"Discreditable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appropriating Cyprus only, they had appropriated a great deal more—if they had taken Candia too, if they had taken whatever they could lay their hands upon—that majority, equally patient, and equally docile, and not only patient and docile, but exulting in the discreditable obedience with which it obeyed all the behests of the Administration—that majority never would have shrunk, but would have walked into the lobby as cheerfully as it did upon the occasions of which ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... she may floor him with a chair leg. Each flees from a purely theoretical risk. Each is a useless encumberer of the earth, and the sooner dead the better. Each is a discredit to the human race, already discreditable enough, God knows. ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... faults; and it was this which the nineteenth century chose to remark. Johnson's Preface in particular was remembered only to be despised. It is not rash to say that at the present time the majority of those who chance to speak of it pronounce it a discreditable performance. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... that I cannot tell, mother; but I am afraid I have found something discreditable in ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... She found discreditable motives for everyone who would not take her at her own estimate of herself. She detested Clutton. She told Philip that his friend had no talent really; it was just flashy and superficial; he couldn't compose a figure to save ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... and had he possessed any manly attributes, or even the ordinary honorable instincts of mankind, there is little doubt he would have been a popular favorite. But he had made his mark, and it was a rather grimy one. From earliest youth he had been guilty of discreditable acts that had won for him the contempt of all right-minded people. That he was still accepted with lax tolerance by some of the more thoughtless matrons of the fashionable set was due to his family name. They could not forget that in spite of his numerous lapses from ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... ourselves should we adorn whatever blemishes and infirmities we find in our neighbor, and serve and help him to promote his honor to the best of our ability, and, on the other hand, prevent whatever may be discreditable to him. And it is especially an excellent and noble virtue for one always to explain advantageously and put the best construction upon all he may hear of his neighbor (if it be not notoriously evil), or at any rate to condone it over and against ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... West ended, as it began, in a carnival of butchery. Treacherous attacks, massacres, burnings, and pillagings were everyday occurrences, and white men were hardly less at fault than red. Indeed the most discreditable of all the recorded episodes of the time was a heartless massacre by Americans of a large band of Indians that had been Christianized by Moravian missionaries and brought together in a peaceful community on the Muskingum. This slaughter of the innocents at Gnadenhutten ("the Tents ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the funds for distribution; 3rd, that the mode proposed would lead to the construction of works of a local nature, to the exclusion of such as are general and as would consequently be of a more useful character; and, last, that it would create a discreditable and injurious dependence on the part of the State governments upon the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Dominion of Canada commemorated the "Diamond Jubilee" by the issue of a highly ornate set of stamps comprising no less than sixteen different denominations, and the inclusion of what were widely termed "unnecessary" high values and the unbusinesslike and somewhat discreditable manner in which they were placed on sale by the Post Office Department cast a slur on Canada's postal history which took ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... evidently plumed himself on his power of "invention"[108] in the matter of plots—a faculty which he knew Shakspere to lack—he cannot conceivably have meant to charge his rival with having committed any discreditable plagiarism in drawing upon Montaigne. At most he would mean to convey that borrowing from the English translation of Montaigne was an easy game as compared with his own scholar-like practice of translating from the Greek and Latin, and from ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... It is done to conciliate three or four thousand voters, who are now in the market, at the expense of three or four hundred who, it is known, are not to be bought. It is unjust in its motives, its means and its end. The measure is discreditable to civilization, and an outrage ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... be torn out, and another report by one Sergeant Tomlinson to be substituted for it. Mr. Mansfield, the stipendiary magistrate, who conducted the inquiry, denounced Dowling and Tomlinson for what he called "the disgraceful and discreditable suppression of the report which," he added, "was no doubt true. He had never heard of more disgraceful proceedings ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... said, being sent to both, and bills in Chancery being addressed also to Bishop Alcock as chancellor. Rotheram was with the king in France as his chancellor, and is so described on opening the negotiation in August, which led to the discreditable peace by which Edward made himself a pensioner to the French king. No Privy Seals were addressed to Alcock after September 28; which may therefore be considered the close of this double chancellorship, and the date of Bishop ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... The bankers only would suffer by this regulation. When a run comes upon them, they sometimes endeavour to gain time, by paying in sixpences, and they would be precluded by this regulation from this discreditable method of evading immediate payment. They would be obliged, in consequence, to keep at all times in their coffers a greater quantity of cash than at present; and though this might, no doubt, be a considerable inconveniency to them, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... moment might have fallen so low. But Anthony was not a satyr. And deserters are not, as a rule, recommended for the D.S.O. To suggest that he was a counter-jumper was equally ridiculous. He was a most attractive gallant gentleman. This made his behaviour infinitely more discreditable. It was ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... The memory of the discreditable circumstances under which he had made Karl's acquaintance, before bringing him into his home, tormented the old centaur with remorse. Some afternoons, he would have a horse saddled, going full gallop toward the neighboring village. But he was no longer hunting ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and there on his hardy body; his coat was distantly suggestive of a collie; his tail of a terrier. But something of width between the patient eyes and bluntness in the scarred muzzle spoke to a tough and hardy ancestor in his discreditable pedigree, as though a lady of his house had once gone away with a bulldog. His part in the company was to do tricks outside beerhouses. When the Signor's strumming had gathered a little crowd, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... a most discreditable business, and I don't see how you propose to better it by cutting my throat. Of course if he's going to marry her, it's a different thing; but I don't believe he is, or he'd have asked me. You think me a fool? Well see they marry, or they'll find me ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... reasonings of theologians, legends of miracles grew luxuriantly. It would be utterly unphilosophical to attribute these as a whole to conscious fraud. Whatever part priestcraft may have taken afterward in sundry discreditable developments of them, the mass of miraculous legends, Century after century, grew up mainly in good faith, and as naturally as elms along water-courses or ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... profession Marie Gessler found nothing discreditable. Of herself her opinion was not high, and her opinion of men was lower. For her smiles she had watched several sacrifice honor, duty, loyalty; and she held them and their kind in contempt. To lie, to cajole, to rob men of secrets they thought important, ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... believe that to know human nature—at least to know it as its worst—one must be the victim of some discreditable misfortune in a small community. Moral cowardice, ingratitude, the greed which is ready to take advantage of some one unable to make an effective protest, the gratuitous insults offered the 'under dog' because he is helpless to fight back—he discovers it all, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... the Egyptians, and red-brown in colour. The features are not those of the negro, the face being oval, and the nose perfectly Grecian. They say, "We are Arabs, not negroes." The practice of drunkenness and debauchery is universal, and everything discreditable to humanity ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... for his employer in his plight than for any other reason. But he remembered that it usually required a guilty conscience to make blackmail possible and that the man who paid always paid because of something discreditable which he ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... extraordinary tribunal, working under extreme tension, which tried persons against whom usually the evidence was pretty conclusive, its record for the first six months was not discreditable. Between April 6 and September 21, 1793, it rendered sixty-three sentences of death, thirteen of transportation, and thirty-eight acquittals. The trials were held patiently, testimony was heard, and the juries duly deliberated. Nevertheless ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... Homer, the purpose of the Divina Commedia, the probable plan of the Canterbury Tales, the Ur-Hamlet. Nobody put preliminary advertisements in the papers, you see, about these things: there was a discreditable neglect of the first requirements of the public. So it is with Esmond. There is, I thought, a reference to it in the Brookfield letters; but in several searches I cannot find it. To his mother he speaks of the book as "grand and melancholy", and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sir," rejoined Dewhurst, "the occurrences of last night, though sufficiently discreditable to you, will not be without profit; for I have observed to my infinite regret, that you are apt to indulge in immoderate potations, and when under their influence to lose due command of yourself, and commit follies which your sober reason must condemn. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Germany's accusation that Russia had stiffened Serbia into resisting Austria's unacceptable demands. It rather leads one to consider that an action which drives a weak nation to arrive at a decision on so awful an issue in so short a time, is an action discreditable to a stronger, and impossible on the part of a morally great, power. If Serbia chose wrongly in refusing to bite the dust, then the guilt is still chargeable to Austria for forcing her little neighbour to take a choice in haste. Sir Edward Grey emphasized ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... from a low-limbed tree a branch as thick as his finger and about a yard in length, and, first trimming it, bent it as Bark had bent the twig and tied a strong sinew cord across. It was a not discreditable bow, considering the fact that it was the first ever made, though one end was smaller than the other and it was rough of outline. Then Ab cut a straight willow twig, as long nearly as the bow, and began repeating the experiments of ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... water—they sparkle up and froth. It certainly was so with Dennis O'Moore; and if Alister could hardly have been more raven-like upon the crack of doom, the levity of Dennis would, in our present circumstances, have been discreditable ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... number of men and women who would go unflinchingly to the stake in vindication of a principle, whose resolution, somewhere in the course of a long, solitary, and indefinite imprisonment, would break down into a discreditable compromise of opinions for which they were unquestionably willing ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... he felt that there was something discreditable in an accommodation with Surajah Dowlah. But his power was limited. A committee, chiefly composed of servants of the Company who had fled from Calcutta, had the principal direction of affairs; and these persons were eager to be restored ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... clumsy satire. He was thoroughly alarmed. He began rapidly to review his own antecedents, and to scrape his memory for discreditable incidents. He could think of nothing he need feel ashamed of, nothing the world might not thoroughly investigate. There were mean actions, but many generous ones to balance in ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... irritate me, Mr. Fairlie—for your niece's sake and for her father's sake, you shall not irritate me. You shall take the whole responsibility of this discreditable settlement on your own shoulders before I leave ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... day, my friend,' Somers would occasionally observe to him. 'I don't mean to say entangled in anything discreditable, for I admit that you are in practice as ideal as in theory. I mean the process will be reversed. Some woman, whose Well-Beloved flits about as yours does now, will catch your eye, and you'll stick to her like a limpet, while she follows ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... myself for having allowed you to bring me to utter and discreditable financial ruin. I remember one morning in the early October of '92, sitting in the yellowing woods at Bracknell with your mother. At that time I knew very little of your real nature. I had stayed from a Saturday to Monday with you at Oxford. You had stayed with me at Cromer for ten days ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... have never crossed his path without finding him engaged in something discreditable. But he's truckled himself into a kind of popularity and power, and, having always been 'a Democrat,' he hopes to get ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... Lightfoot had a sister, and in respect of her, there's no doubt about it that something discreditable might have been laid to James. For once in his life, he acted like a fool, and he wrote the girl a pile of letters. This fellow Lightfoot got hold of 'em, and he's made James pay through the nose ever since. Now the girl's dead, and the thing's ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... space of four or five years, he avenged all the insults that had been lavishly flung upon her by every country in Europe throughout a long, disastrous, and most perplexing civil war. Gloriously did he retrieve the credit that had been mouldering and decaying during two weak and discreditable reigns of nearly fifty years' continuance—gloriously did he establish and extend his country's authority and influence in remote nations—gloriously acquire the real mastery of the British Channel—gloriously ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... beadles to guide them on it. He also reproved the citizens for choosing still the same men as their magistrates: "For you will seem," said he, "either not to esteem government worth much, or to think few worthy to hold it." Speaking, too, of a certain enemy of his, who lived a very base and discreditable life: "It is considered," he said, "rather as a curse than a blessing on him, that this fellow's mother prays that she may leave him behind her." Pointing at one who had sold the land which his father ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... was, had accidentally seen the footman smile rudely when he spoke of "master coming home last night;" and a vague thought struck her, that such late hours were discreditable in the head of a family. Her father should not be despised in ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Orators at fashionable missionary-meetings were wont to speak of them as irreclaimable heathens who bid defiance to civilising influences from impenetrable fastnesses. Mr. George Smith may be credited with having broken down this discreditable state of things. He brought us face to face with this unfortunate section of our fellow-creatures, with what result it is not necessary to say. The sympathies of the public were effectually roused by the narratives which revealed to us the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... headquarters of the Allies. Charles Felix (who was unconnected with the Modena scheme) wrote a letter to the King on this subject, in which he stated it as his belief that the Austrian plan was to get Charles Albert accidentally killed, or to plunge him in vice, or to make him contract a discreditable marriage. This was why they had invited him to their camp. He adds the characteristic remark that their nephew would be in no less danger at the headquarters of the Duke of Wellington 'a cause de la religion.' Have him home and have him married, is ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... then the victory is certainly to be ascribed as much to superiority in skill as to superiority in force. But, on the other hand, it should always be remembered that there was a very decided superiority in force. It is a very discreditable feature of many of our naval histories that they utterly ignore this superiority, seeming ashamed to confess that it existed. In reality it was something to be proud of. It was highly to the credit of the United States that her frigates ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... was an immediate falling off from the Federation, on the one hand of the sane tacticians of the movement, and on the other of those out-and-out Insurrectionists who repudiated political action altogether, and were only too glad to be able to point to a discreditable instance of it. Two resolutions were passed, one by the Socialist League and the other by the Fabian Society. Here is the ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... a claim seems to not a few grotesque in its presumption. Have we not been told by Mr. Balfour that, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, man's "very existence is an accident, his story a brief and discreditable episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets"?—and shall such a one, member of such a race, dream of prolonging his atomic existence world without ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... has his other side. He has some discreditable ways, though he has not a monopoly of them, because he cannot get entirely rid of vexatious Christian competition. We have seen that he seldom transgresses the laws against crimes of violence. Indeed, his dealings with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Kite" or the Home Rule split, much less to disclose his opinions—they are emphatic and deliberate—of the men who made mischief at that crisis. I leave also untouched the plain, unvarnished account he gives, on unimpeachable authority, of a subsequent and not less discreditable phase in the annals of the Liberal party. There are reasons, obvious to everyone who gives the matter a moment's thought, that render it inadvisable in the interests of the political cause with which my brother all his life was identified, and for which he suffered more ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... second marriage had lost him the affections of the people. At any rate, he evaded calling them together on more than one occasion imperiously demanded by the constitution; [35] and, when he did so, he invaded their privileges, [36] and announced principles of government, [37] which formed a discreditable, and, it must be admitted, rare exception to the usual tenor of his administration. Indeed, the most honorable testimony is borne to its general equity and patriotism, by a cortes convened soon after the queen's death, when the tribute, as far as she was concerned, still more unequivocally, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... that at this point of the case, when the Rev. Faker was called, there was nothing to cross-examine about. I knew nothing of the parties, the witnesses, the solicitors, or any one except my learned friends. It would not have been discreditable to my advocacy if I had submitted to a verdict. I will, therefore, give the points of the questions which elicited the truth from the Christian warrior; and probably the non-legal reader of these memoirs may be interested in ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... little interruption. On the 30th of July the Federal engineers exploded a mine under the hostile works, and Burnside's corps rushed to the assault. But the attempt ended in failure—the first defeat of the Army of the Potomac which could fairly be called discreditable. Still, Lee was losing men, few it is true, but most precious, since it was impossible to replace them, while the North poured unlimited numbers into the Federal camps. The policy of "attrition" upon which Grant had embarked, and which he was carrying through regardless of his losses, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and ready. Every one of the officers engaged, from the Colonel to the boy subaltern, was killed, wounded, or taken. Eleven officers and one hundred and fifty men were our losses in this unfortunate but not discreditable affair, which proves once more how much accuracy and how much secrecy is necessary for a successful night attack. Four companies of the regiment were sent down to Port Elizabeth to re-officer, but the arrival of the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sort of existence, with invalid precautions and limitations. I think that this would bring out all that is worst in me, and would lead to unhappiness both in myself and in all those about me. If it has to be so, I shall do my best, but I think it would be a discreditable performance. I do not, however, think that I shall have this trial laid upon me. I feel that I am summoned elsewhere, and I am glad to think that my passage will be a swift one. I am not afraid of what lies ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... grounds, those of expediency, it might be objected that a bargain which on one side you allow to be discreditable leaves the legacy of an indestructible desire on that side to wipe out the discredit by tearing it up. Though Cavour became great by his connection with a movement which, before all things, was swayed ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Boers in the neighbouring colonies. Nothing could illustrate this difference in feeling better than the fact that of the eleven men who throughout declined to sign petitions eight were South African born, one Australian, one English, and one Scotch. There is nothing discreditable to others in these figures; they simply indicate the difference of feeling which did and indeed naturally must exist. The South African born men consider themselves to have been robbed of a portion of their birthright; ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... conquest for its own sake, though he had no personal ambition. The love of adventure was deep in him; he adored sport for its own sake; he had had a long range of experiences—some discreditable—and now he had determined on a new field ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... county, published his address to the electors, has occasionally got into the House of Commons. The vulgar half-educated preacher, who without any introduction asked a patron for a vacant living in the Church, has now and then got the living. And however unfit you may be for a place, and however discreditable may have been the means by which you got it, once you have actually held it for two or three years people come to acquiesce in your holding it. They accept the fact that you are there, just as we accept the fact that any other evil exists ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... velvet coat". Goldsmith's pronounced taste in dress, and his good-natured simplicity, made his costume a fertile subject for playful raillery, — sometimes, for rather discreditable practical ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... feet of the ground. Our city cousins like to be two or three times as high. Under these circumstances building a one-story house would be likely to prove a flying-not in the face of Providence, but, what is reckoned more dangerous and discreditable—flying in the face of custom. Humility isn't popular ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... now, when he was going to do a humane and righteous act, it stayed his hand. There is nothing which so frustrates good resolutions and paralyzes noble efforts as the dead weight of past sins. Those who are acquainted with secret and discreditable chapters of a man's history are able, wielding this knowledge over his head, to say, Thou shalt not do this good act which thou wishest to do, or, Thou shalt do this evil and shameful thing which we bid thee. There ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... discreditable conduct of physicians at consultations. Sometimes several doctors would hold a consultation, and, apparently forgetting the patient for the time, would hold violent disputations. Their main object was to display ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... as they understand the term, is entirely consistent, and one with which no aspirations of a high or an elevated character should, or at least need be connected. It is a reflection upon the integrity of the great agricultural interest of the country, that any such opinion should prevail; and discreditable to that interest, that its condition or example should for a moment ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... the first trophy to the Golgotha of the Bar, in 1684, twelve years after its erection. Sir Thomas Armstrong was deep in the scheme. If the discreditable witnesses examined against Lord William Russell are to be believed, a plot had been concocted by a few desperate men to assassinate "the Blackbird and the Goldfinch"—as the conspirators called the King and the Duke of York—as they were in their coach on their way from Newmarket ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... and even in England. There, not only are artists and men of letters honoured when they are successful—they are, of course, honoured at that stage in America; but the pursuit of literature and art is one which a young man need not feel it discreditable to adopt. The contemporaries of a brilliant youth at Oxford or at Cambridge do not secretly despise him if he declines to enter business. The first-class man does not normally aspire to start life as a drummer. Public life and the Church offer honourable careers; and both of them have traditional ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... old whom he adores; Lahr, nicknamed the Fireman, whose wife was confined the day after his condemnation, giving life at the moment she received death; Chopart, a bookseller's assistant, who has been mixed up in some rather discreditable pranks of youth; and finally Vappreaux junior, who pleaded an alibi and who, if the four others are to be believed, was not at the Barriere de Fontainebleau at all during the ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... dark places of the earth has been fraught with widespread good for mankind; and my plea is that the civilized nations engaged in doing this work shall treat one another with respect and friendship, and shall hold it as discreditable to permit envy and jealousy, backbiting and antagonism among themselves. I visited four different British protectorates or possessions in Africa—namely, East Africa, Uganda, the Sudan, and Egypt. About the first three, I have nothing to say to you save what is pleasant, as well as true. About the ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... a considerable period, during 1859, discreditable scenes of brawling took place at this Church as a protest against the High Church practices of the Rector, the Rev. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... all very well for Hal to be a main feature in her life, blessing it with her friendship, while she turned kindly, unseeing eyes away from the corners where the murky shadows lay: Hal, who knew about the mad, discreditable marriage and its violent termination, and probably also of her mother's insatiable thirst for admiration ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... some surprise from readers of these endless private wars, and burnings, and "heath-slayings," these feuds where blood flows like water, to be compensated by fines as regular as a water-rate, these methodical assassinations, in which it is not in the least discreditable to heroes to mob heroes as brave as themselves to death by numbers, in which nobody dreams of measuring swords, or avoiding vantage of any kind. Yet the enthusiastic experts are not wrong. Whatever outrages the Icelander may commit, he always has the law—an ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... shallow enough, because the writer had no kind of comprehension of Borrow, but then, perhaps, his champion had not. Borrow was neither one of the 'kindest of men' nor the reverse. He was a good hater and a whole-hearted lover, and to be thus is to fill a certain uncomfortable but not discreditable place in the scheme of things. About a month later Borrow was on the way to the East, travelling by Paris and Vienna. From Paris he wrote to Mr. John Murray that Vidocq 'wished much to have a copy of my Gypsies in Spain,' but suspects the Frenchman of desiring to produce a compressed ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... chieftains, who commanded single ships or small detached squadrons. These were generally the younger sons of sovereigns or chieftains who lived upon the land, the elder brothers remaining at home to inherit the throne or the paternal inheritance. It was discreditable then, as it is now in Europe, for any branches of families of the higher class to engage in any pursuit of honorable industry. They could plunder and kill without dishonor, but they could not toil. To rob and murder was glory; to do ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Prohack had a distressing glimpse into the illogical peculiarities of the human conscience, especially his own. He knew that he ought to accept Mimi's offer, since it would definitely obviate the possible consequences of a criminal act and close a discreditable incident. But he thought of his bad nights instead of thinking of Mimi's morals and the ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... if the four allies act with any vigour and drive Mehemet Ali to desperation, France must either kindle the flames of war, or, after all her loud and threatening tone, succumb in a manner not only intolerably galling to the national pride, but which really would be very discreditable in itself. ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... a little startled that you should make such totally groundless assumptions of fact, and then leave a discreditable inference to be drawn from them. He directs me not only to repel this inference as it ought to be repelled, but also to bring to your serious consideration and reflection the propriety of such an assumed narration of facts as your despatch, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... have been blazed abroad, England would have been irritated. It is true she cannot get at Pantouflia very easily; we have no sea-coast, and we are surrounded by friendly countries. But it would have been a ticklish and discreditable position. I must really speak to Dick," which he did next morning ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... of the sort," urged Frank Carlton. "I came out here to form an estate, and I have succeeded in what I undertook, while a number of other persons with similar opportunities have failed. I do not say this for the sake of boasting, but simply as a fact which is certainly not discreditable." ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... heralded Stefansson stunt of living a year on an exclusive meat diet was a discreditable fake. Stefansson did not live on a meat diet, but on a diet consisting of one-fifth protein and four-fifths fat (caloric intake). When compelled against his protest to eat steaks and chops, he was made very ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... will denounce another for the use of discreditable tactics, but it will have no hesitation in using such itself if it can thereby snatch a discreditable victory. So, clear speaking is needed: a fight that is not clean-handed will make victory more disgraceful than ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... regularity can possess neither {ix} perspicuity nor precision, and must therefore be very inadequate to the purpose of conveying one's thoughts. The Gaelic is in manifest danger of falling into this discreditable condition, from the disuse of old idioms and distinctions, and the admission of modern corruptions, unless means be applied to prevent its degenerating. It is obvious that a speaker cannot express himself with precision without a correct knowledge of grammar. When he is conscious ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... remembrance she almost gave up hope of escaping detection, and wished devoutly that they had stayed downstairs and faced the consequences; for to be found out now, hiding in bed in this fashion, made a discreditable matter of what was really not a very bad one. But, to her increasing amazement, Anna said nothing, not even when Aunt Pike said, "I must speak to Katherine in the morning. She has either neglected to brush her hair at all, or she is very extravagant in tying it up for the ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... whole, the latter course appears to me the most consistent with the duty I accepted from the Author, and which I owe to the public. It must not be supposed, however, that the passages which are omitted in this edition contain anything which it would be thought discreditable for the Author to have written or for the Editor to publish, or that they are of considerable extent or importance. These passages are simply withheld at the present time from motives of delicacy to persons still alive, or to their ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Union or the breaking up of the government. I am mortified, it is true, at the violent tone assumed here by many persons, because such violence in debate only leads to irritation, and is, moreover, discreditable to the government and the country. But there is no serious danger, be assured, ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Jesuits when it became worth while to persecute them. Ignatius Loyola, Francisco Xavier, and Diego Lainez, as long as they confined themselves to preaching and to teaching, were safe enough. Even the annals of theological strife, bloodthirsty and discreditable to humanity as they are, contain few examples of persecutors such as Calvin or Torquemada, to whom, ruthless as they were in their savage and narrow malignity and zeal for what they thought the truth, no suspicion ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... of these unprincipled traders in land, some of whom are found in most of the towns, there are a large number of land-speculators who own both wild and improved farms in all parts of the colony who do not descend to these discreditable arts, but wait quietly until their lands become valuable by the progress of improvement in their neighbourhood, when they readily find purchasers—or, rather, the purchasers find them out, and obtain their ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... seem discreditable to Washington, as exhibiting the mighty strength of his passions when aroused. But upon mature consideration it does him great honor, affording equal evidence of his power of self-control, his public spirit, his ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... chiefly against the plan of making peace with France just at the time, they said, when the glory of the English arms and the progress of the English power in that country were at their height. It was very discreditable to the advisers of the king, they said, that they should counsel him to stop short in the career of conquest which his armies were pursuing, and thus sacrifice the grand advantages for the realm of England which were just ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... very discreditable bills which would have been made positively infamous if it had not been for the active opposition of a few friends of liberty. One of these bills was designed to add to the stringency of the present obstructive medical law; the other was designed ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... think of any form of perversion better than "Very discreditable to him. I hope you blew him ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... object of this indecent orgy seems to us almost as discreditable as the purpose it veiled so thinly. Who was Stephen A. Douglas, that the President, with his Cabinet and the two highest officers of the army and navy, should add their official dignity to the raising of his ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Frenchmen, Swiss, and even Englishmen and Irishmen. Against these people there seems to be an especial, and a not very reasonable prejudice. A lady, eminent for her good deeds among the poor of the Five Points, once said, "There is no reason why an organ grinder should be regarded as an altogether discreditable member of the community; his vocation is better than that of begging, and he certainly works hard enough for the pennies thrown to him, lugging his big box around the city from morning until night." To this good word for the organ grinder ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... teased him about his melancholy looks, and made him the butt of all their jokes in the cockpit. He resolved, however, to get over it, and at the next port they put into, Jacqueline's letter was the cause of his entering for the first time some discreditable scenes ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Beel!"—but they could not see Bill's continuous crafty incitements to mutiny, or the hundred and one ways in which he strove, when out of harness, to work up hatred of Jan among his mates, or when in harness to play subtle tricks which should produce an effect discreditable to the ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... small feelings, as for the first time I drew near to the home of my forefathers. I should have been sorry to find it ugly or mean, or lying in a hole, or even modern or insignificant; and when none of these charges could be brought against it, I was filled with highly discreditable pain that Providence had not seen fit to issue me into this world in the masculine form; in which case this fine property would, according to the rules of mankind, have been mine. However, I was very soon ashamed of such ideas, and sat down ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... able to pay. Suppose his doctor tells him he must go South, to get braced up, and to avoid a New York February and March. Suppose the patient has only about money enough to get here, and relies on finding something to do to keep him in food and lodging. Well—there's nothing mysterious or especially discreditable in that, is there? ... The dew is beginning to fall. And I'm keeping you out here in the ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... regarded Marble with more respect after this declaration; for in that day, a travelled man was highly esteemed among us. In her eyes, it was a greater exploit to have seen Amsterdam, than it would now be to visit Jerusalem. Indeed, it is getting rather discreditable to a man of the world not to have seen the Pyramids, the Red Sea, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... Mr. Leonard, looking his man squarely in the eye, "I am inclined to think that the cavalry staff officer is sometimes given to too much 'whitewashing,' and if an infantryman had been sent instead of a cavalryman the most discreditable affair of the late campaign would not have been, as ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Hesiod's story of Kronos swallowing his children; then the Judgement of Paris; then comes a long and earnest explanation of the myth of Attis and the Mother of the Gods. It is on the face of it a story highly discreditable both to the heart and the head of those august beings, and though the rites themselves do not seem to have been in any way improper, the Christians naturally attacked the Pagans and Julian personally ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... the citadel of Messina, but without any appreciable effect on Spain or Italy. The fleet played an important part in starving out the French garrisons of Genoa and Valetta. But elsewhere the action, or inaction, of the British forces was discreditable. True, the conditions were adverse, but an army numbering more than 80,000 men, and costing nearly L10,000,000 sterling, should have accomplished something ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... usage, that sort of blunder when a man ascribes to one age the habits, customs, or generally the characteristics of another. This, however, may be a mere lapse of memory, as to a matter of fact, and implying nothing at all discreditable to the understanding, but only that a man has shifted the boundaries of chronology a little this way or that; as if, for example, a writer should speak of printed books as existing at the day of ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... person or bastard, nor persons of public bad conduct, or those who have had a discreditable criminal sentence passed on them, nor any non-rehabilitated bankrupts or insolvents whatsoever shall be eligible ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... public confidence, as must be necessary on the part of the Principal, to preside with effect over an infant University in a country like this, or to execute his part in recovering it from the utterly inefficient and discreditable condition in which it now lies, I am brought to the unavoidable conclusion not only that his appointment ought not to be confirmed, but that every delay in the disallowance of it opens a door to some new mischief within the Institution; ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... you. I felt that I had let you pledge yourself in the dark; that in my care for Lucia, and confidence in you, I had to some extent bound you to a discreditable engagement. I released you from it; I told you the truth of the story I had hidden from everybody—I wrote to you when my husband lay in jail waiting his trial for murder, and I heard no more from you. ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... trouble to realise my motives. One doesn't explain such things to the world in general, but I want you to understand. If one man less admirable than another; if his friends and his entertainments are inclined to become rowdy and discreditable, does he need help less, or more? Vernon and other men of his kind consider that they do their duty by leaving such a man severely alone. I find mine in being with him— just—as much—as ever I can!" She emphasised the words by a series ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Count Paul about that strange visit to the fortune-teller, but she had been taught, as are so many Englishwomen of her type, to regard everything savouring of superstition as not only silly and weak-minded, but also as rather discreditable. ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... scandalous American load him up with deceptions of so transparent a character that they ought not to have deceived the house cat. On the other hand, he was remorselessly severe upon me for beguiling him, by studied and discreditable artifice, into bragging and boasting about his poor game in the presence of a professional expert disguised in lies and frauds, who could empty more balls in billiard pockets in an hour than he could empty into a basket ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... came to her house to purchase poisons. This paper was seized by the police on her arrest, and examined by the tribunals. Among the names were found those of the Marshal de Luxembourg, the Countess de Soissons, and the Duchess de Bouillon. The marshal seems only to have been guilty of a piece of discreditable folly in visiting a woman of this description, but the popular voice at the time imputed to him something more than folly. The author of the Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe since the Peace of Utrecht, says, "The miserable gang who dealt in poison and prophecy alleged that he had sold himself ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Livonian had happened to meet Madame Marneffe instead of Lisbeth Fischer, he would have found a protectress whose complaisance must have led him into some boggy or discreditable path, where he would have been lost. He would certainly never have worked, nor the artist have been hatched out. Thus, while he deplored the old maid's grasping avarice, his reason bid him prefer her iron hand to the life of idleness ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... benefactor! Since then, alas! both thing and name, Shoddy across the ocean came— Shoddy that can the eye bewilder And makes me blush to meet a builder! Had this good house, in frame or fixture, Been tempered by the least admixture Of that discreditable shoddy, Should we to-day compound our toddy, Or gaily marry song and laughter Below its sempiternal rafter? ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the rich are too rich, they have been stealing; if a closely fought election is lost, the electorate was corrupted; if a statesman does something of which you disapprove, he has been bought or influenced by some discreditable person. If workingmen are restless, they are the victims of agitators; if they are restless over wide areas, there is a conspiracy on foot. If you do not produce enough aeroplanes, it is the work of spies; if there is trouble in Ireland, it is German or Bolshevik "gold." And if you go ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... A similar recommendation has been made from time to time since, and a few years ago a law was passed providing for the selection of sites for three such institutions. No appropriation has, however, been made to carry the act into effect, and the old and discreditable condition still exists. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... but the beginning. After this overture the stings and slurs came thick and fast. It seemed to the dismayed Vice-President that every one in New York took delight in recalling to publicity some detail discreditable to his Bostonian discovery. From all over the East he began to receive applications for agencies from men whom even he knew to be unworthy of trust; and he realized that he had encouraged their approach like vultures on the unhappy Guardian. Within ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... "The discreditable conduct of the doting old King of Bavaria, in his open liaison with a wandering actress who had assumed the name of Lola Montez (but who was in reality the eloped wife of an Englishman, and whom he had created a Bavarian Countess ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... to describe the meeting with Ruth and Isabel at Rochester, and her face betrayed relief and pleasure as he made it clear that the Governor's romance was in no way discreditable. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... few words to say to you before work commences, boys, and I regret to say they are not of a very pleasant character. A most discreditable act—a criminal act—has been committed since we last met in this hall. This desk"—he turned from the boys to the desk, and brought his hand down upon it sharply—"has been forced open during the night, and five pages torn from the Black Book. ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... producers, in such contingencies a mediating power steps in, and brings things to an equilibrium."[25] These great and obvious advantages of the new tariff, the opponents of Ministers, and especially their reckless and discreditable allies called the "Anti-corn-law League," see as plainly as we do; but their anxious aim is to conceal these advantages as much as possible from public view; and for this purpose they never willingly make any allusion to the tariff, or if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... curiosity, tinctured as it was, throughout, with the most perfect good humour, and even politeness, highly diverted me, and I did my best to appease it. One circumstance, it is true, affected me painfully. I allude to the discreditable figure cut by the priests; who, it appeared to me, had no business in such a place at all, further, at least, than as casual inquirers. Among all the beer-drinkers present, however, my red-nosed acquaintance and his curate ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig |
