay perchance, even death itself. And thou, too, hast shown it great favors till in truth it hath become partly thine own and dear to thee. Now that I must depart, I leave Jamestown to thy care. Wilt ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... perchance to dream:—ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... but he would hoot at a suspicion that he might admire anything so much as to make a good-looking doll in its praise. There is absolutely no image-making art in the practice of our people, except only this art of rags and contumely. Or, again, if the revenge taken upon a guy were that of anger for a certain cause, the destruction would not be the work of so thin an annual malice and of so ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... of any contumely. What reasons have I to be offended because he has liked a woman whom he knew before he ever saw me? It has been unfortunate, wretched, miserable; but I do not know that I have any right whatever to be angry with Mr Paul Montague.' Having so spoken she walked out of the room without waiting ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... refused the extension of powers, and his action that day had been to appeal to the Convention against them. The Club, divided at first, went over to him, gave him an ovation, and expelled Collot and Billaud-Varennes with violence and contumely. Robespierre, encouraged by his success, exhorted the Jacobins to purify the Convention by expelling bad men, as they had expelled the Girondins. It was his first appeal to the popular forces. Coffinhal, who was a man of energy, implored him to strike at once. He went home to bed, after ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... first stage to end? At the White House that night Daphne had treated him with contumely, and before spectators. He must either go or bring ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in true womanly revolt. "I will die before that day ever comes to separate me from the man I love and the child who calls me mother. You may force me from this house, you may plunge me into poverty, into contumely, but you shall never make me look upon myself as other than the wife of this good man, whom I have ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... whole populace, armed and unarmed, assembled at the senate-house in the Achradina: where from the altar of Concord, which stood there, one of the nobles, named Polyaenus, delivered a liberal and temperate address. He said, that "men who had experienced servitude and contumely, were enraged against an evil which was well known, but that the Syracusans had rather heard from their fathers than seen with their own eyes the disasters which civil discord introduces." He said, "he commended them for the alacrity with which they ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... Anu, El, Hea, the Great Goddess, the great gods, inflict upon him the utmost contumely, extirpate ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... Word of God, by which the heavens were, of old, and by which they are now kept in store, {6} cannot be made a present of to anybody in morocco binding; nor sown on any wayside by help either of steam plough or steam press; but is nevertheless being offered to us daily, and by us with contumely refused; and sown in us daily, and by us, as ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... Emperor Charles V. with having lent himself, as a docile instrument, to the intolerant devices of the clergy. Charles was never the sincere friend of the court of Rome. On the contrary, no Christian monarch ever treated that court with greater contumely, or in a manner more hostile and effectively prejudicial to its prosperity and influence. The war which he made against the Pope, and which terminated by the invasion of Rome itself, involved that court in all the ills of a destructive ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... Prester John ordered him to be taken forth straightway, and to be put to look after cattle, but to be well looked after himself also. So they took him and set him to keep cattle. This did Prester John of the grudge he bore the King, to heap contumely on him, and to show what a nothing he was, compared ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... considered, "not quite good form, you know." My womanly woman allowed this friend to take upon herself the burden of a sin which she herself had committed, allowed her to bear the brunt of scorn and contumely of her world, allowed her to die without righting the great wrong. A lonely grave and a plain marble slab mark the spot where she who was "not quite good form," lies: while she, to whom she had given more than life, gathers the rose leaves with dainty grace, ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt
... exercising the mind, but in getting ahead of one's fellows. Under these two wholly masculine influences we have made the educational process a joy to the few who successfully attain, and a weary effort, with failure and contumely attached, to all the others. This may be a good method in sex-competition, but is wholly out of place and mischievous in education. Its prevalence shows the injurious masculization of this noble ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Lady Lanswell, and that God will punish you for the wicked deed you have done. I say more, whether Heaven punishes you or not, I will. You have trampled me under your feet; you have insulted, outraged, tortured me. Listen to the word—you have tortured me; you have received me with scorn and contumely; you have laughed at my tears; enjoyed my prayers and humiliation. I swear that I will be revenged, even should I lose all on earth to win that revenge. I swear that you shall come and plead to me on your knees, and I will laugh at you. You shall plead to me with tears, ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... that of BYLES of Bradford. Having long remained silent under undeserved contumely, he suddenly rose at half-past ten and irrelevantly remarked, "I cannot understand how the myth has grown up in this House that I am a blood-thirsty ruffian. Why, Mr. SPEAKER, I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... was not the case with her brother and sister. Theo's keen temper had taken up and resented the whole matter almost with violence. He had not only treated Cavendish, and the Cavendishes generally, who were more important than the individual Dick, with harsh contumely and enmity, refusing to hear any excuse, and taking the occurrence as an insult to himself: but he had quarrelled with his mother, who was disposed to forgive, and with still more vehemence with Chatty, who made no pretence of any wrath, but believed Dick's story fully, and ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... this great and fatal truth had not yet been impressed upon the French nation, for the popular voice was stifled beneath the ukase of despotism; and even the tiers-etat—important as the loyalty of that portion of a kingdom must ever be to its rulers—were treated with disdain and contumely; but beneath all the workings of his government (or rather the government of his minister, for the son of Marie de Medicis was a monarch only in name), may be traced the undercurrent of popular indignation and discontent, which, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... bargain; but Lord John will continue, I believe, to forbid the banns. These things would only be wedges, no sooner conceded than fresh demands would be raised upon them; besides, they never could, without abandoning every principle of independence and losing all sense of honour, yield to contumely, menace and the most insulting language, what they have so long and pertinaciously refused to milder appeals and all the means of persuasion and remonstrance. The great body of the Conservatives certainly, and I believe the whole ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... as the tall horseman, as if driven by the storm of contumely from the window, disappeared towards ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the wheel is held the most exquisite of delights you can confer upon him; where for one gentleman in any way to vanquish another is accounted an everlasting dishonour; where to tumble one into a pit after death, and then throw cold clods upon his upturned face, is a species of contumely, only inflicted ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Cora in her English landau in the Bois, and on to the shabbiest small slut who flaunts her raddle and her broken feather in the slums of London, the same story is told and the same moral preached. Where is an equal army of men to be found to invite the contumely of their own sex? A woman's virtue is her continence, and a man's virtues are truthfulness and courage. There is an unspeakably great army of the one sex which makes a show and a lure of its penal uniform. Find me anywhere a band of men who flaunt themselves ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... openly dethroned by the regent, Michael Palaeologus. When at length the imperial title was assumed by the latter, Baldwin thought it advisable to attempt negotiations with him. His ambassadors were received with open contumely; Michael would give the Latins nothing. "Tell your master," he said, "that if he be desirous of peace, he must pay me, as an annual tribute, the sum which he receives from the trade and customs of Constantinople. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various |
