"Detraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Miscellaneous Tracts, vol. i. p. 71.) "Il n'est point d'hostilite excellente comme la Chrestienne," says old Montaigne; "nostre zele faict merveilles, quand il va secondant nostre pente vers la haine, la cruante, l'ambition, l'avarice, la detraction, la rebellion. Nostre religion est faicte pour extirper les vices; elle les couvre, les nourrit, les incite." ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... the time of the event. This omission is yet another proof of the malicious spirit by which the "relation" was inspired. The suppression of anything that might justify a deed attributed to Cesare reveals how much defamation and detraction were the aims of ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... by St. Paul himself of the vision mentioned, I. Cor. xv., which again is very possibly the same as that of II. Cor. xii. For the purposes of the present investigation, however, the whole story must be set aside. At the same time it should be borne in mind, that any detraction from the historical accuracy of the writer of the Acts, is more than compensated for, by the additional weight given to the conversion of St. Paul, whom we are now able to regard as having been converted by evidence which was in itself overpowering, and which did not stand in need of any ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... deserves. We trust that those who have carefully perused both the favourable and unfavourable extracts, will give us credit for having steered a middle course, without either running ourselves aground on the shoals of detraction, or oversetting the ship by carrying too much sail in favour of our authoress. And although they may have seen that our hand was sometimes unsteady at the helm, we trust that it has always been when we felt apprehensive that the current of criticism ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... "schools" and accepted truths belonging to those prohibited. Every one knows how such daring and destructive innovations are regarded by the medical profession generally. Dr. PIERCE was no exception to the rule. But he paid no attention to detraction, pursuing his own way with that energy which proves now to be a most excellent ally of his ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the book, not only that the greatness of his achievement and its enduring influence upon the progress of knowledge have won him a place beside our Harvey; but, still more, that, like Harvey, he has lived long enough to outlast detraction and opposition, and to see the stone that the builders rejected become the head-stone of ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... marriages from mercenary motives produce unhappiness, that different men are virtuous in different degrees, that advice is generally ineffectual, that adversity has its uses, that fame is liable to suffer from detraction;—these and a host of other such maxims are of the kind upon which no genius and no depth of feeling can confer a momentary interest. Here and there, indeed, the pompous utterance invests them with an unlucky air of absurdity. 'Let no man ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... after Tennyson's birth he was saluted a great poet by that unanimous acclamation which includes mere clamour. Fifty further years, and his centenary was marked by a new detraction. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish the obscure but not unmajestic law of change from the sorry custom of reaction. Change hastes not and rests not, reaction beats to and fro, flickering about the moving mind of the world. ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... character, if public opinion had been different? But it is in truth of base extraction, and ungenerous qualities, springing from selfishness and vanity, and low ambition; by these it subsists, and thrives, and acts; and envy, and jealousy, and detraction, and hatred, and variance, are its too faithful and natural associates. It is, to say the best of it, a root which bears fruits of a poisonous as well as of a beneficial quality. If it sometimes stimulates to great and generous ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... fresh and elastic at an age when most women's activities are growing either slack or febrile. He knew what was said about her; for, popular as she was, there had always been a faint undercurrent of detraction. When she had appeared in New York, nine or ten years earlier, as the pretty Mrs. Haskett whom Gus Varick had unearthed somewhere—was it in Pittsburgh or Utica?—society, while promptly accepting her, had reserved the right to cast a doubt on its own discrimination. ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... party-spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints naturally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In a word, it fills a nation with spleen and rancour, and extinguishes all the seeds of good-nature, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... soldiers are a helpin' him onward, they are a cuttin' down the trees so's he can get through 'em and dash at the enemy. You see as you look on him that he will get through it all. No envy, nor detraction, nor jealousy, no such low underbrush full of crawlin' reptiles, nor no high solid trees, no danger of any sort can keep him back. His big brave, generous heart is sot on helpin' ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... Sir Artegall is beset by the hags Envy and Detraction, who are so angry with him for freeing Irena that they not only attack him themselves, but turn loose upon him the Blatant Beast (Slander). Although Talus begs to annihilate this infamous trio with his dreaded flail, Artegall decrees they shall ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... 1791 and 1797 Mary Wollstonecraft was to write one of the books which belong to the spiritual foundations of the next century, to taste fame and detraction, to know the joys of love and maternity, and to experience a misery and wrong which made life itself an unendurable shame. A later chapter will attempt an estimate of the ideas and personality of this brilliant and courageous woman. A few sentences must suffice here to recall the bare facts of ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... enough, that truth possesses some inherent vitality and power that give it an assured prevalence over falsehood; that a good name cannot be permanently defiled and irreparably ruined by detraction, but, like a star, shines all the brighter for the shadow through which it is seen; that justice cannot be stayed by injustice; that vice is powerless against virtue. I could quote from their great writers hundreds of utterances affirmative of these propositions. One of their poets, for ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... busy, in these promiscuous and multitudinous residences there are so many who have nothing to do, and that always makes mischief. They gather in each other's rooms and spend hours in consultation about others. If they had to walk a half mile before they got to the willing ear of some listener to detraction they would get out of breath before reaching there, and not feel in full glow of animosity or slander, or might, because of the distance, not go at all. But rooms 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 are on the same corridor, and ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... Carthage is so illustrious a city that it were an honour to her that a philosopher should beg to be thus rewarded, but I wished the boon you have bestowed on me to have its full value with no taint of detraction, to suffer no loss of grace by any petition on my part, in a word to be wholly disinterested. For he that begs pays so heavily, and so large is the price that he to whom the petition is addressed receives, that, where the necessaries of life are concerned, one had rather ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... was offered him in his own university, and he owed such preferment as he had (it was never very great) to a chance opportunity of preaching at St. Paul's and a recommendation to Laud. That prelate—to whom all the infinite malignity of political and sectarian detraction has not been able to deny the title of an encourager, as few men have encouraged them, of learning and piety—took Taylor under his protection, made him his chaplain, and procured him incorporation at Oxford, a fellowship at All Souls, and finally the rectory ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... you stand forth? This detraction through years For my people has made me an oaf, Hides my poetry's fount in the fog of its fleers, So it merely a pool of self-worship appears; Like a clumsy troll I Am contemned with affront, Whom all "cultured" folk fly, Or yet gather to hunt, ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... contented gardener—to prune, to strengthen, to engraft, and one by one to remove from its leaves and fresh shoots the slug and 355 the caterpillar. But far be it from us to undervalue with light and senseless detraction the conscientious hardihood of our predecessors, or even to condemn in them that vehemence, to which the blessings it won for us leave us now neither temptation nor pretext. We antedate the feelings, in order ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and the tone of the city as a whole has been changing for the worse. The once magnificent upper estuary, as we have seen, is afflicted with complex and ugly pollution that shuts it off from the pleasant use it might otherwise sustain, and makes it a detraction from the Federal splendor along its northern shore rather than the enhancement it used to be. In places like the Alexandria and Georgetown waterfronts, industrial dilapidation on the shorelines more appropriately matches that pollution in mood, and on the Virginia ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... individual producer. Moreover, along with each individual producer, are a number of others, whose productive powers and actual yield also are unknown to him. Each strives, with all the means at his command—cheap prices, advertisements, long credit, drummers, also secret and crafty detraction of the quality of the goods of his competitor, the last of which is a measure that flourishes particularly at critical moments—to drive all other competitors from the field. Production is wholly left to accident and to the judgment of individuals. Accident often is ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... Mr. Gladstone was, first and foremost, a great Christian man. Yes; and there was the secret, as I have already said, not of his merely political eminence, but of the universal reverence which a nation expresses to-day. All detraction is silenced, and all calumnies have dropped away, as filth from the white wings of a swan as it soars, and with one voice the Empire and the world confess that he was a great and a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... sacred, inner temple Of each soul's unseen communion, We should gather, we should garner, Many lessons full of profit, Lessons long and full of wisdom. We should see the struggling victim In the toils of the ensnarer; See the troubled spirit writhing 'Neath the lashings of detraction; See the burdened nature groaning 'Mid the polished shafts of envy; See the sinner's cunning malice, In the act of human torture; See the Christian's anxious fightings, Foes without, and fears within him. All ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... peerless pair danced a gauntlet. On each side admiration and detraction buzzed all ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... deprive me of those enjoyments, social and domestic, which my time of life required, and to which my circumstances entitled me; and a vigorous execution of the duties must inevitably expose me to the resentment of disappointed and designing men, and to the calumny and detraction of the envious and malicious. I was therefore determined not to engage in so arduous an undertaking. But the solicitations of my friends, acquaintance, and fellow citizens, a full conviction of the necessity, that some person should commence the work of reformation ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... statue, "may regard me with envy; but I despise the world, particularly the critics who have dared to laugh at me. (Groans.) The object of my ambition is attained—I am now the equal and representative of Shakspere—detraction cannot wither the laurels that shadow my brows—Finis coronat opus!—I have done. To-morrow I retire into private life; but though fortune has made me great, she has not made me proud, and I shall be always happy to shake hands with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... I have no pleasure in their conversation. I have myself no gratification in uttering detraction, and therefore ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... mysteries of love. Besides walking in truth, he takes notice, that to be raised with Christ in glory, we must also do his will, keep all his commandments, and love whatever he loved; refraining from all fraud, avarice, detraction, and rash judgment; repaying evil with good, forgiving and showing mercy to others that we ourselves may find mercy. "These things," says he, "I write to you on justice, because you incited me; for neither I, nor any other like me, can attain to the wisdom of the blessed and glorious ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... disgrace to be insane, and the feeling of chagrin at discovering disease of the brain in a relative is another absurdity. Avoidance of insanity should be studied with as much devotion as avoidance of tuberculosis. Yet there should be no detraction from the fact that the heredity is strong. No one should be allowed to marry who has been insane, for the offspring of the ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... that is to say, by detraction which frightens virtue. Envy must be represented with the hands raised to heaven in contempt, because if she could she would use her power against God. Make her face covered with a goodly mark; show her as wounded in the eye by a palm-branch, and wounded in the ear by laurel ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... appeared as well in books as in more ephemeral publications, and upon both sides, and even between writers on the same side. On every hand there has been a most deplorable impeachment of motive, accompanied by a detraction of character by imputation which is quite shocking. Petty personal slights have been insinuated as the ultimate cause of an expression of opinion upon an important literary question, and testimony has been impeached and judgment disparaged by covert allegations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... she, to detraction's desperation, And wedded unto one she had loved well— A man known in the councils of the nation, Cool, and quite English, imperturbable, Though apt to act with fire upon occasion, Proud of himself and her: the world could ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... her a sore heart and all the patient self-denial of her sex. To be welcome to Griffith she had to speak to him of her rival, and to speak well of her. She tried talking of herself and her attachment; he yawned in her face: she tried smooth detraction and innuendo; he fired up directly, and defended her of whose conduct he had been complaining the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... theology, a thing they value far above Christ—and at the same time to crush me, whom they consider as having some influence on the revival of studies. The whole affair was conducted with such clamourings, wild talk, trickery, detraction and cunning that, had I not been present and witnessed, nay, felt all this, I should never have taken any man's word for it that theologians could act so madly. You would have thought it some mortal plague. And yet the poison of this evil beginning with a few has spread ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... and Frontenac himself had often just reason to retort them. He wrote to Ponchartrain: "If you will not be so good as to look closely into the true state of things here, I shall always be exposed to detraction, and forced to make new apologies, which is very hard for a person so full of zeal and uprightness as I am. My secretary, who is going to France, will tell you all the ugly intrigues used to defeat my plans for the service of the king, and the growth of the colony. I have ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... character we have been taught to admire and venerate; they may even point out spots, which we can not disprove, in that sun of glorious brightness which shed its beneficent rays over a century of darkness—but this we know, that whatever may be the force of detraction, his fame has been steadily increasing, even on the admission of his slanderers, for three centuries, and that he now shines as a fixed star in the constellation of the great lights of modern times, not only because he succeeded in crossing the ocean when once ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... should be necessary, by allotting a separate dissertation to each, for I have leisure enough to do so, whatever time it may take up. But the principle of every uneasiness is the same, though they may appear under different names. For envy is an uneasiness; so are emulation, detraction, anguish, sorrow, sadness, tribulation, lamentation, vexation, grief, trouble, affliction, and despair. The Stoics define all these different feelings, and all those words which I have mentioned belong to different things, and do not, as they seem, express the same ideas; but they are to a certain ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... their object, amid obloquy, neglect, and suffering, to the final triumph; of which final triumph other men reaped the substantial reward, leaving to the discoverer the barren glory of his achievement,—and that glory obscured by detraction. Columbus is the representative man of that illustrious order. We trust to be able to show that Charles Goodyear is entitled to a place in it. Whether we consider the prodigious and unforeseen importance of his discovery, or his scarcely paralleled devotion to his object, in the face ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... to entertain a conversation for two hours, without approaching the confines of evil speaking. In my own case, for instance, brute as I am, I see that with every fourth phrase I utter, words full of malice and detraction come to my tongue like flies to wine. I therefore say again that doing and speaking evil are things we inherit from our first parents, and suck in with our mother's milk. This is manifest in the fact, that hardly is a boy out of swaddling clothes before he lifts ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands, no use of wine, corn, or metal. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and passion, were never heard of amongst them. How dissonant would he find his imaginary ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Marlborough's character[15] hath been so variously drawn, and is indeed of so mixed a nature in itself, that it is hard to pronounce on either side, without the suspicion of flattery or detraction. I shall say nothing of his military accomplishments, which the opposite reports, of his friends and enemies among the soldiers, have rendered[26] problematical: but if he be among those who delight in war, it is agreed to be not for the reasons common with other generals. Those maligners who ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... view. True enough; what confidence was there to be placed in Laxton's words? And if Mason had circumvented him; as was alleged, of course there was a very good reason for detraction. ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... calumny and detraction; that I may abhor deceit, and avoid lying, envy and fraud, flattery, hatred, malice and ingratitude. Help ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... establishing her cause on the solid rock of principles! How often have they clung to some plausible chimera which seemed to serve their cause, and nursed an artificial ignorance where they feared the discoveries of an impertinent curiosity! As ingenious in detraction as in silence and dissimulation, have they not too often answered imputations which they could not disprove with accusations which they could not prove, till the slanders they had invented rivalled in number and intensity the slanders which had been invented against them? For such men principles ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... me soon.' And the king gave him the only horse he had. And seizing the yoke of the car himself, the king began to draw it. And as he did so, he said, 'There is now nothing for the Brahmanas.' The king had given away, it is true, but he had done so with detraction. And for that speech of his, he shall have to fall down from heaven. And after the Rishi had said so, of the two that remained, one asked, 'Who amongst us two shall fall down?' And the Rishi answered, 'Vasumanas.' ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of detraction and slander. Proofs. Shakspeare. Burns the poet. Self-knowledge, how much to be desired. Reference to the work of Mrs. Opie—to our ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... depend for their comfort upon the admiration of others are subject to frequent disappointment. Somebody will criticise their appearance, or surpass them in brilliancy, or will receive more attention. Oh! the jealousy, and detraction, and heart-burnings of those who move in this ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... the Southern States. He came among them, an invalid, advised by his physician to resort to this clime for the restoration of his health; as an American citizen, he had not expected that his right to come here would be questioned; as a stranger, or if not entirely so, known mainly by the detraction which the ardent advocacy of the rights of the South had brought upon him, he had supposed that neither his coming nor his going would attract attention. But his anticipations had proved erroneous. The polite, the manly, elevated men, lifted ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... land, with the snows of more than seventy winters lying lightly and gracefully upon his head. There stood Wilson, never more fitly in his place than here; for of the many who have interposed to shield the memory of Burns from detraction, he had spoken with the most generous spirit and collected purpose, and came now to rejoice in the common triumph. There, too, were Alison, the sound and strong historian; Chambers, whose delicate generosity to the relatives of Burns, independently of the services he has rendered to our national ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... honour? a word. What is in that word honour; what is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no. 'T is insensible, then? yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I 'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon. And so ends ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... always was the man on the job. It was his name that appeared in the newspapers, it was his name that headed the list of the junior officers mentioned for distinguished conduct. Standish had followed his career with an admiration and a joy that was without taint of envy or detraction. He gloried in Aintree, he delighted to know the army held such a man. He was grateful to Aintree for upholding the traditions of a profession to which he himself gave all the devotion of a fanatic. He made a god of him. This was the attitude of mind ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... almost the whole world, and assailed by almost every tongue, and pen, and press, you have fearlessly and manfully stood by me, with unsurpassed zeal and undiminished friendship. When I felt as if I should sink beneath the storm of abuse and detraction, which was violently raging around me, I have found myself upheld and sustained by your encouraging voices and approving smiles. I have doubtless, committed many faults and indiscretions, over which ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... differ from high authority, I have not a thought of detraction. None can venerate the NESTORS in science who have enriched its annals, more than I, and though we reverse their judgments, their errors are confessedly our indispensable ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... one-sided, and fixes on faults, which it magnifies, passing by virtues. Carrion flies that buzz with a sickening hum of satisfaction over sores, and prefer corruption to soundness, are as good judges of meat as such critics are of character. That Mephistophelean spirit of detraction has wide scope in this day. Literature and politics, as well as social life with its rivalries, are infested by it, and it finds its way into the church and threatens us all. The race of fault-finders we have always with us, blind as moles to beauties and goodness, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... exposed to the tooth of detraction; vilifed; hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... it did not fail. Revolutions have a habit of succeeding, when the time comes for them. The revolutionary forefathers were opposed to the form of government in their day. They were denounced, they were condemned. But they had the moral courage to stand erect and defy all the storms of detraction; and that is why they are in history, and that is why the great respectable majority of their day sleep in forgotten graves. The world does not know ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... arms: Sylvius, nostrae aetatis medicorum decus, as Vesalius calls him, wrote furious letters, and later spoke of him as a madman (vaesanus). The younger men were with him and he had many friends, but he had aroused a roaring tide of detraction against which he protested a few years later in his work on the "China-root," which is full of details about the "Fabrica." In a fit of temper he threw his notes on Galen and other MSS. in the fire. No sadder page exists in medical writings than the one in which Vesalius tells of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... say that you had purified her of ALL stains of her past—but there may be one that remains. And THAT in most people's eyes would be no detraction. You look puzzled, Miss Nott—but I am coming to the explanation and the end of my story. A ship of war was sent to the island to punish the mutineers and pirates, for such they were, but they could not be found. ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... accomplishments—and graces are so to be envied as those that circumstances rudely hindered the development of. All of which shows what a charitable and good-tempered world it is, notwithstanding its reputation for cynicism and detraction. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... let us put on concord, being humble, temperate; free from all whispering and detraction; and justified by our ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... followed, and before the end of the autumn Richard entertained some dozen of the rank and file, all together, paying their railway fares and housing them from Saturday to Monday. These men, be it noted in passing, distinguished themselves from that day onwards by unsparing detraction whenever the name of Mutimer came up in private talk, though, of course, they were the loudest in applause when platform reference to their leader demanded it. Besides the expressly invited, there was naturally no lack of visitors ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... Through camps and cities, &c. In highly figurative language, this stanza pictures the passage of Urania from 'her secret paradise' to the death-chamber of Adonais in Rome, as if the spiritual essence and external form of the goddess were wounded by the uncongenial atmosphere of human malice and detraction through which she has to pass. The whole description is spiritualized from ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... poverty; no contracts, no succession, no dividences; no occupation, but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands; no use of wine, corn, or metal. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and pardon were ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... help remarking, that young women do not always carefully distinguish between running into the error of detraction, and its opposite extreme of indiscriminate applause. This proceeds from the false idea they entertain, that the direct contrary to what is wrong must be right. Thus the dread of being only suspected of one fault makes them actually ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... themselves Stewards to the Poor, and that in a future State they are accountable for every Doit lavish'd in Equipage or superfluous Dishes. Their Tables are not nicely, but plentifully served, and always open to the honest Needy. At Court, as I have learn'd, there is neither Envy nor Detraction, no one undermines another, nor intercepts the Prince's Bounty or Favour by slandrous Reports; and neither Interest, Riches, nor Quality, but Merit only recommends the Candidate to a Post: A Bribe was never heard of there; which, together with the exact Justice practised, is the Reason ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... least so in its general spirit. The stories which are told about distinguished people generally run in a channel coincident with the facts of their character. On the other hand, with regard to evil reports, it is safe always to allow something for the natural propensity to detraction and slander, which is one of the most undoubted facts of human ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... My favourite author, Morhof, has spoken 'comme un brave homme' upon the difficulty of literary enterprizes, and the facility and venom of detraction: I support his assertion 'totis viribus'; and to beg to speak in the same person with himself. 'Non ignotum mihi est, quantae molis opus humeris meis incumbat. Oceanum enim ingressus sum, in quo portum invenire difficile est, naufragii periculum a syrtibus ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of pride that they cannot endure that any but themselves should be set forth for excellent; so that when they hear one justly praised they will either seek to dismount his virtues, or, if they be like a clear light, they will stab him with a but of detraction; as if there were something yet so foul as did obnubilate even his brightest glory. When their tongue cannot justly condemn him, they will leave him suspected ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Repartees, and Bon-Mots, With too many secrets that all the world knows: Old Anecdotes came on the tapis, new drest, And season'd with Satire, to give them a zest. But the COUNTESS was shock'd! and declar'd with much feeling, [p 17] "She hated the faults of her neighbour revealing. Detraction, of late, had been full of employment, And truly, some folks knew no other enjoyment. 'Twas said, tho' for her part, she thought it quite cruel, That Monsieur LE COQ had been kill'd in a duel. The Hedge-SPARROW publicly swore ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... clerk / writeth in this wise Rebukynge the vice / of vyle detraccion [Sidenote: rebukes the vice of detraction,] What man it be / that of custom & guyse 164 Hurteth with tunge / or by foule colusi[o]n Thabsente / weyue ye for that abusio[n] Suche a detractour / from the table [Sidenote: and bids you turn all backbiters ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... not easily come by. Both in the comprehensiveness of their charges and in the slashing hatred which informs them (however feeble the verse), One Epistle and The Blatant Beast offer as fair a sample as any two such pamphlets can of the calumny, detraction, and critical misunderstanding Pope endured, for the most part patiently, from the publication of his Essay on Criticism to the year of his death. "Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past," (Epistle to Arbuthnot, l. 358) he exclaimed in his ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... bloody countenance. The mossy walls, often scraped, the mossified pavement, the greenish tombs of marble under the maples and firs, showed the effect of shade, solitude, and humidity upon all things of brick in this climate, where wood was already rising into favor as building material, but to the detraction of picturesqueness and all the appearance ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... friends, companions, e'en from youth: A thousand times he's served me, and I joy That he can walk the streets without annoy: Yet 'tis a puzzle, I confess, to me How from that same affair he got off free." Here is the poison-bag of malice, here The gall of fell detraction, pure and sheer: And these, I'swear, if man such pledge may give, My pen and heart shall ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... others, enmity, and hostility against those who do not favor them, envy, hatred, and revenge, and from these fierceness and cruelty; and in respect to the Divine they are denial and consequent contempt, derision, and detraction of the holy things of the church; and after death, when man becomes a spirit, these evils are changed to anger and hatred against these holy things (see above, n. 562). And as these evils breathe forth continually the ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... inside of one of his legs without injury to the other was because the fighter was blessed with a pair of bow-legs that couldn't have stopped the proverbial pig in the proverbial alley. In addition to this decided detraction from his manly beauty, he was short, squatty, thick-necked, a nose of the variety commonly known as a stub, and a couple of little eyes that had a constant twinkle, half-shrewd and half-humorous, ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... as good authorities, in my estimation, as Mr. Dilke or the editor of the Spectator, and I would not under any circumstances, or for any opprobrium, regard with shame what my friends had approved—none but a coward would let the detraction of an enemy outweigh the encouragement of a friend. You must not, therefore, fulfil your threat of being less communicative in future; you ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... of and whose couches are Spintries; whose thrift is usurie, meales gluttonie, exercise cousenage, whose valour bragardrie, Astolpheidas, or Rodomontadas, or if it come to action, crueltie; whose communication is Atheisme, contention, detraction, or Paillardise, most of lewdness, seld of vertue, never of charitie; whose spare-time is vanitie or villanie: yet will I not deale by them, as they doe by others. I like not reproofe where it pertaines not ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... This solution would be less ideal than the other, but Greece would be wise to reconcile herself to it, as Italy has reconciled herself to the incorporation of Corsica in France; for by submitting frankly to this detraction from her national unity she would give her brethren in the Sporades the best opportunity of developing their national individuality untrammelled under a friendly ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... which, in the British Isles, has been lavished upon his scientific importance is being followed abroad by what may be an unnecessary amount of detraction. This is always the worst of setting up a man on too high a pinnacle; some one has to undertake the ungrateful task of pulling him down again. Justus von Liebig addressed himself to this task with some vigour in his Reden und Abhandlung ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... him who must see many years, I praise the life which slips away Out of the light and mutely; which avoids Fame, and her less fair followers, envy, strife, Stupid detraction, jealousy, cabal, Insincere praises; which descends The quiet ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... that our ancestors transmitted orally, in lines composed by the bards, the memorable sayings and deeds which they wished to hand down to generations after them. How far they were worthy of credit, and how far they were subject to the vices of flattery or detraction we cannot tell, but we may be sure that those who were accounted great in these ancient times were anxious to have their doughty deeds immortalised, and perhaps were as sensitive to the tone of public criticism thus represented as is the statesman or warrior of to-day. What would ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... enjoy ourselves, and eat heartily. Now let us be Epicures. We have nothing to do with Superciliousness. Farewell Care, let all Ill-will and Detraction be banished. Let us be ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... in their Absence, the Words in which you described the one must give you an Idea of the other. They were hardly distinguishable, you would think, when they were apart, tho' extremely different when together. What made their Enmity the more entertaining to all the rest of their Sex was, that in Detraction from each other neither could fall upon Terms which did not hit herself as much as her Adversary. Their Nights grew restless with Meditation of new Dresses to outvie each other, and inventing new Devices to recal Admirers, who observed the Charms of the one ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and exalted by imagination;" this is very ambitious, but not very intelligible. He speaks of Wilkie attracting the attention of admirers and detractors. It is very absurd to consider criticism that is not always favourable, detraction. The following passage is well put. "We constantly hear the ignorant advising a student to study the great book of nature, without being biassed by what has been done by other painters; it is as absurd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... hopeless. If I presume to speak of foibles to-day, you will understand that I do so because, lightly though I may talk to you at times, I have a real sense of the responsibilities of this Chair. I worship great learning, which they had: I loathe flippant detraction of what is great; I have usually a heart for men-against-odds and the unpopular cause. But these very valiant fighters had, one and all, some very obvious foibles: and because, in the hour of success, these foibles came to infect the whole teaching of English in ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Detraction, twin-sister of Envy, was all the while pointing out defects in friends and neighbors. He saw their faults and hard peculiarities; but rarely their good qualities. Then Doubt and Distrust crept in through the unguarded door, and soon after their entrance Markland ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... not especially addictated to this kind, of locomotive prayer, collect together in various knots through the chapel, and amuse themselves by auditing or narrating anecdotes, discussing policy, or detraction; and in case it be summer, and the day of a fine texture, they scatter themselves into little crowds on the chapel-green, or lie at their length upon the grass in listless groups, giving way to ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... poetic temperament, and, in fact, exhausting all that poetic vein which, properly applied, might have produced epics; these and many more traits set forth in his biography bring forth his character in its true light, dispel those clouds which malice and detraction may at times have cast over it, and leave it in the full ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... his usual Wednesday lecture at the neighbouring "college for young ladies;" where, blooming misses—in addition to their curriculum of "accomplishments" and "all the 'ologies"—were taught the noble art of family multiplication, domestic division, male detraction, feminine sedition, and, ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of blood "Has Ajax shed since first our host he join'd: "In all these years, his body still remains "Unwounded. Yet on this why should I dwell, "If he must boast, that for the Argive fleet "He fought alone 'gainst Jupiter and Troy? "He fought, I grant it; no malignant spite "Shall move detraction from his valiant deeds. "But let him not the common rites of more "Monopolize; let him to each allow "The honor which they claim. Patroclus, fear'd "In great Pelides' semblance, backward drove "All Troy and Troy's protector from the ships, "Then ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... which her soul possess, Are but the ground of unmade happiness; The rude material: wisdom add to this, Wisdom, the sole artificer of bliss; She from herself, if so compell'd by need, Of thin content can draw the subtle thread; But (no detraction to her sacred skill) If she can work in gold, 'tis better still. If Tullia had been blest with half her sense, None could too much admire her excellence: But since she can make error shine so bright, She thinks it vulgar to defend the right. With understanding she is quite o'errun; And by too great ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... I send, With this let your collection end. Thus I consign you down to fame A character to praise or blame: And if the whole may pass for true, Contented rest, you have your due. Give future time the satisfaction, To leave one handle for detraction. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... hitherto undescribed and unexpressed, in scenery, manners, morals, that all may be wells from which he may be the first to drink. Yet it cannot be expected—for it has passed to a proverb that escape from persecution and detraction can never and nowhere be the lot of literature—that there will not be many instances, even in America, where every attempt on the part of gifted writers (and young writers especially, who are commonly regarded with eyes of invidious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... seems strange that a pleasing degree of three or four fingers of respectful familiarity should fill a man up and give him the panegyrics so bad. For he has them, the worst way—any one can see that. A man who is perfectly at himself does not throw cold detraction at people's architectural productions and picturesque surroundings, and let on that what he prefers is a Dubbonese dust-storm and a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity, No, these are old, old symptoms; and when they appear ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the waistcoat, it fitted him very ill, being infinitely too big for him; and the cap was so heavy that it made his head ache. Thus these cloathes, which perhaps (as they presented the idea of their misery more sensibly to the people's eyes) brought him more envy, hatred, and detraction, than all his deeper impositions and more real advantages, afforded very little use or honour to the wearer; nay, could scarce serve to amuse his own vanity when this was cool enough to reflect with the least seriousness. And, should I speak in ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... of his nature are conspicuous in almost every incident of his career. He fought for a principle as desperately as other men fight for life. The storm of detraction through which he went never once shook the almost haughty independence of his conduct, or swerved him in the slightest from the course he had chosen. The only thing to which he unquestioningly submitted was the truth. His loyalty ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... him to succeed as a statesman, but he displayed the same fortitude under apparent disaster and courage at unexpected crises when he found himself again passing "the wilderness," darkened, not with the smoke of battle, but with detraction and denunciation. Again, in the old spirit he exclaimed, "I will fight it out on this line if ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Dervise, with his venerable Beard, and pointed Bonnet: You are discreet, and yet not mistrustful; you are easy, but not weak; you are beneficent with Discretion; you love your Friends, and create yourself no Enemies. Your most sprightly Flights borrow no Graces from Detraction; you never speak a misbecoming Word, nor do an ill-natur'd Action, tho' 'tis always in your Power. In a Word, your Soul is as spotless as your Person. You have, moreover, a little Fund of Philosophy, which gives me just Grounds to hope that you'll relish ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... as when she approached him with the wine, and her voice as she tendered him the cup; and he acknowledged to himself again all the sympathy she manifested for him, and manifested so plainly that words were unnecessary, and so sweetly that words would have been but a detraction. The vision was exceeding pleasant, but upon his turning to Malluch, it ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... detraction, however, from the excellence of the Avignonese climate. This is the wind denominated the Vent de Bize. The peculiar situation of Avignon, at the mouth of a long avenue of mountains, gives rise to this wind: it collects in the narrow ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... through so much abuse, and none, I am confident, ever bore up against its virulence with more nobleness of spirit, with a steady perseverance in the pursuit of the sublimest of human professions. He has travelled on heedless of the sneers, the ridicule, or the detraction of his enemies, and he has arrived at that point where the lustre of his works will not fail to illuminate the dark regions of barbarism and distaste long after their bright author has ceased ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... else contrarious were these two: The one a man upon whose laureled brow Gray hairs were growing! glory ever new Shall circle him in after years as now; For spent detraction may not disavow The world of knowledge with the wit combined, The elastic force no burden e'er could bow, The various talents and the single mind, Which give him moral power and mastery ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... long as fifty eyes await the turn Of yours to forestall its yet half-formed wish, I'll proffer my assistance you'll not need— When every tongue is praising you, I'll join The praisers' chorus—when you're hemmed about With lives between you and detraction—lives To be laid down if a rude voice, rash eye, Rough hand should violate the sacred ring Their worship throws about you,—then indeed, Who'll stand up for you stout as I?" If so We said, and so we did,—not Mildred there Would be unworthy to behold us both, But we should be unworthy, ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... political canvass. It was a charge of which there was not only no proof or probability, but which was in itself wholly impossible to be true. No man of common information ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it was of that class of falsehoods which, by continued repetition, through all the organs of detraction and abuse, are capable of misleading those who are already far misled, and of further fanning passion already kindling into flame. Doubtless it served in its day, and in greater or less degree, the end designed by it. ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... to my madrigal! Far from all sounds of all the strife, That murmur through the walks of life; From grief, inquietude, and fears, From scenes of riot, or of tears; From passions, cankering day by day, That wear the inmost heart away; From pale Detraction's envious spite, That worries where it fears to bite; From mad Ambition's worldly chase, Come, and in this shady place, Be thine Contentment's humble joys, And a life that makes no noise, Save when fancy, musing long, Turns to ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... the passers by the enemy at the gate; it is also a debt which his honour and a respectful regard for the good opinion of his fellows compel the author to repay. The man who is feeble enough silently to suffer detraction and calumny at the hands of some sciolist or Halb-bildung sheltering his miserable individuality under the shadow (may it never be less!) of " King We," simply sins against himself as the Arabs say and offends good manners by holding out a premium to wanton aggression and injurious doing. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... them of great importance. If he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more, if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest public services, can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger, arising from the insolent outrage ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... very fierce contest before the people, characterized by lavish detraction and personal abuse—one of the most bitter, prolonged, and memorable in the history of the State —and the question of making Illinois permanently a Slave State was put to rest by a majority of about two thousand ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... papers commented according to their party bias, but so far as the candidate was concerned there was lack of the material of criticism. If he had achieved little for praise he had achieved nothing for detraction. There was no inconsistent public utterance, no doubtful transaction, no scandalous paper to bring forward to his detriment. When the fact that he was but twenty-eight years of age had been exhausted in elaborate ridicule, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... cue and entered upon a vein of flattery, she would have been extremely voluble—for villages can vie with cities in adulation as well as in detraction—but she was interrupted by ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... no advantage gained to the argument by supposing two Beings, rather than one Being of a mixed nature. The facts lead to this supposition just as naturally as to the hypothesis of two principles. The existence of the evil Being is as much a detraction from the power of the good one, as if we only at once suppose the latter to be of limited power, and that he prefers making and supporting creatures who suffer much less than they enjoy, to making no creatures at all. The supposition that he made them as happy as ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... generosity, or a love of justice, might induce to lay open their purses to his assistance in ascertaining his right, have, by themselves and their numerous emissaries, employed all the arts of calumny, slander, and detraction against him, by traducing his cause, vilifying his person, and most basely and cruelly tearing his character to pieces, by a thousand misrepresentations, purposely invented and industriously propagated in all places of resort, which ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... candidate, Garfield steadily grew in popular favor. He was met with a storm of detraction at the very hour of his nomination, and it continued with increasing volume and momentum until the close ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... passion is that! How it hunts down him it hates, and how surely it shuts the door of salvation against him who harbours it! Forgive us our debts, the resentful man says in his prayer, as we forgive our debtors. And detraction,—how some men's ink-horns are filled with detraction for ink, and how it drops from their tongue like poison! At their every word a reputation dies. Life and all its opportunities of doing good and having good done to us is laid like a bag of treasure ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... the wind, drank from the Ganges' stream, controlled himself with bitter fasts—but all! far short of moral rectitude. For though a man inure himself to live as any brute, he is not on that account a vessel of the righteous law; whilst he who breaks the laws of right behavior invites detraction, and is one no virtuous man can love; his heart is ever filled with boding fear, his evil name pursues him as a shadow. Having neither profit nor advantage in this world, how can he in the next world reap content? Therefore the wise man ought to practise pure behavior; passing through ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... and eccentric perhaps, has a good sprinkling of learning and humour in his conversation and anecdote, from having lived so long amongst the eminent men of his day, such as Johnson, Foote, Garrick, and such like. But his conversation is sadly disgusting, from his tone of irony and detraction conveyed in a cunning sort of way and directed constantly against the Edinburgh Review, Walter Scott (who is a 'poor ignorant boy, and no poet,' and never wrote a five-feet line in his life), ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... Laura's morbid self-communing was renewed. At night the day's contribution of detraction, innuendo and malicious conjecture would be canvassed in her mind, and then she would drift into a course of thinking. As her thoughts ran on, the indignant tears would spring to her eyes, and she would ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... her song of man's nature and life as it is, on her lips—will you have of her, only the minister to your physical luxuries and baser wants? Be it so: but in the name of that truth which is able to survive ages of misunderstanding and detraction, in the name of that honor which is armed with arts of self-delivery and tradition, that will enable it to live again, 'though all the earth o'erwhelm it to men's eyes,' while this Book of the Advancemement of Learning stands, do not charge on ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... labour more than others to enable me to retain it. You must not be guided by the opinions and judgments of the present generation only, but of those to come also: and yet the latter will be a more candid judgment, for it will not be influenced by detraction and malice. Finally, you should think of this—that you are not seeking glory for yourself alone (and even if that were the case, you still ought not to be careless of it, especially as you had determined to consecrate the memory of your name by the most splendid monuments), but you have to share ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... had served in the campaign about Philadelphia but had been blocked in his extravagant demands for promotion; so he turned for redress to Gates, the star in the north. A malignant campaign followed in detraction of Washington. He had, it was said, worn out his men by useless marches; with an army three times as numerous as that of Howe, he had gained no victory; there was high fighting quality in the American army if properly led, but Washington ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... it seems that its daughters are unfittingly assigned by Gregory (Moral. xxxi, 45), who says that from envy arise "hatred, tale-bearing, detraction, joy at our neighbor's misfortunes, and grief for his prosperity." For joy at our neighbor's misfortunes and grief for his prosperity seem to be the same as envy, as appears from what has been said above (A. 3). Therefore these should not be assigned ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... has not the gypsy-brightness and vagrant charm of Dekker's, her wild soft glances and flashing smiles and fading traces of tears; she is no giddy girl, but a strong woman with fine irregular features, large and luminous eyes, broad intelligent forehead, eyebrows so thick and close together that detraction might call her beetle-browed, powerful mouth and chin, fine contralto voice (with an occasional stammer), expression alternately repellent and attractive, but always striking and sincere. No one has ever found her lovely; but there are times when she has a fascination of her own ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... name. The particular tribute, which in the pages that follow it is desired to pay to him, consists in the careful examination of just those actions and just those qualities of his upon which candid detraction has in fact fastened, or on which candid admiration has pronounced ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... American. Both smelled powder as the aides-de-camp of their chiefs; both rose rapidly from grade to grade, and from rank to rank, until they stood at the top; both labored at the end under the burden of criticism and detraction; and both met their death through a mistake, and fell like ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... a variety of circumstances, and especially from the change in your honour's conduct towards me, that some person, as well inclined to detract, but better skilled in the art of detraction than the author of the above stupid scandal, has made free with my character. For I can not suppose, that malice so absurd, so barefaced, so diametrically opposite to truth, to common policy, and, in short, to everything but villany, as the above ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... "The election has placed our President beyond the pale of human envy or human harm, as he is above the pale of human ambition. Henceforth all men will come to see him as we have seen him—a true, loyal, patient, patriotic, and benevolent man. Having no longer any motive to malign or injure him, detraction will cease, and Abraham Lincoln will take his place with Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and Adams and Jackson—among the benefactors of the country ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... perhaps, be some satisfaction to show the young writer, that the most celebrated ancients have been as rudely subjected to the tyranny of criticism as the moderns. Detraction has ever poured the "waters ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of some newspapers, but not of mine,' I answered. 'But I will do this: I will print your article separately, and furnish you with as many copies as you want, and you can distribute them where you please, but I will not lumber my columns with detraction, and insult patrons to whom I am pledged to furnish a good paper for their families.' The party did not accept my proposition, ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... miserable associations cluster around this instrument of popular power. I know that the arena in which it stands is trodden into mire by the feet of reckless ambition and selfish greed. The wire-pulling and the bribing, the pitiful truckling and the grotesque compromises, the exaggeration and the detraction, the melo-dramatic issues and the sham patriotism, the party watch-words and the party nick-names, the schemes of the few paraded as the will of the many, the elevation of men whose only worth is in the votes they command—vile men, whose hands you would not grasp ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... "But say, does it not strike you as most extraordinary that artists, the very men, that is to say, who beyond all others devote themselves to ideal aims and efforts, are particularly ready to yield to the basest impulses; envy, detraction, and—" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with far more licentiousness than has ever yet been traced to Pope? Pope lived in the public eye from his youth upwards; he had all the dunces of his own time for his enemies, and, I am sorry to say, some, who have not the apology of dulness for detraction, since his death; and yet to what do all their accumulated hints and charges amount?—to an equivocal liaison with Martha Blount, which might arise as much from his infirmities as from his passions; to a hopeless flirtation with Lady Mary W. Montagu; to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sham courage. I was morally a coward, and could not possibly face the evil spirit of detraction. Therefore, the morning found me feverish in body and faint in spirit. I kept out of sight of my boarders, except Mr. Seabrook, who looked into the kitchen with a sympathizing face, and inquired very kindly after Bennie, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... author himself to be disbelieved, that the extravagant praises bestowed upon him may be justified? "Superlative commendation," says Dillwyn, "is near akin to detraction." (See his Reflections, p. 22.) Let him, therefore, who will charge detraction upon me, first understand wherein it consists. I shall criticise, freely, both the works of the living, and the doctrines of those who, to us, live only in their works; and if any man dislike this freedom, let him rebuke it, showing ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... on social and cheerful minds, can only give rise to the most painful impression. Why paint a dark and odious disposition which, devoid of all human sympathy, feeds its vanity in a cold contempt and derision of everything, and solely occupies itself in aimless detraction? Why exhibit such a moral deformity, which could hardly be tolerated even in Tragedy, for the mere purpose of producing domestic ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... and detraction," says Boerhaave, "are sparks, which if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves."—Murphy's Johnston, Vol. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... natural in manner, never putting himself forward, patient under the most hostile criticism which did not impugn his personal veracity. Although the malice of Freeman did once provoke him to a retort the more deadly because it was restrained, he suffered in silence all the detraction which followed the reminiscences and the biography of Carlyle. His temper was singularly placable, and he bore no malice. His father and his eldest brother had not treated him wisely or kindly. But neither of Hurrell Froude nor of the Archdeacon did he ever speak except with admiration ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... more perilously, Raleigh. Crites, like Asper-Macilente in "Every Man Out of His Humour," is Jonson's self-complaisant portrait of himself, the just, wholly admirable, and judicious scholar, holding his head high above the pack of the yelping curs of envy and detraction, but careless of their puny attacks on his perfections with only ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... weak decorative elements, and lack tracery and glass of a decorative quality, an obvious detraction in any great architectural work. The south transept shows indications of four successive periods of construction, and contains the best glass in the church; ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... of man does not suffer the least detraction from his inability to effect his benevolent purpose. "Things must take will for deed," as Browning tells us. David is not at all distressed by the consciousness ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... and returned to Pisa. This circumstance was duly reported to Father Rocco by his correspondent at Florence; but, whether he was too much occupied among the statues, or whether it was one result of his cautious resolution never to expose himself unnecessarily to so much as the breath of detraction, he made no attempt to see Nanina, or even to justify himself toward her by writing her a letter. All his mornings continued to be spent alone in the studio, and all his afternoons to be occupied by his clerical duties, until the day before the masked ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... pair of glasses which were no detraction from her very good looks, and remarked, with the serenity of ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... to retrieve their mistake. His action left nothing to be desired in resolution or readiness. It is true that Rodney discussed the matter with his flag-captain, Walter Young, and that rumor attributed the merit of the decision to the latter; but this sort of detraction is of too common occurrence to affect opinion. Sir Gilbert Blane, Physician to the Fleet, gives the following account: "When it was close upon sunset, it became a question whether the chase should be continued. After some discussion between the ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... lessened by their unceremonious mode of departure from it; and it is to these, the mass of whom are familiarly known in the journals of this country, that we owe the most insidious, because the best informed, detraction of us. Macmillan's Magazine did us sterling service through the papers of Edward Dicey, the best literary feuilletonist in England; and Professor Newman, J. Stuart Mill, and others, gave us the limited influence of the Westminster Review. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... or other, he seemed full of business. He was all complacent bustle about nothing. He left off inveighing against Sir Charles. And, indeed, if you are one of those weak spirits to whom censure is intolerable, there is a cheap and easy way to moderate the rancor of detraction—you have only to die. Let me comfort genius in particular ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... some forty or fifty feet between the house at the stern and the forecastle, which rose considerably higher; a low bulwark was surmounted by a heavy rail supported upon turned posts painted white. Everything, in spite of the captain's boastful detraction, was in perfect trim, at least to landfolk's eyes. "Now come into the cabin," said the captain. He gave Lydia's traps, as he called them, in charge of a boy, while he led the way below, by a narrow stairway, warning Lydia and her grandfather to look out for their heads as they followed. "There!" ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... this voyage, the sight of gold placed the fame and advantage of the enterprizes and discoveries of Don Henry beyond the reach of prejudice and detraction, and the former murmurings and discontents against his proceedings were changed into admiration and applause. In 1443 Nuno Tristan was again sent out, with orders to prosecute, the discovery of a coast which now seemed so likely to prove advantageous to the commerce of Portugal. He now doubled ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... allusion in one of Milton's sonnets, "On the detraction which followed upon his writing ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... reputation for skill in handling barbaric potentates, he knew how to make the most of it, both abroad and in Whitehall. On rejoining his regiment, too, after some of his triumphant expeditions, he was careful to bear himself with a modesty that took the point from detraction, assuring, as it did, his brother-officers that they would have done as well as he, had ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... present, nor too censorious upon the absent; and the cups such only as raised the conversation of the night, without disturbing the business of the morrow. He had not yet experienced the disadvantages attendant on such society, or learned how soon literary eminence becomes the object of detraction, of envy, of injury, even from those who can best feel its merit, if they are discouraged by dissipated habits from emulating its flight, or hardened by perverted feeling against loving ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... scornful pride! nor with malignant aim Belie the voice of consecrated fame, Thy subtlest arts, the pious to debate. End, with strict justice, in thy own disgrace. How weak were friendship could she shake with dread Of thy detraction 'gainst her worthies dead! No! such detraction makes her zeal more just To every claim of their yet speaking dust. Save me, good heaven! and all whom I regard, (Or hasty muse, or irritable bard,) Save us, good heaven! in mild ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... majestick and great at the same time, that no man ever looked upon him without veneration, and a kind of tacit submission to the superiority of his genius.... He was never soured by calumny and detraction, nor ever thought it necessary to confute them; "for they are sparks," said he, "which, if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves."... He was not to be overawed or depressed by the presence, frowns, or insolence of great men; but persisted, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... September, and was received by the ministry, and the people in general, with those marks of esteem and veneration which were due to his long services and signal success; but he was still persecuted with a spirit of envy and detraction. Philip king of Spain, alarmed at the reduction of Gibraltar, sent the marquis de Villadarias with an army to retake it. The siege lasted four months, during which the prince of Hesse exhibited many shining proofs of courage and ability. The place was supplied with men and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... often a whole Train of Railers of each Side tire their Horses in setting Matters right which they have said during the War between the Parties; and a whole Circle of Acquaintance are put into a thousand pleasing Passions and Sentiments, instead of the Pangs of Anger, Envy, Detraction, and Malice. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Christians would neither admit that they worshipped more gods than one because of the Greeks, nor deny the divinity of Christ because of the Jews. They dreaded to be polytheistic; equally did they dread the least apparent detraction from the power and importance of their Saviour. They were forced into the theory of the Trinity by the necessity of those contrary assertions, and they had to make it a mystery protected by curses to save it from a reductio ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... never grated for an instant on his high ideal. Her temper also was the sweetest in the world, eminent as her generous spirit. She spoke of others with so much kindness, and never indulged in that spirit of detraction or that love of personal gossip which Tancred had frankly told her he abhorred. Somehow or other it seemed that their tastes ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... only the law and the prophets, but the very life and spirit of the Gospel too: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them." Which rule, that we may all duly observe, by throwing aside all scandal and detraction, all spite and rancour, all rudeness and contempt, all rage and violence, and whatever tends to make conversation and commerce either uneasy, or troublesome, may the God of peace grant for ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... says, "may seem not worthy of analysis, far less of refutation; but, as Sydney Smith remarked, 'In a country surrounded by dikes, a rat may inundate a province'; and it is the long-continued gnawing of the tooth of detraction, that, at a momentous crisis, let in the cold flood at last upon the nation's heart, and quenched its traditional love." The eighth chapter depicts the views and characterizes the qualities of the Northern European authors who have travelled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... as pure as the chaste morning's breath, When from the Night's cold arms it creeps away, Were clothed in words. —Sir J. Suckling—Detraction Execrated ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Detraction do its worst! for if this be not his, it deserves to be. For my part, I declare for Distributive Justice! and from this, and what follows, he certainly deserves those advantages, which he acknowledges, to have received from the ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... we should dissent from. The State Register may do the same. All the "Woman's Rights" women claim is fair play and truthful criticism. They object, however, to any misstatements. They are willing to fall before truth, but not before detraction. The State Register will please notice and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... professions and occupations to which men can devote themselves, there is such a thing as com petition: and wherever there is competition, there will be the temptation to envy, jealousy, and detraction, as regards a man's competitors: and so there will be the need of that labour and exertion which lie in resolutely trampling that temptation down. You are quite certain, rny friend, as you go on through life, to ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... to pieces, his thought vanishes, the world disappears from him like a dream at morning. On what a spider thread is hung our individual existence! Fragility, appearance, nothingness. If it were for our powers of self-detraction and forgetfulness, all the fairy world which surrounds and draws us would seem to us but a broken spectre in the darkness, an empty appearance, a fleeting hallucination. Appeared—disappeared—there is the whole history of a man, or of a ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... State, above all as senator from South Carolina, he gained lasting renown. His life was eminently pure, his career exceptional, his fame established beyond the reach of calumny, beyond the power of detraction. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... stated anything which he did not firmly believe to be the fact." Remarkable testimony this, concerning a great politician. From Disraeli, who would perhaps be less drawn to this qualification of a statesman, comes this word of praise, with many of detraction: "Nature had combined in Sir Robert Peel many admirable parts. In him a physical frame incapable of fatigue was united with an understanding equally vigorous and flexible. He was gifted with the faculty of method in the highest degree, and with great powers of application, which ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy |
