"Contemptible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still rarer than is the love of Dupris and Bolingbroke. These sentiments proceed from an unknown cause. But you have brought me thus to consider love as a passion. Yes, indeed, it is the last of them all and the most contemptible. It promises everything, and fulfils nothing. It comes, like love, as a need, the last, and dies away the first. Ah, talk to me of revenge, hatred, avarice, of gaming, of ambition, of fanaticism. These passions have something virile in them; these sentiments ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... of the sailor's business to take whatever food was put aboard for him. Running short of provisions was to them only an incident natural to the sailor's calling. This view had been handed down by successive generations of avaricious stoats, not the least prominent and contemptible of whom was Elizabeth, with her chilly heart, at one time receiving from Drake the spoils of his voyage in the Pelican; at another walking through the parks publicly with him, and listening with eager fascination to his stories of "amazing adventure," ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... bishopric to teach me but to be taught by me. In truth I do not understand what could be your Lordship's thought in discussing a matter so foreign to your profession; and it did not seem at all well to me, unless your Lordship regards me as so contemptible a person that I am not equal to this. Although humility is well in all, and particularly in bishops, it is not humility for the sheep to teach the shepherd; nor would it be considered well in me, and still less so in your Lordship, if ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... what did he do? His actions form one of the most incredible and, let it be said, contemptible ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... to him, and taken his share of the troubles, it would have been bad enough; but it was gradually dawning upon Dexter that the boy he had half-idolised for his cleverness and general knowledge was a contemptible, ill-humoured bully—a despicable young tyrant, ready to seize every ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... the privilege of one acquainted in no common degree with languages and their history to expose that dreary joke of the dialect of the oppressed, which superficial people have so long found funny or contemptible. The simplicity and earnestness which give dignity to any phraseology come from the humanity behind it. We are well reminded that divergences from the common use of language, never held to degrade the meaning in Milton or Shakespeare, need not render thought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... and most despised of all the families in the land.'[4] Bunyan alludes to this very pointedly in the preface to A Few Sighs from Hell:—'I am thine, if thou be not ashamed to own me, because of my low and contemptible descent in the world.'[5] His poor and abject parentage was so notorious, that his pastor, John Burton, apologized for it in his recommendation to The Gospel Truths Opened:—'Be not offended because Christ holds forth the glorious treasure of the gospel ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... suddenly, and the light died out of her face. Her image was looking back at her stiffly, superciliously, with, so it seemed to her, the contemptible simper of one who still fatuously admires the thing that has long since lost its charm. She caught her breath and clenched her hands, drawing down her rather heavy eyebrows in an expression of angry scorn. "Oh! never, never, never ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... thought ye dead ere now, but its scotched and not killed ye must hae been by that forest fire twa year back. But now I'll see to it that ye do no mair harm in this section. I hae got ye whar I want ye at last, ye contemptible dog," exclaimed the factor, unconsciously in his excitement reverting back in ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... up his position, looking the very picture of abject misery. The doctor kept him there for full half-an-hour, and then administered twenty stripes, with an unction that showed, clearly enough, his profound contempt for that most contemptible of ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... the public balls, she was asked to dance, by fellows of whom neither she nor Ned approved, but who, Ned finally came to urge, might be useful acquaintances as leading to better ones. But she found all of them contemptible, and would not ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... So, my sister, I do not want you to keep saying within yourself as I proceed: "That is the way to treat a perfect husband;" for you are to remember that no wife was ever worse swindled than this Abigail of my text. At the other end of her table sat a mean, selfish, snarling, contemptible sot, and if she could do so well for a dastard, how ought you to do with that princely and splendid man with whom you are to walk ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... his character as a philosopher or a man. He was aware that in the existing state of society at Rome, wealth was necessary to men high in station; wealth alone could retain influence, and a poor minister became at once contemptible. The distributor of the Imperial favours must have his banquets, his receptions, his slaves and freedmen; he must possess the means of attracting if not of bribing; he must not seem too virtuous, too austere, among an evil generation; in order ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... hideous white brick castle, with its paltry half-dozen acres, entered by lodges of the utmost pretension, and his coach-houses full of flashy carriages, with the family coat-of-arms(!) upon each, I thought the whole place one of the most contemptible patches of snobbery on this fair earth; and I was glad my father's toil-bleared eyes were hid in the grave, so that they should not have the shame ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... with the crown, the power of which then needed strengthening. He supported Tyzenhaus, because of the latter's beneficial activity in the most important direction, that of the economic welfare of the country. After the King's contemptible desertion to the camp of the Confederates of Targowica, all noble and patriotic men in Poland had of course to oppose him. Thus the King, and not Maciek, was the real Cock-on-the-Steeple, and our man of Dobrzyn was really always on the side of those who ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... breeder,' will doubtless be quoted.[40] In reply, we need not say what every body knows, that if Mr. Stevenson is not a 'slave breeder,' he is a solitary exception among the large slaveholders of Virginia. What! Virginia slaveholders not 'slave-breeders?' the pretence is ridiculous and contemptible; it is meanness, hypocrisy, and falsehood, as is abundantly proved by the testimony ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... sanctified Cheats, whose Follies and Vices Erasmus has so effectually lash'd, that some Countries have entirely turn'd these Drones out of their Cells, and in other Places where they are still kept, they are grown contemptible to the highest Degree, and oblig'd to be ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... that it must be, that it was ordained to be, it and all that might follow from it. He even felt almost that Hermione must already know it, have divined it, as if, therefore, any effort to hide it from her must be fruitless, or even contemptible, as if indeed all effort to conceal truth ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... was the reply. "If you think to make a cat's-paw of me in any of your dirty, contemptible pieces of work, you are mistaken. If you think that I came here with any intention of listening for one moment to any of your vile propositions, you are mistaken. I came here simply to satisfy myself on one point. My errand ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... most precious and valuable things in the world. They are only servants of the courageous hearts and pure souls that ought to be their masters. Without training, without obedience, without the instant willingness to sacrifice themselves for their masters, the human body and human life are contemptible and unworthy. I claim that it braces the mind to expose the body; that an education in the prepared emergencies of games and sport, is the best training for the unprepared emergencies with which ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... legitimate birth must be produced, and such is the complex state of society, there are as many beliefs as masters and servants. How can there be unity of mind concerning spiritual offices and blessings with people so at variance upon trivial, contemptible worldly matters? True, there must be the various earthly stations, characters and employments; but it is heathenish, unchristian and worldly for one to entertain the absurd idea that God regards a certain ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... imagined they had reached. Since their creeds were professedly based on the canonical Scriptures, it followed that, in the long run, whoso settled the canon defined the creed. If the private judgment of Luther might legitimately conclude that the epistle of James was contemptible, while the epistles of Paul contained the very essence of Christianity, it must be permissible for some other private judgment, on as good or as bad grounds, to reverse these conclusions; the critical process which excluded the Apocrypha could not be barred, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... doubt; but we, your neighbours, are simply crazy to know who and what you are?" That might strike him in various ways. He might take offence, and one could not blame him. He might see humour in it, and a proof of the contemptible meanness of human nature. I decided that I lacked courage to blurt out my desire that way. He was so very much like myself that I could not rid myself of the notion that he might prefer a milder way of approach. And as I sorted out my stock of ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... will, will you?" sneered Lem, lurching to and fro. "You're a sneak. Bart Stirling—a low, contemptible sneak, ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... willing to give. Even to love only those that love us, is, as the Lord has taught us, but a pinched and sneaking way of loving. Clare never thought about being loved. He was too busy loving, with so many about him to love, to think of himself. He was not the contemptible little wretch to say, "What a fine boy I am, to make everybody love me!" If he had been capable of that, not many would have loved him; and those that did would most of them have got tired of loving a thing that did ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... says (De Lib. Arb. i, 5): "How are they free from sin in sight of Divine providence, who are guilty of taking a man's life for the sake of these contemptible things?" Now among contemptible things he reckons "those which men may forfeit unwillingly," as appears from the context (De Lib. Arb. i, 5): and the chief of these is the life of the body. Therefore it is unlawful for any man to take another's life ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... find that the man was perfectly happy. He said that he had a faithful wife, and a business by which he earned sufficient for his wants; and, if he were to complain of his lot, he should feel mean and contemptible. Surely, if there are any "solid men" in ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... reading in the newspapers the other day that the German Emperor made a speech to some of his regiments in which he urged them to concentrate their attention upon what he was pleased to call "French's contemptible little army." [Laughter.] Well, they are concentrating their attention upon it [laughter and cheers] and that army, which has been fighting with such extraordinary prowess, which has revived in a fortnight of adverse actions the ancient fame and glory of our arms upon the Continent, [cheers,] ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... Grimshaw. Again, he could fully appreciate Cowper's taste for classical literature; considering how utterly Newton's education had been neglected, it is perfectly marvellous how he managed, under the most unfavourable circumstances, to acquire no contemptible knowledge of the great classical authors. Add to all this that Newton's native kindness of heart made him feel very deeply for the misfortune of his friend, and it will be no longer a matter of wonder that there should have been so close a friendship between the two men. It is readily ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... and feels himself bound to express or to indicate its meaning at the risk of overmoralizing. In life he finds nothing insignificant; all tells for destiny and character; nothing that God has made is contemptible. He cannot look upon human life and declare this thing or that thing unworthy of notice, any more than the scientist can declare a fact of the material world beneath the dignity of his inquiry. He feels in every nerve the equality of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... church, and the brown of the monk's robes, and evolve a thrilling mental picture therefrom. The tag game and her noisy little companions vanished. She was peopling the place with stealthy Indians. Stealthy, cunning, yet savagely brave. They bore no relation to the abject, contemptible, and rather smelly Oneidas who came to the back door on summer mornings, in calico, and ragged overalls, with baskets of huckleberries on their arm, their pride gone, a broken and conquered people. She saw them wild, free, sovereign, and there were no greasy, berry-peddling Oneidas among ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... thinking. "I think you had better tell her first, Daddy," she said. "I think it may be wiser for you to tell her. Things were said and done at that election which she must not know. They were so mean, so contemptible that she ought never to know. If I am not there she cannot ask about them. I will tell you the result and how it came about and you can tell her. Perhaps that will be sufficient. I hope it may ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... him that she was doing fairly well in journalism, and had attempted sensational fiction, but that none saw more clearly than she how worthless and contemptible her sort of work was, and none longed more sincerely than she to produce good work, serious work.... However, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... induces him to desert? This is none the less injurious when effected by getting father or brother or friend into a public meeting, and there working upon his feelings until he is persuaded to write the soldier-boy that he is fighting in a bad cause, for a wicked Administration of a contemptible government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert. I think that in such a case to silence the agitator and to save the boy is not only constitutional, but is withal a great mercy." No other man in our history has so fully possessed ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Washington, in which they say, that they are authorised to declare that his Britannic Majesty has proposed the unconditional independence of America as preliminary to a peace. This change in the British system places them in a truly contemptible light, since it is a direct disavowal of their assertion. Carleton seems to feel this, if we may judge by some expressions in the extracts ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... soul-inquiries that came one upon another close as the blows of a lash. She was then shocked at the intentions with which she had fallen asleep. The little vanities, and condescensions, and generosities which she had planned for her own glory—how contemptible they appeared! And in the darkness she could see their certain end—envy and hatred for herself and dissatisfaction and loss of friends for her father and mother. Had she not ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... profession, and country, being contemptible to the nobles of the place, he, by his wife's persuasion, came to settle at Rome, where merit also gave a title to distinction. On his way thither, say the historians, as he approached the city gate, an eagle, stooping from above, took off his hat, and flying round his chariot for some time, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... rule is not against the policy of the law. It is in harmony with it, and calculated to preserve peace and, in a great measure, prevent barbarous acts, acts of cruelty, regarded by mankind as inexcusable, contemptible, detestable. It is neither too early nor too late to promulgate the doctrine that if a husband commits an assault and battery upon his wife he may be held responsible civilly and criminally for the act, which is not only committed in violation of the laws of God and man, but in direct antagonism ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... which the necessity of winning or "making records" is constantly held up as the raison d'etre of athletic sports is that it suggests to the ordinary student, who has no hopes of brilliant success in athletics, that moderate exercise is contemptible, and that he need do nothing to keep up his bodily vigour. Thus, Dr. Birkbeck Hill found that the proportion of students who took part in some athletic sport was distinctly less at Harvard than at Oxford. Nor could I ascertain that nearly so large a proportion of the adult population themselves ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... lined Broadwater, which was then not much more than half as long as it is now, and Little Water, nearly their western length. Market square, the houses of which were almost wholly wood, and mean and contemptible in appearance, was the home of the wholesale and more respectable retail dealers in dry goods and hardware. The larger grocery dealers centred near the then head of Broadwater. The population ranged between 6,500 and 7,500, and consisted of a large infusion ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... you hadn't taken Homer for any more than a creative poet, even after a few thousand years of study, so why should my meager manuscript make such a large impact. At that, I acquiesced to them and admitted that on that end my attempt to save humanity one way or another was contemptible, but I still write, as you see, for the story's sake, and possibly for my own material immortality. But never mind that, for it is high time that I went ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... one by one; but he had struggled, until he was so entangled that he could not get out. And now he perceived that the net which seemed so fine was the strong net woven by desire. All his subtle reasonings, his chivalry, his delicacy, his sincerity itself, could be reduced to this simple and contemptible element. Positively, his whole character, as he now contemplated it seemed to slip away from him and dissolve in the irresistible stream, primeval, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... liable to that taunt now. It was a part of his punishment, and the one which lasted longest. From any other boy he might have winced under it; but really, coming from Jones, it was too contemptible ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... had come down into the country, he had been there once or twice: but the sight of the sacred stone had brought no consolation to him. A guilty man doing a guilty deed: a mere speculator, content to lay down his faith and honor for a fortune and a worldly career; and owning that his life was but a contemptible surrender—what right had he in the holy place? what booted it to him in the world he lived in, that others were no better than himself? Arthur and Laura rode by the gates of Fairoaks; and he shook hands with his tenant's children, playing on the lawn and the terrace—Laura looked ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the doctrine of personal survival has been repeatedly flung at it by satirists, and commented on by philosophers. The Christian who "hopes to be saved by grossly believing" has been felt on all hands to be as mean in his hope, as he is contemptible in his way of attaining it. To center all our religious efforts to the one end of getting joy—however we may define it—for our individual selves, has something repulsive in it to a deeply religious mind. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... "I have had a contemptible opinion of you," he said, "ever since I discovered what cowards you are, but I had no idea that you were so ungrateful, selfish, and cruel, as I now find you to be. Here was your Minor Canon, who labored ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... exercise of good dispositions being harmonised and assimilated into the divine virtue, are consequently removed to a place of unblemished sanctity and happiness; as of those who by the most flagitious arts have risen from contemptible beginnings to the greatest affluence and power, and whom you therefore look upon as unanswerable instances of negligence in the gods, because you are ignorant of the purposes to which they are subservient, and in what manner they contribute to that supreme intention of good ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... and such a woman, with her courtesy, her travel, her sharp edge of judgment, her large humanity, and her love of the comedy of the world, being dead can never be replaced. There are, growing up around you, characters quite insufficient, and to you, perhaps, contemptible, who will in their fruiting display all these things." There never was, nor has been, a time (say those who are acquainted with the great story of Europe) when Christendom has failed. Out of dead passages there has sprung up suddenly, and quite miraculously, whatever was ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... derived from the penal laws we have passed, and which, for the time, have been severe and numerous? What advances have we made towards our object by the sending of a force which, by land and sea, is no contemptible strength? Has the disorder abated? Nothing less. When I see things in this situation after such confident hopes, bold promises, and active exertions, I cannot, for my life, avoid a suspicion that the plan itself is ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... be really happy without being good, clean, square, and true. This does not mean that a person is happy because he does not use tobacco, drink, gamble, use profane language or does not do other vicious things. Some of the meanest, narrowest, most contemptible people in the world do none of these things but they are uncharitable, jealous, envious, revengeful. They stab you in the back, slander you, cheat you. They may be cunning, underhanded, and yet have a fairly good standing in the church. No person can be really ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Mrs. Rolland, 'which were simply sickening to a respectable English servant. She used to encourage him to talk to her about all his affairs—how he got on with his wife, and how pressed he was for money, and such like—just as if they were equals. Contemptible—that's ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... farce. There was something sombrely contemptible to each one in the idea of being forced into the pretence of eating, for the sake of the hired attendants who carried the dishes. For the first time in his life Greifenstein's hardy nature was disgusted by the sight of food. Rieseneck sat erect in his chair, from time ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... of the third day the pass of Thermopyae was forced, thanks to the treachery of a Greek and the contemptible policy of the Spartan government which steadily refused the plea of Leonidas for reenforcements. With Thermopyae taken there was no further reason for the Greek fleet to try to hold the straits north of Euboea, and during the night it retired unobserved. The following day the Persian ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... he is the only one that could be possible; but he is a very good-natured, good sort of a fellow; and whenever Winthrop comes into his hands, he will make a different sort of place of it, and live in a very different sort of way; and with that property, he will never be a contemptible man—good, freehold property. No, no; Henrietta might do worse than marry Charles Hayter; and if she has him, and Louisa can get Captain Wentworth, I ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... said, "that the most contemptible people in the world to-day are those politicians and others who, in years gone by, systematically cried down anything in the shape of national defence or national inclination to personal service, because ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... value and plans their meaning. With the utmost determination he held himself to his task, not willing to believe that his judgment and nerve could be so disturbed as to render him unfit for any serious business. But the result was contemptible ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... old," said Fakrash, "all men pursued wealth; nor could any amass enough to satisfy his desires. Have riches, then, become so contemptible in mortal eyes that thou findest them but ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... "It is singular that, contemptible as are these natives of India when officered by men of their own race and religion, they will fight to the death when ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... man!—that he might be sure to err on the right side, he forced Theodore to go with him to the stand, and pay Matty for the stolen fruit. He endeavored, too, to make him apologize to Jim, both for the theft of his property, and also for his contemptible meanness in keeping silent on the occasion of Jim's attack on the playground. But here he was powerless: Theodore absolutely and doggedly refused to do it; and his grandfather was obliged to content ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... in company as, much above me, when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope, as if I had been with all the princes in Europe. What I mean by low company, which should by all means be avoided, is the company of those, who, absolutely insignificant and contemptible in themselves, think they are honored by being in your company; and who flatter every vice and every folly you have, in order to engage you to converse with them. The pride of being the first of the company is but too common; but it is very silly, and very prejudicial. Nothing in the world lets ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... alone reconciled her to life. Pascal was now everything to her—her present and her future; and she solemnly vowed that she would make a noble man of him. But alas! misfortunes never come singly. One of her husband's friends, who acted as administrator to the estate, took a contemptible advantage of her inexperience. She went to sleep one night possessing an income of fifteen thousand francs, but she awoke to find herself ruined—so completely ruined that she did not know where to obtain her dinner for that same evening. Had she been ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... and cuff and laugh at me again. Oh, it is a cowardly and contemptible world, uncle, and happy is the man who wants nothing of it! He is its master, its absolute master, and everybody else is its wretched slave. Think of the people who are scrambling for fame and titles and decorations ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... inquire into all the tendencies, all the antecedents. A high fastidious spirit, jealous, because sensitive, yet far too proud to admit, much less indulge that jealousy, seemed of all others the easiest to deceive. The hide of the rhinoceros is no contemptible gift, and a certain bluntness, I might say coarseness of character, enables a man to go through the world comfortably and happily, unvexed by those petty stings and bites and irritations that worry thinner skins to death. With Lord Bearwarden to suspect ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... friend in everything, as true to you as man could be! If I had done the dastardly thing of which you accuse me, why should I come to you at all? I could have taken my bride and gone to the other end of the earth. We need not have adopted these contemptible measures. But although I did care for this girl—more than I ever cared or ever shall care for another—I knew it was you she loved and I did all I could to aid you in your suit. Have you forgotten how I brought her here, as you lay in that very chair, and removed the ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... now commenced their expedition. Summers was no contemptible antiquary; and he sought to beguile the nervous impatience of his companion by dilating on the attractions of the antient and memorable town to which his ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in yesterday's Times on the late disgraceful affair of Mr. Mazzini's letters and the Secretary of State, you mention that Mr. Mazzini is entirely unknown to you, entirely indifferent to you; and add, very justly, that if he were the most contemptible of mankind, it would not affect ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... "arming every woman, child, and cat and dog" is favorably regarded by us? Is not such a policy a sort of left-handed outcome of the Prussian contention that even their own unarmed civilian populace is contemptible and may be slaughtered without mercy if military procedure is resisted, or even if supplies are ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... deformed people. Their sensitiveness is well known.) Like the fox to whom the grapes are sour, he declares that what his stronger fellows accomplish is bad, their performance of their duty defective, and their aims contemptible, especially in the sexual sphere, where he feels himself openly most injured. The tale treats specifically from the outset the conquest of a woman. The carpet, the ring, are female symbols, the first is the body of the woman, the ring is the vagina (Greek kteis comb pudenda muliebria). ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... under a specious appearance hiding the most abandoned profligacy; like one of the players on the stage, if you strip him of his fine habits wrought with gold, all that remains behind is a ridiculous spectacle of a little contemptible fellow, hired to appear there for seven drachmas. And yet these men despise everybody, talk absurdly of the gods, and drawing in a number of credulous boys, roar to them in a tragical style about virtue, ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... high, renouncing the dulcet, but transitory enjoyments of this life, to encounter, for the salvation of their souls, and of others, privation and sorrow, and painful death. Quoe terra non plena nostri laboris? Yet, O how contemptible is the suffering, when compared with the joy of the hope which is set before us—of the starry crown that awaits the willing martyr! Feed thy soul, my son, on these divine contemplations, until they become a part of thyself, and the path that leads to a bloody grave shall be strewed with roses. ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... idle; puerile &c (foolish) 499; airy, shallow; weak &c 160; powerless &c 158; frivolous, petty, niggling; piddling, peddling; fribble^, inane, ridiculous, farcical; finical, finikin^; fiddle-faddle, fingle-fangle^, namby-pamby, wishy-washy, milk and water. poor, paltry, pitiful; contemptible &c (contempt) 930; sorry, mean, meager, shabby, miserable, wretched, vile, scrubby, scrannel^, weedy, niggardly, scurvy, putid^, beggarly, worthless, twopennyhalfpenny, cheap, trashy, catchpenny, gimcrack, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... nothing more terrible than the sense of superiority to others. It arises, not from merit or the consciousness of merit, but from sheer tin-like flimsiness of character. It arises from limited sympathies. The really great man, and the really sagacious man, is one to whom nothing is contemptible. To him, even the follies of his fellow-passengers are manifestations of human nature, revelations of the material from which scholars and politicians no less than drunkards and inconstants are gradually in course of time developed. ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... other instances shown to the British servants of the Company that the Directors were not able to protect them, here the same lesson was taught to the natives. Whilst the matter lay between the native power and the servants, the former was considered by Mr. Hastings in the most contemptible light. When the question was between the servants and the Court of Directors, the native power was asserted to be a self-derived, hereditary, uncontrollable authority, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... servile wits undertake it: who think it enough, if they can be rewarded of the printer. And so as Epaminondas is said, with the honour of his virtue, to have made an office, by his exercising it, which before was contemptible, to become highly respected: so these, no more but setting their names to it, by their own disgracefulness, disgrace the most graceful poesy. For now, as if all the Muses were got with child, to bring forth bastard ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... mean. Habitually suspicious, like all insincere people, Mrs. Beaumont now began to imagine that there was some plot carrying on against her by Sir John Hunter and Lightbody, and that Miss Hunter was made use of against her. Having a most contemptible opinion of her Albina's understanding, and knowing that her young friend had too little capacity to be able to deceive her, or to invent a plausible excuse impromptu, Mrs. Beaumont turned quick, and exclaimed, "My dear, what could Lightbody be ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... not despair for England whether Free-traders or Protectionists be in the ascendant, unless I see that the faction out of power abet the endeavours of those who would make the Government of the country contemptible. Read Montalembert's speeches. They are very eloquent and instructive. He had as full a faith in his religion, and what he considered due to his religion, as you can have in your Corn Laws. Yet observe how bitterly he now repents having aided those ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... every notion of what the truth ought to be, of what the service of the truth ought to be—their every "thou shalt" was launched against us.... Our objectives, our methods, our quiet, cautious, distrustful manner—all appeared to them as absolutely discreditable and contemptible.—Looking back, one may almost ask one's self with reason if it was not actually an aesthetic sense that kept men blind so long: what they demanded of the truth was picturesque effectiveness, and of the learned a strong appeal to their ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... would allow. As I looked on I could scarcely refrain from rushing into the sable throng, and joining them in their frisks and jumps; though I dare say, had I done so they would have considered me a very contemptible performer. At length the Queen's chamberlain clapped his hands, and gave notice that the court must break up, as her majesty was desirous of retiring to attend to her duties in putting to bed the children of her mistress to whom she was ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... tameness, however contemptible, cannot be censured; for the first drop of blood shed in civil and unnatural war will make a wound that years, perhaps ages, may not heal.... The indiscriminate hand of vengeance has lumped together innocent and guilty; with all the formalities of hostility, has ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... unjust judge, a scoundrel at heart, a mean, contemptible coward, unfit to consort with honest men, and every pure, good woman should spurn me like dirt. Say it! Louder! The lady should be interested ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... obliged!—You see, my dear fellow, I've really gotten into a deuce of a situation as far as you are concerned: either I tell you impudently to your face that I consider your method of elocution excellent—and in that case I'd be guilty of a lie of the most contemptible kind: or else I tell you that I consider it abominable and then we'd get into another ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... a great degree of folly in talking unnecessarily of one's private affairs. I have just now been interrupted by one of my new neighbours, who has made himself absolutely contemptible in my eyes, by his silly garrulous pruriency. I know it has been a fault of my own, too; but from this moment I abjure it, as I would the service of hell! Your poets, spend-thrifts, and other fools of that kidney, pretend forsooth to crack their jokes on prudence; but 'tis a squalid vagabond ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... profitable sale of bones and relics, said to be those of saints but in reality obtained from the catacombs of Rome, had arisen. To the barbarian people of the north these gloomy objects proved more acceptable than images of wood, and the traffic, though contemptible, was more honourable than the slave-trade in vassals and peasant children which had been carried on with Jews and Mohammedans. Like all the great statesmen of antiquity, who were unable to comprehend the possibility of a highly civilized society without the existence of slavery, Charlemagne ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... able to whip any boy of his size in the neighborhood. He was always ready to fight, and had, perhaps, given some hard knocks in his time; but he sustained his character rather by his talent for bullying, than by any conquests he had won. On the whole he was a miserable, contemptible little bruiser whom no decent boy could love or respect. He talked so big about "black eyes," "bloody noses" and "smashed heads," that few boys cared to dispute his title to the honors he had assumed. Probably some who felt able to contest the palm with him, did not care ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... that in the midst of our contemptible hatred of "long books" this excellent trilogy should have appeared, is an indication of the daring and ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... strongly to the conservatism of the feudal aristocracy with which he had labored so hard to connect himself; he was vigorously hostile to the democratic spirit, and, in his later years, to the Reform Bill; and he felt and expressed almost childish delight in the friendship of the contemptible George IV, because George IV was his king. The conservatism was closely connected, in fact, with his Romantic interest in the past, and in politics it took the form, theoretically, of Jacobitism, loyalty to the worthless Stuart race whose memory his novels have done so much ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... like it, dear Tess! Distinction does not consist in the facile use of a contemptible set of conventions, but in being numbered among those who are true, and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, and of good report—as you ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... husband pitifully. What would he think of her? Would he, too, regard her as a traitor, a weak and contemptible creature, forever barred from love and respect, false to her duty, her honor? His face told her nothing. He was regarding her impassively. She remembered now that he had said that he would never see her again if she disobeyed him. Then she turned away, her mind made up. ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... dullest English moralist or American humorist; a course of reading digestible only by such constitutions as could survive and assimilate a diet of Martin Tupper or Mark Twain. And yet even in the very homeliest doggrel of Heywood's or Shakespeare's time there is something comparatively not contemptible; the English, when not alloyed by fantastic or pedantic experiment, has a simple historic purity and dignity of its own; the dulness is not so dreary as the dulness of mediaeval prosers, the commonplace is not so vulgar as the commonplace of ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... assist his family with large donations, cannot be disputed. But how he came to command so much money does not appear. His frugality, bordering upon penuriousness, impressed contemporaries. This, considering the length of his life, may account for not contemptible accumulations. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... a low, contemptible trick!" returned Josiah Crabtree. "But I must say I do not think it quite as ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... that there seemed to be a strong prejudice among some of the soldiers against the Salvation Army for some reason. The soldiers stood about swearing at the Staff-Captain and his helper as they worked, and saying the most abusive and contemptible things to them. At last the Staff-Captain turned about and, looking at them, in the kindliest ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... was a vastly more formidable affair. There it may be said that the whole country was in arms, and the element of religious fanaticism came into play; but in spite of that the resistance which they opposed to the troops was absolutely contemptible; however, it is just as well that you did not see them drill, because now, if by any chance this lad should die, and inquiry were made about it, there would be no occasion for you to allude to the subject at all. You would be able to say truthfully that finding that he was ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... he is the most contemptible blockhead that the universe can furnish! Courage perhaps he possesses, but of brains ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... dollars," thought David, as he pulled out his knife and cut the rope, "and I have kept Dan and father from playing a most contemptible trick upon one who would be a good friend to them, if they would ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... little eyes snapped and her tail was carried higher than ever. "It's a disgrace! It's a disgrace to the whole feathered race, and something ought to be done about it!" sputtered Jenny. "I'm ashamed to think that such a contemptible creature wears feathers! I ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... contributed to hasten the approach of that cloudy reverse at which I have already hinted. For some time the ruin of my father's affairs had been prevented by the sums which his eloquence had wrung from the well-meaning Mr. Elford. Hugh was no contemptible orator on these occasions. Hope seldom forsook him, and he built so securely on what he hoped might come to pass as sometimes to assert the thing had already happened. Such convenient mistakes are daily made. If indeed the good graces of fortune would but have kept pace with his ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... care, and plenty seemed the lot of all. The peasant lived in an ugly and windowless house because his father and grandfather had done so before him, not because it was necessary. It was odd to see girls tall as Dian, and as fair, bending their pretty bodies to come out of the contemptible little apertures ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... of courts and towns. As to the third item—the world's opinion—I don't know that you need lay a stress on some; for, generally speaking, all that the world did, said, or thought, was alike contemptible in her eyes, in which, perhaps, she was not so very far wrong. I must add, though at the cost of interrupting the story by two or three more sentences, that Catalina had also a fifth advantage, which sounds humbly, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Well.—When a beautiful and noble-minded young woman falls in love with a contemptible scoundrel, forgives his rebuffs, compromises her own dignity to win his affection, and finally persuades him to let her throw herself away on him,—is the result a romance or a tragedy? This is a nice question; and by the answer ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Langeais;' the immoral beauty sacrificed to the ambition of her lover in the 'Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes;' the mother sacrificed to the dissolute son in the 'Menage de Garcon;' the woman of political ambition sacrificed to the contemptible intriguers opposed to her in 'Les Employes;' and, indeed, in one way or other, as subordinate character or as heroine, this figure of a graceful feminine victim comes into nearly every novel. Virtuous heroes fare little better. Poor Colonel ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... of the nation. The "option" about which we should be most solicitous was definitely expressed by Washington when he said: "There is an option left to the United States whether they will be respectable and prosperous or contemptible and miserable as a nation." Our national self-respect would not be increased when Turkey, as a debt-paying nation, shall be held as our equal and Mexico as our superior. The credit of a great nation cannot even be discussed without some loss; it cannot even ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... knowledge of the state of things in Lower Canada." There were some who had exerted themselves to defame and injure the President, with a view to their own private interests. He particularly alluded to that contemptible animal, Chief Justice Alcock; to his worthy friend and coadjutor, of whose treacherous, plausible, and selfish character, he had never entertained a doubt; and to that smoothfaced swindler, whom the Lieutenant-Governor had taken so affectionately by ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... ecstatic contemplation of heaven, became in popular opinion the highest ideal of humanity, displacing the old ideal of the patriot and hero who, forgetful of self, lives and is ready to die for the good of his country. The earthly city seemed poor and contemptible to men whose eyes beheld the City of God coming in the clouds of heaven. Thus the centre of gravity, so to say, was shifted from the present to a future life, and however much the other world may have gained, there can be little doubt that this one lost heavily by the change. A ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... rich baronetcy, I fell back upon absurd imaginings; and what with the self-satisfaction of doing my duty, what with the vanity of my baby manhood, and what with the mystery I chose to believe in and interpret according to my desires, I was fast sliding into a moral condition contemptible indeed. ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... deliberate, and therefore a juster, view of his complete achievement, we are driven irresistibly to the conclusion that the force that shaped and swayed Maupassant's prose writings was the conviction that in life there could be no phase so noble or so mean, so honorable or so contemptible, so lofty or so low as to be unworthy of chronicling,—no groove of human virtue or fault, success or failure, wisdom or folly that did not possess its own peculiar psychological aspect ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... but of inspiration emanating from an evil spirit. This hypothesis of a diabolic inspiration is rejected by the school of Van Dale. Both the power of at all looking into the future, and the fancied source of that power, are dismissed as contemptible chimeras. Upon the first of these dark pretensions we shall have occasion to speak at another point. Upon the other we agree with Van Dale. Yet, even here, the spirit of triumphant ridicule, applied to questions not wholly within the competence of human resources, is displeasing in grave discussions: ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... vehicle stopped before the largest tent, Crawford said beneath his breath, "The Amenokal is here, all right. Cliff, watch your teguelmoust. If any of these people see more than your eyes, your standing has dropped to a contemptible zero." ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds |
