"Despicable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their first principles. They also affirm that paradise and hell belong to this world, into which every man returns in the form of a beast, a plant, or again as a man; and that in this second state, he is great, powerful, and happy, or poor, despicable, and unhappy, according to his former merits or demerits. In practice they inculcate kindness to and respect for each other, with implicit obedience to their chiefs, who are called Pir, (old men,) and are furnished ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... affections crushed, their bleeding hearts; to forget themselves, and to feel thenceforth but a single wound—the wound of France to cry aloud for justice; never to suffer themselves to be appeased, never to relent, but to be implacable; to seize the despicable perjurer, crowned though he were, if not with the hand of the law, at least with the pincers of truth, and to heat red-hot in the fire of history all the letters of his oath, and brand them on ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... except for a little while after you put your arms about his neck. No—For years I was a fool, a profligate fool, wasting my life as I wasted all those thousands of dollars that I had not earned. I turned thief—a despicable sneak thief. At last the dirty crime found me out. I received a small share of the punishment that I deserved. Then you took me in—without question—treated me as a man. God knows ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... perfect. They ought to be largely advertised; but it is very good in me to say so, for I threw down No. IV. with this reflection, "What is the good of writing a thundering big book, when everything is in this green little book, so despicable for its size?" In the name of all that is good and bad, I may as well shut up shop altogether. You put capitally and most simply and clearly the relation of animals and plants to each other at ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... gave thanks to God, and gaining courage, said, "Thou art utterly despicable; for thou art black of soul, and weak as a child; nor shall I henceforth cast one thought on thee. For the Lord is my helper, and I shall despise my enemies." That black being, hearing this, fled forthwith, cowering at his words, and ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... however, and Frobisher breathed a sigh of thanksgiving. He had set his heart on commanding her, and he would have been bitterly disappointed if so fine a ship had been lost to him and the Navy through the despicable cupidity of a mandarin and the incompetence of a ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... scars, how keen a gash he can inflict with his sharp hind claw when brought to bay. From ten to twelve miles is by no means an unusual run, and when thoroughly exhausted he makes a stand, either with his back against a tree, or in the water. In both of these positions he is no despicable adversary, and will do much damage to a pack of hounds, by grasping them in his short fore arms and ripping them open, if on land; or by seizing and holding them under, if in the water. Instances are on record of ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... to those, with whom we converse. After this is once established, abusive language is universally blamed, and gives less pain upon account of its coarseness and incivility, which render the person despicable, that employs it. It becomes less disagreeable, merely because originally it is more so; and it is more disagreeable, because it affords an inference by general and common rules, that ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... and a minute afterward he was ignominiously brought back and put under guard. I am glad to say that his case inspired no sympathy. To enlist, obtain a bounty, and then attempt to evade the service for which the bounty was given, is despicable in the extreme. I am glad to know that no others of our company had the least desire ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... at all; I am in your eyes an abject and most despicable creature; and I am sometimes the same in my own eyes, though not often: I more frequently congratulate myself on my vices than blame myself for them; you are more constant in ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Whereas Granville Kelmscott, a rich man's son, and the heir to a great estate beyond the dreams of avarice—that HE should have come risking his life in these savage wilds for mere increase of superfluous wealth, why, it was simply despicable. ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... world has to wonder what the dictator of Iraq is thinking. If he thinks that by targeting innocent civilians in Israel and Saudi Arabia, that he will gain an advantage—he is dead wrong. If he thinks that he will advance his cause through tragic and despicable environmental terrorism—he is dead wrong. And if he thinks that by abusing coalition P.O.W.s, he will ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... His influence indeed was so great as to over-shadow that of the States-General, but great as it was, it had to be exerted to the utmost before that body could be induced to accept a man of Anjou's despicable and untrustworthy character as their new ruler. William however had committed himself to the candidature of the duke, through lack of any fitter choice; and at last both the States-General and the several provincial ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... help themselves. Whoever declines so to declare himself they pronounce their enemy, and are perfectly right in so doing, whether he be a declared foe or a false friend Besides, the Anti-Corn Law League has used the most despicable falsehoods and tricks to win the support of the workers. It has tried to prove to them that the money price of labour is in inverse proportion to the price of corn; that wages are high when grain is cheap, and vice versa, an assertion which it pretends to prove with the most ridiculous arguments, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... all is grown acrid, divisive, threatening dissolution; and the huge tumultuous Life of Society is galvanic, devil-ridden, too truly possessed by a devil: For, in short, Mammon is not a god at all; but a devil, and even a very despicable devil. Follow the Devil faithfully, you are sure enough to go to the Devil: whither else can you go?—In such situations, men look back with a kind of mournful recognition even on poor limited Monk-figures, with their poor litanies; and reflect, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... of the dignity of their sovereign, the new ministers of the palace immediately published an edict to declare, that his late favorite had disgraced the names of consul and patrician, to abolish his statues, to confiscate his wealth, and to inflict a perpetual exile in the Island of Cyprus. [31] A despicable and decrepit eunuch could no longer alarm the fears of his enemies; nor was he capable of enjoying what yet remained, the comforts of peace, of solitude, and of a happy climate. But their implacable ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... for whatever it may be worth. In pondering the fancy, I need hardly say that I do not assess myself at any extravagant value. I but venture to think that the devotion of one human creature, however humble, throughout a lifetime, is not a despicable offering. To use me as they would, to fetch and carry with me, to draw on me for whatever force resides in me, as they would on a bank account, to the last penny, to use my brains for their plans, my heart for their love, my blood for added ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... virtuous independence, and must foster the secret calculations of a vicious ambition. If it be asserted that evil passions are displayed in all ranks of society, that they ascend the throne by hereditary right, and that despicable characters are to be met with at the head of aristocratic nations as well as in the sphere of a democracy, this objection has but little weight in my estimation. The corruption of men who have casually risen to power has a coarse and vulgar infection in ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... an old story to Mr. Randolph; but to discuss it with Daisy was a very new thing. He found her eager, patient, intelligent, and wise with an odd sort of child-wisdom which yet was not despicable for older years. Daisy's views of the feudal system, and of the wittenagemot, and of trial by jury, and of representative legislation, were intensely amusing to Mr. Randolph; he said it was going back to a primitive condition ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... possessed him; he believed, however, that the old man out of kindness subdued what he really felt. Sidney's state was pitiable. He knew not whether he more shrank from the thought of being infected with Joseph Snowdon's baseness or despised himself for his attitude to Jane. Despicable entirely had been his explanations to Michael, but how could he make them more sincere? To tell the whole truth, to reveal Joseph's tactics would be equivalent to taking a part in the dirty contest; Michael would probably ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... of the Fosdick home and they entered that home together. For there was Mrs. Fosdick, as ever majestic, commanding, awe-inspiring, the same Mrs. Fosdick who had, in her letter to his grandfather, written him down a despicable, underhanded sneak, here was that same Mrs. Fosdick—but not at all the same. For this lady was smiling and gracious, welcoming him to her home, addressing him by his Christian name, treating him kindly, with almost motherly tenderness. Madeline's letters and Mrs. Fosdick's ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... independence without puzzling my head about the future. I felt that in my first profession, as I was not blessed with the vocation necessary to it, I should have succeeded only by dint of hypocrisy, and I should have been despicable in my own estimation, even if I had seen the purple mantle on my shoulders, for the greatest dignities cannot silence a man's own conscience. If, on the other hand, I had continued to seek fortune in a military career, which is surrounded by a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... contrary, who, after lives of ignoble labor or despicable ease, die of sickness, sink from their beds to the dismal house of Hela. In this gigantic vaulted cavern the air smells like a newly stirred grave; damp fogs rise, hollow sighs are heard, the only light ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... risk his health, his character, his beauty, the little money which at this moment of time might be so indispensable to his great project, for the chance of winning something which in comparison with Marie Melmotte's money must be despicable! But at last he came! She waited patiently till he had thrown aside his hat and coat, and then she appeared at the dining-room door. She had studied her part for the occasion. She would not say a harsh ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... reduction of the great wild boar to the very insignificant proportions of a little black pig—commonplace, paltry, and altogether contemptible—was too much for their sensitive natures. It had placed them all in a false position. They were not cowards, but they had all been alarmed by the most despicable of animals. Frank felt profoundly humiliated, and reflected, with a blush, upon the absurd figure that he had made of himself in hesitating so long before such an enemy, and then advancing upon it in such a way. Bob's feelings were very ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... because the dishonest man is living at other people's expense, profiting by their losses, and fattening himself on the earnings of those whom he has wronged, that dishonesty is deservedly ranked as one of the most despicable ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... would call a man a coward who was afraid in battle. To be a coward there seems to me to be a coward all round. I have always thought the one virtue in man I really envied was bravery, and that a coward was the most despicable creature living. It might not be his actual fault, but one can't help that. It is not anyone's fault if he is fearfully ugly or born an idiot, for example. But cowardice seems somehow different. Not to be brave when he is strong seems to put a man below the level ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... miserable wretch, Emmanuel? Well, although I treated him in so bold and harsh a manner, I must tell you that I am at heart bitterly afraid of him. He is at once a coward to the strong, and a tyrant to the weak; one of those despicable characters which get our nation unjustly aspersed. He really does possess all those vices and meannesses which are attributed to many who are as noble, true, and good as you of the Christian race. You will consider me as unmerciful as my faith, from the manner ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... answered Charles, "I cannot think religious parties defensible on the considerations which justify political. There is, to my feelings, something despicable ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... he practises most frequently in his tragedies, the former in his comedies. The comic characters are, without mixture, loathsome and despicable. The men of Etherege and Vanbrugh are bad enough. Those of Smollett are perhaps worse. But they do not approach to the Celadons, the Wildbloods, the Woodalls, and the Rhodophils of Dryden. The vices of these last are set off by a certain fierce hard impudence, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... now welcome even to Sophie, who once half whispered and half screamed to Athalie that it would do no harm if she was rather more friendly to him, for he was now a rich man, a far from despicable parti, worth more than three officers put together, who have nothing but their smart uniform and their debts. To which Fraulein Athalie replied, "It does not follow that I should take my father's servant for a husband." Frau Sophie could finish the sentence for herself—"Because ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... To honor. Formerly of noble blood Thou wert, but now no more than broken straw. Thou needst not further try to flatter me. Though thou shouldst purify thyself seven times, false one, I'd not permit thee to approach my side." The King grew angry and replied: "Tis thou Who art despicable. Thy cunning tricks Are worthless now. Thy jealousy insane Was without cause, and common were thy acts. Thy wit is much below thy beauty. Will follow thee, should I protection cease." "Have I forgot my noble birth?" ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... not care to give any further thought to the despicable man. He had come to the settlement to visit Jack Carleton and Otto Relstaub, and found they were absent on a singular hunt for the horse that had been missing fully a week. His interest lay in them, and especially in Jack. He had heard most ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... get a new one at his own expense. "The system" knew neither justice nor fair play. It knew nothing but the cynical phrase of Richard Croker, Tammany Hall's famous boss, "my own pocket all the time." But Roosevelt changed all that. He had not been in Mulberry Street a month before that despicable rule about the uniform was blotted out. His whole term of office on the Police Board was marked by acts of recognition of bravery and faithful service. Many times he had to dig the facts out for himself or ran upon them by accident. There ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... right, my child, thou art over-young to have any knowledge of so despicable an intrigue. But the matter is naturally of deep concern for us all," she added, as Ecciva, having recovered her perfect self-control lifted her eyes to Madama di Thenouris with a smile that was intended to thank her for her trust, while assuring her that ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... go without him, my dear lads. He has been a very faithful servant to us, and it would be a mean, cowardly, despicable act for us to leave him in the lurch. Oh, it's impossible. It would be little better than murder to leave a man here without ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... superstitions. The day of revivals is gone. Only the ignorant and unthinking can hereafter be impressed by hearing the orthodox creed. Fear has in it no reformatory power, and the more intelligent the world grows the more despicable and contemptible the doctrine of eternal misery will become. The tendency of the age is toward intellectual liberty, toward personal investigation. Authority is no longer taken for truth. People are beginning to find that all the great and good are not dead—that some good people are alive, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... nurses and servants, and are later passed on to the boarding-schools. At any rate their principal task is to raise their daughters as show-dolls, and their sons as pupils for the jeunesse dore (gilded youth) out of which dudedom recruits its ranks—that despicable class of men that may be fairly put upon a level with procurers. This jeunesse dore furnishes the chief contingent to the seducers of the daughters of the working class. They look upon idleness ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... at old errors. It is common sense to seek to find some point in the present beliefs of his hearers to which his message may attach itself. An orator who flatters for the sake of securing favour for himself is despicable; a missionary who recognises the truth which lies under the system which he ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... physical suffering seemed to her less intolerable than to be unjustly held in this extreme of scorn.. This was the deeper wrong; and putting herself in her lover's place, feeling with his feelings, she knew it to be by far the deeper. In Dartmoor he shared the sufferings of men unfortunate but not despicable, punished for fighting in their country's cause. But here was a moral punishment, deserved by none but the vilest; and she had helped to bring it—was allowing it to ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... origin. About twelve years before it broke out, Major Waldron treacherously seized a band of Indians at Dover in New Hampshire and sent them to Boston, where several of them were hanged for alleged complicity in Philip's war[5] and others sold into slavery. This despicable act the Indians never forgot ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... "You despicable coward; you ungrateful scoundrel!" he struck out, catching the man fairly under the jaw, and knocking him backward with a staggering crash upon the metal steps of ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... against this unexpected freak of fortune, for Sylvia seized the paper and read the paragraph aloud with such happy emphasis amid Prue's outcries and his father's applause, that Mark began to feel that he really had done something praiseworthy, and that the "daub" was not so despicable after all. ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... the more lowly He seemed by reason of His poverty, the greater might the power of His Godhead be shown to be. Hence in a sermon of the Council of Ephesus (P. iii, c. ix) we read: "He chose all that was poor and despicable, all that was of small account and hidden from the majority, that we might recognize His Godhead to have transformed the terrestrial sphere. For this reason did He choose a poor maid for His Mother, a poorer ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... not for what his father or his friends have done. If they have given him a position, the greater is his shame for sinking beneath that position. The person who is above labor or despises the laborer, is himself one of the most despicable creatures on God's earth. He not only displays a dull intelligence of those nobler inspirations with which God has endowed us, but he even shows a lack of plain ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... consisted of smoked and dried herrings, corned mackerel, fresh prawns, beef steaks, cold roast beef, cold ham, roast and boiled yams, eggs, and toast: a supply that will not be thought despicable for the passengers of a merchant schooner, in the Bight of Biafra, where the sun was so powerful, that our anchor was hot enough to serve the purposes ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... which terminate in complaint and contempt; the more they know one another, the less is their mutual esteem: the feeble mind quarrels with one still more imbecile than itself; the dissolute riot with the dissolute, and they despise their companions, while they too have themselves become despicable. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... off at once to catch the only train that would get him back to Tercanbury in time for call-over. As he sat in the corner of the railway carriage he saw that he had done nothing. He was angry with himself for his weakness. It was despicable to have allowed himself to be turned from his purpose by the pompous airs of the Vicar and the tears of his aunt. But as the result of he knew not what conversations between the couple another letter was written to the headmaster. Mr. Perkins ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... sympathy in his noble ambition, they met him with sneers. All the feelings which should guide a chivalric soldier and lead him to honor real heroism, were quenched by the intense prejudice against color. Mean and despicable as is the spirit which prompted the-manager of the Grand Union Hotel to refuse to entertain the rich Jewish banker, that which influenced the young men at West Point is still more deserving scorn and contempt. It was meaner and more contemptible ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... and then she looked up suddenly, with an odd, fierce smile, and she said bitterly enough—'and yet, if I were a man, and capable of loving, I could love no other way; because I suppose love to be a madness, and the sublimest and the most despicable of states. And I admire Moore for that flash of the fallen angelic—it is the sentiment of a hero and a madman—too base and too noble for this cool, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a horror of the jealousies, the quarrels, the hatreds, the lies, the stabbings in the dark that make too often hideous, despicable, and terrible a world that should be very beautiful. During his musical education he had seen enough to realize that side by side with great talent, with a warm impulse toward beauty, with an ardor that counts labor as ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... in his expression of gratitude. "When the period of mourning has expired," he consequently added, "I shall lead in person, my despicable eldest son to your mansion, to pay our obeisance, and express ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... thought it would come to that; unhappy, miserable Alice! how could you bestow the affections of a warm, true heart on a despicable wretch like Theophilus Moncton. The old fiend's ambition and this fatal passion have been ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... know what is normal and what abnormal in his physiological development, and is often the victim of groundless fears that use up his strength or send him in despair to seek assistance from the most easily available sources of information, those baleful writings and despicable quack practitioners everywhere soliciting and alarming youth, and whose career forms one of the saddest commentaries on ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... accumulated it from the love of accumulation, the case would have been totally different. He might then have been justly despised, and characterized as being of the earth, earthy—incapable of high and generous sentiments and aspirations—sordid, grovelling, and utterly despicable. Sir William Follett had, during twenty years of intense and self-denying toil, succeeded in acquiring an ample fortune, which he disposed of, at his death, justly and generously; and how many hours of exhaustion, both of mind and body, must have been cheered, from time to time, by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... is, imputing to our neighbor's practice, judgment, or profession, evil consequences (apt to render him odious, or despicable) which have no dependence on them, or connection with them. There do in every age occur disorders and mishaps, springing from various complications of causes, working some of them in a more open and discernible, others in a more secret and subtle way ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... provoking the attack, as usual, sustained some crushing defeats, mainly couched in the language of Scripture, which was, as she felt with Christian indignation, turning her own favorite weapon against herself, as possibly Charles thought she deserved, for putting such a weapon to so despicable ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... fact and were slain. He had come; she had spoken. Never would she forget the look in his eyes when he had said, "Good night, and—good-by;" nor could she pass over the half-threat in the words that had gone before the leave-taking. To what deeper depth despicable could he plunge, having already sounded the deepest of them all—that of unfaith, of infidelity alike to the woman he had wronged and to the ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... short sentence of avowal over, Lionel might as well have talked to the moon. Lady Verner heard him not. She was horrified. The Wests in her eyes were utterly despicable. Dr. West was tolerated as her doctor; but as nothing else. Her brave Lionel—standing there before her in all the pride of his strength and his beauty—he sacrifice himself to Sibylla West! ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... received Forstner with much condescension. Death had relieved her, in 1702, from her sickly, despicable spouse, and she was free to open her house to every German traveller, which, in his lifetime, Monsieur had always endeavoured ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... great deal longer, adding indecorum to awkwardness, and impertinence to incivility, accumulating incongruities, despising what is respectable, respecting what is despicable; but no one listened ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... felt something touch my hand; it was a great Corsican dog, which was turned loose at night, and was so fierce that it was a great protection to our house. I felt glad to have it at my side, for in case of a struggle it would be no despicable ally. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... want notoriety; our desires on this point, as upon others, are not noble, but the human is very despicable vermin and only tolerable when it tends to the brute, and away from the evangelical. I will tell you an anecdote which is in itself an admirable illustration of my craving for notoriety; and my anecdote will serve a double purpose,—it will bring me some of the notoriety of which I am so desirous, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... myriads of insects in the air sheds a drowsy harmony over the tree-tops, the field-faring woman goes out to haymaking, and leaves her baby in the shade by the hedge-side. A wooden sheepcage, turned upside down and filled with new-made hay, forms not at all a despicable cradle; and here the little thing lies on its back and inhales the fresh pure air, and feels the warmth of the genial sun, cheered from time to time by visits from its busy mother. Perhaps this is the only true poetry ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... bulging with the backwash of a lover's smile. Frank sprang up, and his brother, smiling even more affectionately, took his chair. At the same moment the widow stopped playing, and the scales seemed suddenly to fall from the young soldier's eyes. He saw himself as the most despicable villain in Europe, and Ellen as lost for ever, whether as sister or friend. So distraught was he that he had nearly tried to open a mid-Victorian cabinet before he discovered it was not the door. Downstairs he hurried wildly, ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... cattle, unfit for mental and moral improvement, these churchmen asserted that the highest property possible to be acquired in servants could not cancel the obligation to take care of the religious instruction of those who "despicable as they are in the eyes of man are nevertheless ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... one engaged in a hazardous business at which he could not always win, and he had some desirable qualities—good-humor, liberality, coolness and daring. The well-bred gentleman who served as his decoy, however, possessed none of these redeeming characteristics. His part was merely despicable; there was only ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... it manifest, that whatever circumstances could possibly contribute to make a country poor and despicable, are all united with respect to Ireland. The nation controlled by laws to which they do not consent, disowned by their brethren and countrymen, refused the liberty not only of trading with their own manufactures, but even their native commodities, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... the rifled tombs of Cromwell, Blake, and Ireton—the despicable revenge of the men who did not dare to face them in the field,—and they marked the grave of James the First, who erected no monument to himself, and so justified in death the reputation for philosophy which he had aimed at in his life. Then they inspected ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... and, followed by Winifred, took her seat at the table. Operations then commenced. Mr. Wood carved the ducks; Mr. Kneebone helped to the pigeon-pie; while Thames unwired and uncorked a bottle of stout Carnarvonshire ale. The woollen-draper was no despicable trencherman in a general way; but his feats with the knife and fork were child's sport compared with those of Mr. Smith. The leg and wing of a duck were disposed of by this gentleman in a twinkling; a brace of pigeons and a pound of steak followed with equal celerity; and he had just ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... liked by her maker) awakens sympathy in the reader when routed in her fortunes, black-leg though she be. She cared for her husband, after her fashion, and she plays the game of Bad Luck in a way far from despicable. Nor is that easy-going, commonplace scoundrel, Rawdon, with his dog-like devotion to the same Becky, denied his touch of higher humanity. Behind all these is a large tolerance, an intellectual breadth, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... was mad. The face of Laura drifted past him as in a dream, and then again, that of the other woman. No, no; he regretted nothing, absolutely nothing. But he had been a fool there; he had wasted time and lent himself to a despicable intrigue. For all that he outcried it, there was a touch of shame on his cheeks when he remembered that, had he asked, she would have given him that scrap of paper the first hour of their meeting. Somewhere in Hildegarde ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... of quacks, together with the mischief they do, and the ruin they work, would require much more space to adequately ventilate than we can devote to it here. The healing art is a noble one, and duly qualified men, interested in their profession, are public benefactors; but the despicable race of charlatans not only rob their victims, but frequently ruin their health, and drive them to the verge of insanity. There is probably hardly a reader of this page who has not met, within the circle of his or her acquaintance, some unfortunate ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... sitting behind his bunch of wooden decoys, a wounded tern fluttering in agony at his feet. Withal, be it said, he was a man of gentlemanly bearing, courteous, and a Christian. He did not shoot on Sunday,—not he. Such sport is to me despicable. Yet it is affirmed by those who ought to know—by those, that is, who engage in it—that it tends to promote a ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... thy vaporish boast That I am helpless to combat thee! Well, Have at thee, then! Yet if a doom most dire Thou wouldst escape, flee whilst thou canst!—Revile Me not, Miasmic Mist!—Rank Air! retire! One instant longer an thou haunt'st me, I'll Inhale thee, O thou wraith despicable! ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... Ralph and Kittie planning a walk to the woods next day, and her jealous heart ached and burned fiercely. How despicable he was to take all of Kittie's time, and make himself such a paragon in her eyes, that she could talk of no one else. Kat shook her head in dire vengeance, and might have cried if she hadn't been too proud. But just then ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... prevent the child's going where she belongs. I wish you to understand that I shall continue this fight to the very last. I—I am not one to be easily beaten. Simpson, you and Thomas come with me. This night's despicable chicanery is only the beginning. This is bad business for you, Cy Whittaker," he snarled, his self-control vanishing, "and"—with a vindictive glance at the schoolmistress—"for those who are with you in it. That appointment ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... immortality. And in the same way Boswell's hero was after all but a sort of Grub Street Cyclops, respectable enough by his intelligence—(but even so ridiculous in comparison to gifted Whigs)—yet more or less despicable in his manners, his English, and his politics. Now, Macaulay was the genius of special pleading. Admirable man of letters as he was, he was politician first and man of letters afterwards: his judgments are no more final than his antitheses are dull, and his method for all its brilliance is ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... precedents; but the Whig cabal frustrated my intentions, though I was supported by Mr. White, of the Independent Whig, and many other patriotic members of that body. By and by, I shall lay open to public view the despicable intrigues of this faction in the city of London. The mass of the livery are honest, honourable and patriotic, and real lovers of fair play; but the tricks and intrigues of the factions, who have strutted upon the boards ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... But despicable as his conduct had been, he underwent no hasty condemnation. The defection was discussed in all its bearings, but it seemed sadly clear at last that this uncle must possess some innate badness of character and fondness for low company. We who ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... of the fourteenth century, during the Black Death, did what human intellect could do in the actual condition of the healing art; and their knowledge of the disease was by no means despicable. They, like the rest of mankind, have indulged in prejudices, and defended them, perhaps, with too much obstinacy: some of these, however, were founded on the mode of thinking of the age, and passed current in those days as established truths; others continue to ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... forkurinto. Deserve meriti. Design (draw) desegni. Design (intend) intenci. Design (intention) intenco. Designate montri, nomi. Designing ruza. Desire deziri. Desist cxesi, cxesigi. Desk skribtablo. Desolate ruinigi. Despair malesperi. Despatch ekspedi. Desperate furioza. Despicable malnobla. Despise malestimi. Despond malesperi. Despot tirano. Despotism tiraneco. Dessert deserto. Destine, for difini (por). Destiny sorto. Destitute malricxega. Destroy detrui. Destruction detruo. Detach apartigi. Detachment (milit.) tacxmento. Detail detalo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... returned in little groups, but either out of womanly intuition or in answer to my unspoken but fervent prayers, passed us and went into the house. I was affected by an odd mixture of desperate courage and despicable cowardice. I determined to tell her all, yet I shrank from the task with more terror than ever befell me in the first ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... flag as much as we ever did. Yet, what a howdy-do when a title comes along! What a craning of necks, what a kotowing! How many earldoms and dukedoms are not based upon some detestable action, some despicable service rendered some orgiastic sovereign! The most honorable thing about the so-called nobility is generally the box-hedge which surrounds the manse. Kotow; pour our millions into the bottomless purses of spendthrifts; give them our most beautiful women. There ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... and dangers that Nature has set before it, with disease as Nature's agent, crouching and ready to destroy the child's life, not in open combat, but invisibly concealed by the limitation of our senses. This is one of Nature's unspeakable crimes; one of God's despicable impositions. ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... invitations, and, moreover, played up to it, for she was forever destroying her last will and making a new one. Each was read aloud to a concourse of expectant and envious legatees. Each specified scores of legacies of no despicable amount, and yet more numerous sops to numerous acquaintances. In every will Calvaster, her nearest relative and favorite grandnephew, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... belli as Helen, the moral which Southey pointed in his ballad of the Battle of Blenheim, emerges, not from the poet's design, but from the inevitable logic of his humor. Pique inspired the Secchia Rapita, and in the despicable character of Count Culagna he fully revenged the slight which had been put upon him. The revenge is savage, certainly; for the Count remains 'immortally immerded' in the long-drawn episode which brought to view the shame of his domestic life. Yet while Tassoni drew ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... I felt that were I to stay in the East for fifty years, I should never reach the supreme heights of metaphysical abstraction whence men really appear as specks and life as a play; therefore to remain was to avow myself a runaway and to live henceforth despicable in my own eyes. For over the unfathomable deep of oriental custom the torrent of our civilization flows unblending, as in the Druid's legend the twin streams of Dee flow clear through Bala lake, and never ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... understanding with yourself that you will be a man, that you will express in your work the highest thing in you, the best thing in you. You can not afford to debase or demoralize yourself by bringing out your mean side, the lowest and most despicable thing in you. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Smith's place, and told Smith he was a dirty, mean, despicable swindler—or something like that. Smith smiled. Dad put one leg through the slip-rails and promised Smith, if he'd only come along, to split palings out of him. But Smith did n't. The instinct of ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... of Leeds in 1789, was a feeble person. Pitt had broken up the family compact and could reckon on the compliance of Spain. France was isolated and had exhibited her weakness before the eyes of Europe. The despicable proceedings of the national assembly saved England from a war, and dissolved the alliance which had ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... and stretched myself out on the bed, well knowing that I was taking incalculable risks, and that insanity and even death were by no means remote possibilities of the road ahead. But let that be as it may! In my opinion, there is no coward more despicable than he who will not face danger for the sake ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz
... stoned to death. The Athenian women, roused by a similar passion with the men, inflicted the same fate upon his wife and children—one of those excesses of virtue which become crimes, but for which exigency makes no despicable excuse. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... true apogee of Napoleon's power. From the November day in 1799 when the successful general had overthrown the corrupt and despicable Directory down to 1808, his story is a magnificent succession of the triumphs of peace and of war. Whatever be the judgment of his contemporaries or of posterity upon his motives, there can be little question that throughout these nine years he appeared to France ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the allies of Priam in the Trojan war. He is drawn under two widely different characters: In classic story he is depicted as an admirable archer, slain by Diomed, and honored as a hero-god in his own country; but in mediaeval romance he is represented as a despicable pimp, insomuch that the word pander is derived from his name. Chaucer, in his Tro[:i]lus and Cresseide, and Shakespeare, in his drama of Troilus and Cressida, represent him as procuring for Troilus the good graces of Cressid, and in Much Ado About Nothing, it is said that Troilus ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... tumble together for the mastery as in the lists of tournament, we are tempted to think of the LARGE TESTAMENT as of one long-drawn epical grimace, pulled by a merry-andrew, who has found a certain despicable eminence over human respect and human affections by perching himself astride upon the gallows. Between these two views, at best, all temperate judgments will be found to fall; and rather, as I imagine, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... blushing rind, And on that pulp ambrosial dined, Had not some hand with skill and toil, To raise the tree, prepared the soil? Consider, sot, what would ensue, Were all such worthless things as you. You'd soon be forced (by hunger stung) To make your dirty meals on dung; 140 On which such despicable need, Unpitied, is reduced to feed; Besides, vain selfish insect, learn (If you can right and wrong discern) That he who, with industrious zeal, Contributes to the public weal, By adding to the common good, His own hath rightly understood.' So saying, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... saw him in a new light. He still sneered, but behind the mask she got for the first time a glimpse of another man. Only dimly she divined him; but what she visioned was half devil and half hero, capable of things great as well as of deeds despicable. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... compelled to admit the young man into all of his plans. This came about some three years ago, while I was in school. I had known Tom Reddon in Chicago. He won my love. I cannot deny it, although I despise him to-day more deeply than I ever expect to hate again. He was even more despicable than my stepfather. Without the faintest touch of pity, he set about to obliterate every chance Rosalie could have had for restitution. Time began to prove to me that he was not the man I thought him to be. His nature revealed ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... selfishness wrecking a nation, and, in another, a solemn instance of divine retribution working its designs by men's sins. The greater part of this account deals with it in the former aspect, and shows the despicable motives of the men in whose hands was the nation's fate; but one sentence (verse 15) draws back the curtain for a moment, and shows us the true cause. There is something very striking in that one flash, which reveals ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a model of noble friendship for all time. Envy poisons much human friendship. It is not easy to work loyally for the honor and advancement of another when he is taking our place, and drawing our crowds after him. But in any circumstances envy is despicable and most undivine. Then even in our friendship for Christ we need to be ever most watchful lest we allow self to creep in. We must learn to care only for his honor and the advancement of his kingdom, and ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... is thus explained in a private letter from Colonel Hamilton—"This man (Arnold) is in every sense despicable. In addition to the scene of knavery and prostitution during his command in Philadelphia, which the late seizure of his papers has unfolded, the history of his command at West Point is a history of little as well as great ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Numbers 4 and 5. They are simply perfect. They ought to be largely advertised; but it is very good in me to say so, for I threw down Number 4 with this reflection, "What is the good of my writing a thundering big book, when everything is in this green little book so despicable for its size?" In the name of all that is good and bad I may as well ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... recognised in his experience. Hence the smallness, the triteness, and the inhumanity in works of merely sectarian religion; and hence we find equal although unsimilar limitations in works inspired by the spirit of the flesh or the despicable taste for high society. So that the first duty of any man who is to write is intellectual. Designedly or not, he has so far set himself up for a leader of the minds of men; and he must see that his own mind is kept supple, charitable, and bright. Everything but prejudice should find a voice ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him to the abbey, where he was at once recognized by the monks who had formed the funeral procession on the previous evening, and by others who had seen him. The brother whose duty it was to tend the sick, an old soldier with the scars of a dozen deep wounds in him, and by no means a despicable surgeon, pronounced Gilbert's condition almost hopeless, and assured the abbot that it would be certain death to the young Lord of Stoke to send him back to his home. He was therefore laid upon a new bed in an upper chamber that had fair ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... living God, who rules in scorn, and whom peasants, nobles, priests, and kings blindly reverence, and by whom everything is sold—the light of heaven, earth's produce, the peace of outraged conscience, the most despicable things, every object of ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... accursed passion of the agent of all this misery. I devote my remaining days to tracking and extinguishing a monster. I am told I may hope to accomplish my righteous and merciful purpose. At present there is scarcely a gleam of light to guide me. I curse my conceited incredulity, my despicable affectation of superiority, my blindness, my obstinacy—all—too late. I cannot write or talk collectedly now. I am distracted. So soon as I shall have a little recovered, I mean to devote myself for a time to enquiry, which may ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... calm, but inwardly she nursed a burning volcano. She had great pride of race, and had often gloried in the honourable name which she bore. That a Fitzgerald should be suspected of so despicable a crime as stealing a sovereign seemed little short of an affront to her whole family. It was a blot on their good repute such as had never been placed there before. In days gone by her ancestors had fought duels for far less insults; ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... this my wrath was not excited for thou art our lord. This, however, I regard as a highly improper act—this act of staking Draupadi. This innocent girl deserveth not this treatment. Having obtained the Pandavas as her lords, it is for thee alone that she is being thus persecuted by the low, despicable, cruel, and mean-minded Kauravas. It is for her sake, O king, that my anger falleth on thee. I shall burn those hands of thine. Sahadeva, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... nothing to fear from us, would with little scruple or remorse, supply their wants by depredations on our property as often as it fell in their way. The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral. Under a vigorous national government, the natural strength and resources of the country, directed to a common interest, would baffle all the combinations ...
— The Federalist Papers
... incessantly. You have eaten up all my little property; our six children lie on straw, and we are living in a stable with the beasts. Here we are forced to beg for alms, and, besides, you are so ugly and vile and despicable that very soon they will be tossing us bread as if we were dogs. Ah, my poor people, take pity on us! Take pity on me! I have n't deserved my lot, and never had woman a more dirty and detestable husband. Help me ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... the hidden drift of this small colloquy. Robert Frazer looked sadly at his cousin. Natures that are closely allied have an electric sympathy. He could not even darkly discern the truth, but he connected Brett's words in some remote way with Capella. How he loathed the despicable Italian who left his wife to bear alone the trouble that oppressed her—who only went away in order to concoct ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... to seek their re-establishment abroad, whether by the misery of transportation or other disaster; letting them know that diligence and application have their due encouragement, even in the remotest parts of the world, and that no case can be so low, so despicable, or so empty of prospect, but that an unwearied industry will go a great way to deliver us from it, will in time raise the meanest creature to appear again the world, and give him a new case ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... remain with their hands on the ground. Even the children of samurai always assumed the lordly attitude toward tradesmen. The sons of tradesmen might not venture into a quarrel with the sons of samurai, for the armed children of the samurai were at liberty to cut down and kill the children of the despicable merchant, should they ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... you're about it," he suggested. "Lay all the blame of that shameful stratagem on my shoulders. It was a despicable thing to do. When I had you watched, I acted in a manner—I won't say unworthy of a gentleman; have I been a gentleman since I first ran away from home? Why, it's even been said my way of speaking is no longer the way of a gentleman; and small wonder, too, after the company I've kept. Ah, well! I'm ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... to keep silent, to omit speaking cambiar, to change, to alter consignar, to consign, to record contrato social, articles of partnership cordoban, morocco leather despacio, slowly despreciable, despicable dinero efectivo, cash discutir, to discuss especulacion, speculation, venture garrote, cudgel, stick *impedir, to hinder, to preclude ladron, thief (el) matiz, shade *mover, to move, to actuate ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... their ugly heads here and there from under Branwell's finest phrases. And since there is no single vulgar, trite, or Micawber-like effusion throughout 'Wuthering Heights;' and since Heathcliff's passion is never once treated in the despicable would-be worldly fashion in which Branwell describes his own sensations, and since at the time that 'Wuthering Heights' was written he was manifestly, and by his own confession, too physically prostrate for any literary effort, we may ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... what means," though they certainly have intimated that its gratification ought to be one of the principal objects of a dramatic author. They were foolish enough to think, that to pander to the tastes of an audience, if corrupt and vitiated, is paltry, is despicable; that to consult its inclinations when at war with sound taste or proper decorum, is to do the work of those who are influenced only by a love of sordid gain, reckless of every pure and elevated feeling—that ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Socialist modern civilisation is worse than a failure. "Our civilisation seems all so savage and bestial and filthy and inartistic; all so cowardly and devilish and despicable. We fight by cheatery and underselling, and adulteration and bribery, and unmanly smirking for our bone of a livelihood; all scrambling and biting round the platter when there is abundance for all, if we were orderly and courteous ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... Japanese pots with decalcomanie butterflies would be, and these people fling mud at the elegant Englishman, Byng, who wrote a book called THE BRIC-A-BRAC HUNTER, and make fun of him for chasing around after what they choose to call "his despicable trifles"; and for "gushing" over these trifles; and for exhibiting his "deep infantile delight" in what they call his "tuppenny collection of beggarly trivialities"; and for beginning his book with a picture of himself ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... background; out at elbows, down at the elbows, down in the world. inglorious; nameless, renownless^; obscure; unknown to fame; unnoticed, unnoted^, unhonored, unglorified^. shameful; disgraceful, discreditable, disreputable; despicable; questionable; unbecoming, unworthy; derogatory; degrading, humiliating, infra dignitatem [Lat.], dedecorous^; scandalous, infamous, too bad, unmentionable; ribald, opprobrious; errant, shocking, outrageous, notorious. ignominious, scrubby, dirty, abject, vile, beggarly, pitiful, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... bright pageantry, its charges and shock of arms, its feats of single combat. Fate willed that I was yet to see another, trained on the battlefields of Europe, humbled in the dust by these foes whom I found so despicable, and the soldiers of the king taught a lesson they were ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... nation can commit crimes like this without suffering more than its victims. Spain has never to this day recovered from the blow to her own prosperity, to her commerce, her manufactures, and her civilisation dealt by the narrow-minded and ignorant King, led by a despicable favourite, and the fanatical bigot, Ribera. With the Moors went almost all their arts and industries; immense tracts of country became arid wastes: Castile and La Mancha barely raise crops every second year where the Moriscos reaped their teeming harvest, and Estremadura from a smiling garden became ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... says, "For matter, were it never so despicable, is spirit: were it never so honourable, can it ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... knew that the principal and at least four girls in school knew what I had done. When I entered the sophomore class in the fall I felt a positive hatred for this girl and for her friends. I did all sorts of cruel, despicable things that year, and succeeded in dividing my class into two factions who opposed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... further element in the market, is the "jobber", whose main object is to take advantage of the small fluctuation caused by chance, but we must not forget the big speculators. By these, we do not mean those despicable people who aim to snatch a profit, and who, on having to face a loss, plead the gaming act. Experience and force of circumstances have, luckily, driven these parasites almost out of the market. But we do mean those big operators, who having weighed carefully "the pros ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer
... cannot but record the effect of an actual though undesigned experiment, which I prosecuted for upwards of twelve years among you. For the greater part of that time I could expatiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villany of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny; in a word, upon all those deformities of character which awaken the natural indignation of the human heart against the pests and the disturbers of human society. Now, could I, upon the strength of these warm expostulations, have got the thief to give ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... don't know; if you have, didn't you see Glenfern turn up the king, and yet you returned his lead—returned our adversary's lead in the face of his king. I've been telling you these twenty years not to return your adversary's lead; nothing can be more despicable; nothing can be a greater proof of imbecility of mind—humph!" Then, seating herself, she began to exercise her fan with considerable activity. "This has been the most disagreeable day I ever spent in this house, girls. I don't know what's come over you, but you are all wrong; my petticoat's ruined; ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... if I despise, as great gossip, Emily's telling you that I am writing another tragedy! Why, my dear, I shouldn't consider it despicable gossip if Emily were to tell you what colored gloves I had on the last time she saw me. Do we not all three love each other dearly? and is not everything, no matter how trifling, of interest in that case? But Mrs. John Kemble does not pretend to love me dearly, I flatter myself, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... a despicable or very ascetic regimen which Stevenson lays before us under April in his reproduction of Breton's "Fantasticks," 1626, under the title of the "Twelve Months," 1661:—"The wholesome dyet that breeds good sanguine juyce, such as pullets, capons, sucking ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... necessary dues levied on every Persian Shiyaee while traversing Central Arabia, and under Wahabee guidance and protection, amounted, I found, to about one hundred and fifty gold tomans, equalling nearly sixty pounds sterling, English, no light expenditure for a Persian, and no despicable gain to an Arab."—Palgrave's Central and ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... forget what experience must have been undergone before Occidental free competition could become as comparatively merciful, as it is. Among a people trained for centuries to regard all selfish competition as criminal, and all profit-seeking despicable, any sudden stimulation of effort for purely personal advantage might well be impolitic. Evidence as to how little the nation was prepared, twelve or thirteen years ago, for Western forms of free government, has been furnished by the history of the earlier ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... campaign. It was the pride and strength of Siwash against a red-headed Missouri girl, weight about ninety-five pounds; and we couldn't help feeling sorry for her. But she had brought it on herself. Insurgency, Miss Allstairs, is a very wicked thing. It's a despicable attempt on the part of the minority to become the majority, and no true patriot will desert the majority ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... "single campaign" is over, and America not conquered. The whole work is yet to do, and the force much less to do it with. Their condition is both despicable and deplorable: out of cash—out of heart, and out of hope. A country furnished with arms and ammunition as America now is, with three millions of inhabitants, and three thousand miles distant from the nearest enemy ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... rate, short of inspiration, it seems hardly possible to be both rich and honest; and the millionaire is under a far more continuous temptation to thieve than the labourer who gets his shilling daily for despicable toils. Are you surprised? It is even so. And you repeat it every Sunday in your churches. 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.' I have heard ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... discuss the important event of the evening, and Mrs. Goddard assured him that their plot was progressing admirably. Still, she manifested a twinge of remorse as she thought of the despicable trick she had devised against the fair girl whom her brother was ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... tempers, a rare art of dissimulation, a rare dexterity in insinuating what it is not safe to affirm or to propose in explicit terms. There are two feelings which often prevent an unprincipled layman from becoming utterly depraved and despicable, domestic feeling, and chivalrous feeling. His heart may be softened by the endearments of a family. His pride may revolt from the thought of doing what does not become a gentleman. But neither with the domestic feeling nor with the chivalrous feeling has the wicked priest any sympathy. His ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was totally at a loss to comprehend what was meant by offended pride. Optimism, indeed! He felt far more inclined to embrace the faith of the Manichee! And what a fool was he to have submitted to such a despicable, such a degrading situation! What infinite weakness not to be able to resist her influence, the influence of a woman who had betrayed him! Yes! betrayed him. He had for some period reconciled his mind to entertain the idea of Henrietta's ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... self-government. But it was a play that at times approached dangerously near to the tragic. The passions of this Latin offshoot were strong, if their minds were dull and lethargic, and when aroused were capable of the most despicable, as well as the most grandly heroic deeds. And in the present instance, when the fleeting sense of the absurd passed, Jose knew that he was facing a crisis. Something told him that resistance now would be useless. True, Rosendo might have opposed arrest with violence, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... was no despicable horse-jockey, selected for his purpose a strong well-made horse, about sixteen hands high, and had him led into the yard, to see whether the paces corresponded with his appearance. As these also gave perfect satisfaction to the customer, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott |
