"Depreciate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... self-elevation by depreciating others. Indeed, one should, by one's merits alone, seek distinction over persons that are distinguished but never over those that are inferior. Men really destitute of merit and filled with a sense of self-admiration depreciate men of real merit, by asserting their own virtues and affluence. Swelling with a sense of their own importance, these men, when none interferes with them (for bringing them to a right sense of what they are), regard themselves to be superior to men of real distinction. One possessed of real wisdom ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... out to be the regular pilot of the harbour; a post, be it known, of no small profit; and, in his eyes, at least, invested with immense importance. Our unceremonious entrance, therefore, was regarded as highly insulting, and tending to depreciate both the dignity and lucrativeness ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... business, interest and passion have their genuine effect; but a friendly letter is a calm and deliberate performance in the cool of leisure, in the stillness of solitude, and surely no man sits down by design to depreciate his own character. Friendship has no tendency to secure veracity; for by whom can a man so much wish to be thought better than he is, as by him whose kindness he ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... killing of an alligator with their primitive weapons was a feat never attempted. They chanted praises in my honour at night, and wherever I moved, my performances with the whales and alligator were always the first things to be sung. Nor did I attempt to depreciate my achievements; on the contrary, I exaggerated the facts as much as I possibly could. I described to them how I had fought and killed the whale with my stiletto in spite of the fact that the monster ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... good judge, [Footnote: Arbuthnot on Air. App.] and we have often found to our cost. How ought we then to value such rich and healthful countries on the Missisippi? As much surely as some would depreciate and vilify them. It may be observed, that all the countries in America are only populous in the inland parts, and generally at a distance from navigation; as the sea coasts both of North and South America are generally low, damp, excessively ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... writes of Buzot, "Sensible, ardent, melancholy, he seems born to give and share happiness. This man would forget the universe in the sweetness of private virtues. Capable of sublime impulses and unvarying affections, the vulgar, who like to depreciate what it can not equal, accuse him of being a dreamer. Of sweet countenance, elegant figure, there is always in his attire that care, neatness, and propriety which announce the respect of self as well as of others. While the dregs of the nation elevate the flatterers and corrupters ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... beautiful, more beautiful even than usual, it seemed to him. He did not guess that she had an offering to make, and for the sake of the man at whose feet she would lay it, would not even so far as trifles went, depreciate the gift, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... me by inheritance as theirs; but earned by toil, by abstinence, by valour; amidst clouds of dust, and seas of blood: scenes of action, where those effeminate Patricians, who endeavour, by indirect means, to depreciate me in your esteem, have never dared to ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... one-eighth in number, or from four thousand to four thousand five hundred, and one-sixth in capacity of production. It is deserving the serious notice of all proprietors of existing machines, that machines are now introducing into the trade of such power of production as must still more than ever depreciate (in the absence of an immensely increased demand) the value of ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... we have now said enough to prove that if a man will be bold enough to 'depreciate censure,'—will attack what he is pleased to consider abuses, however countenanced by high authority—and will obtrude his literary eloquence into our solemn courts of law, he deserves—what does he not deserve?—to be addressed henceforth by a name suggestive at once of ignorance, presumption, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... are we to cry down man for the sake of crying up nature? Why are we to depreciate the dweller that we may magnify the dwelling-place? Is not, man (to say the least) one of the works of God? Did not God make, both man and nature? And does not Revelation (which our author holds in so deep reverence) teach that man was the last and noblest of the handiworks ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... They both hewed out their own fortunes and recorded them on the pages of history, the one with his pen, the other with his graver. If at times ill informed bibliographers who have got beyond their depth fail to discern its merits, and endeavour to deny or depreciate De Bry's Collection, charging it with a want of authenticity and historic truth, it is hoped that enough has been said here to vindicate at least the first two parts, Virginia and Florida. The remaining parts, it is believed, can be shown ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... assertion that seemed to me the most strange in Miss Martineau's work, was, that Mr Carlisle, the author of "Sartor Resartus", was the most read of any English author. Without intending to depreciate the works of Mr Carlisle, I felt convinced from my own knowledge, that this could not be a fact, for Mr Carlisle's works are not suited to the Americans. I, therefore, determined to ascertain how far it was correct. I went to the publishers, and inquired how many of Mr Carlisle's works ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... companions. Among them are a set of 'jolly military officers 'who play whist, smoke and chaff, and are always exploding over the smallest of jokes. They are not like the people with whom he has hitherto associated, but he will not depreciate them; for they know all kinds of things of which he is ignorant, and are made, as he perceives, just of the 'right kind of metal to take India and keep it.' In a letter to Venables, written a few months later, he describes his position ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... courtier and the fine gentleman gave way to solid sense and plain descriptions. In his love-pieces he was obliged to have the strictest regard to modesty and decency; the ladies at that time insisting so much upon the nicest punctilios of honour, that it was highly criminal to depreciate their sex, or do anything that might offend virtue." Chaucer, in their estimation, had sinned against the dignity and honour of womankind by his translation of the French "Roman de la Rose," and by his "Troilus and Cressida" — assuming it to ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... my heart, and from that instant began between him and me the strong attachment, which on my part still remains the same, and would be so on his, had not the traitors, who have deprived me of all the consolation of life, taken advantage of my absence to deceive his old age and depreciate ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... nobles and commons, senate and people together, unanimously chose Camillus the fifth time dictator; who, though very aged, not wanting much of fourscore years, yet, considering the danger and necessity of his country, did not, as before, pretend sickness, or depreciate his own capacity, but at once undertook the charge, and enrolled soldiers. And, knowing that the great force of the barbarians lay chiefly in their swords, with which they laid about them in a rude and inartificial manner, hacking and hewing the head ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the chief, if not the only, manufacturers; the men judge that if they performed that office, it would exceedingly depreciate them. * * * In the winter season, the women gather buffalo's hair, a sort of coarse, brown, curled wool; and having spun it as fine as they can, and properly doubled it, they put small beads of different colours upon the yarn, as they ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... have this peace, however, the Queen must again agree with Lord Clarendon that we ought not ourselves to depreciate it, as our Press has done the deeds ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... much feeling! Quite a love. No great favourite with the young men, certainly, who sneer at, and affect to despise him; but everybody knows that's only envy, and they needn't give themselves the trouble to depreciate his merits at any rate, for Ma says he shall be asked to every future dinner-party, if it's only to talk to people between the courses, and distract their attention when there's any unexpected ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... in which another poet of beautiful talents has attempted to depreciate a name, to which, probably, few of his readers are ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... be no breach of hospitality, Sire, to hang the princess' fool," spoke the condemned man with no sign of waning confidence, "yet it would seem to depreciate the duke's gift. Your Majesty should hang the one and spare the other. 'Tis a matter of logic," he went on quickly, "to point out where the duke's gift ends and the princess' fool begins. A gift is a gift until it is received. The princess has not yet received the duke's ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... any restriction of which I have been aware. If there was anything I withheld from you, and which you think you should have had, I can only say that it was not of the nature of my best. What it was I make no attempt to say, nor would it do any good to try. Whatever it was, I wish neither to depreciate it nor to deny it. It was something that swept me—like the tornado of which one of your letters speaks—but it passed. It passed, leaving me tired and older—oh, very much older!—and with an intense ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... Nova Spanha, sent and had conveyed to me on the twenty-ninth day of the month of October in the year one thousand five hundred and sixty-eight, by Christovao Ponze de Leon, notary of his camp, I say that I cannot help being amazed again and again at seeing how his Grace attempts to depreciate my actions and give luster to his own—those on the one side being so different from those on the other, and done in sight of his camp yonder and of this fleet stationed here. When there are, however, so many noblemen and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... Perugino—one, that he was an Umbrian, even though long resident in Florence, the other, that he had come, as we have seen, into collision with his admired Michelangelo. Even so, Vasari is much too good a judge to depreciate his art, but he attacks the Perugian master personally, and his remarks about religion do not count for much. Vasari lived in an age—that of the counter-Reformation—which combined in Italy the lowest level of morals with apparent orthodoxy, ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... reply in some words which I used in writing of the Religio Poetae, and affirm with an emphasis which I only wish to strengthen, that, here and everywhere, and never more than in the exquisite passage which Mr. Gosse only quotes to depreciate, the prose of Patmore is the prose of a poet; not prose 'incompletely executed,' and aspiring after the 'nobler order' of poetry, but adequate and achieved prose, of a very rare kind. Thought, in him, is of the very substance of poetry, and is sustained throughout ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Luther and Bacon. Certainly their unsatisfactory science was one of the marked developments of the civilization of Europe, through which the Gothic nations must need pass. It has been the fashion to ridicule it and depreciate it in our modern times, especially among Protestants, who have ridiculed and slandered the papal power and all the institutions of the Middle Ages. Yet scholars might as well ridicule the text-books they were required to study fifty years ago, because ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... Captain Bland," said Cabot, "we understand perfectly that all you have just said is trade talk, made to depreciate the value of our goods, and you know as well as I do that they have but ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... by this conduct deprive fortune of all blame, by making yourself seem to deserve your mishaps, and to have been unworthy of your former prosperity, but worthy of your present misery? And why do you depreciate the value of my victory, and make my success a small one, by proving degenerate and an unworthy antagonist for Romans? Valour, however unfortunate, commands great respect even from enemies: but the Romans despise cowardice, even ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... to the conclusion that it would be wise, as well as advantageous to themselves, to consult him before purchasing pictures, books, statues, or china, so that he occupied the powerful position of being able with a word to start an artist's reputation or depreciate it, as he chose,—a distinction he had not desired, and which was often a source of trouble to him, because there were so few, so very few, whose work he felt he could conscientiously approve and encourage. He was eminently good-natured and sympathetic; he would not ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... of Mr. Burke. In him they thought it possible they might have a neighbor. If he should buy a place and build a fine house somewhere in their vicinity, which they thought the only vicinity in which any one should build a fine house, it might be a very good thing, and would certainly not depreciate the value of their property. A wealthy bachelor might indeed be a more desirable neighbor than a ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... saying, with a sarcastic smile, that he preferred paying in money as its weight rendered it a mere encumbrance. As it happened, the president could give no clear title to the land, and the money had to be refunded. He paid it back in paper, which Law dared not refuse, lest he should depreciate it in the market. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... least desire to depreciate the value of philology as an adjuvant to ethnology, I must venture to doubt, with Rudolphi, Desmoulins, Crawfurd, and others, its title to the leading position claimed for it by the writers whom I have just quoted. On the ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... left England. I had no hope of seeing you, but it was the homage of gratitude and adoration. Great events have happened since we last met. I have realised my dreams, dreams which I sometimes fancied you, and you alone, did not depreciate or discredit, and, in the sweetness of your charity, would not have been ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... "I do not depreciate, certainly, the profession of the artist," replied the Judge, "nor the value of his agency: in its best meaning, his is as noble as any; but is it this pure bent, this noble view of it, which impels ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... in this matter to the voice of the people, by the nobility of England and Scotland, has been regarded and treated with special rancor; and yet, in its place, it has been particularly important. Without it great advantages would have been taken to depreciate the value of the national testimony. The value of this testimony in particular will appear from the fact that the anti- slavery cause has been treated with especial contempt by the leaders of society in this country, and every attempt made ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... it from me to depreciate the labours of Montfaucon. But those who have not the means of getting at that learned antiquarian's Monarchie Francoise may possibly have an opportunity of examining precisely the same representations, of the procession above alluded to, in Ducarel's Anglo-Norman ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... with which it entered into the world, so that its being is destroyed where this is omitted. A few words may be devoted to this question. The Gospel possesses properties which oppose every positive religion, because they depreciate it, and these properties form the kernel of the Gospel. The disposition which is devoted to God, humble, ardent and sincere in its love to God and to the brethren, is, as an abiding habit, law, and at the same ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... said I, "I have THOUGHT harder things of you than I ever SAID to any one. Pray believe that, and believe, also, that I never tried to injure you. For the rest, I can make no complaint. You do not like me. I liked you once, and do now, when you do not depreciate yourself of purpose. . . . Pardon me, but I say this very humbly too. . . . I suppose I always shall like you, in spite of myself. You are one of the most gifted and fascinating women that I ever met. I have been anxious for my friend. I was concerned to make ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of course bad, the company stupid, and the conversation turned solely upon Mrs. Pullens's exploits, with occasional attempts of Mrs. Jekyll to depreciate the merits of some of her discoveries. At length the hour of departure arrived, to Mary's great relief, as she thought any change must be for the better. Not so Grizzy, who was charmed and confounded by all she had seen, and heard, and tasted, and all of whose preconceived ideas on the subjects ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... on you that there are other people in the world than the charming Lady Hermione, you will realize that she is a mere pawn around whom a number of very important persons are contending. I don't wish to say a word to depreciate her as a star of the first magnitude, but I am greatly mistaken if there is not another woman, either here or in Europe, whose personality, if known, would attract far more attention from the police. . . . ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... of my argument is to dispute not only that sociology is a science, but also to deny that Herbert Spencer and Comte are to be exalted as the founders of a new and fruitful system of human inquiry. I find myself forced to depreciate these modern idols, and to reinstate the Greek social philosophers in their vacant niches, to ask you rather to go to Plato for the proper method, the proper way of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... well calculated to bring many listeners. Besides, something was expected from both Edgerton and myself. We had not reached our present position without making for ourselves a little circle, in which we had friends to approve and exult, and enemies to depreciate, and condemn. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... and it is only proper that I should feel a certain gratitude to the advocates of the new philosophy. But the primary purpose of this novel is artistic, not polemical. The book was not written to depreciate anybody's valued delusions, but to make a study of human nature under certain modern conditions. In one age men cure diseases by potable gold and strengthen their faith by a belief in witches, in another they substitute animal magnetism and adventism. Within the memory of those of us ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... sure, will proceed to depreciate the military work of Von Moltke, just as he tries to depreciate his diplomatic and parliamentary work. He has reached a pitch of infatuation unbelievable; and is becoming, as I have said before, more and more of a Nero every day. At the present moment he is instigating the construction of ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... government and sent to foreign ports, the depreciation of its funds would have been averted, but whether this could have been done is, to say the least, by no means certain. As it was, in 1863, both Confederate and State money began to depreciate in value, and this depreciation once begun, had no stop ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... nothing like the millions of which I had dreamed, but still enough. To make the most of it and to be sure that it remained, I invested it very well, mostly in large mortgages at four per cent which, if the security is good, do not depreciate in capital value. Never again did I touch a single speculative stock, who desired to think no more about money. It was at this time that I bought the Fulcombe property. It cost me about L120,000 of my capital, ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... is a sad reflection upon public taste, when a person whose entire intellectual capital is wit, humor, or buffoonery, is preferred to men of solid learning. But it is a worse view of human nature, when men of real merit and worth depreciate themselves and lower the public taste, by attempting to do what, at best, they can have but ill success in, and what they would despise themselves for, were they to succeed completely. ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... catastrophe. The Christian writers of Europe on all manner of subjects, whether of history, religion, or science, have followed a similar course against their conquering antagonists. It has been their constant practice to hide what they could not depreciate, and depreciate what ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... condition. God forbid that I should even seem to depreciate other forms of healing men's evils and redressing men's wrongs, and diminishing the sorrows of humanity! We welcome them all; but education, art, culture, refinement, improved environment, bettered social and political conditions, whilst they do a great deal, do not go down to the bottom of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... was will bear a comparison with its original better than those of M. Beaupre. That the Plates II and III in the accompanying Atlas, are offered as being more full and somewhat more correct, does neither arise from a wish to depreciate those of my predecessor in the investigation, nor from an assumption of superior merit; there is, indeed, very little due to any superiority they may be found to possess; but there would be room for reproach if, after having followed with an outline of his chart ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... Voltaire's life were therefore consecrated to an endeavour to dethrone the idol which his own hands had set up. Voltaire traded on the patriotic prejudices of his hearers, but his efforts to depreciate Shakespeare were very partially successful. Few writers of power were ready to second the soured critic, and after Voltaire's death the Shakespeare cult in France, of which he was the unwilling inaugurator, spread ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... if not so large: 150 I stand myself. Refer this to the gods Whose gift alone it is! which, shall I dare (All pride apart) upon the absurd pretext That such a gift by chance lay in my hand, Discourse of lightly or depreciate? It might have fallen to another's hand: what then? I pass too surely: let at ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... himself upon his every-day sense, his practical knowledge, rather than those visionary musings which he thought a dangerous indulgence of imagination. He could not put the compositions of Collins among the mere curiosities of literature, but he permitted himself to depreciate habits of mental excursion which he had ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... reorganization was driven home by the conditions brought about in the War Office during the early months of the Great War. Somehow one feels no irresistible impulse to abridge one's functions and to depreciate one's importance by one's own act, to lop off one's own members, so to speak. But when Sir W. Robertson turned up at the end of 1915 to become C.I.G.S. he straightway split my Directorate in two, and he thus put things at ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... necessary to the welfare of their charges. And then, too, judging from the way in which they managed to amuse themselves, they liked being in Petershof, though they never owned that to the invalids. On the contrary, it was the custom for the caretakers to depreciate the place, and to deplore the necessity which obliged them to continue there month after month. They were fond, too, of talking about the sacrifices which they made, and the pleasures which they willingly gave up in order to stay with their invalids. ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... that never made a loaf of bread nor held a needle, but had only fingered the leaves of Greek and Latin Lexicons, and volumes of Zoology and Ornithology, and thrummed piano-keys,—all very well in their place (don't think I depreciate them), but very bad when their place is so large that there's no room for anything else,—very ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... him to depreciate his own verses as compared with Lewis', some of which he recited to Ballantyne, in 1799, speaking of their author, says Lockhart, "with rapture." But however fine an ear for rhythm Lewis may have had, his verse is for the most part execrable; and his jaunty, jiggling anapaests ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... applied. At the suggestion of Mr. Bishton, a clergyman of Westbury, Sir Eardley Wilmot recommended the leasing portions of land to well conducted ticket-holders. This was however strongly opposed on the spot, as tending to depreciate property, and inconsistent with the social circumstances of the country. The English allotment system was inapplicable: at home, it is a subsidiary to the general resources of the laborer, who can commonly find employment ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... Doge at Venice, by world-historical memories and by works of art as yet unrivalled. The spirit of the Venetian Republic still lives in that unique building. Architects may tell us that its Gothic arcades are melodramatic; sculptors may depreciate the decorative work of Sansovino; painters may assert that the genius of Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese shines elsewhere with greater lustre. Yet the poet clings with ever-deepening admiration to the sea-born palace of the ancient ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... of the limitations of his work. He baptized with water, the symbol and means of outward cleansing. He does not depreciate his position or the importance of his baptism, but his whole soul bows in reverence before the coming Messiah, whose great office was to transcend his, as the wide Mediterranean surpassed the little lake of Galilee. His outline ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... your speech would betray you. ... In order to prove that Americans have no right to their liberties, we are every day endeavoring to subvert the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of our own. To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself; and we never gain a paltry advantage over them in debate without attacking some of those principles, or deriding some of those feelings, for which our ancestors have shed their blood. . . . As long as you have the wisdom to keep ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... depreciate those who love you. Only the poor are generous as a rule; the rich have always excellent reasons for not handing over twenty thousand francs to a relation. Come, my child, do not pout, let us talk rationally.—Among the young ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... precious a gift to be thrown away. A man who would permit a field to be overgrown with weeds and thorns simply because it would not naturally produce roses, would be very foolish, particularly if the ground should only need cultivation to enable it to yield abundantly of corn. Far be it from me to depreciate physical symmetry and personal comeliness. They are gifts of God, and they are very good; but there are better things in this world than a good face, and better things than the admiration which a good face wins. I am more and more convinced, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... old fashion about his style—the greasy coat and keen taste of Papa Malgras, the watching for the pictures of beginners, bought at ten francs, to be resold at fifteen, all the little humdrum comedy of the connoisseur, turning up his nose at a coveted canvas in order to depreciate it, worshipping painting in his inmost heart, and earning a meagre living by quickly and prudently turning over his petty capital. No, no; the famous Naudet had the appearance of a nobleman, with a fancy-pattern jacket, a diamond pin in his scarf, and patent-leather boots; ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... grasp it. But we must remember that we are subject to the same natural factor in the solution of this problem, and that it cannot be solved without considering this factor. The Negro must first of all have a conscientious pride and absolute faith and belief in himself. He must not unduly depreciate race distinctions and allow himself to think that, because out of one blood God created all nations of the earth, brotherhood is already an accomplished reality. Let us not deceive ourselves, blighted as we are with a heritage of moral leprosy from our past history and hard pressed ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... understood to be payable in silver at six shillings and eight pence the ounce, or in gold at its comparative value. Bills of a new form were issued, purporting to be for ounces of silver, which were to be received in payment of all debts, with this proviso, that if they should depreciate between the time of contract and of payment, a proportional addition should be made ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Gold may depreciate, stocks rise or fall, and business values change so as to leave the market in panic, but every man on the street or in the store knows that one value forever remains permanent, unvarying, and that is character. Every other asset may be swept ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... the same time, the existing and accustomed means and facilities of payment created by the bank itself, and to do this without extreme embarrassment, without absolute distress, is, in my judgment, impossible. I hesitate not to say, that, as this veto travels to the West, it will depreciate the value of every man's property from the Atlantic States to the capital of Missouri. Its effects will be felt in the price of lands, the great and leading article of Western property, in the price ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... victories in some of the southern ports will send the secession army howling, and the leaders in the rebellion will flee the country. All the states will then be loyal for a generation to come. Negroes will depreciate so rapidly in value that nobody will want to own them, and their masters will be the loudest in their declamation against the institution from a political and economic point of view. The negro will never disturb this country again. The worst that is to be apprehended from ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... only—but you are one with Miss Graves to depreciate my Durandarte, in favour of the more classical Jachimo; whom we all admire; but you shall be just,' said she, and she pouted. She had seen her father plant Dartrey Fenellan in the midst of a group ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... all its repentant sorrows; than like one who has lived his whole time secluded in a monastery, or in his own study. Then he speaks with such exquisite sensibility on the subject of love, that he commends the very thing which he attempts to depreciate. I do not think my Lord Frederick would make the passion appear in more pleasing colours by painting its delights, than Mr. Dorriforth could in describing its sorrows—and if he talks to me frequently in this manner, I shall ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... looking into the future is the key to Aladdin's Palace and to the Temple of Power. To know what will appreciate in value and what will depreciate, that is the art of success in life, and that was the art which made ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the Dominie's character, and that if anything could cure his unfortunate passion, it would be a supposition on his part that the girl was not correct. I determined at all events to depreciate her, as I knew that what I said would never be mentioned by him, and would therefore do her no harm. Still, I felt that I had to play a difficult game, as I was determined not to state what was not the fact. "Pleasant, sir; yes, pleasant to everybody; the fact ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... we talked together for a little while upstairs, that this caprice about the wind was a fiction and that he used the pretence to account for any disappointment he could not conceal, rather than he would blame the real cause of it or disparage or depreciate any one. We thought this very characteristic of his eccentric gentleness and of the difference between him and those petulant people who make the weather and the winds (particularly that unlucky wind which he had chosen for such a different purpose) the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the monopoly of culture and to the exclusive inheritance of the spirit of antiquity must be abated, if not abandoned. But I should be very sorry that anything I have said should be taken to imply a desire on my part to depreciate the value of classical education, as it might be and as it sometimes is. The native capacities of mankind vary no less than their opportunities; and while culture is one, the road by which one man may best reach it is widely different from that which is most advantageous to another. Again, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... whencesoever derived, to attain some future apparent good. Value is the price that will be given for the use of a man's power. To honour a man is to acknowledge his power; to dishonour him is to depreciate it. The public worth of a man is the value set ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... cold, hard aspect of his calling, took the ring in his fingers, and holding it up to the window, pretended to examine it—assuming, at the same time, an air of affected disappointment. He thereupon began at once to depreciate the article—declaring that it was nothing but a Brazilian crystal, and that he would hardly take it at any price. I saw by the countenance, and the heaving bosom of the lady—for such I was convinced she was, though in reduced circumstances—that she was bitterly disappointed—having calculated ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... political arena. Where is the advocate of any measure that does not suffer sneers, ridicule, contempt, and all that tends to depreciate character in public estimation? Where is the partisan that is not attacked, as either weak in intellect, or dishonest in principle, or selfish in motives? And where is the man who is linked with any ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... celebrated all over the country, North and South. Such a tribute was never paid before in any country to the memory of a judge. His services were commemorated for the very reason that led Jefferson to depreciate them—because they led to the establishment of a strong national government with a controlling judicial authority adequate to protect it within its sphere from interference or obstruction in any way ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... their connexion with our present order of things, their learning, their soundness, their authority appeared to be greatly exaggerated; and the reaction from excessive veneration made others dislike and depreciate them. This was the state of feeling when the Martyrs' Memorial was started. It was eagerly pressed with ingenious and persevering arguments by Mr. Golightly, the indefatigable and long-labouring opponent of all that savoured of Tractarianism. The appeal seemed ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... from the woods upon the lights of Fisher's Hill the Invincibles lay in an earthwork before it facing their enemy. Harry Kenton sat with St. Clair, Langdon and Dalton. The two colonels were not far away. For almost the first time, Harry's heart failed him. He did not wish to depreciate Early, but he felt that he was not the great Jackson or anything approaching him. He knew that the troops felt the same way. They missed the mighty spirit and the unfaltering mind that had led them in earlier years ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from her husband new-return'd To his own country in the twentieth year, After such hardship. But prepare me, nurse, A bed, for solitary I must sleep, Since she is iron, and feels not for me. 200 Him answer'd then prudent Penelope. I neither magnify thee, sir! nor yet Depreciate thee, nor is my wonder such As hurries me at once into thy arms, Though my remembrance perfectly retains, Such as he was, Ulysses, when he sail'd On board his bark from Ithaca—Go, nurse, Prepare ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... trying question. His reputation is high among his countrymen, and you must not expect me to depreciate it. [Footnote: The Highland poet almost always was an improvisatore. Captain Burt met one of ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... writer to raise her countrywomen to higher mental efforts than are required by the almost exclusive perusal of works of fiction. If women may excel as painters and sculptors, why may not a woman attempt to excel as an historian? Men of cultivated intellect, far from wishing to depreciate such efforts, will be the first to encourage them with more than ordinary warmth; the opinions of other persons, whatever may be their position, are ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... likely to depreciate to you the value of What Does, after spending my first twelve lectures up here, on the art and practice of Writing, encouraging you to do this thing which I daily delight in trying to do: as God forbid that anyone should hint a slightening word ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... to depreciate human nature, and consider it under its worst appearances. They give mean interpretations and base motives to the worthiest actions; they resolve virtue and vice into constitution. In short, they endeavour to make no distinction between man and man, or between the species of men and that of ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... the book is dramatic rather than historical: it does not relate actual occurrences, but rather points a moral in the form of a narrative. In the New Testament the overgreat emphasis which he thought James placed on works as against faith caused him to depreciate this Epistle and to question its apostolic authorship. Luther also knew that in the earliest centuries of the Christian era the question had been raised whether Second Peter, Jude, James, Revelation, really belonged ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... help being generous, cheerful, active. She had been told often enough that she was fair to look upon. She knew that she was called The Wonder by the schoolmates who were dazzled by her singular accomplishments, but she did not overvalue them. She rather tended to depreciate her own gifts, in comparison with those of her friend, Miss Lurida Vincent. The two agreed all the better for differing as they did. The octave makes a perfect chord, when shorter intervals jar more or less on the ear. Each admired the other with a ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... been voiced by Walter of Henley and Sir Anthony Fitzherbert) in his ingenious Gentleman Farmer against the expense of ploughing with horses and urges a return to oxen. He points out that horses involve a large original investment, are worn out in farm work, and after their prime steadily depreciate in value; while, on the other hand, the ox can be fattened for market when his usefulness as a draught animal is over, and then sell for more than his original cost; that he is less subject to infirmities than the horse; can be fed per tractive unit more economically and gives more valuable ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... that he had been threatening all manner of evil to his cousin Herbert; and had his threats been proved true so quickly? But there was no shadow of triumph in his feelings. Owen Fitzgerald was a man of many faults. He was reckless, passionate, prone to depreciate the opinion of others, extravagant in his thoughts and habits, ever ready to fight, both morally and physically, those who did not at a moment's notice agree with him. He was a man who would at once ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... had been by Ernest's altered manner, I was disposed to do justice to his merits, and the more Richard seemed desirous to depreciate him, the more I was willing to exalt him. If he was capable of the meanness of envy, I was resolved to punish him. I did him injustice. He was not envious, but jealous; and it is impossible for jealousy and justice ever ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the Army of the Confederates in Flanders. And as nothing could give a nobler Idea of the great Character of that Prince than such a nefarious Combination against him; so, with all considerate Men, nothing could more depreciate the Cause of his inconsiderate Enemies. If I remember what I have read, the Sons of ancient Rome, though Heathens, behav'd themselves against an Enemy in a quite different Manner. Their Historians afford us more Instances than a few of their ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... excellence of our author's carries with it a danger which most of his readers must have recognised. His definition and vignetting of separate scenes, incidents, and characters is so sharp and complete that he finds a difficulty in combining them. The attempt to disdain and depreciate plot which the above-mentioned Preface contains is, I suspect (though I am, as often confessed, no plot-worshipper), as our disdains and depreciations so often are, itself a confession. At any rate, it is allowed ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... attempted to reply to him, was exactly in keeping with his well-known dictatorial temper. Does Dr. Lightfoot bring forward any evidence to contradict this piece of collegiate history? None whatever. He merely treats us to a few of his own conjectures, which simply prove his anxiety to depreciate its significance. And yet he ventures to parade the name of Bentley among those of the scholars who contend for the genuineness of these letters! He deals after the same fashion with the celebrated Porson. In a letter to the author of this review [7:2], Dr. Cureton ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... as an appendix or (in the style of painters) a companion to the other. There is nothing in their collection which will be understood by any candid person as a reflection on anybody, or any body of men. They are not in the least prompted by any mean jealousy to depreciate the merit of their brother artists. Animated by the same public spirit, their sole view is to convince foreigners, as well as their own blinded countrymen, that however inferior this nation may be unjustly deemed in other branches of the polite arts, the palm ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... it the Interest of Each to protect it till they are able to protect it themselves—This, the United States must do by a Navy. Till they shall have erected a powerful Navy, they will be lyable to Insults wch may injure & depreciate their Character as a Sovereign & independent State; & while they may be incapable of resenting it themselves, no friendly power may venture or care to resent it on their Behalf. The U. S. must then build a Navy. They have or may have all the Materials in Plenty—But what will Ships of ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... me' when I brought up the ark. 'Have I not behaved myself, and hushed my soul, as a babe that is weaned of his mother?' As a child which is not ashamed to uncover himself before his mother, so have I likened myself before Thee, in not being ashamed to depreciate myself before Thee for Thy glory," etc. (See 2 ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... diamond on a drinking-glass.[265] The hieroglyphic of the diamond is to show her, that her value is imaginary; and that of the glass to acquaint her, that her condition is frail, and depends on the hand which holds her. This wise design admonishes her, neither to overrate nor depreciate her charms; as well considering and applying, that it is perfectly according to the humour and taste of the company, whether the toast is eaten, or left ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... adjoining our own. On casting an eye out at the street, I found them, one at each window of their own room, already engaged in a lively discussion of the comparative merits of Cowes and Philadelphia! This propensity to exaggerate the value of whatever is our own, and to depreciate that which is our neighbour's, a principle that is connected with the very ground-work of poor human nature, forms a material portion of travelling equipage of nearly every one who quits the scenes of his own youth, to visit those of other people. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to young and spirited Western voters. His service in Congress began amid exciting debates over the compromise measures of 1850, when the Southern fire-eaters were already rampant. Seddon, of Virginia, in his eagerness to depreciate the North and glorify the South, affirmed in a speech that at the battle of Buena Vista, "at that most critical juncture when all seemed lost save honor," amid the discomfiture and rout of "the brave but unfortunate troops of the North through a mistaken order," ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... prisoner in the minds of the jury. In his eagerness to carry out this laudable design, the Quarterly Reviewer cannot even state the history of the doctrine of natural selection without an oblique and entirely unjustifiable attempt to depreciate Mr. Darwin. "To Mr. Darwin," says he, "and (through Mr. Wallace's reticence) to Mr. Darwin alone, is due the credit of having first brought it prominently forward and demonstrated its truth." No one can less desire than I do, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... misrepresentations of its enemies, or to check the violence of persecution, always appeal with special confidence to this weighty testimonial. A veteran profligate converted into a sober and exemplary citizen was a witness for the truth whose evidence it was difficult either to discard or to depreciate. Nor were such vouchers rare either in the second or third century. A learned minister of the Church could now venture to affirm that Christian communities were to be found composed of men "reclaimed from ten thousand vices," [276:1] ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... London is a book of such general interest, that the additions and corrections, which I shall continue from time to time to offer to your readers, will not, I think, be deemed impertinent or trifling. Let it not be imagined, for one single instant, that I wish to depreciate Mr. Cunningham's labours. On the contrary, his book is one of the most delightful publications relative to our great city which we possess. And let me candidly say, if I were to select only half-a-dozen volumes for my own reading, Cunningham's Handbook of London ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... Mrs. Ballinger, scenting in Miss Van Vluyck's tone a tendency to depreciate the coveted distinction of entertaining Osric Dane; "I don't know that such a question can seriously be raised as to a book which has attracted more attention among thoughtful people than ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... taken by Boyd and Co., Goldsmidt, and others, were generally contracted for upon much better terms for the country than those taken by the Stock Exchange; but as they were contending against what is known by the interests of the house, they all were ruined in their turns, as the jobbers could always depreciate the value of stocks by making sales for time of that ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the struggles to elevate this artist's reputation above its proper level have proved signal failures, so the effort to depreciate it must ultimately be defeated. Only one kind of injustice ever proves irreparable wrong: that which a man exercises towards himself. Mr. Powers had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... of being fair to the men of our own blood, past and present. Particularly in our own artistic history there has been visible a strongly marked tendency, such as no other nation has shown in equal measure, to neglect and depreciate native work in comparison with foreign, even when the latter might perhaps be worse. But I think we may say, without self-laudation, that British composition is now worth some considerable attention from ourselves and others; it was, not unnaturally, wellnigh ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... would willingly pay to Theocritus the honour which is always due to an original author, I am far from intending to depreciate Virgil: of whom Horace justly declares, that the rural muses have appropriated to him their elegance and sweetness, and who, as he copied Theocritus in his design, has resembled him likewise in his success; for, if we except Calphurnius, an obscure author of the lower ages, I know not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... fishing has become a business, and is prosecuted on a great scale in several far separated regions. Perhaps the increase of production, through superior methods and instruments, may, here as elsewhere, have contributed to depreciate ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... know, and it is well the public should know; but I believe there would be no such antidote to it as for people to be fully made aware how and where it is spreading. That is the role I have all along proposed to myself: not to declaim against any man or any system, not to depreciate or disguise the truth, but simply to describe. I cannot imagine a more legitimate method of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... positions of the highest authority, to the thrones of rulers and sovereigns. And many of these women have discharged those duties with great intellectual ability and great success. It is rather the fashion now among literary men to depreciate Queen Elizabeth and her government. But it is clear that, whatever may have been her errors—and no doubt they were grave—she still appears in the roll of history as one of the best sovereigns not only of her own house, but of all the dynasties of England. Certainly ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... admirer of nature, he seems born to give and share happiness. This man would forget the universe in the sweetness of private virtues. Capable of sublime impulses and unvarying affections, the vulgar, who like to depreciate what it cannot equal, accuse him of being a dreamer. Of sweet countenance, elegant figure, there is always in his attire that care, neatness, and propriety, which announce respect of self as well as of others. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... more ingenious than hitherto, I believe that it is in medicine they must be sought for. It is true that the science of medicine, as it now exists, contains few things whose utility is very remarkable: but without any wish to depreciate it, I am confident that there is no one, even among those whose profession it is, who does not admit that all at present known in it is almost nothing in comparison of what remains to be discovered; ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... bone, strictly homologous—which makes the determination of the difference between Homo and Pithecus the anatomist's difficulty." The present theory fully recognises and accounts for these facts; and we may perhaps claim as corroborative of its truth, that it neither requires us to depreciate the intellectual chasm which separates man from the apes, nor refuses full recognition of the striking resemblances to them, which exist in other ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... You can depreciate your own cousin, if you like. But I know what I shall do. I shall let her wear all my best things. How fortunate it is, Richard, that we're exactly of a size! O, I am so glad we brought Kitty along! If she should marry and settle down in Boston—no, I hope she ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... are to be found in every man's possession, and every man is interested in their being redeemed.... Provide for continuing your armies in the field till victory and peace shall lead them home, and avoid the reproach of permitting the currency to depreciate in your hands, when, by yielding a part to taxes and loans, the whole might have been appreciated and preserved. Humanity as well as justice makes this demand upon you; the complaints of ruined widows and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... clearly—the representation of a people by its deputies being according to modern ideas an element of free constitution for all nations, and Ireland having for so long a time enjoyed a privilege very similar to it under her own national monarchs, our object cannot be understood to depreciate a political institution which seems to have become a necessity of the times, owing to the eager aspiration of all minds and hearts toward it. But we think it a delusion to imagine that, by its possession, national happiness is ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... that no reverses can depreciate. He hates to be beaten. But he gave in to Alice, as the others said so too, and we went out to collect the performing troop and sort it ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... men of letters, who, early in life, have formed some favourite plan of literary labour, which they have unremittingly pursued, till, sometimes near the close of life, they either discover their inability to terminate it, or begin to depreciate their own constant labour. The literary architect has grown gray over his edifice; and, as if the black wand of enchantment had waved over it, the colonnades become interminable, the pillars seem to want a foundation, and all the rich ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Name it is altogether needless to mention, (the Fact being too well known to many Peoples Misfortune) having by some indiscreet Management greatly hurt his Reputation, and several Stories of a suspicious nature, tending to depreciate his Character, being whisper'd about; which coming in time to his knowledge, he thought of a notable Device to prevent the Consequences that generally ensue on those occasions to Persons in his way of Life. ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... proportionately undervalue my property. Thus if I estimate the real value of my house and curtilage at L1200, and feel that I do not care if I sell at that price, I shall put it down in the Rate Book at L900. This applies to all owners, so that the allowance for compulsory sale would only artificially depreciate by one-fourth all the rateable values put down in ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... recalled from the winning—crease to the barriers. For what blessing has life to offer? Should we not rather say what labour? But granting that it has, at any rate it has after all a limit either to enjoyment or to existence. I don't wish to depreciate life, as many men and good philosophers have often done; nor do I regret having lived, for I have done so in a way that lets me think that I was not born in vain. But I quit life as I would an inn, not as I would a home. For nature has given us a ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... passed under various external circumstances) is capable—this consolation those may draw from history who stand in need of it; and it is craved by envy, vexed at what is great and transcendent, striving, therefore, to depreciate it and to find some flaw in it. Thus in modern times it has been demonstrated ad nauseam that princes are generally unhappy on their thrones; in consideration of which the possession of a throne is tolerated, and men acquiesce in the fact that not themselves but the personages in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... mind bent only on her home; but yet, without effort and without thought, knitting for her children. Now stockings are good and comfortable things, and the children will undoubtedly be much the better for them; but surely it would be short-sighted, to say the least of it, to depreciate this toiling mother as a mere stocking-machine—a mere ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... been the fashion to depreciate Montesinos, but I find it impossible to discover the reasons by which this depreciation can be justified. It is alleged that he uses fanciful hypotheses to explain Peru. The reply to this seems to me conclusive. In the first place, ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... way that he might be taken to imply that we had some other faculty for the perception of moral truths, in addition to, and distinct from, our reason." And the writer goes on to make an "uncompromising assertion of reason as the one supreme faculty of man. To depreciate reason (he says) to the profit of some supposed 'moral' illative sense, would be to open the door to the most desolating of all scepticisms, and to subordinate the basis of our highest intellectual power to some mere ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... to the high opinion I have always entertained of his honour and delicacy,-let me observe the difference of his behaviour, when nearly in the same situation, to that of Sir Clement Willoughby. He had, at least, equal cause to depreciate me in his opinion, and to mortify and sink me in my own; but far different was his conduct:-perplexed, indeed, he looked, and much surprised:-but it was benevolently, not with insolence. I am even inclined to think, that ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... away, waste, wear; wane, ebb, decline; descend &c 306; subside; melt away, die away; retire into the shade, hide its diminished head, fall to a low ebb, run low, languish, decay, crumble. bate, abate, dequantitate^; discount; depreciate; extenuate, lower, weaken, attenuate, fritter away; mitigate &c (moderate) 174; dwarf, throw into the shade; reduce &c 195; shorten &c 201; subtract &c 38. Adj. unincreased^ &c 35; decreased &c v.; decreasing &c v.; on the wane &c n.. Phr. a gilded halo hovering round decay [Byron]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Mana's carcanet, need no comment from us; and we should, perhaps, have avoided the delicate responsibility of criticizing one of our most precious contributors, had it not been that we have seen some very unfair attempts to depreciate Mr. Longfellow, and that, as it seemed to us, for qualities which stamp him as a true and original poet. The writer who appeals to more peculiar moods of mind, to more complex or more esoteric motives of emotion, may be a greater favorite with the few; but he whose verse is in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... did not belong to his district; and the inquest was further adjourned until the 25th day of the same month. And, during this interval, some of the Manchester newspapers inserted the vilest falsehoods, to depreciate the reputation of the deceased, with a view, as your Petitioner believes, to extinguish every feeling ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... prey I saw the whole creation filled with pain—each creature seems to exist through the misery of another & death & havoc is the watchword of the animated world—And Man also—even in Athens the most civilized spot on the earth what a multitude of mean passions—envy, malice—a restless desire to depreciate all that was great and good did I see—And in the dominions of the great being I saw man [reduced?][97] far below the animals of the field preying on one anothers [sic] hearts; happy in the downfall of others—themselves holding on with bent necks and ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... a prior claim? Then I withdraw; be his the honour and the reward. But if not—if mine was the deed, mine the risk, mine the courage to ascend and smite and punish, dealing vengeance on the father through the son—then why depreciate my services? why seek to deprive me of a ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... for the conveyance of historical facts, subtle emotions or abstruse philosophical conceptions, can it compare with the languages of the Western world? The answers given to this question have varied considerably. But it is noteworthy that those who most depreciate the qualities of Chinese are, generally speaking, theorists rather than persons possessing a profound first-hand knowledge of the language itself. Such writers argue that want of inflection in the characters ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... therefore, did they look upon the doctrine of government by unvarying law with disfavor. It seemed to depreciate their dignity, to lessen their importance. To them there was something shocking in a God who cannot be swayed by human entreaty, a cold, passionless divinity—something frightful in ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... man exerts over material conditions, by virtue of his intelligence and freedom, is also an important element which, in these studies, we should not depreciate or ignore. We must accept, with all its consequences, the dictum of universal consciousness that man is free. He is not absolutely subject to, and moulded by nature. He has the power to control the circumstances by which he is surrounded—to originate new social and physical conditions—to ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... shrank from numbers. He was not a Bodleian man; he had not the sinews to grapple with libraries. He was the connoisseur throughout. Of the huge acquisitiveness of a Heber or a Huth he had not a trace. He hated a crowd, of whatsoever it was composed. He was apt to apologize for his possessions, and to depreciate his tastes. As for boasting of a treasure, he could as easily have eaten ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... the food they eat, their drinks, and all the consequences of these necessities visible in the absence of all sense of delicacy, of all appreciation of the fine arts, and the comprehension of philosophy,—he must evidently intend to depreciate them. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the extreme of this prudence. It takes bank-notes, good, bad, clean, ragged, and saves itself by the speed with which it passes them off. Iron cannot rust, nor beer sour, nor timber rot, nor calicoes go out of fashion, nor money stocks depreciate, in the few swift moments in which the Yankee suffers any one of them to remain in his possession. In skating over thin ice our safety ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... except by those versed in the experiences of life. Such perceive a calm wisdom, a penetrating sagacity, a sober enthusiasm, and a refined taste, which are unusual even among the masters of human thought. It is the fashion to depreciate the original merits of this poet, as well as those of Virgil and Plautus and Terence, because they derived so much assistance from the Greeks. But the Greeks borrowed from each other. Pure originality is impossible. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... that the general tendency of the profession has been to depreciate the importance of personal and municipal cleanliness, and to inculcate a reliance on drug medicines, vaccination, and other ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... a cry among the people for more paper money, only fifteen thousand pounds being extant in the province, and that soon to be sunk. The wealthy inhabitants oppos'd any addition, being against all paper currency, from an apprehension that it would depreciate, as it had done in New England, to the prejudice of all creditors. We had discuss'd this point in our Junto, where I was on the side of an addition, being persuaded that the first small sum struck in 1723 had done much good by increasing the trade, employment, and number of inhabitants ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... fate threatens, though more remotely, those who depreciate and censure good work; and consequently many are too prudent to attempt it. But there is another way; and when a man of eminent merit appears, the first effect he produces is often only to pique all his rivals, just as the ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... their general. It would not become me, therefore, to make war against those whom I was sent to aid, unless my country orders me to do so." After expressing himself thus, he sent messengers to Sparta, with instructions to depreciate Tachos, and to praise Nektanebis. Both these princes also sent embassies to the Lacedaemonians, the one begging for aid as their old friend and ally, the other making large promises of future good-will towards ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... no moral disease is ever benefited by its study. I was a living proof of the truth of the opinion that brooding over one's wrongs or infirmities seldom does much more than aggravate the evil. I greatly fear it is in the nature of man to depreciate the advantages he actually enjoys and to exaggerate those which are denied him. Fifty times during the six months that succeeded the repulse of the young baronet did I resolve to take heart and to throw myself at the feet of Anna, and as often was I deterred ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN are as great, if not greater, than those of Engineering. The question, however, is not so much one of original outlay, but which of the two journals gives most for the money. In this very essential particular, and with no intention to depreciate the value of Engineering, we assert, with becoming modesty, that the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN occupies a position which Engineering will ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... of Dr. Clarke and his friends. Although the latter professed to find in the early fathers a confirmation of their views, yet from a consciousness, perhaps, of the unsatisfactoriness of this confirmation they constantly depreciate the value of patristic evidence. In connection, therefore, with the subject of the Trinity, Waterland clearly points out what is and what is not the true character of the appeal to antiquity. The fathers are certain proofs in many cases ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... take it) from a stubborn determination to refuse the New Testament as a sufficient guide in itself, and to force the Old Testament into alliance with it—whereof comes all manner of camel-swallowing and of gnat-straining. But so to resent this miserable error, or to (by any implication) depreciate the divine goodness and beauty of the New Testament, is to commit even a worse error. And to class Jesus Christ with Mahomet is simply audacity and folly. I might as well hoist myself on to a high platform, to inform my disciples that the lives of King George the Fourth and of King Alfred the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... keeping her room the entire day, and weeping until her eyelids were nearly blistered. Meantime, Eugenia had hurried off to the city with her ill-gotten treasure, on which the miserly old Jew, to whom it was offered, looked with eager longing eyes, taking care, however, to depreciate its value, lest his customer should expect too much. But Eugenia was fully his equal in management, and when at night she returned home, she was in possession of the satin, the lace and the flowers, together with several other articles ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... respectable medical gentlemen on the Continent (among whom are Dr. De Carro, of Vienna, and Dr. Ballhorn, of Hanover) I find it is as warmly adopted abroad, where it has afforded the greatest satisfaction. I have the pleasure, too, of seeing that the feeble efforts of a few individuals to depreciate the new practice are sinking fast into contempt beneath the immense mass of evidence which has arisen up in support ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... manuscripts were long a common prey to many who never acknowledged their fountain head; among these suppressors and dilapidators pre-eminently stands the crafty Italian Polydore Vergil, who not only drew largely from this source, but, to cover the robbery, did not omit to depreciate the father of our antiquities—an act of a piece with the character of the man, who is said to have collected and burnt a greater number of historical MSS. than would have loaded a wagon, to prevent the detection of the numerous ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... democratic institutions being universal in America, they were as fairly entitled to share in the good as in the bad; and in what he praised, of which there is here abundant testimony, he must be held to have exalted those institutions as much, as in what he blamed he could be held to depreciate them. He never sets himself up in judgment on the entire people. As we see, from the way the letters show us that the opinions he afterwards published were formed, he does not draw conclusions while his observation is only half concluded; and he refrains throughout from ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... to make my Work appear of a trifling Nature, has been an Attempt to depreciate Literal Criticism. To this End, and to pay a servile Compliment to Mr. Pope, an Anonymous Writer has, like a Scotch Pedlar in Wit, unbraced his Pack on the Subject. But, that his Virulence might not seem to be levelled singly at Me, he has done Me the Honour to join Dr. Bentley in the ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... Messrs. Morison and Moat, of the Hygeian establishment at King's Cross, London, reply. Is it not, upon the constant showing of those gentlemen, an ascertained fact that the whole medical profession have united to depreciate the worth of the Universal Vegetable Medicines? And is this opposition to vegetables, and exaltation of steel and iron instead, on the part of the regular practitioners, capable of any interpretation but one? Is it not a distinct renouncement of the agricultural ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... this may appear to some, others, I doubt not, will feel and acknowledge the truth of it; nay, may, perhaps, think I have not treated the subject with decent solemnity; but surely a man may speak truth with a smiling countenance. In reality, to depreciate a book maliciously, or even wantonly, is at least a very ill-natured office; and a morose snarling critic may, I believe, be suspected to be ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... design of lessening the glory of either General Bonaparte or General Desaix; they know as well as myself that theirs are names so respected that they can never be affected by such detractions, and that it would be as vain to dispute the praise due to the Chief who planned the battle was to attempt to depreciate the brilliant share which General Kellerman had in its successful result. I will add to the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... you stay out here through it all," said Elizabeth, not as much to depreciate the dangers as to give her aunt an opportunity of posing as a ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens |
