"Contempt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I cannot explain. Perhaps the Secretary of War will, when he gets his historian, at $2,500 a year, to write a national history of the war. Some malicious people said the Secretary of War had two reasons for this: the first, to show his contempt for military science; the second, because he wanted to show what fools some of these strange generals were. I have also heard it intimated that the reason why some of these strange generals were assigned to ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... of rosin, even such is the first ebullition of my thoughts: take them for what they are worth, and blame no one but your discontented self that they are no better. Do you suppose, keen sir, that I am not quite self-conscious of their shallowness, utter contempt of subordination and selection, their empty reasoning and pellucid vanity?—There I have saved you the labour of a sentence, and present you with a killing verdict for myself. After a little, perhaps, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... purpose, and to subscribe to your advizement; being, notwithstanding, resolued stil to abide your farther resolution. My principal doubts are these. First, I was minded for a while to haue intermitted the vttering of my writings; leaste by ouer-much cloying their noble eares, I should gather a contempt of myself, or else seeme rather for game and commoditie to doe it, for some sweetnesse that I haue already tasted. Then also me seemeth the work too base for his excellent lordship, being made in honour of a priuate personage vnknowne, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... fighting on the battle-field—in the existence of demons, who wander through the forests in search of victims—and in the occult powers of wizards and medicine men. He had been taught that the only objects in life worthy of the occupation of men were war and the chase—that he should look with contempt on those who, he had heard, spent their time in the peaceful business of agriculture and commerce; that revenge and hatred of foes were the noblest sentiments to be cultivated in the human breast; ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... "exactly those who attack me most virulently receive the highest honors at the hands of your majesty. You are as cruel with me as a beautiful and ravishing coquette. So soon as by a love-glance you have made me the happiest of men, you turn away with cold contempt, and smile alluringly upon my rivals. I have yet two dagger-strokes in my heart, which cause me death-agony. If your majesty would make me truly happy, you must cure the wounds with ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... think seriously on the course of life I was to pursue. From the time that my mind had run on love and matrimony, I had lost all relish for serious study; and long before that time, I had felt a sentiment bordering on contempt for the pursuits of my father. Besides, he had already taken my two younger brothers into the counting-house with him. I therefore prevailed on my indulgent parent, with the aid of my mother's intercession, to purchase for ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... gave a long sigh, "I feel like that man in Pilgrim's Progress, after he dropped his burden from his back," she said. "The mean things I did never bothered me until just lately. After I saw that my own brother had nothing but contempt for me, I began to realize what a wretch I was, and the remorse has been ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... the guilt of those who oppressed they leave the fact of oppression as dark as before. The most terrible legal tyranny under which a nation has ever groaned avenged the rising under Tyrconnell. The conquered people, in Swift's bitter words of contempt, became "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to their conquerors. Such as the work was, however, it was thoroughly done. Though local risings of these serfs perpetually spread terror among the English ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... as much courtesy and respect as he had shown contempt to me, "You will, of course, understand, Mrs. Harker, that when a man is so loved and honoured as our host is, everything regarding him is of interest in our little community. Dr. Seward is loved not only by his household and his friends, but even by his patients, who, being some of ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... and rolling worlds Which Thou and I alone of living things Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou 5 Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise, And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts, With fear and self-contempt and barren hope. Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate, Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn, 10 O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge. Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours, And moments aye divided by keen pangs Till they seemed years, torture and solitude, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Swan that when defiance has to be made, it is ever best to deal in no half-measures. And, besides, coming from the Red Tower of the Wolfsberg, their precious Society of the White Wolf, with its mummery and flummery, filled me with a hot contempt. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... never given to the use of stimulants, and in fact, for the greater part of his career, was a total abstainer. And the man who knows somewhat of the eternal paradox of things can readily understand how this little tapster, proud and defiant, had a supreme contempt for the patrons who gulped down the stuff that he handed out over the bar. He dealt in that for which he had no use; and the American bartender today who wears his kohinoor and draws the pay of a bank cashier is one who "never touches a drop of anything." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... coffee is poured out you are at liberty to drink it boiling and muddy, or cold and clear. Real amateurs drink it without waiting. Those who allow the sediment to settle down, do not do so from contempt, for they afterwards collect it with the little finger and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... bright, Your parents went there from western skies, 'neath the Rocky mountain's height. Where do you live? What there, in that wretched barn of a place! A man who can rent such dens should meet the contempt of his race. What have you had to eat to-day? Why, how have you lived it out? Your mother and you did sewing; oh yes, at starvation prices, no doubt. Him? I know the man you have worked for then, he keeps his carriage and pair, Gives ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... mother, continually bumping against her as she walked slowly and heavily along, and having almost miraculous escapes from being kicked by the other camels. But he was getting stronger each day, and looked in amazement, not unmixed with contempt, at the new calf who had appeared the night before, and who was straggling feebly along, doing its best to keep up with the others. But the journey that day was a short one, for, as the sun grew hotter and hotter, Camer, the new calf, grew more ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... who accumulated riches both on earth and in heaven, may possibly be overdrawn, however, because Frances and I were "artistic temperaments" that viewed the type with a dislike and distrust amounting to contempt. The majority considered Samuel Franklyn a worthy man and a good citizen. The majority, doubtless, held the saner view. A few years more, and he certainly would have been made a baronet. He relieved much suffering ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... Poland, seeing the short work made of his ally, the king of Denmark, by this boy king, whom they had all regarded with so much contempt, deemed discretion to be the better part of valor and, as the lad had prophesied, withdrew from Livonia, "going back by the way he came." Then the young conqueror, flushed with his successes, turned his army against ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... persons the power of the East was embodied, were foremost in advocating their destruction. Indeed, from first to last, owing to the close connection of church and state in the Byzantine empire, the unpopularity of the latter in Western Europe was shared by the former. To this must be added the contempt for one another's character which had arisen among the adherents of the two churches, for the Easterns had learned to regard the people of the West as ignorant and barbarous, and were esteemed by them in turn as mendacious ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... Indian tales to meet golden-haired, fair-complexioned heroes and heroines. Mr. Thornton tells me that in the Panjab when one native speaks of another with contempt, he says, "he is a black man," ek kala admi hai. Sir Neville Chamberlain tells me that if you wish to praise a native for his valour and brave conduct, you say to him, "Your countenance is red," or "your cheeks are red," and that nothing is worse than to tell him his "face is black." ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... entwined, As one continued brake, the undergrowth Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplexed All path of man or beast that passed that way. One gate there only was, and that looked east On the other side: which when the arch-felon saw, Due entrance he disdained; and, in contempt, At one flight bound high over-leaped all bound Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within Lights on his feet. As when a prowling wolf, Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey, Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve In hurdled cotes amid the field secure, Leaps o'er the fence ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... gentleman in the plaid waistcoat immediately, hammering the table with a stout-bottle. Miss J'mima Ivins's friend's young man eyed the man behind the waistcoat from head to foot, and cast a look of interrogative contempt towards Mr. Samuel Wilkins. Comic song, accompanied on the organ. Miss J'mima Ivins was convulsed with laughter—so was the man with the whiskers. Everything the ladies did, the plaid waistcoat and whiskers did, by ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... All his contempt for the tyrants, and his compassion for his people unjustly oppressed, he puts into his poem Ahoti Ruhamah, which is inscribed "to the Honor of the Daughter of Jacob violated by the Son ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... upon the earth and the sky rather than upon the faces of his fellows. His natural love of Nature had been intensified by his captivity, while a bitter contempt and suspicion of all men and women had grown up in his mind. He entered his father's house ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... the alabaster statue of Pocahontas, with a little ripple of self-disdain. She was in a strange humour, and beneath the surface of her apparent gaiety there ran an undercurrent of bitterness and contempt for herself. Her eyes were unusually brilliant, and her cheeks were pink enough to have been rouged. The sight of her old lover had stirred many memories ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... was natural and habitual in Pope's; and that, in the eyes of our grandchildren, Keats's and Shelley's peculiarities will seem as monstrous as Pope's or Johnson's do in ours. But if, misled by the popular contempt for Pope, be should he inclined to answer this advice with a shrug and a smile, we entreat him and all young poets, to consider, line by line, word by word, sound by sound, only those once well-known lines, which many a brave and wise man of fifty years ago would have ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... him money. With these donations he purchased silk handkerchiefs and wore them in his breast, gowns for his gins, for he at last had TWO, and to his great credit he abstained from any indulgence in intoxication, looking down, apparently with contempt, on those wretched specimens of his race who lead ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... succeeded week, and the monarch still continued to avoid the enraged favourite; and even occasionally alluded to her with a contempt which stung her haughty and presumptuous spirit beyond endurance. She saw her little Court melting away, her flatterers dispersing, and her friends becoming estranged; nor could she conceal from herself ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... gentleman, that I gave her the message which I promised to deliver from you, and also that I transmitted a letter with which you entrusted me; and repel with scorn and indignation the charges which you were pleased to bring against me, as I treat with contempt the language and the threats which you ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Turner, the man whose narrow escape was mentioned not long since. We heard that the men, whom the entreaties of his wife induced to go in search of him, found him leisurely driving along his recovered oxen, and whistling in utter contempt of the Pawnee nation. His party was encamped within two miles of us; but we passed them that morning, while the men were driving in the oxen, and the women packing their domestic utensils and their ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... refuse to survive their lord, and with brave words meet their death, is finely described. But not all are true; some, who have been especially favored, ignobly flee. These are treated with the racial contempt for cowards. The poem has survived in fragmentary form, and the name of the poet is ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... in sight, driving in the tumbling woolly flock. Ellen did not want them to see the package, so with contempt for herself, and somewhat lessening anger, she kicked it back into the tent. What was in it? She peeped inside the tent, devoured by curiosity. Neat, well wrapped and tied packages like that were not often seen in the Tonto Basin. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... ship, and sculled upstairs like winkin'." A loud peal of the bell summoned up my mother, leaving my father in a state of no pleasant suspense, for he was calculating how far Sir Hercules could bring in "kissing a lady's ladies' maid" under the article of war as "contempt of superiors," and, if so, how many dozen kisses his back might receive from the cat in return. While he was absorbed in this pleasing speculation, Lady Hercules was pouring out anathemas against my mother's want of delicacy and decency, informing her that it was ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... moment shame and contempt reigned in Mark Eden's breast, but they were chased away by a manly feeling of pity for the enemy who seemed to be ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... his rush from theatre to theatre of the war a message will reach the KAISER. The hatred of a world may flatter him, but the cold, chilling contempt of Little Pilswick will pierce to his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... proceeded tranquilly, "to treat his mental capabilities with quite so much contempt. They are possibly not startlingly brilliant, and he is perfectly easy to deceive. But even an official detective can see through a ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... disturbance possible, would not be attained by divorce either. Moreover, in the event of divorce, or even of an attempt to obtain a divorce, it was obvious that the wife broke off all relations with the husband and threw in her lot with the lover. And in spite of the complete, as he supposed, contempt and indifference he now felt for his wife, at the bottom of his heart Alexey Alexandrovitch still had one feeling left in regard to her—a disinclination to see her free to throw in her lot with Vronsky, so that her crime ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... widening the belief that the Democrats had no interest in their welfare. The panic had aided it yet more, by multiplying the discontented who might be converted to the new faith. Every month the Populist party increased in strength, the East watching it with mingled fear and contempt and ignorance. The comic papers pictured as the typical Populist the raw-boned, booted, unkempt farmer, in shirt-sleeves and with flowing beard. It could not see the foundation of real reforms on which the movement stood. A satirist ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... of government the waste of public money is a crime against the citizen, and the contempt of our people for economy and frugality in their personal affairs deplorably saps the strength and sturdiness of our ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... the quality of civilization stolen literature would confer upon a nation, I preferred to distinguish my generosity by a more national and less tricky example. This, I observed, did not give satisfaction to the damsels, who turned away with a look of contempt, and no doubt to this day entertain a very poor opinion ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... too, another feeling you dislike in me,—disdain! I first learned to despise my father, the host, and I then despised my acquaintances, his guests; for I saw, while they laughed at him, that they flattered, and that their merriment was not the only thing suffered to feed at his expense. Thus contempt grew up with me, and I had nothing to check it; for when I looked around I saw not one living thing that I could respect. This father of mine had the sense to think I was no idiot. He was proud ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "self-abnegation," predicates the concept of sacrifice; the giving up of something much to be desired, while, as a matter of truth, there arises in the consciousness of the Illumined One, a natural contempt for the "baubles" of externality; therefore there is no sacrifice. Nothing is given up. On the contrary, the ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... with coward fear, Ganelon threw his sable cloak from his shoulders and faced the gallant Roland. "All the world knows," said Ganelon, "that I am thy stepfather, and that I bear thee no love, but only hatred and contempt; but to show your malice toward me thus openly is the work of a fool and a coward. If I return from this dangerous mission, then will I ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the other a Chinese, should be taught the Mantchoo language; and that they might pass their examinations for office in that language. I could observe, that the young men of the royal family at Yuen-min-yuen spoke with great contempt of the Chinese. One of them, perceiving that I was desirous of acquiring some knowledge of the Chinese written character, took great pains to convince me that the Tartar language was much superior to it; and he not only offered to furnish me with the alphabet and ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... to other customs, wondered how a priest could be addressed with such contempt by ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... little Michael most wished to do, but he had no hope that his father would listen for a moment to the suggestion. His father, Ludovico Buonarotti, was a distinguished man in the state, and held art and artists in contempt. He had planned a great political career for his boy, as ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... wills to oppose the weight, of the staggering mass that chokes and crushes them into perdition, brings every law of healthy existence into question with them, and every alleged method of help and hope into doubt. Indignation, without any calming faith in justice, and self-contempt, without any curative self-reproach, dull the intelligence, and degrade the conscience, into sullen incredulity of all sunshine outside the dunghill, or breeze beyond the wafting of its impurity; and at last a philosophy develops ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... to take away something from the dignity of writing, and therefore are never communicated but with hesitation, and a little fear of abasement and contempt. But it must be remembered, that life consists not of a series of illustrious actions, or elegant enjoyments; the greater part of our time passes in compliance with necessities, in the performance of daily duties, in the removal of small ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... sorrow!" he breaks out again, "not a king but would wish to be without these if he could. But I know that he cannot!" The loneliness which breathes in words like these has often begotten in great rulers a cynical contempt of men and the judgements of men. But cynicism found no echo in the large and sympathetic temper of AElfred. He not only longed for the love of his subjects, but for the remembrance of "generations" to come. Nor did his inner gloom or anxiety check for an instant his vivid and versatile ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... and Bohemia three separate kingdoms, or of dethroning the Emperor Francis, and putting in his place his brother, the Grand Duke of Wuerzburg, formerly the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The Austrians, for whom he had felt a certain contempt, now inspired him with profound esteem; he admired their bravery, and especially the fidelity, of which they had given many touching proofs, to their unfortunate ruler. The hero of Wagram said to himself that if instead of gaining this battle he had lost it, he would not ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Exposition of the Motives from which the National Assembly have proclaimed the Convention, and suspended the Executive Power of the King,[31] without dreaming that it is an account of a revolution which arose out of distrust or contempt for the Assembly, which had driven the king away from his palace and from power, and which had finally annihilated the very chamber that was thus professing to expound its motives for doing what the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... cheap and common by comparison. It was so easy for her to look well turned out; and it would never be easy to dress Avice, who bade fair to resemble her mother in build, and had already a passion for frills and trimmings, and a contempt for plain things. Mrs. Rainham had an uneasy conviction that the girl who bore all her scathing comments in silence actually dared to criticize her in her own mind—perhaps openly to Bob, whose blue eyes held many unspoken things as he looked at her. Once she had overheard ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... spirit of our soldiers, it is easy to understand their contempt for those civilians who go on strike, prate of weariness, scream their terror when a few Hun planes sail over London, devote columns in their papers to pin-prick tragedies of food-shortage, and cloud the growing generosity between England and America by cavilling criticisms ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... several drunkards amongst the Portuguese, but, without one exception, they have been individuals who, having travelled abroad, like this fellow, have returned with a contempt for their own country, and polluted with the worst vices of the lands which ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... outrage, such contempt for the rights of nations, called for prompt vengeance, but Gama understood the art of dissimulation; however, on receiving a visit on board from some rich merchants, he detained them, and sent to the Zamorin to demand an exchange of prisoners. The king's reply not being sent within the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... mentioning the princess Jehaun- ara before him, "Your imprudence is not to be forgiven," said she; "can you think that the king of Samandal, whose character is so well known, will have greater consideration for you, than the many other kings to whom he has refused his daughter, with such evident contempt? Would you have him send you away with the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... comfortless away—dismiss me not With this afflicting answer, oh, my father! Use me more tenderly, indeed, I need it. This is the last resource of wild despair— It conquers every power of firm resolve To beat it as a man—this deep contempt— My every suit denied: Let me away— Unheard and foiled in all my fondest hopes, I take my leave. Now Alva and Domingo May proudly sit in triumph where your son Lies weeping in the dust. Your crowd of courtiers, And your long train of cringing, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... made their rivals wince, despite their affected contempt. To-morrow was the day of the meeting; and between now and then they must decide whether or not they would obey their own seniors and stay away, or revolt and take the consequences. The unanimous opinion was in favour ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... hard-working fellow, with an eye to the main chance and a taste for pleasures that cost him nothing, jovial, but vulgar and self-satisfied, the kind of man who, having enjoyed the favours of woman, treats her with arrogance and contempt, till from loving she comes to loathe him—a characteristic example, according to M. Bourget, of le faux homme a femmes. Such was Aubert, Fenayrou's pupil. He was soon to become something ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... had a high contempt for all working men, and a keen suspicion of every attitude which smacked of liberty. The working man, like the negro, was happier far in a state of semi-slavery—such was the honest view ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... expressions, and did not speak at all except to beg his Majesty's reflection upon what I had said.—'Reflection?'" asks the King, with eyes dangerous to behold;—"My Lord," continues Robinson, heavily narrative, "his contempt of what I had said was so great," kicking his boot through Guelderland and the guilders as the most contemptible of objects, "and was expressed in such violent terms, that now, if ever (as your Lordship perceives), it was time to make the last effort;" play our trump-card down at once; "a ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the way with their feet. The mother leaned against the wall, and throwing back her head listened to their careful utterances. Tatyana arose, looked around, and sat down again. Her green eyes gleamed dryly as she looked into the peasants' faces with dissatisfaction and contempt. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... on the earth with a force which nearly buried it in the ground, and was so hot at the time that it could not be touched with the hand. It afterward became cold. Now the savans heard all this, and pronounced that it could not be; and for a long while every report of the kind was treated with contempt. Now every one knows, and every one is fully satisfied of the fact, and not the least surprise is expressed when they are told of the circumstance. As Shakespeare makes Hamlet observe very truly—'There are more things ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... narrative the trappers listened with respectful attention, for, despite the feelings of pity, almost bordering on contempt, with which they regarded the stranger's weapons and his knowledge, or rather ignorance, of woodcraft, they could not help reverencing the simple-minded enthusiasm in a good cause that had conducted the artist so deep into a ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... a touch of merry contempt for all the vain controversies and conflicts of humanity in the grateful ejaculation with which the old doctor greeted that peaceful, ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... the river and the stepping-stones. Here the stream had widened out and was very shallow, great rough masses of pudding stone being laid on the bed to let wayfarers pass over dry-shod. This was, however, a luxury looked upon with great contempt by Harry, who merely drew his trousers into a roll above his knees, and walked straight in all amongst the water-cresses and forget-me-nots which peeped up here and there. Of course, such an example must needs be followed upon the instant, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... such a feeling as if it had been a review written against myself, making false quotations from me. But I am ashamd to say so much about a short piece. How are you served! and the labors of years turn'd into contempt by scoundrels. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... shoulders, for he had divined his old master's secret contempt, and wished to win him back by his old-time caresses—all the wheedling practices of a hussy. Very sincerely and with a sort of anxious deference he again promised Claude that he would do everything in his power to further the hanging of his ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... bonfire. When we got the wall down the most part of the house was gone, and the fire had caught the surrounding shrubs, so all we could do was to halt on the edge of the mass and squirt water, in the hope of putting out the flames. But, Lord bless you!" said the officer with good-humored contempt, "you might as well have tried with a child's squirt. As you see, sir, everything is gone within the wall. Leastways, all but that big oak near ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... prison. Mr Adams, the second mate, turning out of his cabin at the same time to take his watch, the two managed to raise "Snowball"—the captain and the Irishman easing the burden by lifting him from below. As for the grand Mrs Major Negus, she had to content herself with looking on with an undisguised contempt at the whole proceeding, wondering all the while that they should dare to introduce a negro into the saloon in that manner without ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... acquaintance with a tribe new to us, we received them with pleasure. But when they climbed over the side we found that they were pure Chukches, some of them old acquaintances, who during winter had been guests on board the Vega. "Ankali" said they, with evident contempt, are first met with farther beyond St. Lawrence Bay. When we anchored next day at the mouth of this bay we were immediately, as usual, visited by a large number of natives, and ourselves visited their tents on land. They still talked Chukch with a limited mixture of foreign words, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... only one wife, but a man may have as many concubines (pota), as he can secure. The pota lives in a house of her own, but she is held somewhat in contempt by the other woman, and is seldom seen in the social gatherings or in other homes. Her children belong to the father, and she has no right of appeal to the old men, except in cases of cruelty. Men with concubines do not suffer in the estimation of their fellows, but are considered clever ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... the 'Barbara Lane'. He knows that her captain, Mr. Vance, is a friend of the family. What a mighty contempt did Ned and his kind have for foot passengers! Laying about him with his whip, and shouting at the top of his voice to make himself heard, he sent the Colonel's Kentucky bays through the crowd down to the Barbara's landing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... men's views that the odious and anti-social excesses of Fox at the gambling-table are visited with a blame usually wreathed in smiles, whilst the financial irregularities of a noble and pure-minded man are thought fit matter for the fiercest censure or the most lordly contempt. ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... and in the Greek islands, as well as Sicily, the coast of Asia Minor, and Constantinople. Like most Englishmen who have served in the Levant, he developed a considerable respect for the Turk, and a quite unbounded contempt for the Greek. After the armistice negotiations in Crete he writes: "I found the conduct of the Turkish chiefs throughout manly, straightforward, and sincere, while that of their opponents was very much the reverse;" and in another place he writes of the Greeks ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... and German power fastened upon the world is as fatuous as the dreamers in Russia. What I am opposed to is not the feeling of the pacifists, but their stupidity. My heart is with them, but my mind has a contempt for them. I want peace, but I know how to get ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... apartment was ready. Every method was tried to continue or augment the indifference which the Dauphin long manifested towards his youthful spouse. She was deeply hurt at it, but she never suffered herself to utter the slightest complaint on the subject. Inattention to, even contempt for, the charms which she heard extolled on all sides, nothing induced her to break silence; and some tears, which would involuntarily burst from her eyes, were the sole symptoms of her inward sufferings discoverable by those ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and also the outward signs by which these emotions are indicated, as tear, smile, laugh, blush, weep, sigh, groan. Nearly all our national proverbs are Anglo-Saxon. Almost all the terms and phrases by which we most energetically express anger, contempt and indignation ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... a Spartan youth was of a most restricted kind. He was taught to despise literature as unworthy of a warrior, while the study of eloquence and philosophy, which were cultivated at Athens with such extraordinary success, was regarded at Sparta with contempt. Long speeches were a Spartan's abhorrence, and he was trained to express ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... punished; if a crime it should be punished as other crimes are punished—by indictment or information, trial by jury if a jury is demanded, with all the safeguards that secure an accused person against judicial blunders and judicial bias. The necessity for these safeguards is even greater in cases of contempt than in others—particularly if the prosecuting witness is to sit in judgment on his own grievance. That should, of course, not be permitted: the trial should take place before ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... if thou lose, thou losest all. Thou losest soul, God, Christ heaven, ease, peace, &c. Besides, thou layest thyself open to all the shame, contempt, and reproach, that either God, Christ, saints, the world, sin, the devil, and all, can lay upon thee. As Christ saith of the foolish builder, so will I say of thee, if thou be such a one who runs and misseth; I say, even all that go by will ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan
... it almost as Popple might have said "A DENTIST?" and Undine found herself astray in a new labyrinth of social distinctions. She felt a sudden contempt for Harry Lipscomb, who had already struck her as too loud, and irrelevantly comic. "I guess Mabel'll get a divorce pretty soon," she added, desiring, for personal reasons, to present Mrs. Lipscomb as ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... in common contempt, the incidents and effects of their traffic were viewed with mixed emotions. Its employment of shackles was excused only on the ground of necessary precaution. Its breaking up of families was generally deplored, although it was apologized for by thick-and-thin champions ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... passed her lips in the nature of sustenance, neither her youth nor the fact that she was being half starved in her prison could save her from dangerous suspicion of contempt for the commandments of ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... characterizes the government of Bonaparte, is his profound contempt for the intellectual riches of human nature; virtue, mental dignity, religion, enthusiasm, these, these are in his eyes, the eternal enemies of the continent, to make use of his favorite expression; he would reduce man to force and cunning, and designate every thing else ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... are other kinds; not always true. Because, in this so sacred matter, clever people, without scruple, have made capital out of the heart's natural longing; and the dividing line is dim where falsehood ends and truth begins. So it has all come into suspicion and contempt. Accept what is freely given, Roy. Do not be tempted to try and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise, or blame,—nothing but well and fair, And what may quiet us ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... be admitted that the Guard Corps has retained that reputation for courage and contempt of death which it earned in 1870, when Emperor William I, after the battle of Gravelotte, wrote: 'My Guard has formed its grave in front of St. Privat,' and the swarms of men who came up bravely to the British rifles in the woods around Ypres repeated the tactics of forty-four years ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... was bartering his convictions for flattery and ease by allying himself to Calvin and his following. He recalled Helen's remark that what is called being honest with one's self is often the subtlest form of hypocrisy, and he did not spare himself a single pang of self-humiliation and contempt; and then, when he was full to the throat with self-loathing, he let his sensuous, self-loving nature devise excuse and soothe his ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... flute-player no longer and that when that glad time came, he would, himself, pick out for her the handsomest and bravest gentleman whom he could find and bring him to her, ready-made, to love. She knew he felt a great contempt for riches; she knew that his experience of America had far from prepossessed him in favor either of the country or the people in it. She was absolutely certain that the man whom he would choose for her would be a very different sort of person from John Vanderlyn. Handsome he was, for certain, ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... to Subscribe Ten or Twenty Pounds a Year, to so noble and so successful a Scheme, is hard and perhaps painful to say: I am the more amaz'd at it, as they cou'd not but say, it wou'd have raised Ireland from Idleness to Industry, from Ignorance to Knowledge; from Contempt and Disregard, to Honour and Credit; and wou'd not have left us in fifty Years, an Idler or a Beggar, (which are but synonimous Terms) in the whole Kingdom. A Dish or two sav'd from their Tables, or a Bottle or two from their Revellings, an Horse or two left out of their Stables, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... on the young man's face, and fierce anger shot from his eyes. But the one who had spoken so sharply fixed upon him a look of withering contempt, and riding close up to the carriage, handed him his card, remarking ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... old families of Virginia there was indeed far less feeling on this subject than in some of the other States. Knowing the good feeling that almost universally existed between themselves and their slaves, the gentry of Virginia regarded with contempt the calumnies of which they were the subject. Secure in the affection of their slaves, an affection which was afterward abundantly proved during the course of the war, they scarcely saw the ugly side of the question. The worst masters were the smallest ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... insane in the eyes of reason. This protest the writer feels obliged to make, for while he regards the traditional, historical and anthropological curiosities here collected as matters of some interest, in various aspects, he has nothing but abhorrence and contempt for modern efforts to converse with the manes, and for all the profane impostures ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... "I know I ought to leave you in contempt for your cursed shilly-shallying, pusillanimous conduct, but with my poor child's agonised past before me, I can't behave as a polished ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... the subject of proverbs generally; but we are compelled to agree with Motherwell, when he says that this writer's rendering of the Scottish dialect is "most barbarous;" nor do we wonder that it excited the profound contempt of Allan Ramsay, who, from his thorough knowledge of the Scottish vernacular, was openly indignant at the reputation gained by Kelly's work, and made a collection himself, which was published at Edinburgh in 1763. In a sensible but ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... quoted gives the same portrait of the writer, only seen in profile, as it were, which we have already seen drawn in full face in the story of "Morton's Hope." It is charged with that 'saeva indignatio' which at times verges on misanthropic contempt for its objects, not unnatural to a high-spirited young man who sees his lofty ideals confronted with the ignoble facts which strew the highways of political life. But we can recognize real conviction and the deepest feeling beneath his ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... increasing staccato. Short contributions from the men crowded into corners. Frenzied beating of the typewriting machines, and overhead and far away the band. There was no air in the room. Sara Lee was to find out a great deal later on about the contempt of the Belgians for air. She ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to cast himself indignantly from "this bank and shoal of time," or the frail tottering bark that bears up modern reputation, into the huge sea of ancient renown, and to revel there with untired, outspread plume. Even this in him is spleen—his contempt of his contemporaries makes him turn back to the lustrous past, or project himself forward to the dim future!—Lord Byron's tragedies, Faliero,[B] Sardanapalus, &c. are not equal to his other works. They want the essence of the drama. They abound in speeches ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... warfare—that their headquarters was Constantinople—they have become attached to the soil, and shut themselves up in their harems, have established a feudal system, are divided among themselves by hereditary enmities, and their contempt for foreigners is no longer founded ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... rejoicing and furnished the desired excuse for Leopold to remain passive. Kaunitz, who had consistently opposed intervention in France, now asserted that Louis had voluntarily accepted the constitution. The action of Louis and Marie Antoinette was in reality forced. Amidst the Queen's expressions of contempt for the French Princes at Coblentz, the suppressed fire of her fury against her captors flashes forth in this sentence written to Mercy d'Argenteau (28th August)—"The only question for us is to lull them to sleep and inspire them with confidence so as to trick them the better afterwards."—And ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... misunderstood by the other side, and placed to the account of cowardice, imbecility or weakness; and because there can be no middle course in carrying on a war. We have suffered enough by it already in money and men; we must suffer no more. Besides, we lose self-respect, and gain only the contempt of the enemy. When the bearer of General Sherman's polite proclamation, addressed 'to the loyal citizens of South Carolina,' communicated it to the two officers near Beaufort, they replied, with courteous nonchalance, 'Your mission ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... can do no more than represent to your Lordship, and wait for such instructions as may be thought proper." And he continued to present these combinations of the merchants as "a most certain evidence of the lost authority of Government," and as exhibiting "insolence and contempt of Parliament." But he complains that they were not so much regarded in England as he expected they would be, and that he was left to act on his own judgment. He soon saw pilloried in the newspapers the names of a son of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... means by which intelligent men now converse with each other, and persons of all classes and all pursuits convey each the contribution of his individual experience. It was, therefore, he said, as absurd to hold book-knowledge at present in contempt, as it would be for a man to avail himself only of his own eyes and ears, and to aim at nothing which could not be performed exclusively by his own arms. The use and necessity of personal experience consisted in the power ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... naturally disposed to check these tumults, had lost all their influence; and being reproached with cowardice on account of the base desertion of their sovereign in the battle of Poiotiers, were treated with universal contempt by the inferior orders. The troops, who, from the deficiency of pay, were no longer retained in discipline, threw off all regard to their officers, sought the means of subsistence by plunder and robbery, and associating to them all the disorderly people with whom that age abounded, formed numerous ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... do we find?" continued the Cynic. "We find a contempt for the old virtues of simplicity and reticence; we find the distinction of sex wiped out, and with it all reverence and sense of mystery. Nature is a back number with them; they must for ever be plastering their noses with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... was one individual in the whole world, of whom the spinster aunt entertained a mortal and deep-rooted jealousy, it was this identical niece. The colour rushed over her face and neck, and she tossed her head in silence with an air of ineffable contempt. At last, biting her thin lips, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... translated into values of movement, and, for the same reason—to prevent the drawing of the eye inward, to permit it to devote itself to the rhythm of the line—the backgrounds were either entirely suppressed or kept as simple as possible. Colour also, with almost a contempt for its representative function, Botticelli entirely subordinated to his lineal scheme, compelling it to draw attention to the line, rather than, as is ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... in turn brought his elephant up to the prostrate animal and made her smell and strike it with her trunk in order to inspire her with contempt for tigers. Colonel Dermot measured it with a tape and found it to be nine feet six inches from nose to tip of tail. It was a young, fully-grown male in splendid condition. Then came the troublesome business of ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... my hand, I throw in your face our broken friendship, my trampled happiness, lost faith in God and man, endless contempt for you ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz, |
