"Low-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from her lips he gathered the full particulars of her history. Percy is not her real name, but she is the daughter of an English peer of very ancient family. Her father having married a second time, Dorothea was exposed to the persecutions of a low-minded vulgar woman, whose whole ideas were of that mean and mercenary description which characterise the Caucasian race. Naomi Shekles was the offspring of a Jew, and she hated, whilst she envied, the superior charms of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... the people in most monarchies are abject and low-minded in their deportment. Thus the men take off their hats when they enter churches, although the minister be not present; and even the boys take off their hats when they enter private houses. This is commencing ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... now heard, that Sir Hargrave Pollexfen is come from abroad already. What can be the meaning of it? He is so low-minded, so malicious a man, and I have suffered so much from him—What can be the meaning of his sudden return? I am told, that he is actually in London. Pray, my dear Lady G——, inform yourself about him; and whether he thinks of coming ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... comparison, still his mind is full of grace, and wisdom, and glory. The proud man, meanwhile, for the sake of feeding his own self-conceit at other men's expense, is filling his mind with low, mean, earthly thoughts about the weaknesses, sins, and follies, of the world around him. Is not he truly low-minded, thinking about ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Zulu, savage, barbarian, Yahoo; unlicked cub^, rough diamond^. barbarousness, barbarism; boeotia. V. be ignoble &c adj., be nobody &c n.. Adj. ignoble, common, mean, low, base, vile, sorry, scrubby, beggarly; below par; no great shakes &c (unimportant) 643; homely, homespun; vulgar, low-minded; snobbish. plebeian, proletarian; of low parentage, of low origin, of low extraction, of mean parentage, of mean origin, of mean extraction; lowborn, baseborn, earthborn^; mushroom, dunghill, risen from the ranks; unknown to fame, obscure, untitled. rustic, uncivilized; loutish, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... time he governed it upon the principles of Nero or Caligula. His elevation to the situation which he held, involved more contradictions than perhaps attach to any similar event in history. A low-born and low-minded tyrant was permitted to rule with the rod of the most frightful despotism a people, whose anxiety for liberty had shortly before rendered them unable to endure the rule of a humane and lawful sovereign. A dastardly coward arose to the command of one of the bravest nations in the world; ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... the farm as a sweetly ideal place in which to bring up a boy, all this may be disturbing—but the truth is, low-minded men are low-minded everywhere, and farm hands are often creatures with enormous appetites and small remorse, men on whom the beauty of nature has ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... indescribable airs, to make others feel the pain of mortification. They meet as if to fight the boundaries of their rank and fashion, and the less definite and perceptible is the line which divides them, the more punctilious is their pride. It is a great mistake to suppose that this low-minded folly is peculiar to people of rank; it ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... the wretched specimens of style, etc." Incautious and very low-minded! [Lays them on the table. Aloud.] At any rate these unimportant notes are better off in my paper-basket than in any one else's. And what, sir, induces you to ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... times more if I had had the lady just mentioned by my side. The nearest approach to her was a Unitarian minister from Boston, who very soon demanded a separation, for incompatibility of temper. He told me I was low-minded, immoral, a devotee of 'art for art'—whatever that is: all of which greatly afflicted me, for he was really a sweet little fellow. But shortly afterwards I met an Englishman, with whom I struck up an acquaintance ...
— The American • Henry James
... reads it!"—she answered—"But what are we to read? If low-minded and illiterate scavengers are employed to write for the newspapers instead of well-educated men, we must put up with the mud the scavengers collect. We know well enough that every journal is more or less a calendar of lies,—all the same we cannot blind ourselves to the great change that has ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... man may cherish, respect and even adore his wife, and yet her presence and touch may not appeal to his senses, nor excite his appetite or erection; while some low-minded woman will produce in him an irresistible sensual attraction, even when he experiences neither esteem nor love for her. In such cases sexual appetite is in more or less radical opposition to love. Such ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... principles and modes of thought of various parties, interests, and races, their views, aims, habits and manners, their religious creeds and forms of worship,—gaining experience how various yet how alike men are, how low-minded, how bad, how opposed, yet how confident in their opinions; all this exerts a perceptible influence upon the mind, which it is impossible to mistake, be it good or be it bad, and is popularly ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... should say—of such a man as Sir Joshua Reynolds—such as he has been proved to be—such as not only such men as Burke and Johnson knew him, but such as his pupil and inmate Northcote knew him—to be vilified by a low-minded biography, the dirty ingredients of which are raked up from lying mouths, or, at least, incapable of judging of such a character—from the lips of servants, whose idle tales of masters who discard them, it is the common usage of the decent, not to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... withdrawal from society, she had forced herself to go to the Holland House party, that no one might say she hid herself, that no one might for an instant suppose that any hostile act of such a man as Lord Parham, or any malice of that low-minded woman, could humiliate her son ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and drink," said Rorie, with a look of self-contempt. "I'm afraid I'm a horribly low-minded brute. I used even to enjoy my dinner, sometimes, after a long country ride; but I could never make you understand what a bore life was to me all last year, how the glory and enjoyment seemed to have gone out of existence. The dismal monotony of my days weighed upon me like a nightmare. Life ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... an enthusiastic admirer of the Revolution—excluded, by my sex, from participating in public affairs, yet taking delight in conversing of them—I despised the first calumnies circulated respecting me, attributing them to the envy felt by the ignorant and low-minded at what they were pleased to style my elevated position, but to which I infinitely preferred the peaceful obscurity in which I had passed so many ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... must be an offer of marriage. It was in fact only a circular describing the Banner Bone Breaker. It closed with an appeal to Buff Orpington breeders to raise and ever raise the standard, bidding them remember, in the midst of a low-minded and sordid civilisation, that the rose comb should be small and neat, firmly set on, with good working, a nice spike at the back lying well down to head, and never, under any circumstances, never sticking up. This adjuration somewhat ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... of this project, even if it were what it pretends to be, and was not in reality the dominion, through that disgraceful medium, of half a dozen, or perhaps fewer, intriguing politicians, is so mean, so low-minded, so stupid a contrivance, in point of wisdom, as well as so perfectly detestable for its wickedness, that I must always consider the correctives which might make it in any degree practicable to be so ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... wants that had displeased him in the sports soon led him to decline the company of those who indulged in them. From the low-minded, from the uncultivated, from the unrefined in mind and manner, and such there are in the highest class of society as well as in the less-favoured, he shrank away in secret disgust or weariness. There was no affinity. To his books, to his grounds, which he took endless delight in ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... my desk to yours, because I sit next to Mr. Malcolm, who is one of the steadiest and most respectable clerks in the office; and therefore I am not subject to so much annoyance as you will be, seated next to that empty-headed Williams, and coarse low-minded Lawson. I do not really like any of the clerks; there are none of them the sort of young men I should choose as companions. As to the duties, they are agreeable enough, and I have nothing to find ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... only washed! I intend to found a Philanthropical Society for Washing the Deserving Poor and Shaving Soldiers. I am pleased to observe that, although not of an unmilitary bearing, you are apparently shaved. In my calendar of the virtues shaving comes next to drinking. A gentleman may be a low-minded ruffian without sixpence, but he will always be close shaved. See me, with the eye of fancy, in the chill hours of the morning—say about a quarter to twelve, noon—see me awake! First thing of all, without one thought of the plausible but unsatisfactory small beer, or the healthful ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who was living at Bath, of an intention to supplant him; made coarse, impertinent repartees to the visitors at that city, and in general raised up a dislike to himself. Yet, as other monarchs have had their eulogists in sober mind, Nash had his in one of the most depraved; and Anstey, the low-minded author of 'The New Bath Guide,' panegyrized him a short time after his death ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... cross-grained, low-minded, selfish, unbelieving people amongst them. God knows it. But there are ladies and gentlemen amongst ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... be a clergyman. This Fonseca was all-powerful in Indian affairs for the next thirty years. He won and retained the confidence of the sovereigns by virtue of his executive ability. He was a man of coarse fibre, ambitious and domineering, cold-hearted and perfidious, with a cynical contempt—such as low-minded people are apt to call "smart"—for the higher human feelings. He was one of those ugly customers who crush, without a twinge of compunction, whatever comes in their way. The slightest opposition made him furious, and his vindictiveness was insatiable. This dexterous and pushing Fonseca held one ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... who forbeare (Being possess'd with a religious feare) To slip occasion, when they might erect Hornes on a tradesman's noddle, or neglect The violation of a virgin's bed With promise to requite her maiden-head. Basely low-minded we esteeme that man Who cannot swagger well, or (if he can) Who doth not with implacable desire, Follow revenge with a consuming fire. Extortious rascals, when they are alone, Bethinke how closely they have pick'd each bone, Nay, with a frolicke humour, they ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... from one nearly allied to it, namely, the want of that noble independence and confidence in its own resources which should distinguish genius, and the dangerous ambition to get sponsors and vouchers for it in persons of rank and fashion. The affectation of the society of lords is as mean and low-minded as the love of that of cobblers and tapsters. It is that cobblers and tapsters may admire, that we wish to be seen in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... very different course. Though the haughtiest of princesses, though the most austere of matrons, she forgot in her thirst for revenge both the dignity of her race and the purity of her character, and condescended to flatter the low-born and low-minded concubine, who, having acquired influence by prostituting herself, retained it by prostituting others. Maria Theresa actually wrote with her own hand a note, full of expressions of esteem and friendship, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... what an eye of calm dignity the principal tragedian gazes on the crowd below, or converses confidentially with the harlequin! The four clowns, who are engaged in a mock broadsword combat, may be all very well for the low-minded holiday-makers; but these are the people for the reflective portion of the community. They look so noble in those Roman dresses, with their yellow legs and arms, long black curly heads, bushy eyebrows, and scowl expressive of assassination, and vengeance, and everything ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... would deserve to do it if he were that low-minded; but if I know Squire Percival, he will go to the poor-house first. Fred, you would surely scorn such a dirty thing as selling the old man ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... raised for concession; its mere mention was enough to bring down the most bitter charges of a want of patriotism, a Roman leaning, a sordid regard to the interests of commerce over those of honor, a poor and low-minded spirit. Such as had courage to lift up a warning voice were soon silenced by the universal clamor of the opposite party; and although the war was opposed by some of the ablest men in the kingdom, men inferior to none ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... that the princess was, at this time of her life, such a low-minded creature, that severity had greater influence over her than kindness. She understood terror better far than tenderness. When the wise woman looked at her thus, she fell on her knees, and held up her hands ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... spending his knights in le trou de charbon, and afterwards of skewering the streets—twisting double knockers, pulling singlebelles, and indulging in other fashonable divertions, to wich the low-minded polease, and the settin madgistrets have strong objexions. His Pa allows him only sicks hundred a-year, wich isn't above 1/2 enuff to keep a cabb, a cupple of hosses, and other thinks, which it's not necessary to elude to here. Isn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... unfairness! You pose as a public-spirited citizen solicitous about the sanctity of the worship of Vesta and I find you a pettifogging wretch actuated by spite and malice. You desire not a fair test, but the ruin of a woman you are low-minded enough to hate. Eugh!" With one of his excesses of unconventional energy he flung the sieve far out over the river. It sailed whirling through the air, splashed in the water and ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... science of the natural laws, were vainly seeking to curb and quench the Incarnate soul of new ages,—the spirit of a scientific human advancement; and, when all the common welfare was still openly intrusted to the unchecked caprice and passion of one selfish, pitiful, narrow, low-minded man. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... because your horizon is far more limited because you have only seen it from the inside. You are rather in the position of the valet. No gossip and gabble of yours about braces and sock-suspenders will make your hero less a hero: you will only establish your title to be considered an unperceptive and low-minded creature among the only people whose ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... O'Connor. "Ach! ye dirty villains, ye low-minded spalpeens," he added, shaking his fist at ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... any good principle, he took advantage of his position, whenever the captain's eye was not upon him, to bully those with whom he had previously associated on an equality. He was "very much above them now," he thought, and showed it as it was in the nature only of a low-minded fellow ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... or, by the head of Odin, you shall feel my fangs! You say that my will is like the wind's will. Can you not see why, dull brutes that you are? Because it is not my will, but yours,—now Rothgar's beast-fierceness, now your low-minded craft. Because I am not content with myself, I listen to you. And you—you—Oh, leave me, leave me, before I lose my human nature and go mad like a dog! Leave—You laugh!" As he caught sight of Rothgar, he interrupted himself with a roar. His hand shot to his belt and plucking ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Rodogune, Sensuality has been his aim, and pleasure has been his God. To gratify his passions has been the sole object of his attentions; and he has remitted no exertion that could enhance to him the joys of the feast and the fruition of beauty. One low-minded gratification has succeeded to another; pleasures of an elevated and intellectual kind have been strangers to his heart; and were it not that the subtlety of wit was a gift bestowed upon him by supernatural existencies, he must long ere this have sunk his mind to the lowest savageness ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... which we drink our afternoon coffee in Germany," said he, looking at me with his impenetrably bright eyes, just as if he had never heard me. "When the ladies all meet together to talk scan—O, behuete! What am I saying?—to consult seriously upon important topics, you know. There are some low-minded persons who call the whole ceremony a Klatsch—Kaffeeklatsch. I am sure you and I shall talk seriously upon important subjects, so suppose we call this our Kaffeeklatsch, although we have no coffee ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... sentiment distinguishing their nation, that difference of religion will not prejudice them against a hearty amity, because the transcendant nature of freedom elevates all, who unite in the cause, above such low-minded infirmities." ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... exercises of young minds, when first admitted to the fountains of Greek and Latin Poetry; and the Teacher who could seek to dissuade their ingenious souls from such delightful dreams, by coarse, vulgar, and indecent ribaldry, instead of deserving the name of "sensible," must have been a low-minded vulgar fellow, fitter for the Porter than the Master of such an Establishment. But the truth probably is, that all this is a fiction of Mr. Coleridge, whose wit is at all times most execrable and disgusting. Whatever the merits of ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... author of the work in question has ever, in the fleshly sense, gone questing after gold, it is probable that both have ardently desired and fondly imagined the details of such a life in youthful day-dreams; and the author, counting upon that, and well aware (cunning and low-minded man!) that this class of interest, having been frequently treated, finds a readily accessible and beaten road to the sympathies of the reader, addressed himself throughout to the building up and circumstantiation of this boyish dream. Character to the boy is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who value the possibility of a new poem, symphony, or mathematical law so highly that they would sacrifice their own health, happiness, and sanity to retain that possibility for their offspring. Of course we may declare that a majority which made such a decision must be composed of very low-minded uncultured people, altogether lacking in appreciation of pathology, and reflecting no credit on the eugenic cause they supported; but there can be little doubt that we should have ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the cultivation of sentiment, and Religious Belief as the accidental hue or posture of the mind, I am reluctantly but forcibly reminded of a very unpleasant page of Metaphysics, viz., of the relations between God and Nature insinuated by such philosophers as Hume. This acute, though most low-minded of speculators, in his inquiry concerning the Human Understanding, introduces, as is well known, Epicurus, that is, a teacher of atheism, delivering an harangue to the Athenian people, not indeed in defence, but in extenuation of that opinion. His object is to show that, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Lovelace!'—Tell her so, if thou wilt: but, at the same time, tell her that I have no view to her fortune; and that I will solemnly resign that, and all pretensions to it, in whose favour she pleases, if she resign life issueless.—I am not so low-minded a wretch, as to be guilty of any sordid views to her fortune.—Let her judge for herself, then, whether it be not for her honour rather to leave this world a Lovelace ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... earned his pardon. The Jacobin party contained one gang which, even in that party, was pre-eminent in every mean and every savage vice; a gang so low-minded and so inhuman that, compared with them, Robespierre might be called magnanimous and merciful. Of these wretches Hebert was perhaps the best representative. His favourite amusement was to torment and insult the miserable remains of that great family which, having ruled France ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the rain of heaven; they are the salt of the earth! The poor are to be always with a nation for its best blessing, or for its condemnation and ruin. The chief saw the valleys desolate of the men readiest and ablest to fight the battles of his country. For the sake of greedy, low-minded fellows, the summons of her war-pipes would be heard in them no more, or would sound in vain among the manless rocks; from sheilin, cottage, or clachan, would spring no kilted warriors with battle response! ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... been advanced that great queens owed their power to the association and advice of the noble and high-minded men who surrounded them; and, further, that the poor showing made by many kings, was due to the association and vice of the base and low-minded women ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... that John was sitting at an open window above, and heard occasional snatches of this conversation quite sufficient to impress him disagreeably. He had not heard enough to know exactly what had been said, but enough to feel that a set of coarse, low-minded men were making quite free with the name and reputation of his ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... what our surroundings were, one must have lived in a prison camp. There was no room for pretense or disguise. Men appeared what they really were, noble or low-minded, pure or depraved; and there did one trait of your father's character single him out. In all our intercourse I can remember no conversation or word of his that an angel might not have uttered or listened to. Set this down in your memory. . . . It will throw light upon other points, and ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... I should shock you if I were to tell you what I have endured from my brother. My father's wealth was divided equally between us. His own share he ran through in five years, and he has tried since then by every trick of a cunning, low-minded man, by base cajolery, by legal quibbles, by brutal intimidation, to juggle me out of my share as well. There is no villainy of which the man is not capable. Oh, I know my brother Jeremiah. I know him and I am ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... prompting, like that of the bean-stalk when it climbs the pole. Yet a bean-stalk will sometimes show a kind of perversity or depravity that looks like the result of deliberate choice. Each season, among my dozen or more hills of pole-beans, there are usually two or three low-minded plants that will not climb the poles, but go groveling upon the ground, wandering off among the potato-vines or cucumbers, departing utterly from the traditions of their race, becoming shiftless and vagrant. When I lift them up and wind them around the poles and tie them ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the middle rank of life. Happiness ought to be your great object, and it is to be found only in independence. Turn your back on Whitehall and on Somerset-House; leave the Customs and Excise to the feeble and low-minded; look not for success to favour, to partiality, to friendship, or to what is called interest: write it on your heart, that you will depend solely on your own merit and your own exertions. Think not, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... meaning of the word. He dislikes to be called a "greeny" or anything that suggests that he is young and inexperienced. Often he pretends to know things he does not. Nearly every boy, at an early age, is thrown in contact with low-minded persons who think it amusing to persuade the youth to prove he knows indecent things. He thinks it a test of manhood to be acquainted with various vices and so in order to prove his knowledge is led into various indiscretions, ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... and never neglected an occasion to show himself off in that capacity,—"this individgle ye see afore ye, gentlemen,"—once more hitting Dan, this time with the toe of his boot, gently, to indicate the subject of his remarks,—"was lately as low-minded a peep as ever you see. He had no more conscience than to 'sociate with niggers, and sell 'em liquor, and even give 'em liquor when they couldn't pay fur't; and you all know how he degraded himself by takin' ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... consideration. Necessity, as it has no law, so it has no shame. But moral necessity is not like metaphysical, or even physical. In that category it is a word of loose signification, and conveys different ideas to different minds. To the low-minded, the slightest necessity becomes an invincible necessity. "The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way, and I shall be devoured in the streets." But when the necessity pleaded is not in the nature of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... brother was far less favourable, though she did not say anything directly to his disadvantage. From all that I could gather from her, I was led to suppose that he was a specimen of the idle, coarse-mannered, profligate, low-minded 'squirearchy'—a result which might naturally have flowed from the circumstance of his being, as it were, outlawed from society, and driven for companionship to grades below his own—enjoying, too, the dangerous prerogative of ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... low-minded creature," hissed my mother, at the same time striking me in the face with her big diamonds. "It's mortal sin to throw suspicion on so holy a man, and I will not ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... these representatives of the Tsar is given in the novel in this wise: "Yes, they are all alike, even the best and most tender-hearted among them. At home they are splendid fathers of families and excellent husbands; but as soon as they approach the barracks they become low-minded, cowardly, and idiotic barbarians. You ask me why this is, and I answer: Because nobody can find a grain of sense in what is called military service. You know how all children like to play at war. Well, the ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... the brutes who had been set upon his track, knew that low-minded Merlin and his noisome ways, and blamed himself severely for having left Anne Mie and Petronelle alone with him even for ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... face to face, few dared to venture to degrade the subject in debate from the discussion of principles to the miserable subterfuge of imputing bad motives as a sufficient answer to good arguments; but still many of these dignified gentlemen smiled approval on the efforts of the low-minded, small-minded caucus-speakers of their party, when they declared that Webster's logic was unworthy of consideration, because he was bought by the Bank, or bought by the manufacturers of Massachusetts, or bought by some other combination ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... enough to be joined with Berenice on the throne, the Alexandrians sent to Syria for Seleucus, the son of Antiochus Grypus and of Selene, the sister of Lathyrus, to come to Egypt and marry Berenice. He was low-minded in all his pleasures and tastes, and got the nickname of Cybiosactes, the scullion. He was even said to have stolen the golden sarcophagus in which the body of Alexander was buried; and was so much disliked by his young wife that she ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... brotherly affection. He had not seen her looking in at the door; he did not know the cause of her appearing so withdrawn and unmotherly: he forgot his shilling novel and his sherry and water, and brooded over the thing. He could not endure the low-minded cub, he said to himself; he would gladly, if only the wretch were well enough, give him a sound horse-whipping; but to see him so treated by father and mother was more than he could bear: he began to pity a lad born of parents so hard-hearted. What would have ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... either great awe or great irritation in the parent. Old Osborne stood in secret terror of his son as a better gentleman than himself; and perhaps my readers may have remarked in their experience of this Vanity Fair of ours, that there is no character which a low-minded man so much mistrusts ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wholesome lessons, if he comes to his task with some hope and love. King is, of course, a verbose bully; he delights in petty triumphs; he rejoices in making himself felt; he is a cynic as well, a greedy and low-minded man; he takes a disgusting pleasure in detective work; he begins by believing the worst of boys; he is vain, shy, irritable; he is cruel, and likes to see his victim writhe. I have known many schoolmasters and I have never known a Mr. King, except perhaps at a private school. But even King has done ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... aim were these powers directed? Had she any clear view of the demands and opportunities of life, any definite plan, any high, pure purpose? This is, after all, the test question, which detects the low-born and low-minded wearer of the robe ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Concord neighbors, as he looks down upon them from a near-by hill: "On whatever side I look off, I am reminded of the mean and narrow-minded men whom I have lately met there. What can be uglier than a country occupied by grovelling, coarse, and low-minded men?—no scenery can redeem it. Hornets, hyenas, and baboons are not so great a curse to a country as men of a similar character." Tried by his ideal standards, his neighbors and his countrymen generally were, of course, found wanting, yet he went about among them helpful ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... am still astonished at the passion with which my brave and pure cousin loved this cowardly and low-minded man, though it is but in accordance with that strange law which draws the extremes of nature together. As she heard the Emperor's stern reply the last sign of colour faded from her pale face, and her eyes were ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in. The appearance of the low-minded cove was hailed with disapprobation from all sides, on account of his having brought his corkscrew with him. He pleaded "the ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... been the ideal of the good or the noble to which he could have approximated in the estimate of the most thoughtless. He had that sort of military courage which was, and is, more common than weeds. In all else he was a low-minded man, vulgar in his thoughts, most unprincely in his habits. He was even worse than that: wicked, brutal, sensually cruel. And his wicked minister, Sully, than whom a more servile mind never existed, illustrates in one passage his own character and his master's by the apology which ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... "if you can see your way." It was exactly what she appeared to have argued out with herself. "If, conscientiously, you can denounce me; if, conscientiously, you can revile me; if, conscientiously, you can put me in my place for a low-minded ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... what I would scarcely have expected of Margaret. She turned upon him like a virago and informed Frederick R. Woods precisely what she thought of him; she acquainted him with the fact that he was a sordid, low-minded, grasping beast, and a miser, and a tyrant, and (I think) a parricide; she notified him that he was thoroughly unworthy to wipe the dust off his nephew's shoes—an office toward which, to do him justice, he had never shown any marked aspirations—and that Billy ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... can converse at our ease and without restraint," he remarked to Kai Lung. "It will be a distinguished privilege for a person occupying the important public position which you undoubtedly do; for myself, my instincts are so degraded and low-minded that nothing gives me more gratification than ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... great cause in the world," he said, "which stands some chance of missing complete success through senseless and low-minded ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Joan. Oh, gal, why won't 'e give ear to me, as have lived fifty an' more winters in the world than what you have? Why caan't 'e taste an' try what the Lard is? Drabbit this nonsense 'bout Nature! As if you was a fitcher, or an 'awk, or an owl! Caan't 'e see what a draggle tail, low-minded pass all this be bringin' 'e to? Yet you'm a thinkin' creature an' abbun done no worse than scores o' folks who be tanklin' 'pon harps afore the throne o' God this blessed minute. You chose wrong; you said so, an' I was glad to hear 'e, for you never 'lowed even ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... for a pack of dirty, low-minded curs!" swore the officer, his face blazing with anger. "Here you've a general who is risking life, and fortune, and station; and then you blame him because he cannot with a handful of raw troops defeat thirty thousand regulars. There's not a general in Europe—not ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... cried to the quadruped, greatly amazed: "Why your passion toward me do you hurtle? I'm an ornithological wonder of grace, And you're an illogical turtle,— A waddling, impossible turtle! A low-minded, grass-eating turtle! A highly ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... much to hope, even in a dream, of the low-minded Charles II. Harrington could not obtain even the show of justice in a public trial. He was kept five months an untried prisoner in the Tower, only sheltered from daily brutalities by bribe to the lieutenant. When his habeas corpus had been moved for, it was at first flatly refused; and when ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington |
