"Contemptuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appeal in the name of God and of the country. By the light of those solid and actual qualities which ensure to her no ignoble place on the noble roll of Italian women who have deserved well of Italy, the record of her visions and ecstasies may be read without contemptuous intolerance of hysterical disease. The rapturous visionary and passionate ascetic was in plain matters of this earth as pure and practical a ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... froth; no combing waves, such as the land dweller sees, for no wave could rise enough to comb,—only great hills of water, crystalline with wavelets, streaked with spun foam, heaving as if from a blind impulse, and leaving us, in a contemptuous toleration, to keep afloat if we could. And now and then two great waves raced each other, as they will at long intervals, till they ran close to each other and united, and we were thrown aloft a little higher, to see nothing more than a wild waste ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... I moved out to where the sergeant held my horse, mounted, and crossing the Yamhill River close by, called back in Chinook from the farther bank that "the sixteen men who killed the woman must be delivered up, and my six-shooter also." This was responded to by contemptuous laughter, so I went back to the military post somewhat crestfallen, and made my report of the turn affairs had taken, inwardly longing for another chance to bring the ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... ostentation of such ministers as Granvelle. His retainers appeared in doublet and hose of the coarsest grey material, with long hanging sleeves and no embroideries. They wore an emblem of a fool's cap and bells, or a monk's cowl, which was supposed to mock the Cardinal's contemptuous allusion to the nobles as buffoons. The King was furious at the fashion which soon spread among the courtiers. They changed the device then to a bundle of arrows or a wheat-sheaf which, they asserted, denoted the union of all their hearts in the King's service. Schoolboys could not have betrayed ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... its widest sense denotes any kind of omission; but sometimes it is taken strictly for the omission of something concerning God, or for a man's intentional and as it were contemptuous dereliction of duty: and then it has a certain gravity, for which reason it demands ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... of this general resentment darted an angry glance around him, and suppressing with difficulty the desire which urged him to reply in furious or in contemptuous language, returned his dagger into his scabbard, looked disdainfully around upon the assembled menials, turned short upon his heel, and pushing aside those who stood betwixt him and the door, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... importantly to her sister-in-law. "You know that half Kingcombe belongs to Anne Valery?" And Agatha noticed, with some amusement, what an extreme deference was infused into the usually nonchalant, contemptuous manner of ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... urgent persuasion of his friends than to his own eagerness to appear in print. Though J. S. Mill and a few other critics wrote with good judgement and praised the book, it met with a cold reception in most places, and the Quarterly Review, regardless of its blunder over Keats, spoke of it in most contemptuous terms. All can recognize to-day how unfair this was to the merits of a volume which contained the 'Lotos-Eaters', 'Oenone', and the 'Lady of Shalott'; but the effect of the harsh verdict on the poet, always sensitive about the reception of his work, was unfortunate ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... some of the Latin, but even managed to construe a few lines to the professor's prompting. At the same time, conscious of my superiority over such a feeble companion, I could not help smiling a little, and even looking rather contemptuous, when it came to a question of analysis, and Ikonin, as on previous occasions, plunged into a silence which promised never to end. I had hoped to please the professor by that knowing, slightly sarcastic smile of mine, but, as a ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... the loss of your schooner was, in my opinion,' (Mr Denham's eyebrows here rose in contemptuous surprise), 'unseaworthiness of ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... us to Gatwick and Sandown—(or rather the train takes us—another absurd expression)—the last day of the latter Meeting being devoted to "Jumping Races," which is the contemptuous way some people speak of the winter branch of our National Sport!—forgetting that it demands the two most desirable qualities in a horse, speed and endurance—whereas the modern flat-racing has degenerated, for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... that there is at present no serious friction between the black and the white people in South Africa. Though the attitude of most of the whites—there are, of course, many exceptions—is contemptuous, unfriendly, and even suspicious, the black man accepts the superiority of the white as part of the order of nature. He is too low down, too completely severed from the white, to feel indignant. Even the few educated ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... are admirably sketched the vices generally accompanying a low degree of civilisation; and in the first scene of the second act Shakespeare has, as in many other places, shown the tendency in bad men to indulge in scorn and contemptuous expressions as a mode of getting rid of their own uneasy feelings of inferiority to the good, and also, by making the good ridiculous, of rendering the transition of others to wickedness easy. Shakespeare never puts habitual scorn into ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... occasionally it even happened that the father, the professor, plainly revealed his ignorance to his son, the school-boy. In such cases the father was either compelled to dismiss the argument, with a few contemptuous remarks to "these new follies," or peremptorily order the school-boy to attend to his lessons. Once or twice, in self-defence, the son had produced one or other of his school-books; the professor had lost his temper and wished the new ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... their lives; long after his death, and the departure of his influence, removed any interested motive for courting her friendship. Between them and Lady Nelson, on the other hand, the breach was final. Their occasional mention of her is unfriendly, and upon the whole contemptuous; while she, as far as can be judged from their letters, returned to them an equal measure ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... armies, lay near the city Baecula. Before his camp he had outposts of cavalry. On these the light-armed, those who fought before the standards and those who composed the vanguard, as they came up from their march, and before they chose the ground for their camp, commenced an attack in so contemptuous a manner, that it was perfectly evident what degree of spirit each party possessed. The cavalry were driven into their camp in disorderly flight, and the Roman standards were advanced almost within their very gates. ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... two companion pieces, it has been cavilled at (not to reckon Africanus' enquiries) from the time of the Jewish teacher whom Jerome tells us of in his preface to Daniel, yet even the most contemptuous deprecators of the 'Additions' can find little seriously to condemn in the theology of this story.[78] Considering the strong desire which has existed in some quarters to charge these apocryphal books with grievous doctrinal error, this fact says much. The ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... by snapping his thick fingers with a contemptuous look for the women folk. He had just worked off his five years' government naval service; and it was as master-gunner of the fleet that he had learned to speak good French and hold sceptical opinions. He hemmed and hawed and then rattled off his latest ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... reform—failing, as a rule, to accomplish anything. Aldermen and legislators are his creatures. His web is out in all directions: he holds this man's mortgage, knows that man's guilty secret, discovers the other's weakness and takes advantage of it. He is cynically illiterate and contemptuous of the respectable classes. If need be he can resort to outrageous violence to gain his ends. And yet, though the reflective novelists have all condemned him for half a century, he sits fast in ordinary fiction, where he is tolerated with the amused fatalism ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... so. But this superiority was justly credited to the wise rule of the grand duke's father and grandfather, rather than to any merit of his own. Yet he was liked in a sort of way—I am afraid I must say in a contemptuous sort of way. The general notion was that he was what is generally described by the expressive term "a poor creature." He probably was so, in truth, from his birth upward. It was said—and I believe with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... at all times together His sacred genius baited sore, The silent fury fanned to flaming, Delighted in your work before? O be triumphant! Earthly torment The Poet soul did fully bear, Extinguished are the lights inspired, The laurel crown lies leafless there! The murderer contemptuous gazing Did stedfastly his weapon aim, No swifter beat his heart, Assassin! Nor shook his lifted hand for shame. No wonder; from a distance came he As an adventurer unknown, For worthy title, star of order— Stood but his mad desire alone. Sneering and self-complacent ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... had laid the Arangi well up under the lee of this outjutting point of Malaita, was now failing, so that she began to roll in the easy swells with crashings of sheets and tackles and thunderous flappings of her sails. Jerry no more than cocked a contemptuous quizzical eye at the mainsail anticking above him. He knew already the empty windiness of its threats, but he was careful of the mainsheet blocks, and walked around the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... Zealander is, we know, to sketch our own "mediaevalism" with contemptuous pity for its darkness. But until his day comes, our farthing-dips seem to make a gaudy illumination. And, meantime, we are alive; we walk about; we, too, can swell the chorus which the Initiated chant in every century with ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... in his "Art of England," "endeavoured to represent the beauty of the poor. On the contrary, his witness to their degradation, as inevitable consequences of their London life, is constant and, for the most part, contemptuous." ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... had obtained for me from Mr. Middleton, but only on the condition that I would give them both my most solemn word of honour that I would never play again. Mr. Middleton's letter was not only stern, it was also contemptuous; and had I then been able to devise any mode of extricating myself from my difficulties, I would have refused the money and the promise exacted from me; but it was vain to seek for any such; and with feelings more ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... next room; that is, the young lady is up; but there is another change in her appearance since last night. She has grown contemptuous of herself and indulges less in brooding. But her impatience at the slow passage of time continues, and her interest in the box is even greater than before. She does not open it, however, only looks at it and lays her trembling hand now and ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... It was actually the first real smile that had broken the sadness of their lives in that long, dreary week. Belle returned the charge with a contemptuous glance. ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... more labor has been expended, and a greater effect produced. Public functionaries, who have been pleased to speak in contemptuous terms of the progress of abolitionism, both in Maine and New Hampshire, will, it is thought, soon be made to see, through a medium not at all deceptive, the grossness ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Enraged and bewildered by Sanin's unconventional method of dealing with the difficulty, the discomfited emissaries withdraw. Later, the challenger meets Sanin in the street, and goaded to frenzy by his calm and contemptuous stare, strikes him with a whip; he immediately receives in the face a terrible blow from his adversary's fist, delivered with all his colossal strength. A friend carries him to his lodgings, and there he commits suicide. From the conventional point ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... middle-aged, and cover gray hairs with shame, and wretchedness, and ruin! Oh, the dissipations, over which custom has thrown an influence well nigh omnipotent! Oh, the tauntings, and the high looks, the stiff neck, and the contemptuous sneer, with which wealth and station conduct themselves towards the lowliness of Christian meekness! Oh, the power that nerves itself against holiness! Wealth and imposing splendour, eloquence and numbers, ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2. No. 6., Nov. 1827 - Or Original Monthly Sermons from Living Ministers • William Patton
... that of Roman numina and of Greek polytheism, and yet not incapable of being reconciled with these; so that it might be taken as an inpouring of sudden light upon old conceptions of the Power, glorifying and transfiguring them, rather than, like the Epicurean faith, a bitter and contemptuous negation of man's inherited religious instincts. But before we go on to consider this illumination more closely, let me say a few words about Panaetius the Stoic missionary, and Scipio Aemilianus, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... by the President of the United States, by G-d, sir, yes," and receiving from Young the sneering reply, "We know all about it, Governor." On July 4., no northward movement of the people having begun, Cumming told Young that he intended to publish his proclamation. "Do as YOU please," was the contemptuous reply; "to-morrow I shall get upon the tongue of my wagon, and tell the people that I am going home, and they ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... come later. Their very muscles seemed to be strained in the ardour of their terrific intention to push out and destroy the invader. While admitting, as all the officers I met admitted, the great military qualities of the enemy, they held towards him a more definitely contemptuous attitude than I could discover elsewhere. "When the Boches attack us," said one of them, "we drive them back to their trench, and we take that trench. Thus we advance." But, for them, there was Boche and Boche. It was the Bavarians whom they most respected. ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... nuffin' to do wid you. G'way and send your massa har,' replied the mulatto man, turning his face away with a lordly, contemptuous gesture, that spoke him a true descendant of Pocahontas. This movement exposed his left side to the doorway, outside of which, hidden from us by the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... gone two hours,' said Frank at last, still without raising his eyes from his book. His tone was contemptuous, his voice was jarring, not yet having ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... the principals of the quarrel are known. "Histriomastix," a play revised by Marston in 1598, has been regarded as the one in which Jonson was thus "represented on the stage"; although the personage in question, Chrisogonus, a poet, satirist, and translator, poor but proud, and contemptuous of the common herd, seems rather a complimentary portrait of Jonson than a caricature. As to the personages actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His Humour," Carlo Buffone was formerly thought certainly to be Marston, as he was described as "a public scurrilous, and profane ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... intention than that they should be disturbed or offended in any way, and she and all her household were at the service of "the little sick angel of God." After which the doctor dismissed her with an air of contemptuous tolerance, and laid his hand on the door of Amy's room. Behold, it ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... those things that concern salvation confined strictly to the time spent in reading Scripture. A few questions, or a remark in the course of a secular lesson, often shows them what is the most important of all matters in our minds. Nothing positively controversial is taught; that is to say, no contemptuous expressions about the religion of any of the children are allowed, and the plainest truths of the Gospel specially set forward; but occasionally something comes into the lesson which shows to an intelligent learner the vanity of ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... open door he saw young Hollingsworth rise with a yawn from the ineffectual solace of a brandy-and-soda and transport his purposeless person to the window. Glennard measured his course with a contemptuous eye. It was so like Hollingsworth to get up and look out of the window just as it was growing too dark to see anything! There was a man rich enough to do what he pleased—had he been capable of being pleased—yet barred ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... Committees, Institutions, 55 Associations and Societies, A vain, speech-mouthing, speech-reporting Guild, One Benefit-Club for mutual flattery, We have drunk up, demure as at a grace, Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth; 60 Contemptuous of all honourable rule, Yet bartering freedom and the poor man's life For gold, as at a market! The sweet words Of Christian promise, words that even yet Might stem destruction, were they wisely preached, 65 Are muttered o'er by men, whose tones proclaim How flat and wearisome ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... presidency, and who, in the effort to do so, had engaged in what might have been stigmatized even as a cabal. Plenty of people were ready to tell him stories innumerable of Chase's hostility to him, and contemptuous remarks about him; but to all such communications he quietly refused to give ear. What Mr. Chase thought or felt concerning him was not pertinent to the question whether or no Chase would make a good chief justice. Yet it was true that Montgomery Blair would have liked ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... discouraging our project that Jimmie was for giving it up, but I think one man never received three such simultaneously contemptuous glances as we three levelled at Jimmie for his craven suggestion. So it happened that one Sunday morning we took a carriage, and, having invited the consul, who spoke Russian, we drove to Tolstoy's town house, some little ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... and burned out by mobs of fanatical brigands who organized a rule of terror from one end of Numidia to the other. Supported in secret by the Donatists, they called themselves "the Athletes of Christ." The Catholics had given them the contemptuous name of "Circoncelliones," or prowlers around cellars, because they generally plundered cellars and grain-houses. Troops of fanaticized and hysterical women rambled round with them, scouring the country like your true bacchantes, clawing the unfortunate ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... made it still more unpleasant for Anthony was that Mr. Lewis would frequently remind him that it was his intention to "sell him as soon as he got possession—the first day of January." "I can get fifteen hundred dollars for you easily, and I will do it." This contemptuous threat had caused Anthony's blood to boil time and again. But Anthony had to take the matter as calmly as possible, which, however, he was not ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... had listened in a sort of dumb rage as the man's words stung, and stung again. MacNair's uncouth manner, his blunt brutality of speech, his scornful, even contemptuous reference to her work, and, most of all, his utter disregard of her, struck her to the very depths. As MacNair turned to go, she stayed him with a ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... (supported by Mr. ASQUITH) declined to admit into the Bill for extending the life of this Parliament a provision enabling constituencies to get rid of Members who had ceased to represent them. But they did not like his contemptuous reference to their argumentative powers. Mr. TREVELYAN, who regards himself as the representative (by literary descent) of CHARLES JAMES FOX, was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... see early pricks the tree that will prove a thorn: hath my familiar conversing with you made you coy,[1] or my good looks drawn you to be thus contemptuous? I can quickly remedy such a fault, and I will bend the tree while it is a wand. In faith, sir boy, I have a snaffle for such a headstrong colt. You, sirs, lay hold on him and bind him, and then I will give him a cooling card ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... choosing one set of companions or choosing another. There are some awful cads who sit along with Mr. Monk;—fellows that make you sick to hear them, and whom I couldn't be civil to. But I don't think there is anybody I hate so much as old Beeswax. He has a contemptuous way with his nose which makes me ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... small, the more irksome the better, that you may take from your mother's daily load, some service you can render for father, brother, sister, aunt; some daily household task, so small you may feel contemptuous of it, yet some one must do it, and it may be a special thorn in that some one's side. So surely as you force yourself to do the small things nearest your hand, so surely will you be called upon ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... as they deserved it, compared with his. There were people, to be sure, who paid little attention to him, but he did not notice them; and those who showed it more plainly were "Philistines, everyday fellows, insignificant people," as he whispered to his brother with contemptuous pity. It was quite peculiar: everyone's greater or lesser importance as a man and a citizen could be measured with perfect exactitude by the degree of his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... Much good he will do!" returned Lady Verner, in so contemptuous a tone as to prove she had no very exalted opinion of ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... was the only wear; but, per Bacco, he should learn it too! She was in a high rage. The Captain was given to know that Ferrara was a great city, with more houses in it than one; in fine, he was shown the door. Supper first was an extreme and contemptuous condescension of Olimpia's, urged by the thought that a fed Mosca might be a more desperate Mosca, while a lean one would be desperate ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... A sound of contemptuous anger showed that her shaft—her mild shaft—had gone home. She hurried on—"But at last I got him to promise me to wait a week. That was yesterday at five o'clock. He wouldn't promise me to write ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... long head, also dark above and silvery grey below. I doubted the fact of its ejecting saliva till assured by the Rev. John Milum that two missionaries at Lagos, Messieurs J. B. Wood and David, had suffered severely from inflamed eyes after the contemptuous ophine crachat. All along the coast is a cerastes (horned snake), whose armature is upon the snout and whose short fat form suggests the puff-adder. The worst is a venomous-looking cobra, or hooded viper, with flat, cordate head, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... petitions to dissolve the Union be poured in by thousands, I shall not again interfere on the floor of Congress, since the house have virtually declared that there is nothing contemptuous or improper in offering them, and are willing again to afford Mr. Adams an opportunity of sweeping all the strings of discord that exist in our country. I acted as I thought for the best, being ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... bisexual temperament. He was a great artist who has been dealt with unjustly, partly, perhaps, because of the prejudice of Vasari,—whose admiration for Michelangelo amounted to worship, but who is contemptuous toward Sodoma and grudging of praise,—partly because his work is little known out of Italy and not very easy of access there. Reckless, unbalanced, and eccentric in his life, Sodoma revealed in his painting a peculiar feminine softness and warmth—which indeed we seem to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... wrought passage in which Burke describes external aggrandisement as the original thought and the ultimate aim of the earlier statesmen of the Revolution, is no better than ingenious nonsense. The whole performance rests on a gross and inexcusable anachronism. There is a contemptuous refusal to discriminate between groups of men who were as different from one another as Oliver Cromwell was different from James Nayler, and between periods which were as unlike in all their conditions as the Athens of the Thirty Tyrants was unlike Athens after Thrasybulus ...
— Burke • John Morley
... daring brightness of her glances, it was not a joyous face, such as one would wish a girl of seventeen to possess. A little cynical curve of the red mouth, a little contemptuous glance from those brown eyes, showed one that she took her measurements of individuals by a gauge of her own, and that she had not that guileless trust in human nature that is supposed to belong to young womanhood. The full expression indicated an independence ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... time that I minds that I ever sailed under that buntin', and I would be sorry to see it often hoisted over my head," he observed to the elder Doull, pointing at it with his thumb half over his shoulder, and a contemptuous sneer on his lips. "I never loved them mounseers, and hopes I never may. They are to my mind the nat'ral born enemies, so to speak, of Englishmen, and it's my belief that they'll remain the same to the end ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... of September the Turkish commander was a third time summoned to surrender. This last summons was treated with contemptuous silence. It had been delivered to Achmed Pacha, while, accompanied by his Janizaries, he was on his way to the mosque. When he had finished its perusal he addressed two of his officers that were walking ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... legs of the cow), and, after some hours, found ourselves in a wonderful country indeed, which, I was informed by the man-animal, was his own native land, inhabited by things of his own species. This elevated the man-animal very much in my esteem, and in fact, I now began to feel ashamed of the contemptuous familiarity with which I had treated him; for I found that the man-animals in general were a nation of the most powerful magicians, who lived with worms in their brain, (*19) which, no doubt, served to stimulate them by their painful writhings ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... words which I caught distinctly related to his motive for secretly leaving the farm. Mortified pride—doubly mortified by Naomi's contemptuous refusal and by the personal indignity offered to him by Ambrose—was at the bottom of his conduct in absenting himself from Morwick. He owned that he had seen the advertisement, and that it had actually encouraged him ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... in front of me was clearly no better informed, and then I gathered from a slightly contemptuous Scotchman beside me that it was Chris Robinson had walked between the honourable member in possession of the house and the Speaker. I caught a glimpse of him blushingly whispering about his misadventure to ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... while, and then indicated his surroundings with a contemptuous sweep of his hand—the dirty sidewalk strewn with cigar ends and banana peelings, the straggling houses with their cracked board walls and ugly square fronts, the rutted street down which ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... with some particularity upon this trial, not because it is by any means the most flagrant for the contemptuous disregard shown by the judges, not only to the legal rights, but to the feelings of the prisoner, but because it came first in the order of time, and serves in a good measure to explain all the trials that follow it. Comment upon it is needless. Such a mockery of justice would ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... him an injustice," I answered, with some heat, "just as you have all been ignorantly contemptuous of Crookes. I confess I used to share in some small degree your estimate of Flammarion; but if you will read his latest book with attention and with candor, you cannot but be impressed with his wide ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... day Baruch Mendoza was more pallid than his robe; his eyes looked like twin stars, they so glittered, and the fire in them was hardly of this earth. His cheek-bones started through the skin; beard and hair hung in damp masses about the ghastly face and head; his lips were parted in a contemptuous grin, and there was a strained, listening look on the countenance: he was listening for the key that was slaying him, and he saw it now, saw it in the flesh, a creeping, crawling, shapeless thing that slowly strangled ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... serious side," the Princess went on, eager to defend her favorite. "He is now probably studying some deep military problem all this time, and that is why we have not seen him,"—and then noticing the scornful pose of Tamara's head she laughed. "Don't be so contemptuous, dear child," she—said. "Perhaps you too will ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... healthy young man cannot understand, it is an old maid. Who can forget that terrible outburst of the aunt in Une Vie? "Nobody ever cared to ask if my feet were wet!" Mr. Untermeyer will live and learn. He is not contemptuous; he is full of pity, but it is the ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... only way of coming quickly to an end." A pension, which he had, not been paid for a long time past was revived in his favor. Vaugelas took his plan to Cardinal Richelieu. "Well, sir," said the minister, smiling with a somewhat contemptuous air of kindness, "you will not forget the word pension in this Dictionary." "No, Monsignor," replied M. de Vaugelas, with a profound bow, "and still less reconnaissance (gratitude)." Vaugelas had finished the first volume ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... slouched hat, and then, relaxing his strained attitude, would give way to a movement of impatience. "You ain't uneasy about anything, Bill, are you?" asked the Expressman confidentially. Bill lifted his eyes with a slightly contemptuous surprise. "Not about anything ter COME. It's what HEZ happened that I don't exackly sabe. I don't see no signs of Ramon's gang ever havin' been out at all, and ef they were out I don't see why they ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... your party have been burnt, not by a rude and lawless rabble, but by the common hangman, in broad day-light, before the Royal Exchange in London, and by authority of Parliament. Perhaps," he continues, "you never heard of this contemptuous treatment of the Oxford principles, and therefore I will give it you from the Parliamentary Records:—'Anno Domini 1710. The House of Lords, taking into consideration the judgment and decree of the University of Oxford, passed in their Convocation July 21, 1683,—it was resolved by the Lords ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... fugitives to increase their desperate rage. But what drove the iron into the soul of the arch-murderer Ruthven was Darnley's solemn public declaration denying all knowledge of or complicity in Rizzio's assassination; nor did it soothe his fury to know that all Scotland rang with contemptuous laughter at that impudent and cowardly perjury. From his sick-bed at Newcastle, whereon some six weeks later he was to breathe his last, the forsaken wretch replied to it by sending the Queen the bond to which he had demanded ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... "The king, without doubt." "Indeed, Mr. Partridge," says Mrs. Miller, "you are not of the same opinion with the town; for they are all agreed, that Hamlet is acted by the best player who ever was on the stage." "He the best player!" cries Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer, "why, I could act as well as he myself. I am sure, if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as ne did. And then, to be sure, in that scene, as you called it, between him and his mother, where you told me ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... immemorial, have been conquered subjects of the Hungarians, and who should be punished rather with rods and blows than with the sword.' Thus, and much more in the same strain, spake Andreas. Michael, on the other hand, spoke of his enemy with contemptuous jocularity, as a mounted and perjured priest who had allied himself with the Turks, the enemies of Christendom, whilst he himself claimed to represent fidelity to Christianity and the Empire. Moreover, he held out to his troops tho prospect of great ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... not so obvions so far as newspaper reading is concerned. Like other people, the Dutch take such newspapers as defend or represent their own political opinions, and often affect towards journals on the other side a contemptuous indifference which ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... were evidently not very creditable to some of those who were concerned in it, and Murray's tone, in speaking of the "uncle" who had brought him out into the Texas plains to lose him so easily, was bitterly contemptuous. ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... hating them all alike for their former coolness to me and their present odious attitude toward my people. And it was not difficult, recalling all my boyish dislike for John Johnson and his steadily contemptuous treatment of me, to make him the chief ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... mask, too, break into a smile. He looked at the others, the barefoot girls and the women; whatever the understanding was, they shared it; each oval, sun-tinged face, under its crown of jet hair, had the same faint light of laughter of tragic, inscrutable mirth, at once contemptuous and pitiful. Along the street, folk had come forth from their doors ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... up the farmer's holly staff, broke it across his knee to show the strength of his wrists, and threw the pieces away with a contemptuous gesture. ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... shot a contemptuous look over his shoulder. "Better world? What do I want with a better world? I just don't want to be bothered. I've been getting my three squares a day, got a nice little flat for my family. How do I know it's not going to be a ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... disgust unspeakable. For half that speech I should have killed a man—indeed, I had killed men for less than half. And yet, for all the passion that raged in my soul, I preserved upon my countenance a smiling mask. That smile exhausted her patience and increased her loathing, for with a contemptuous exclamation ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... annoyance from the restless girl by requesting her opinion of his progress in tuning the instrument. Near them stood a tall man, dark and handsome. He seemed unused to his present circumstances, and contemptuous, not of the company nor the object for which they were assembled, but in the abstract, as if habitual contempt were part of ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... natural traits growing into—blemishes—in one inheritor and into graces in another. Yet to know Gideon Hayle was to read the riddle. As quick to anger as his sons, as full of mirth as his daughter; open-hearted, wrong-headed, generous, tyrannous, valorous, contemptuous of all book wisdom yet an incessant, keen inquirer with a fantastical explanation of his own for everything in nature, science, politics, or religion. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... turned toward him, as if to speak; but, without a word, looked again at the canvas. She seemed perplexed and puzzled, as though she caught glimpses of something in the picture that she did not rightly understand Then, as she looked, her eyes kindled with contemptuous scorn, and there was a pronounced sneer in her cold tones as she said, "Really, I don't believe I care for you to do this sort of thing." She laughed shortly. "It reminds one a little of that ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... to the Romans, and therefore the little he did understand of it was too much. But he had begun to be afraid of his daughter: her still dignity had begun to tell upon him in his humiliation. He laid the letter aside, said nothing, and waited, inwardly angry and contemptuous. After a while he began to flatter himself with the hope that perhaps it was but a sort of impertinent valentine, the writer of which was unknown to Ginevra. From the moment of its arrival, however, he kept a stricter ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... down at her. His yellow, dusky-set eyes rested on her good-naturedly, without seeing her, his lip curled in a self-conscious, contemptuous sort ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... says Mrs Miller, 'you are not of the same opinion with the town; for they are all agreed that Hamlet is acted by the best player who was ever on the stage.'—'He the best player!' cries Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer; 'why I could act as well as he myself. I am sure if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did. And then to be sure, in that scene, as you called ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that the king would adopt the conduct and institutions of his grandfather. Accordingly, the Latins, with whom a treaty had been concluded in the reign of Tullus, gained fresh courage; and, after they had invaded Roman territory, returned a contemptuous answer to the Romans when they demanded satisfaction, supposing that the Roman king would spend his reign in indolence among chapels and altars. The disposition of Ancus was between two extremes, preserving the qualities of both Numa and Romulus; and, besides ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... than treason, and extends to other offences, not capital, of a like tendency, but without any actual design against the king in contemplation, such as contempts of the king and his government, riotous assemblings for political purposes, and the like; and in general all contemptuous, indecent, or malicious observations upon his person and government, whether by writing or speaking, or by tokens, calculated to lessen him in the esteem of his subjects, or weaken his government, or raise jealousies of him amongst the people, will fall under the notion of seditious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... stood, and motionless save for the pant and tumult of her bosom, fierce-eyed and contemptuous of lip. ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... Calista said, "Oh—!" with the peculiar German inflection of contemptuous patience. Conrad said ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... not short I should do better. What a pity I cut it the last time; it would have been so long and splendid now," she continued, giving a kind of contemptuous pull at the thick, beautiful brown hair on whose glossy surface there was in certain lights a reddish tinge, which ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... this universal complaint, it appears that, while Mr. Wilberforce is lamenting their hard fate in being subject to a master, their greatest fear is the not having a master whom they know; and that to be told by the negroes of another estate that "they belong to no massa," is one of the most contemptuous reproaches that can be cast upon them. Poor creatures, when they happened to hear on Wednesday evening that my carriage was ordered for Montego Bay the next morning, they fancied that I was going away for good ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... bunk at midnight. It was his duty to rivet chains on the legs of the second-sentence men—the twice convicted. They had been told on the voyage that they would have an island all to themselves, where they would not be annoyed by the contemptuous looks and bitter jibes of better men. All night long the blacksmith plied his hammer and made the ship resound with the rattling chains and ringing manacles, as he fastened them well on the legs of the prisoners. At dawn ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... waited till the first lieutenant had paused, and then made the first freemason sign, looking up very boldly at the first lieutenant, who actually drew back with astonishment at this contemptuous conduct, hitherto unwitnessed on board of ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... of monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements, and deduces the successes of Rome from the excellence of her constitution. His conception of relations is everywhere dreadfully jejune and destitute of imagination: his contemptuous and over-wise mode of treating religious matters is altogether offensive. The narrative, preserving throughout an intentional contrast to the usual Greek historiography with its artistic style, is doubtless correct and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... John, conspicuous part taken by, in favor of the Americans, i. 494; lord-mayor of London, address of, to the king, on American affairs—biographical notice of (note), i. 604; his contemptuous treatment of a royal proclamation, i. 611; speech of, in Parliament, in relation to the British flight from Boston, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... ... dooen oute of Frenche appeared in 1571 and reached a second edition in 1576. In the latter year appeared a work of G. Pettie that bore on its title page—A Petite Palace of Pettie his Pleasure—a clear reference to Painter's book. Notwithstanding Anthony a Wood's contemptuous judgment of his great-uncle's book it ran through no less than six editions between 1576 and 1613.[17] The year after Pettie's first edition appeared R. Smyth's Stravnge and Tragicall histories Translated out ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... to be derived from the French JACQUES or, as others maintain, from JANKIN, a distinctive form of JOHAN or JOHN; JOHNKIN gives us JOCK and JOCKEY; from its extreme commonness it has acquired that slightly contemptuous signification observable in such compounds as "every man JACK," "JACK-of-all-trades," "JACK-an-apes," and the name as applied to the knaves in playing-cards, and to the small white ball used as a mark in the game of bowls is an ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... described minutely Mitya's exploits in the "Metropolis," all his compromising doings and sayings, and told the story of Captain Snegiryov's "wisp of tow." But even Rakitin could say nothing positive about Mitya's inheritance, and confined himself to contemptuous generalities. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in great state, as usual on those occasions, he evoked the services of a demon in the shape of a huge black horse, forcing it to fly through the air to Paris. The king was rather offended at his coming in such an unceremonious manner, and was about to give him a contemptuous refusal when Scott asked him to defer his decision until his horse had stamped its foot three times. The first stamp shook every church in Paris, causing all the bells to ring; the second threw down three of the towers ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... honors voted him and believing that he really deserved them, yet most blameworthy are those who, after beginning to reward him as he deserved, led him on and made him liable to censure by the measures that they voted. He neither dared to thrust them all aside, for fear of being thought contemptuous, nor could he be safe when he accepted them. Excess in honors and praises renders conceited even the most modest, especially if such rewards appear to have been given with sincerity. [-4-] The privileges that ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... promoter was just passing their table. He turned around at the sound of his name. For a moment he failed to recognize Burton. There was very little likeness between the pale, contemptuous young man with the dreamy eyes, who had sat opposite to him at the professor's dinner table a few nights ago, and this flushed young man who had just attracted his attention, and who had evidently been lunching exceedingly well. It was part of his business, however, ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... then I was always weak. I think that was why Hugh's strength had appealed so to me. I needed love and protection. Hester, strong and self-sufficient, had never felt such a need. She could not understand. Oh, how contemptuous ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... running up fifty feet of iron-bark trunk as quickly as it could cover the level ground, and keeping always on the far side of the tree from the dogs, its long, ugly, wedge-shaped head constantly turning from side to side, in keen, listening observation. From Jess's contemptuous, half-hearted bark, Finn gathered that this singularly ugly creature was not one of the deadly people, but also, on the other hand, that it was not game worthy of a hound's ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... said, as he took up the express package, and gave Godolphin's letter a contemptuous push with his hand, "You can gather up this spilt milk. Put it away somewhere; I don't want to see it or think of it again." He cut open the package, and found the prompt-book, which he laid aside, while he looked to see if his own copy of the play ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... the pledge for life, I trust," returned the workman, seriously. He was hurt at the contemptuous manner of his old employer, but his dependent condition made him conceal his feelings. "You will have ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... very familiar talk to Bull; not the words, but the commanding and contemptuous tone in which they were spoken. Crestfallen, he submitted. Of one thing he must make sure: that no harm befell him before he faced Pete Reeve and Pete Reeve's gun. Then he could only pray for courage to attack. But the effect of the sheriff's little ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... call on M. Zuccato, the Venetian ambassador. I gave him M. Morosini's letter, and he said, coldly, that he was glad to make my acquaintance. When I asked him to present me at Court the insolent fool only replied with a smile, which might fairly be described as contemptuous. It was the aristocratic pride coming out, so I returned his smile with a cold bow, and never set foot in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Felix repeated. He looked again at Hardyman and took his hat. "Make my apologies to my aunt," he said. "You must introduce yourself to her Ladyship. I can't wait here any longer." He walked out of the room, having deliberately returned the contemptuous indifference of Hardyman by a similar indifference on his own side, ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... the king's pleasure, and forfeiture of goods and chattels. And all slander against the king, queen, or their issue, was subjected to the penalty of misprision of treason. After these compliances, the parliament was prorogued; and those acts, so contemptuous towards the pope, and so destructive of his authority, were passed at the very time that Clement pronounced his hasty sentence against the king. Henry's resentment against Queen Catharine, on account of her obstinacy, was the reason why he excluded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Eileen O'Keeffe she felt would rescue Nelly O'Neill if licence carried her too near the falls. It was so irresistibly seductive, this swift response of the audience to the wink of suggestion. Like a vast lyre, the Hall vibrated to the faintest breath of roguishness. Almost in contemptuous mockery ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... hours which were lost to love, she looked at her cousin to see if it were possible that he meant to make use of it. The manners of the young man, his gestures, the way in which he took up his eye-glass, his affected superciliousness, his contemptuous glance at the coffer which had just given so much pleasure to the rich heiress, and which he evidently regarded as without value, or even as ridiculous,—all these things, which shocked the Cruchots and the des Grassins, pleased Eugenie so deeply ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... nature, roused by Mountjoy's contemptuous composure, was forcing its way outwards; he set his ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... their offer of service, they staid not, but, with angry and indignant mien, filed out of the camp, and, plunging once more into the wilderness, left the devoted little army to march on to that destruction to which its ill-starred commander seemed so fatally bent on leading it. The contemptuous indifference which always marked the demeanor of Braddock towards these rude but brave and trusty warriors of the woods was very offensive to Washington; the more, as he knew, that, when it came to be put to the test, these men, unskilled ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... telephone with a contemptuous sneer on her face; but Leslie's gay laugh persisted in her ears. Restlessly she moved through her rooms thinking what she might do to divert herself, and shrinking from all the tiresome things she had been doing for years until ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Big Otter in his contemptuous estimate of the value of Salamander, I believed that I could get along quite well without him; and therefore resolved to send him back—first to the Indian camp to tell of our safety and intentions, and then to the fort ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... rabbit at the gap. "Sixpence for the privilege of passing by the private road!" He was bowled over in an instant by the impatient and contemptuous Mole, who trotted along the side of the hedge chaffing the other rabbits as they peeped hurriedly from their holes to see what the row was about. "Onion-sauce! Onion-sauce!" he remarked jeeringly, and was gone before they could think of a thoroughly satisfactory reply. ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... the old man, with contemptuous good humour. "My working hours are done for the day, and you're welcome enough to any instruction you're capable of receiving from my remarks. It's not saying much, ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... being closed, and the bells of the different churches tolling. It is said that his majesty, who, at the time these commotions took place, was enjoying the pleasures of conviviality in Ireland, expressed in somewhat contemptuous terms his dissatisfaction at the want of arrangement and energy on the part of ministers. But this seemed to proceed from the failure of their plans rather than from any respect to his deceased queen. She ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... beverage?' However, as he found there was nothing better to be had, he let the man bring him some beer, and when he had got it, soon showed that he could drink it easily enough; so, when he had drunk two or three draughts, he turned his eyes in a contemptuous manner, first, on the coachman, and then on me: I saw the scamp recollected me, for after staring at me and my dress for about half a minute, he put on a broad grin, and flinging his head back, he ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... character of Peiraeus. Police officers of the city. Favourite epithet of the city. The Athenian orators. Excellence to which eloquence attained at. Dr Johnson's contemptuous derision of the civilisation of the people of. Their books and book education. An Athenian day. Defects of the Athenians' conversational education. The law of ostracism at Athens. Happiness of the Athenians in their term of government. Their ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sharp accent upon every word and every imperfect rhyme; scanned every line with stern precision. Sometimes when he came to a false Alexandrine, he gave himself the appearance of being absolutely unable to force his lips to utter such barbarisms; and then his eyes glowed with malicious fire, and a contemptuous smile played about ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... arch of the Place du Carrousel. Haughty, contemptuous, the marble arch of the Place du Carrousel. Like a woman raped by force, rising above her fate, Borne up by the cold rigidity of hate, Stands the marble arch of the Place du Carrousel. Tap! Clink-a-tink! Tap! Rap! Chink! What falls to ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell |
