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Opprobrium   /əprˈoʊbriəm/   Listen
Opprobrium

noun
1.
State of disgrace resulting from public abuse.  Synonym: obloquy.
2.
A state of extreme dishonor.  Synonym: infamy.  "The name was a by-word of scorn and opprobrium throughout the city"






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"Opprobrium" Quotes from Famous Books



... with them except obey them. In addition to this treatment, varying from mere pin-pricks to oppression, they are mostly referred to in the Press, in public speeches, and private conversation, with words of opprobrium and contempt as "niggers" and "black brutes". The occasional outbreaks of a few, usually maddened with drink which Europeans have sold to them, are put to the discredit of the whole race. Those who, when they hear of a case ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... this act must and ought to be to all Christians at present; yet this passage and a hundred still stronger from divines and Church letters contemporary with Calvin, prove Servetus' death not to be Calvin's guilt especially, but the common 'opprobrium' of all European Christendom,—of the Romanists whose laws the Senate of Geneva followed, and from fear of whose reproaches (as if Protestants favoured heresy) they executed them,—and of the Protestant churches who applauded the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... generosity, and that devotedness which commands a noble heart to sacrifice itself for its country and fellow creatures, from wretches branded, degraded by corruption, in whom every moral energy is destroyed, or eternally compressed by the weight of the indelible opprobrium which renders them aliens to their country, which separates them for ever ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard

... state." The opprobrium rested upon him then; let the honor be his now. This in simple justice to the truth ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds

... mere 'force of his style', wrote down the first poet of all antiquity.' (Note to second edition.) This was 'Ossian' Macpherson, 1738-96, who, in 1773, had followed up his Erse epics by a prose translation of Homer, which brought him little but opprobrium. 'Your abilities, since your Homer, are not so formidable,' says Johnson in the knockdown letter which he addressed to him in 1775. (Birkbeck ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... harvest, and, some think, Success in war. She strives not with our Gods: Confusion never wrought she in my house, Nor minished Hengist's glory. Had her voice, Clangorous or strident, drawn upon my throne Deserved opprobrium'—here the monarch's brows Flushed at the thought, and fire was in his eyes— 'The hand that clasps this sceptre had not spared To hunt her forth, an outcast in the woods, Thenceforth with beasts to herd! More lief were I To take the lioness to my bed and board Than ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... been called by an uncountable number of housemaids and footmen "the little Madam"—the most sarcastic term of opprobrium contained in their dictionary. A leader of New York society, she had run charitable institutions and new movements with the same precision and efficiency that she had used in her houses. Every hour of her day had been filled. Not one moment had been wasted or frittered ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... disruption of 1843. In 1840 he introduced a bill to settle the vexed question of patronage; but disliked by a majority in the general assembly of the Scotch church, and unsupported by the government, it failed to become law, and some opprobrium was cast upon its author. In 1843 he brought forward a similar measure "to remove doubts respecting the admission of ministers to benefices.'' This Admission to Benefices Act, as it was called, passed into law, but did not ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... believe that the cunning Knickerbocker, in his desire to vindicate, as he thought, the character of his race against the accusation of immorality, hath by his denial not only committed a grievous sin against "the truth of history," but hath greatly added thereto, by attempting to foist off the opprobrium of the same on to the shoulders of the Connecticut folks. But history will not remain forever falsified, and the day has at length arrived when every historical tub must "stand on its own bottom," and the world will henceforth know that the New Netherlanders did not take bundling by inoculation from ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles

... other hand, it would seem that in certain circles and contingencies the "grand old name of Gentleman" is regarded as a term of opprobrium. The late Lord Wriothesley Russell, who was for many years a Canon of Windsor, used to conduct a mission service for the Household troops quartered there; and one of his converts, a stalwart trooper of the Blues, expressing his gratitude for these voluntary ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... feelings simply and directly. Godwin's characters pause to cull their words from dictionaries. Forester's invective, when he believes that Williams has basely robbed his master is astonishingly elegant: "Vile calumniator! You are the abhorrence of nature, the opprobrium of the human species and the earth can only be freed from an insupportable burthen by your being exterminated."[81] The diction is so elaborately dignified that the contempt which was meant almost ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... and Quarterly are practically connotative terms; and this is a direct result of the righteous but misguided indignation of Shelley—misguided because his information was incomplete and the more guilty party escaped, thus inflicting upon the Quarterly the brunt of the opprobrium of which far more than half should be accredited ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... many ways and manners has taken away all opprobrium from the message by telephone, and with the exception of those of a very small minority of letter-loving hostesses, all informal invitations are sent and answered by telephone. Such messages, however, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... given of his change of attitude except that he wished to please the King. As far as his own interests were concerned, it is obvious that he could have nothing to gain by publishing to the world a scandal that must inevitably bring opprobrium on the Church. His lamentations to this effect in the famous Bull[167] clearly show that he recognized this danger and therefore desired at all costs to clear the accused Knights, if evidence could be obtained in their favour. It was only when the Templars made damning admissions in his presence ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... removed, their effect is still there. The very statement of the terms, Ireland versus England, is enough to show the hopelessness of such a combat. It is a very easy thing to magnify the old heroism of the Irish, and cast opprobrium on the present bearers of the name, as did several newspaper writers recently, for not displaying the "pluck" of their ancestors who fought against Elizabeth, Cromwell, and William of Orange. It is forgotten that circumstances have altered considerably since those days when the Irish ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... anecdotes, with embellishments of her lingering decline, and its real or supposed cause. In short, they worked each other up to some indignation against the austere little man, who sat examining papers in an adjoining room, unconscious of what opprobrium he ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... patrimonies for a pittance from the British pension-roll, and their native land for a cold reception in their miscalled home, or the passive ones who remained behind to endure the coldness of former friends, and the public opprobrium, as despised citizens, under a government which they abhorred. In justice to the old gentleman who has favored us with his discontented musings, we must remark that the state of the country, so far as can be gathered from these papers, was of dismal augury for the tendencies of democratic rule. ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... miscreant just before his fate—nay, was, in all probability, the very youth described in the account as found in his chamber and escaping the pursuit—I asked you if you would now venture to leave that disguise— that shelter under which you would for ever be safe from the opprobrium of the world—from the shame that, sooner or later, your brother must ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... travel to England and to other foreign lands. Though some of those men are punished for their temerity in defying this sacred injunction of their faith, it is remarkable how many pundits arise to defend such travel and to reduce the opprobrium which overtakes a sea-travelled man. Indeed, every year adds to the ease with which such a man can avoid punishment for ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... Sanders' News Letter and Daily Advertiser of Feb. 18, 1845, which, among other curiosities, contains an 'Address of the Dublin Protestant Operative Association, and Reformation Society,' one sentence of which is—'We have raised our voices against the spirit of compromise, which is the opprobrium of the age; we have unfurled the banner of Protestant truth, and placed ourselves beneath it, we have insisted upon Protestant ascendancy as just and equitable, because Protestant principles ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... Republic. At present I find myself ill-treated, persecuted, and disparaged, by every shameful means, which their policy brings to the aid of persecution. I would have been indifferent to all except that species of opprobrium with which the first magistrates of the Republic endeavour to overwhelm me. After having deserved well of my country by my last act, I am not bound to hear myself accused in a manner as absurd as atrocious. I have not expected that a manifesto, signed ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... you not, rather, yourself trample it under foot, as alike the disgrace of your country, the enemy of humanity, and the enemy of God? And nobly join, with heart and hand, every honest man who seeks to load with the opprobrium they deserve, the law itself and everything that justifies and ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society

... unchanged, his heart oppressed, and his mind intent on promoting the happiness of those by whom he is exiled. And what am I, or who, that I should do him this violence? What validity have these arguments of rank, relationship, and the world's opprobrium? Are they just? He refuted them: so he thought, and so persists to think. And who was ever less partial, or more ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... as I was of her person and of her love. I had renounced my country, and, in good faith, I had intended to have held by her for ever; and, when I should find myself in a country where marriage with one born in slavery was looked upon as no opprobrium, I had determined that the indissoluble ceremony should be legally performed. To do all this I was in earnest; but, events, or destiny, or by whatever high-sounding term we may call those occurrences which force us on in a path we wish not to ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... Hales, "lost him all the advantages which a fuller experience of it and a longer intercourse with it might have given. That world was no less estranged from him than he from it. It misunderstood and misinterpreted him throughout his career. It covered him with its opprobrium. Assuredly, he was not the man that world painted. It by no means follows that because Shelley did not repeat the ordinary creeds, and even mocked at them, that he believed nothing. Shelley was never in his soul an atheist: it was simply impossible with his nature that he should be; ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... there was little prospect of "peace friendship, and harmony" with England. The world remembers, and unfortunately the English people do not forget, that they had nowhere more bitter and offensive critics than in Germany. One refined method of opprobrium was the unprohibited sale in the main streets of Berlin of spittoons bearing the countenance of the English Colonial Minister, Mr. Chamberlain. A war with England would at that moment have been highly ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... child of ours wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to reflect with a true filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? are we to give them our weakness for their strength? our opprobrium for their glory? and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve them ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... other States is doubtful. The publication in August of Adams's letter to Tench Coxe, written in 1792, when he was bitterly disappointed at Washington's refusal to send him as minister to England, and asserting that the appointment of Pinckney was due to British influence, thus casting opprobrium upon the integrity of Washington, had done as much as Hamilton's pamphlet, if not more, to damn him finally with the Federalists. Hamilton's chief punishment for his thunderbolt was in his conscience, and his leadership of ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... this story we may presume without any lack of Christian charity, that these promises were extorted by means best known to the inquisition, that diabolical instrument of the pretended disciples of the Prince of Peace, and eternal opprobrium of the Peninsula. With regard to Joseph there was some shadow of excuse, as he seems to have accepted his appointment from the orthodox pope, though secretly attached to the heretical ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... worthy magistrate would not have surrendered the child intrusted to him, at least until Waife's return. And really it was a kindness to the old man to save him both from an agonizing scene with Jasper, and from the more public opprobrium which any resistance on his part to Jasper's authority or any altercation between the two would occasion. And as her main object then was to secure Losely's allegiance to her, by proving her power to be useful to him, so Waifes and Sophys and Mayors and Managers were to her but as pawns to be moved ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in many cases amenable to treatment, and yet they often become the opprobrium of the practioner by remaining, as they frequently do, an eyesore on the top of the hock; they do not interfere, it is true, with the work of the horse, but fixing upon him the stigma of what, in human estimation, is a most unreliable and objectionable reputation, to wit, that of being an habitual ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... committed to his execution was a bold and patriotic one—to drive the English from their last stronghold in France. Calais, over whose walls a foreign flag had been waving for two centuries, was to France an opprobrium and to England a trophy. But it was considered by the English government as an indispensable key to the Continent—a possession that it would not only be a disgrace to lose, but a national calamity. The importance of Calais was thus described by Micheli, the Venetian ambassador, only one year ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... an independent sovereign. He even extended his sway beyond the Jordan, reducing several important towns to his obedience; though the achievement which most gratified his Jewish subjects was the capture of Shechem, followed by the demolition of the temple on Gerizim, so long regarded as the opprobrium of the Hebrew faith. At a later period he made himself master of Samaria and Galilee, when, to gratify still farther the vindictive grudge which yet rankled in the breasts of his people, he destroyed the capital of the former, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... that is to say, by considering what would happen to society if men generally were to act in that manner. Thus, take the case of lying. In primitive states of society, and even in some more advanced nations, no great opprobrium attaches to telling a lie. In ancient Greece, for instance, veracity by no means occupied the same prominent position among the virtues that it does among ourselves, and, even now, Teutonic races are generally ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler

... singled out to slap on the back, and the grand Squire's lady to pat on the head, with a smiling gratulation on his young and fair repute—he, who had already learned so dearly to prize the sweets of an honorable name—he, to be made, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye, a mark for opprobrium, a butt of scorn, a jeer, and a byword! The streams of his life were poisoned at the fountain. And then came a tenderer thought of his mother! of the shock this would be to her—she who had already begun to look up ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... discharge, and frequently the production of pus has ceased from the moment of the evacuation of the original contents. Hence it appears that caries, when no longer labouring as heretofore under the irritation of decomposing matter, ceases to be an opprobrium of surgery, and recovers like other inflammatory affections. In the publication before alluded to, I have mentioned the case of a middle-aged man with a psoas abscess depending in diseased bone, in whom ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... the duty of every one capable of demonstrating any definite points of superiority in modern art, and who is in a position in which his doing so will not be ungraceful, to encounter without hesitation whatever opprobrium may fall upon him from the necessary prejudice even of the most candid minds, and from the far more virulent opposition of those who have no hope of maintaining their own reputation for discernment ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... comfort—we think it much if we can keep down insurrection by the bayonet and the sabre. Lucro ponamus is our cry, if we can effect even thus much; whereas Rome, in her simplest and pastoral days, converted this menacing danger and standing opprobrium of modern statesmanship to her own immense benefit. Not satisfied merely to have neutralized it, she drew from it the vital resources of her martial aggrandizement. For, Fifthly, these colonies were in two ways made the corner-stones of her martial policy: ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... an enormous evil, and it is very easy for one who dwells in the free States to cover with opprobrium those who hold slaves; but if the abolitionist indulges in a violence of invective that compels one to fear that his heart is burning with hatred towards his Southern brothers, he stands quite as low in the moral scale as ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... persons of a distant people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into SLAVERY in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be BOUGHT and SOLD, he has prostituted his prerogative for suppressing every ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... would cause an outcry from one end of Italy to the other. It would be a disgrace, and an opprobrium to the city for many a year. What! Ravenna invites, entices this hapless girl, who had been the admiration of so many cities, to come within her walls; and in return for the delight which she had given them— murders her. Other cities vie with each other in doing honour to the gifted ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... procedure was not invented in Belfast.] and discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... Americans, in his little sphere, he was denounced as a bold and inveterate Tory. In this manner he continued to serve his country in secret during the early years of the struggle, hourly environed by danger, and the constant subject of unmerited opprobrium. ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... and thereby put The lash in conscience' hand—and yet I thought Hypocrisy a duty to my calling! 'Twere better I were known as what I am, Than still to hide my sin beneath the garb Of outward purity! 'Twere better now, By Hester's side, to bear opprobrium, And brave what man may do, than still to ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... wonder that they have vilified and denounced the American party with every term of opprobrium that our vocabulary can furnish. No wonder they talk of dark lanterns and secret oaths and midnight assemblies. No wonder that they strive to frighten their followers with the notion that the American party is a raw-head and bloody bones, which should be shunned and avoided. For, if honest ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... pride, your sensitiveness to neglect and censure, your high sense of personal dignity. I have seen how ill you can brook slight affronts—do you believe that your love will enable you to bear great ones—scorn, contumely, perhaps opprobrium? Think, think, and weigh ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... them far beyond his wishes),—that the priests would fail on so public an occasion before the eyes of the people. Parties en masse commit infamous actions which would cover a single man with shame and opprobrium; therefore when one man alone stands in his guilt before the eyes of the masses, he becomes a Robespierre, a Jeffries, a Laubardemont, a species of expiatory altar on which all secret guilts hang ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... enthusiasm,—the enthusiasm of women, of young men, of lovers, of all the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy of his day. She gave him the world, and he proved ungrateful.... She gave him fame, and he bequeathed opprobrium.... But posterity should be grateful to them, and forgive a weakness that gave us the prophet of liberty. When Rousseau wrote those odious pages against his benefactress, he was no longer Rousseau, he was a poor madman. ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... a dozen languages, and has passed through nine editions in the original German. Through it the name of Haeckel became almost a household word the world over, and subject for mingled applause and opprobrium—applause from the unprejudiced for its great merit; opprobrium from the bigoted because of the unprecedented candor with which it followed the Darwinian hypothesis to ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... solemn oath to the contrary. But yet when I throw myself upon your generosity, when I declare to you the embarrassments in which your presence involves me, will you not release me from that oath? Reflect upon the danger of a discovery, upon the opprobrium in which such an event would plunge me: Reflect that my honour and reputation are at stake, and that my peace of mind depends on your compliance. As yet my heart is free; I shall separate from you with regret, but not with despair. Stay here, and a few weeks will sacrifice my happiness ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... love. What sentiments do you think you have inspired me with? Monsieur de Gersay, your father, through an excess of affection for you, wished you to remain ignorant of your birth. Ah, my son, by what fatality have you compelled me to reveal this secret? You know to what degree of opprobrium the prejudiced have put one of your birth, wherefore it was necessary to conceal it from your delicacy of mind, but you would not have it so. Know me as your mother, oh, my son, and pardon me for having ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... the point of view of their curiosity and barbarity, though that is real enough, but consider it part of the humiliation sent by God for the expiation of your crimes. God, who was innocent, was subject to very different opprobrium, and yet suffered all with joy; for, as Tertullian observes, He was a victim fattened on the joys of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... had retired into private life. His excesses had raised such a storm of opprobrium against the Carlists that they had to request him to desist. Lizarraga summoned him to render himself up a prisoner. "Come and take me," replied Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz had near two thousand followers; Lizarraga a few hundred. ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... and chafe a man's spirit like a fetter. Such gifts bless neither him who gives nor him who takes. We must put our hearts into them, if we would win hearts by them. We must be ready, like our Master, to take blind beggars by the hand, if we would bless or help them. The despair and opprobrium of our modern civilisation; the gulf growing wider and deeper between Dives and Lazarus, between Belgravia and Whitechapel; the mournful failure of legalised help, and of delegated efforts to bridge it over, the darkening ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... Dr. Green, of Boston, saying before the physicians of that city that it is upon the members of the medical profession and the exceptional laws which it has always demanded, that the whole liquor fraternity depends more than upon anything else to screen it from opprobrium and just punishment for the evils it entails, and that after thirty years of professional experience he felt assured that alcoholic stimulants are not required as medicines, and that many, if not a majority of the best physicians, ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... smothered distrust of the Christians. For instance, they used ugly expressions to designate objects the Christians venerated. The Christians responded in kind. The ecclesiastical works of the time are full of insults and terms of opprobrium aimed at the Jews. If one reads the narrative of the Crusades, during which the blood of innocent massacred Jews flowed in streams, one must perforce excuse, not so much real hostility toward the Christians, as the employment of malicious expressions directed against ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... a born trader he embarks on it, and there are pretty goings on! On the West Coast he frequently sets up in business for himself; on the South-West Coast he usually becomes a sub-trader to one of the great English, French, or German firms. On both Coasts he gets himself disliked, and brings down opprobrium on all black traders, expressed in language more powerful than select. This wholesale denunciation of black traders is unfair, because there are many perfectly straight trading natives; still the majority are recruited from missionary school ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... neighborhood became more congenial for the Tories who during that period harried the country-side. The Quakers were Tories, and are so called in the letters of the period; but the word "Tories" remains in the speech of Quaker Hill as a name of opprobrium. It describes a species of guerrillas who infested parts ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... gone forth she has acquitted herself creditably, and successfully lived down all attempts to ridicule and cast opprobrium upon her adventure. This forward march, which has been likened to a great tidal wave, has carried in its course higher education for woman, including her entrance to the medical, legal, and clerical professions, the position as trustee on school boards ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various

... infringed this rule, incurred the dishonourable epithet of niddering, or worthless,— an epithet of a nature so insulting, that men were known to have slain themselves, rather than endure life under such opprobrium. But the offenders were very few amidst a race trained in moderation and self- denial; and hence it was that woman, worshipped for so many years like something sacred, was received, when she became the head of a family, into the arms and heart of a husband ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... that shock to her sensibilities which we have detailed,—but never fainting, never despairing. Not even relinquishing her pride, but guarding it with triple defences, by her reserve in respect to Phil, as well as by a certain new dignity of manner which has grown out of her conflict with the opprobrium that seems to threaten, for no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... Guises keep the town so full of spies that we have only the river where we can talk without fear. You are now, my son, like a sentinel who must die at his post. Remember this: if you are discovered, we shall all abandon you; we shall even cast, if necessary, opprobrium and infamy upon you. We shall say that you are a creature of the Guises, made to play this part to ruin us. You see therefore that we ask ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... such are the things held by the bulk of both educated and uneducated calling themselves Christians, however many of them may vainly think by an explanatory clause here and there to turn away the opprobrium of their falsehood, while they remain virtually the same—that such are the things so held, I am, alas! unable to deny. It helps nothing, I repeat, that many, thinking little on the matter, use quasi mitigated forms to express their tenets, and imagine that so they indicate a different ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... get the best of other people—especially older people, like parents and teachers. They believe in practising concealment, dissimulation and insincerity; but they are very wary of getting saddled with a downright lie. They have the utmost contempt for a "tell-tale," and they include in this opprobrium any boy who hasn't sense enough to keep from older people an inkling of any sort, as to what he himself may have been up to, as well as any others of the crowd. Nothing is half so bad as blabbing what you know—not ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... witnessed an opprobrium, hitherto unheard of in our national assemblies. The same member, M. Dupin[29], advanced, that the oath to be taken to the sovereign by the nation, in order to be valid and legitimate, should not be administered by virtue ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... written by the three admirals on the 24th of October, which, describing the national fleet as a mere crowd of "Greek corsairs," by implication included Lord Cochrane and his English supporters in the same opprobrium. This had not at first been perceived by him. On his detecting the insult, he wrote to the representatives of the three powers three letters, which here need to ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... priests are not guilty—they are only led astray. When the eye of the law falls on these errors of the conscience, it envenoms them. The best means of curing them is not to see them. To punish by the pangs of hunger simple and venial errors, would be an opprobrium to legislation—a horror in morals. The legislator leaves to God the care of avenging his own glory, if he believe it violated by an indecorous worship. Would you, in the name of tolerance, again create ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... pictures of a debased and shamelessly corrupt condition of society. Keen contemptuous ridicule, a sardonic irony that held nothing in reverence, a caustic sarcasm that burned like an acid, and a vituperative invective that ransacked the language for phrases of opprobrium—these were the agents enlisted by Juvenal into the service of purging ...
— English Satires • Various

... what you like," Sophia retorted, adding contemptuously a term of opprobrium which has long since ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... venerable object of censure, then nearly four-score years of age, his limbs trembling with palsy, his bald head crimson with excitement, and tears dropping from his eyes, as he for four days stood defying the storm and hurling back defiantly the opprobrium with which his adversaries sought to stigmatize him. He was animated by the recollection that the slave-power had prevented the re-election of his father and of himself to the Presidential chair, and he poured forth the hoarded wrath of half a century. Lord Morpeth, who was ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... criterion of the justice of scientific conclusions, in all that relates to the origin of things, and, among them, of species. In this nineteenth century, as at the dawn of modern physical science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the orthodox. Who shall number the patient and earnest seekers after truth, from the days of Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered and their good name blasted by the mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters? Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley

... carried opium to the United States. Foreigners in China combated the evil. The nation took a determined stand, and finally, through international agreement under American leadership, the trade and the consumption of opium were checked. Similarly slavery was put under the opprobrium of Christendom, public opinion in one nation after another was formed against it, laws were passed condemning it, and at last it received an international ban. At the present time, through agitation ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... and the planters, both of whose characters had been grossly calumniated. These wished that an inquiry might be instituted, and this immediately, conscious that the more their conduct was examined the less they would be found to merit the opprobrium with which they had been loaded. The charges against the Slave Trade were either true or false. If they were true, it ought to be abolished; but if upon inquiry they were found to be without foundation, justice ought to be done to the reputation of those who were concerned in it. He then said a ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... Nile, exhibit their eulogistic inscriptions in hieroglyphics. By this new species of shorthand we might have embodied this very article in half a dozen sprightly etchings! But as the hapless inventor of the first great art of printing incurred, among his astounded contemporaries, the opprobrium of being in compact with the evil one, (whence, probably, the familiar appellation of printers' devils,) it behoves the early practitioners of the new art to look to their reputations! By economizing the time of the public, they may squander their own good repute. It is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... witness. Every national contest has seen the rise and the fall of an anti-war party, and felt the influence of a press wielded in the interest of that party. These have not, necessarily, always been in the wrong. The contrary has been often true, though their fall, and the opprobrium cast upon them have been none the less sure. It is only when these have arisen during the progress of a war involving great moral and humanitarian principles in its successful prosecution, that ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... bearing on his future political prospects, after insinuating that there had been "art or management to entice a representative in Congress from a conscientious responsibility to his own or the wishes of his constituents," he declared his intention "to appeal from this opprobrium and censure to the judgment of an enlightened, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... that dog of a weather. The crookedness of the fuel transported her, and she upbraided the fagots as springing from races of ugly old curs. (The vocabulary of Venetian abuse is inexhaustible, and the Venetians invent and combine terms of opprobrium with endless facility, but all abuse begins and ends with the attribution of doggishness.) The conscription was held in the campo near us, and G. declared the place to have become unendurable—"proprio un campo di sospiri!" ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... a more obscure or despised place for the consummation of their enterprise in the city of Boston than was this selfsame negro church and school-room. The weather added an ever memorable night to the opprobrium of the spot. A fierce northeaster accompanied with "snow, rain, and hail in equal proportions" was roaring and careering through the city's streets. To an eye-witness, Oliver Johnson, "it almost seemed as if Nature was frowning upon the new effort to abolish slavery; but," ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... entire: Johnson said they were. I mentioned Lord Hailes's censure of Prior, in his Preface to a collection of Sacred Poems, by various hands, published by him at Edinburgh a great many years ago, where he mentions, 'those impure tales which will be the eternal opprobrium of their ingenious authour.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, Lord Hailes has forgot. There is nothing in Prior that will excite to lewdness. If Lord Hailes thinks there is, he must be more combustible than other people.' I instanced the tale of Paulo Purganti and his Wife. JOHNSON. Sir, there is nothing ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... walked the earth, and to trust that a benevolent Creator would devote neither him nor any other man to eternal hellfire. For this most offensive doctrine he was howled at by the strictly pious, while he earned still deeper opprobrium by daring to advocate religious toleration: In face of the endless horrors inflicted by the Spanish Inquisition upon his native land, he had the hardihood—although a determined Protestant himself—to claim for Roman Catholics ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of monuments consecrated by art and the years is a crime that war does not excuse. May it be an eternal opprobrium for ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... self-complacency, among the functionaries of the island. But the recent escape, and the manner in which they had been connected with it, entirely altered the state of things. A new load of responsibility rested on their shoulders; fresh opprobrium was to be met and put down; and the last acquisition of ridicule promised to throw the first proofs of their simplicity and dulness entirely into the shade. Had not Griffin and his associates been implicated in the affair, it is probable the vice-governatore and the podesta would have been still ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... continued to comment on the fatal scroll with the lynx-eye of jealousy, loading her name with every opprobrium. Gloucester inwardly thanked Heaven that none other than Soulis and himself were present to hear Edward fasten such foul dishonor on his queen. The generous earl could not find other arguments to assuage the mountain ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... Bradley relinquished her position as Matron of the Home, to enter upon her great work of reforming and improving the Rendezvous of Distribution, which under the name of "Camp Misery," had long been the opprobrium of the War Department, and Miss Bradford was called to succeed her in charge of the Soldiers' Home at Washington. Of the efficiency and beneficence of her administration here for two and a half years ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... inhabitants. Lord Erith, Lord Rosherville's heir, considered his cousin a low person, of deplorably vulgar habits and manners; while Foker, and with equal reason, voted Erith a prig and a dullard, the nightcap of the House of Commons, the Speaker's opprobrium, the dreariest of philanthropic spouters. Nor could George Robert, Earl of Gravesend and Rosherville, ever forget that on one evening when he condescended to play at billiards with his nephew, that young gentleman poked his lordship ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN KING of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... Chicago Settlements affords an interesting study in social psychology. For whether Hull-House is in any wise identified with the strike or not, makes no difference. When "Labor" is in disgrace we are always regarded as belonging to it and share the opprobrium. In the public excitement following the Pullman strike Hull-House lost many friends; later the teamsters' strike caused another such defection, although my office in both cases had been solely that ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... faction howled with Cerberus throat, When falsehood struck a felon stroke, When forgery did its worst To pull its hated quarry down, To dim, disarm, degrade, discrown. Against the array accurst That ancient chief made gallant head, Dismayed not, nor disquieted At rancour's rude assault. He shared opprobrium undeserved, But not for that had courage swerved, Or loyalty made default. But now? The hand that reared hath razed; And as old ANGUS stood amazed At WILTON's shameful tale, So fealty here must bend the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various

... elsewhere such as startled even itself. Of all branches of education, the science of gauging people and events by their relative importance defies study most insolently. For three or four generations, society has united in withering with contempt and opprobrium the shameless futility of Mme. de Pompadour and Mme. du Barry; yet, if one bid at an auction for some object that had been approved by the taste of either lady, one quickly found that it were better to buy half-a-dozen Napoleons or Frederics, or ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... twice rebellious. He has set bad example among the prisoners, assaulted his keeper, and loaded the Provisional Government with opprobrium. I may say to you, Messieurs, however, that I have really nothing to do with the man's case. In this time of tumult, when the operation of all laws is suspended, the Court-Martial is the only tribunal to which serious ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins

... July, 1776, the draft of a Declaration of Independence was reported to Congress by the committee, and in it the slave trade was characterized as "an execrable commerce," as "a piratical warfare," as the "opprobrium of infidel powers," and as "a cruel war against human nature." [Applause.] All agreed on this except South Carolina and Georgia, and in order to preserve harmony, and from the necessity of the case, these ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... ill-living and scandalous mortals. Though few things, even in what is called Literature, are more disgusting than to hear small critics, who earn their bite and sup by acting as the self-appointed showmen of the works of their betters, heaping terms of moral opprobrium upon those whose genius is, if not exactly a lamp unto our feet, at all events a joy to our hearts,—still, not even genius can repeal the Decalogue, or re- write the sentence of doom, 'He which is filthy, let him ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... Her reasoning is to the effect that they bring scandal upon Germany; that they associate with the names of its favourite watering-places the appellation of "hells;" that they attract swindlers and adventurers of every degree; and that they have for many a year past been held up to the opprobrium of Europe. For why should this practice be a lawful practice of Germany and of no other country in Europe? Why not in France, in Spain, in Italy, in the Northern States, in Great Britain itself? Let us ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... in his "Dictionary of Americanisms,"[41] that even "bull" was softened to "male cow." This was the Golden Age of euphemism, as it was of euphuism; the worst inventions of the English mid-Victorians were adopted and improved. The word "woman" became a term of opprobrium, verging close upon downright libel; legs became the inimitable "limbs"; the stomach began to run from the "bosom" to the pelvic arch; pantaloons faded into "unmentionables"; the newspapers spun their parts of speech into such gossamer webs as "a statutory offence," "a house of questionable repute" ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... Monsieur. You have soiled your name with ineffaceable opprobrium. While so much as a drop of blood remains in my veins, I will leave no means untried to punish you for your cowardice and ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... moving sight. About twenty young creatures, the eldest not exceeding sixteen, many of them with angelic faces divested of every angelic expression, featured with impudence, impenitency, and profligacy, and clothed in the silken tatters of squalid finery. A magisterial—a national—opprobrium! What a disadvantageous contrast to the Spinhaus, in Amsterdam, where the confined sit under the eye of a matron, spinning or sewing, in plain and neat dresses provided by the public! No traces of their former lives appear in their countenances; a thorough reformation seems to have ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... does not stand on a lesser pedestal. If fighting in itself, be it offensive or defensive, is, as Quakers rightly testify, brutal and wrong, we can still say with Lessing, "We know from what failings our virtue springs."[3] "Sneaks" and "cowards" are epithets of the worst opprobrium to healthy, simple natures. Childhood begins life with these notions, and knighthood also; but, as life grows larger and its relations many-sided, the early faith seeks sanction from higher authority and more rational sources for its own justification, satisfaction and development. If military ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... God the praise; but we know that this woman is a sinner." This was the best they could find to say of her in the moment of her greatest victories; but indeed it is no disparagement to Jeanne or to any saint that she should share with her Master the opprobrium of such words ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... attaches to their vices. They should rather be held up in their true deformity, as the more conspicuous from the very greatness with which they are associated. It may be remarked, however, that the reiterated and unsparing opprobrium with which foreign writers, who have been little sensible to Gonsalvo's merits, have visited these offences, affords tolerable evidence that they are the only ones of any magnitude that can be ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... monseigneur," said the poor fellow; "since I must die, at least let it please you that it be in the early morning; so that, as I have many acquaintances in the town, I may not be held up to public opprobrium." ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... by which he hoped to destroy not only the heroic leader but the entire League by bringing opprobrium and ridicule upon them, was wonderfully subtle in its refined cruelty, and Chauvelin, knowing by now something of Sir Percy Blakeney's curiously blended character, was never for a moment in doubt but that he would write the infamous letter, save his wife by sacrificing his honour, and then seek ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... rank in such matters as encouragement of learning, endowment of research etc., with the basest of kingdoms, and the contrast of status between the learned Societies of London and of Paris, Berlin, Vienna or Rome is mortifying to an Englishman—a national opprobrium. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton



Words linked to "Opprobrium" :   opprobrious, shame, fame, disgrace, dishonour, ignominy, dishonor



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