"Inferiority" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... banter. "We may make up our minds to be very civil to each other when we meet. The threats of the oven may no doubt be dropped on our side, and you may abstain from expressing in words your sense of our inferiority." ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... me, and gave me his hand, I keenly recalled in him that same old haughtiness of expression; and it seemed to me that he did not properly appreciate his position of official inferiority, as, in the presence of the officers, he asked me what I had been doing in all that time, and how I happened to be there. In spite of the fact that I invariably made my replies in Russian, he kept putting his questions ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... physical compulsion which would make the Negro work." The Negro wished to be free to leave his job when he pleased, but, as Benjamin C. Truman stated in his report to President Johnson, a "result of the settled belief in the Negro's inferiority, and in the necessity that he should not be left to himself without a guardian, is that in some sections he is discouraged from leaving his old master. I have known of planters who considered it an offence against neighborhood courtesy for another to hire their ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... note is in the hand-writing of Miss Burney, at a subsequent period. The objection of Mr. Crisp to the MS play of 'The Witlings,' was its resemblance to Moliere's 'Femmes Savantes,' and consequent immense inferiority. It is, however, a curious fact, and to the author a consolatory one, that she had literally never read the 'Femmes Savantes' when she ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... thing was to be introduced to the bride. Jack did the honors himself, presenting each one of us, and seemed just as proud as a little boy with new boots. Then we were given introductions to several good-looking neighbor girls. We began to feel our own inferiority. ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... expecting that her whole family would share her triumph. Gratified by George Rivers's admiration, she regarded him with favour and complacency; and her habit of considering herself as the most sensible person in her sphere made her so regard his appreciation of her, that she was blinded to his inferiority. It must be allowed that he was less dull with ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... and the fact that his standard of beauty was not a high one. This may be partly accounted for by the fact that in Lombardy an artist had no opportunity to study the remains of classic art, and this one circumstance very largely excuses the inferiority of the northern sculptors to those of Tuscany, whose taste had been much improved by close ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... with which she intended to have inquired for Caroline; before the mild yet penetrating glance of Mrs. Hamilton even her self-possession appeared about to abandon her. She felt lowered, humbled in her presence, and it was this, perhaps, this very sense of inferiority, which had ever ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... associate with each other, we associate with our ideas of each other, and few people have either the ability or courage to question their own ideas. None have more persistently and dogmatically insisted upon the inherent inferiority of women than the men with whom they come in closest contact. It is the husbands, brothers, and sons of women whom it has been most difficult to induce to consider women seriously or to acknowledge that women have rights which men are bound to respect. So, too, it is those people who live in ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... in almost all respects with trees grown in the open grounds from known white-pine seedlings, I believe their peculiar character is due to unfavorable circumstances in their early growth. The pine, then, is an exception to the general rule as to the inferiority of the forest to the open-ground tree. The pasture oak and pasture beech, on the contrary, are well known to produce far better timber than those grown in the woods, and there are few trees to which the remark is not equally applicable. ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... could easily be compared to that of men. It was of the same grade, and there seemed to be no question or suggestion of inferiority. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... British conceit, politely suggested that it would be a good plan to have placards containing the words, 'It is good to have the conceit taken out of us,' in all languages, hung all over the Exhibition—the intention being to courteously intimate to foreigners their general inferiority to John Bull. Certainly it is a good thing to have the conceit taken out of us—with the saving clause added by our contributor, H.P.L.—'so that it be not done with the corkscrew of ignorance,' or of conceit itself, as is generally the case when English wit attempts such extraction. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was not so much dislike he felt, as an uneasy sentiment of inferiority. However well he himself had got on in the world, he yet grudged the reputation of a man whom he had remembered a wayward, inexperienced boy: he did not love to hear any one praise Maltravers. He fancied, too, that this feeling was reciprocal, and ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... nation of which almost every man is a soldier, is to elevate the man at the expense of the woman, and the German woman has taken to her new position very readily. She plays her wonderful part in the production of munitions, not as in Britain in a spirit of equality, but with a sort of admitted inferiority difficult ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... is connected with mankind in every creed, whether worshipped as the universal sublime Spirit of omnipotence, or shaped by the forms of idolatry into representations of a deity. From the creation of Adam, mankind has acknowledged its inferiority, and must bow down and worship either the true God or a graven image; or something that is in heaven or in earth. The world, as we accept that term, was always actuated by a natural religious instinct. Cut off from that world, lost in the mysterious distance that shrouded the origin of the Egyptian ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... three of the poor fellows were seen clinging to the keel for twenty minutes, but no assistance could be rendered. Now, both of these were considered good lifeboats, but they were not self-righting. Numerous cases might be cited to prove the inferiority of the non-self-righting boats, but one more will suffice. In February 1858 the Southwold boat—a large sailing boat, esteemed one of the finest in the kingdom, but not self-righting—went out for exercise, and was running ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... though some I know—meek, friendly men at that—couldn't stand him at any price. I haven't the slightest doubt he considered himself vastly my superior—indeed, had you been Emperor of East and West, you could not have ignored your inferiority in his presence—but I couldn't get up any real sentiment of offence. He did not despise me for anything I could help, for anything I was—don't you know? I was a negligible quantity simply because I was not ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... account of the matter, perhaps, is, that this inferiority in one branch of taste may result from a difference of temperament in our lively southern neighbours, which, in other respects, has its advantages. Restless, acute, and loquacious, they delight more naturally ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... submit to the unlettered sergeant-major who teaches him his goose-step; to the rich parvenu more intolerable still, as the pruner of his obtrusive vulgarities of speech and manner, the index of his social inferiority and the standing menace to his innate rudeness, that is only intensified by his consciousness of wealth; to the poor man's son essentially a "schoolmaster"—a wielder of the ferule and a bloodless automaton, to whom, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... and nothing but 'a lucky hit of nature' that mended her design when she was determined to make as thick a skull as she had ever yet turned out of her hands, could have given existence even to this instance of inferiority. He says he was quite ignorant of their intention of the honour that has been done him. If this be not affectation, I can imagine nothing with which to compare or illustrate his surprise, except that which must have come over the onion, when it discovered that the Egyptians ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... he knew to some extent, and yet he was traveling toward it with a feeling akin to that with which he had approached Quebec. It was in a way and for its time a great port, in which many languages were spoken and to which many ships came. Despite its inferiority in size it was already the chief window through which the New World looked upon the Old. He expected to see life in the seething little city at the mouth of the Hudson and he expected also that a crisis in ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... openly proclaimed itself, and never wore away. My chance of security lay, not so much in my own caution, and my perfect command of look and action under all emergencies, as in the self-distrust and timidity of her nature; in the helpless inferiority of position to which her husband's want of affection, and her daughter's want of respect, condemned her in her own house; and in the influence of repulsion—at times, even of absolute terror—which my presence had the power of communicating ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... with an ecclesiastical system as narrow and tyrannical as Laud's. New presbyter was but old priest writ large, and the balance between the two gave the decision into the hands of the Independents, whose numerical inferiority was redeemed by Cromwell's military genius. When Presbyterians and Independents had ground the Royalists to powder at Marston Moor and Naseby, Charles sought to recover his authority through their quarrels. He fell between two ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... secured an amount of L3628. He appears also to have been disappointed in an expectancy he had of L3000 prize-money from the proceeds, among other booty, of those two well-furnished Apostles aforesaid, as he familiarly terms the St. Matthew and St. Andrew. Another and more generous grievance was the inferiority of the gains of his seamen to those of the soldiers. With other principal officers of the fleet he offended Vere by backing the sailors in their demand for a search of the soldiers' chests. Throughout ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... 'Mandiocca.'" Putting these two statements together, can there be any doubt about the genesis of these tribal names? Let "the Tortoise" become sufficiently distinguished (not necessarily by superiority—great inferiority may occasionally suffice) and the tradition of descent from him, preserved by his descendants themselves if he was superior, and by their contemptuous neighbours if he was inferior, may ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the finest woman I ever saw!" He clearly perceived the inferiority of other women, whom, nevertheless, he admired and liked, such as the Countess of ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... prompted them to essay their own powers of governing, and among these, as a natural consequence, was the Cardinal de Richelieu, who, despising the abilities of the finance minister, chafed under his own inferiority of place, and did not fail to imbue the Queen-mother with the same feeling. La Vieuville was accused of arrogating to himself an amount of authority wholly incompatible with his office, and it is impossible to suppress a smile while contemplating the fact that this accusation was brought ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... brother and sister were children, they were constantly at the vicarage with their uncle and aunt, and Miss Gwynne was their playmate there, and had not known their inferiority. Now that he really was a man of education and a gentleman, in spite of all her kindness to his mother, she knew it full well. Why did he never consider what any one else in his own neighbourhood thought of him or his family? It was only Miss ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... admiration. His bold and sincere spirit instantly compared the doctrines which were now submitted to him, with those in the belief of which he had been bred; and, enlightened by the comparison, was not slow to acknowledge the inferiority of Judaism. He said to himself, that a religion made for a single people, to the exclusion of all others,—which only offered a barbarous justice for rule of conduct,—which neither rendered the present intelligible nor satisfactory, and left the future uncertain,—could not be ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... would not and could not do it, that is, unless I was absolutely sure that my life or comfort depended upon it. If once I began to creep upon my knees I should always have to do so, and it would be a patent acknowledgment of inferiority. So, fortified by an insular prejudice against "kootooing," which has, like most of our so-called prejudices, a good deal of common sense to recommend it, I marched in boldly after Billali. I found myself in another ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... inconsistent with Christianity, was in conflict with the rights of man; that it was a slow poison, daily contaminating the minds and morals of their people; that, by reducing a part of their own species to abject inferiority, they lost the idea of the dignity of man, which the hand of Nature had implanted within them for great and useful purposes; that, by the habit from infancy of trampling on the rights of human nature, every liberal sentiment was extinguished or enfeebled; that every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... has been blamed for not taking advantage of his victory and falling upon the Federals on the morning after the battle; but although such an assault might possibly have been successful he was conscious of his immense inferiority in force, and his troops would have been compelled to have advanced to the attack across ground completely swept by the fire of the magnificently served Northern artillery posted upon their commanding heights. He was, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... enemy haughtily descended the mountains, filled with the calculations they had formed in their ignorant meditations. They fancied that to appear before our camp was enough to conquer us; but they found valour armed with prudence! They acknowledged their inferiority. They trembled at the idea of the hour of battle, and profited by the hour of darkness!! and they sought an asylum in Callao. My army began its march, and at the end of eight days the enemy has had to fly precipitately—convinced ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... in great haste, and was certainly by that time far beyond our reach. We were much puzzled in our minds for the meaning of this precipitate retreat of colonel Doyle; however, after one day of welcome rest and high cheer, we faced about, fully determined, notwithstanding our inferiority of force, once more to try our fortune with colonel Watson. But in reaching the ground where we had left him encamped, we got advice that he too, with all his troops, were gone off, at a tangent, as ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... to pursue a truly Spanish policy. There was indeed one word which, if pronounced, would be a spell potent enough to alter their decision; a word that calls the blood into the cheek of a Spaniard as an insult to his pride, a brand of inferiority on his nation. That word was Gibraltar. Meantime, the King of Spain declared that he would not then, nor in the future, enter into the quarrel of France and England; that he wished to close his life in tranquility, and ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... that I have with good intentions contributed toward the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable. Not unconscious in the outset of the inferiority of my qualifications, experience, in my own eyes—perhaps still more in the eyes of others—has strengthened the motives to diffidence of myself; and every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me, more and more, that the shade ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... Manchu-Tartar people, springing from Central Manchuria, then captured Peking and made it their capital. The Khitans were a cheerful people, with a peculiar sense of humour and a still greater conviction of the inferiority of women. To show their contempt for them, it is still recorded that they used to slit the back of their wives and drink their blood to give them strength. For two and a half centuries the Khitans, under the style of the Liao or Iron dynasty, maintained their position by ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... boldly enough into the middle of the room, and drew himself up; but a sudden consciousness of his extreme inferiority to the soldier's son, both in figure, manner and mode of walking, made him feel quite sheepish. There was a pause ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... influenced only by Motives of sound Policy, we should pay them as soon as possible & provide sure & adequate Funds for the Payment of Interest in the mean time. When we have done this we shall have the Sense of Independence impressd on our Minds, no longer feeling that State of Inferiority which a wise King tells us the Borrower stands ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... thought may have been suggested to Reynolds by Johnson's writings. In The Rambler, No. 87, he had said:—'There are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.' In No. 166, he says:—'To be obliged is to be in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... about the Austrian occupation of Bosnia. My diary towards the close of my stay notes: "I wouldn't be a native under British rule at any price. They may 'do a lot of good to you,' but, dear God! they do let you know their contempt for you, and drive your inferiority into you. Any one with any spunk would rather go to hell his own way than be chivied to heaven by such odiously superior beasts. . . . The Moslems are not grateful for 'benefits' they do not want, and the ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... was the fascination philosophy exerted upon the men of his generation that even Judah Halevi, despite his efforts to shake its authority and point out its inadequacy and evident inferiority to revelation, was not able wholly to escape it. And we find accordingly that he deems it necessary to devote a large part of the fifth book of the Kusari to the presentation of a bird's eye view of the current philosophy of the day. To be sure, ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... thought had been a galling one. And now once again he was in a similar position. Of course, Madam Lee and the Galbraiths would desire to make good the past; he knew them well enough for that. Delight would be elevated to the same plane with Cynthia, and he would be faced with the old irritating inferiority of fortune. Moreover, in her recently acquired station, the lady of his dreams might scorn such a humble suitor. Who could tell? Wealth worked great changes in individuals sometimes, and at best human nature was a frail, assailable, and incalculable ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... being fed on hay. Here again, I should say, is a commercial mistake. The lamb of pasture-fed animals must be incontestably superior. Humanity here seems on the side of utilitarianism. Who can say? Perhaps the inferiority of French meat in certain regions arises from this habit of stabling cattle and sheep. The drive from Clairmarais to St. Omer took us through a quite different and much more attractive country. We were now in the marais, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... behind him in Rome, bearing his name, the members of which were prosecuted by the Government, very likely as traitors and rebels. Keim's good opinion of Suetonius is much degraded by this Chrestus: "In his 'Life of Claudius,' who expelled the Jews from Rome, he has shown his undoubted inferiority to Tacitus as a historian by treating 'Christ' as a restless and seditious Jewish agitator, who was still living in the time of Claudius, and, indeed, in Rome" ("Jesus ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... The cotton-fields are quite full of yellow and pink blossoms. We rode through many cotton-fields, and a pretty sight they were, some good, some poor,—those belonging to the Government as a general thing showing marked inferiority to those ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... hereditary and otherwise, that we cannot regard the inferior development of humanity in the tropics as due solely to temperature. Physically considered, no men attain a better development than many tribes who inhabit the warmer regions of the globe. The inferiority of the inhabitants of these regions in intellectual power is more likely the result of ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... constitute poverty of spirit: simplicity, humility, and christian poverty. Simplicity consists in that singleness of aim which looks only to God, referring to Him alone those innumerable opportunities which come to us from objects other than Himself. Humility is that conviction of our own inferiority and destitution which makes the truly humble man regard himself as always an unprofitable servant. Christian poverty is of three kinds. First, that which is affective, but not effective. This can be practised in the midst of wealth, as in the case of Abraham, David, St. Louis, ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... purpose, they were actually creeping nigher and nigher to each other every moment, the savages crawling onwards with the exultation of men who felt their superior strength, and the Kentuckians advancing with equal alacrity, as if ignorant of, or bravely indifferent to their inferiority. ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... The inferiority of Burmah in respect of population, notwithstanding the superior fertility of the soil, is to be traced to the physical geography of the country. The great rivers of India flow east or west. The great rivers of the Burmese peninsula flow from north to ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... themselves at close quarters with Castruccio's reserves they could not stand against them and at once fell back into the river. The cavalry of either side had not as yet gained any decisive advantage over the other, because Castruccio, knowing his inferiority in this arm, had commanded his leaders only to stand on the defensive against the attacks of their adversaries, as he hoped that when he had overcome the infantry he would be able to make short work of the cavalry. This fell out as he had hoped, for when he saw the Florentine ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Peruvians especially were separated from them by no impassable gulf such as separates the negro or the Australian bushman from the white man. Central and Southern America thus came to be peopled by a hybrid race, speaking Spanish, large elements of which were conscious of their own inferiority. This in itself would perhaps have been a barrier to progress. But the concentration of attention upon the precious metals, and the neglect of industry due to this cause and to the employment of slave-labour, formed a further obstacle. ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... up the garage and negotiating for gasoline Steve thrust resolutely from his mind his encounter with O'Malley and the galling sense of inferiority it carried with it; but once on the highroad again the smart returned and the sting lingering behind the man's scorn was not to be allayed. It required every excuse his wounded dignity could muster to bolster up his pride ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... are neither much above us nor beneath us. If a man is poor, and chooses as a friend one who is rich, the chances are either that he becomes a toady and a mere "hanger-on," or that he is made to feel his inferiority. Young men in this way have been led into expenses which they could not afford, and into society that did them harm, and into debts sometimes that they could not pay. Making friends of those beneath us is often equally a mistake. We come to look upon them with patronizing affability. ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... perfect" is an axiom that does not apply to the art of song in the bird world; since the redstart, a member of a highly melodious family, with a good voice to start with, has never attained to excellence in spite of much practising. The song is interesting both on account of its exceptional inferiority and of its character. A distinguished ornithologist has said that little birds have two ways of making themselves attractive—by melody and by bright plumage; and that most species excel in one or the other way; and that the acquisition of gay colours by a species of a sober-coloured ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... proceeding first from Major Harry Lee, of their famous Light Horse, that Captain Winwood was in America, in the smaller way his modesty permitted, what the Chevalier Bayard was in France, and Sir Philip Sidney in England. This has been received more than once (such is the malice of conscious inferiority) with derisive smiles or supercilious sneers; and not only by certain of his own countrymen, but even in my presence, when my friendship for Winwood, though I had been his rival in love and his enemy in war, was not less known than was my quickness to take offence and avenge ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of Hereward's strong arm; until, in Gilbert's absence, an incident occurred which placed the young exile on a pinnacle so far above them that only by his death could they hope to rid themselves of their feeling of inferiority. ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... chapel was merely nominal, and I was very glad it was so. I was hardly ever brought into contact with him, except as trustee, and once I was asked to his house to dinner; but the attempt to make me feel my inferiority was so painful, and the rudeness of his children was so marked, that ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... convert you into an advocate for the elevation of the sex. You sustain the old cry—the inferiority ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... is very rare indeed, and that when she is encountered she is not usually esteemed for her general intelligence. This is particularly true in the United States, where the position of women is higher than in any other civilized or semi-civilized country, and the old assumption of their intellectual inferiority has been most successfully challenged. The American dinner-table, in truth, becomes a monument to the defective technic of the American housewife. The guest who respects his oesophagus, invited to feed upon its discordant and ill-prepared victuals, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... the part of women in the past I believe to have been due to a natural, and, as I think, wholesome feminine disinclination to take up intellectual studies and scientific pursuits that until recently have been deemed the prerogative of men, and not to any innate inferiority of the female brain. ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... while it annoyed her with the sense of a barrier which she could not break down or pass. She was the daughter of the richest man in Rexton and inclined to give herself airs on that account, but Alan's gentle indifference always brought home to her an unwelcome feeling of inferiority. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... pavement,"—to use an expression which gives the reader a tangible idea of the effect of a good guard. That pose, which is in some degree observant, marks so plainly a duellist of the first rank that a feeling of inferiority came into Max's soul, and produced the same disarray of powers which demoralizes a gambler when, in presence of a master or a lucky hand, he loses his self-possession and plays less well ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... with other things that men in those days thought much of. I shall not attempt to go over these things in detail. Their inferiority is already obvious. ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... at last dragged himself with a disagreeable sense of moral responsibility into Burlington House, and had come away at last strangely dissatisfied. Acquitting Dick of any conscious plagiarism, of a breach of common honesty, he was disagreeably filled with a sense of the work's immeasurable inferiority to Oswyn's ruined masterpiece. It was clever, and audacious, and striking; it had had the fortune to be splendidly hung, and that was all, for all his goodwill, he could say. And since, after all, that was so little, would strike his friend as but a cold tribute after the panegyrics ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... of Beowulf in its relation to historical tradition and traditional ethics, and the comparative limitation of the Hliand, are not in themselves conditions of either advantage or inferiority. They simply mark the difference between two types of narrative poem. To be free and comprehensive in relation to history, to summarise and represent in epic characters the traditional experience of an heroic age, is not the proper virtue of every kind of poetry, though ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... but as it was we could not check them before their fire began to tell on our line. They deployed to the right and left until they covered our entire front, and then charged. My men, appreciating the inferiority of their armament, after seeing several of their comrades fall, and having fired a few ineffectual volleys, fell back on the town, passing some buildings without taking possession of them, which mistake was instantly taken advantage of by the Indians, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... book. The ornaments are often very large, sometimes containing eight or ten or even twelve rows of feathers, one behind another. They can usually be distinguished from those made by the Mekeo people by a general inferiority in design and make of the ornament as a whole, the Mafulu people having less artistic skill in this respect than the people of the lowlands. The ornaments include feathers of parrots, cockatoos, hornbills, cassowaries, birds of paradise, bower birds and some ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... curiosities, and of his sayings and his jokes, in the circle at home. Odd, moreover, as it may seem, Mr. Dodge had an itching desire to remain with the Effinghams; for while he was permitting jealousy and a consciousness of inferiority to beget hatred, he was willing at any moment to make peace, provided it could be done by a frank admission into their intimacy. As to the innocent family that was rendered of so much account to the happiness of Mr. Dodge, it seldom thought of that individual ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Bay, in Carnarvonshire. These slates were first examined by Sedgwick in 1831, and were re-examined by him and described in 1846 (Quarterly Geological Journal volume 3 page 156.), after some fossils had been found in the underlying Lingula flags by Mr. Davis. The inferiority in position of these Lingula flags to the Tremadoc beds was at the same time established. The overlying Tremadoc beds were traced by their pisolitic ore from Tremadoc to Dolgelly. No fossils proper to the Tremadoc slates were then observed, but subsequently, thirty-six ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... at New Orleans the vessel had sailed. In this predicament Edison fell in with a travelled Spaniard, who depicted the inferiority of other countries, and especially of South America, in such vivid colours, that he changed his intention and returned home to Michigan. After a pleasant holiday with his friends he resumed his occupation in ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... need not trace the tale;—nor the one weakness of his so mighty love; nor the inferiority of his perceptive intellect to that even of the second woman character in the play, the Emilia who dies in wild testimony against his error:—"Oh, murderous coxcomb! What should such a fool Do ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... talking a while longer, said good-night again and rode off. While undressing, Miriam and I spoke of nothing else. And when I lay down, and looked in my own heart and saw my shocking ignorance and pitiful inferiority so painfully evident even to my own eyes, I actually cried. Why was I denied the education that would enable me to be the equal of such a man as Colonel Breaux and the others? He says the woman's mind is the same as the man's, originally; it is only education that creates the difference. Why ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... irresponsibility of animals and the passions of men, which is one of the fatal necessities of slavery, or from the gradually increasing consciousness of the non-slaveholding population of the Slave States of the true cause of their material impoverishment and political inferiority? From one or the other source its ruinous forces will be fed, but in either event it is not the Union that will be imperilled, but the privileged Order who on every occasion of a thwarted whim have menaced its disruption, and who will then find in ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Byron wrote the passage in his Diary for November 17, 1813. A further cause for the cold reception of 'Rokeby' was its inferiority both to the 'Lay' and to 'Marmion'. In Letter vii. of the 'Twopenny Post-bag', ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... the same dress as their former masters or mistresses wore;—"the belles affranchies found, in a costume whereof the negligence seemed a very inspiration of voluptuousness, means of evading that social inferiority which the law sought to impose upon them:—they began to inspire the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... inferiority in weight of the Ceylon tusks, as compared with those of the elephant of India, it would, I think, be precipitate to draw the inference that the size of the former was uniformly and naturally less than that of ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... it, and no kind of imitation was so natural and easy as dress. First, the socially ambitious led off in this imitation; then presently the less pretentious were constrained to follow their example, to avoid an apparent confession of social inferiority; till, finally, even the philosophers had to follow the herd and conform to the fashion, to avoid being conspicuous ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... time it must be distinctly understood that so light a projectile as 650 grains will not break the bone of an elephant's leg, neither will it penetrate the skull of a rhinoceros unless just behind the ear. This is sufficient to establish the inferiority ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... it kept telling him over and over that he was a fool to allow Dakota to live. But Duncan knew better than to attempt an open clash with Dakota; each time that he had looked into Dakota's eyes he had seen there something which told him plainer than words of his own inferiority—that he would have no chance in a man-to-man encounter with him. And his latest experience ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... could feel inferiority, since they get the real side of friendship," said Imogen, with gentle authority. "And I can't think that, in our sense of the word, the real side is given with you. There is conscious condescension, conscious adaptation to ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Napoleon III. had replaced France at the head of Europe, Prussia was the only member of the Pentarchy which had not been humiliated by his blows, or yet more by his assistance. England has suffered from her connection with him,—a connection difficult on many occasions to distinguish from inferiority and subserviency; and in war the old superiority of the French armies to those of Russia and Austria has been asserted in the Crimea and in Italy. Prussia alone has not stooped before the avenger of the man whom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... the room. The old gamesters who stood round the table, and had seen, with interest indeed and some pity, but with no great emotion, a man play his last stake, saw this, saw a man stake his life for a whim, with very different feelings; with astonishment, with admiration, with a sense of inferiority that did not so much gall their pride as awaken their interest. For the moment, the man who was above death, who risked it for a fancy, a trifle, a momentary gratification, was a demigod. "Throw!" repeated Crillon, heedless and apparently unconscious of the stir round him: "Throw! but beware ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... of the country youth in comparison with his city cousin is due to no inherent inferiority, for in a few years he often out-strips him, but it is the direct result of his lack of social contacts. Personality develops through social life, through the give and take of one personality with another, through imitation, and the acquirement of a natural ease ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... perpetual account current with himself; all that he consumes he must produce. Such is the general rule, which no one can escape without being, ipso facto struck with dishonor or suspected of fraud. Singular idea, truly,—that of decreeing, under pretext of fraternity, the relative inferiority of the majority of men! After this beautiful declaration nothing will be left but to draw its consequences; and soon, thanks to fraternity, aristocracy ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... enhanced by the really engaging and unassuming manners and conversation of the host. At Joseph's, even in the midst of abundance and of liberty, in seeing the person or meditating on the character of the host, you feel both your inferiority of fortune and the humiliation of dependence, and that you visit a master instead of a friend, who indirectly tells you, "Eat, drink, and rejoice as long and as much as you like; but remember that if ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... entertained for each other and with only too good grounds in either case; the inconvenient number of respectable and influential men in the ranks of the aristocracy and the intellectual and moral inferiority of almost all who took part in the matter—altogether produced among the opponents of Caesar a reluctant and refractory co-operation, which formed the saddest contrast to the harmonious and compact action on the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Miss Julia not only because his fate is in ascendancy, but because he is a man. Sexually he is the aristocrat because of his male strength, his more finely developed senses, and his capacity for taking the initiative. His inferiority depends mainly on the temporary social environment in which he has to live, and which he probably can shed together with the ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... coast of the United States. The brilliant record made by United States ships in their single combats with the enemy during this war should not be allowed to blind our people to the fact that, from their numerical inferiority, they were practically prisoners in their own ports; and, like other prisoners, had to break jail to gain freedom to act. The distant and little frequented Cape Verde group, off the African coast, was ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... flocks, their money consequently was debased and almost worthless. The social distinctions of noble and peasant survived only in tradition, and all classes intermingled without any sense of superiority or inferiority. Elegance of manner, polish, grace, were unsought and existed only by natural refinement, which was rare among a people who were on the whole simple to boorishness. Physically they were, however, admirable. All visitors were struck by the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... flannel shirt, hopping about on the barn floor (which, though clean-swept and smooth, was hardly meant for dancing) to tunes which were hummed and whistled by each alternately, rose before her; and she compared it in its utter inferiority with this picture of herself in this Heavenly Green Frock and Mr. Bennet in his Perfect Evening Clothes, the shining floor which stretched away from them, and the lilt of the band music which went to ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... hinderance to the adoption of abolition principles by the people of the United States, was the low estimate, everywhere in that country, placed upon the Negro, as a man; that because of his assumed natural inferiority, people reconciled themselves to his enslavement and oppression, as things inevitable, if not desirable. The grand thing to be done, therefore, was to change the estimation in which the colored people of the United States were held; to remove the prejudice which depreciated ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... on the inferiority of the common buildings in Paris, there are some remarkable exceptions. The Boulevards, the remains of the ancient ramparts of the city, are in general beautiful, from their circular form, from their ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... East Indian opium is inferior to the Turkish, and owing to peculiarities of climate, will probably always be so. It never yields more than five per cent. of morphia, whence its inferiority, but is as good in other respects, and even ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... thus introducing into the nemological mechanism the task of compensating for the defective structure. Dr. Southard wishes to try to map out these defects in the cerebral structures and thus reason backwards to the somatic inferiority. I confess he lifts me into ideal regions. Such stimuli are ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... important as the male, and the possessor thereof under just as great need of power in the organization and management of society and the government of society as man; and if there be a difference, she, by reason of her average physical inferiority, is really protected, and ought to be protected, by a superior mental and moral fitness to give direction to the course of society and the policy of the state. If, then, there be a distinction between ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... sailors, the accommodation ladder flashing with varnish and brass in the August sun; the orderly, snowy decks and basket chairs under the awning aft. What a contrast with this sordid midnight scramble, over damp meat and littered packing-cases! The bitterest touch of all was a growing sense of inferiority and ignorance which I had never before been allowed to feel in ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... him aright. But when Shakespeare lay dead in the spring of 1616, when, as one of his admirers technically phrased it, he had withdrawn from the stage of the world to the "tiring-house" or dressing-room of the grave, the flood of panegyrical lamentation was not checked by the sense of literary inferiority which in all sincerity oppressed the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... infantile, and deficient in reasoning ability and judgment," Doris said. "Koffler is a typical adolescent problem-child show-off type, and Burris is an almost perfect twelve-year-old schoolyard bully. They both have inferiority complexes long enough to step on. If the purpose of this test is what I'm led to believe it is, I can't, in professional good conscience, recommend anything but that you get rid of ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper
... year, until he seems but a piece of mechanism. His powers, from lack of use, dwindle to mediocrity, to inferiority, until finally he becomes a mere part of the ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... from these hints that our memoir has nothing to do with slavery as a North American institution, except so far as it is an inheritance from the system it describes; yet, in proportion as the details exhibit an innate or acquired inferiority of the negro race in its own land, they must appeal to every generous heart in behalf ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... vituperative wit at the expense of their mother and other relatives, incidentally brought in. Instead of being aghast, I enjoyed it, and was feverish with a desire to be as brilliant, for my vocabulary was deficient and my sense of inferiority was active during the whole of my visit in Belem. I blushed often, smiled foolishly, and was afflicted with a general ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... was practically settled. [Footnote: It is noted, however, that the reception of the doubtful books into the canon does not imply a recognition of their equality with the other books. The distinct admission of their inferiority was made by all the ecclesiastical authorities of that period. None of the early fathers believed that all these writings were equally inspired and equally authoritative.] Nevertheless, considerable independent judgment on the subject still seems to ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... loving kindness has welcomed them one by one, and at whose request they have been gathered together, seems to imply that they are privately printed. If this is because no publisher would undertake the production of the volume, we do not wonder; not because of the inferiority of the poems, for they are much better than many that do find publishers. They belong to a large class in which the world cannot be brought to take any great interest—verses expressive of various emotions, love, devotion, resignation, and so forth, which are ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... convinced, a far better system than government ownership of railroads, which, wherever tested, has proved its inferiority except, to an extent, in the Germany on which the Prussian Junker planted his heel and of which he made a scourge and a horrible example to the world; and the very reasons which have made state railways measurably ...
— Government Ownership of Railroads, and War Taxation • Otto H. Kahn
... second place to girls at school is that the boy feels a sense of inferiority that he is never afterward able entirely to shake off."—Editorial in London ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... scarce ever speaking, and when he did speak using a tone which the Grand Turk might employ towards a beggar. It was true enough that the prisoners were inferior to him in quality, but, their lot and circumstances being the same, it was decidedly a mistake to make the others feel their inferiority, and, as I think, a mark of ill breeding to boot. His few words were sneers, and he had a contemptuous way of looking at a man that made one itch to thrash him. At length he was thrashed, and very smartly, by a man in our dormitory, and after that he was utterly ignored, ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... broad foreheads, dark eyes and hair, and a deeper, warmer red on the cheeks than on those of the rosy Swedes. The average height is, perhaps, not quite equal to that of the latter race, but in physical vigor I can see no inferiority, and there are among them many men of splendid stature, strength, and proportion. Von Buch ascribes the marked difference of stature between the Finns and the Lapps, both living under precisely the same influences of climate, to the more cleanly habits of the former and their constant ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... brought before me I sent for Aristides Papazaphiropoulos, our interpreter, and in the meantime delivered a short lecture to the Sergeant-Major, Quartermaster-Sergeant and Storeman on the inferiority of the Balkan peoples, with particular reference to the specimen before us, to whom, in view of the fact that he seemed a little below himself, I gave a tot of rum. He eyed it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... read it most determinedly. It had become a touching incident to me, and I remember how we there and then agreed upon a compromise: she was to read the enticing thing just to convince herself of its inferiority. ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... pity, is borne to the demands of his own nature, by the poor clansman, the poor partisan, who rejoices in the glory of his chief! The poor and the low find some amends to their immense moral capacity, for their acquiescence in a political and social inferiority.[73] They are content to be brushed like flies from the path of a great person, so that justice shall be done by him to that common nature which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged and glorified. They sun themselves in the great man's light, and feel it to be their ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... festival in which they appeared, though without any mystical signification. In the Panathena, the daughters of the Metceci, or foreign residents, carried Parasols over the heads of Athenian women as a mark of inferiority, ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... beginning of the act, though as a direct quotation, not for thematic treatment as Puccini uses the Japanese themes in his score. This is one of the characteristics of Giordano's opera and one which illustrates his inferiority as a musician to his more successful rival. In the second act a semi-chorus of women quote again from Russian folk-song by singing the melody of the air known to all musical folklorists by its German title, "Schne Minka." In the third act there is a Russian Easter ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... may be and it may not be. If you have known what perfection is in woman, it is fair to argue that inferiority ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... watering-places, which are usually rendered agreeable by a judicious disposition of walks, and by other similar temptations. In nothing are the money-grasping and shiftless habits of America rendered more apparent, than in the inferiority of her places of public resort. In all these particulars nature has done a good deal for some of them, but nowhere has man done anything ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... parents neglected the child, but a lady of title took pity on her, and when she was five years old adopted her. Even as a little girl she was haughty and imperious. At the age of eight she refused to play with another child on the ground of her companion's social inferiority. "The daughter of a Baroness," she said, "cannot play with the daughter of a wine-merchant." When she was eleven years old, her parents took her away from her protectress and sent her into the streets to sell gingerbread—a dangerous experience for a child of tender ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... Parthian rule was sufficient to call forth different feelings. There can be no doubt that the Parthians, whether they were actually Turanians or no, were, in comparison with the Persians, unpolished and uncivilized. They showed their own sense of this inferiority by an affectation of Persian manners. But this affectation was not very successful. It is evident that in art, in architecture, in manners, in habits of life, the Parthian race reached only a low standard; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... me at once point out to you that this calmness is the attribute of the entirely highest class of art: the introduction of strong or violently emotional incident is at once a confession of inferiority. ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... his inferiority, Oscar sat down on a stone post, lost in a revery which did not allow him to perceive that his trousers, drawn up by the effect of his position, showed the point of junction between the old top of his stocking and the new "footing,"—his ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... to see how this can be accomplished, even when the variation is eminently favourable indeed; and still more, when the advantage gained is very slight, as must generally be the case. The advantage, whatever it may be, is utterly outbalanced by numerical inferiority. A million creatures are born; ten thousand survive to produce offspring. One of the million has twice as good a chance as any other of surviving, but the chances are fifty to one against the gifted individuals ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... anything but a fourth-rate composer, it shows a natural incapacity for the highest branch of the art. In poetry and painting, where the cultivation is far rarer, greater excellence has been attained by many women. Their inferiority is certainly not so marked as ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... splendidly arrayed, and thus dignified in form, features, and expression, this distinguished man recalled so powerfully to the memory of his imaginative pupil the high-minded doges of the heroic period of Venice, and the imposing portraits of Titian's senators, that, with a deep sense of his own moral inferiority, he obeyed in silence, and with starting tears removed the offending sketch. Then placing before him a small picture of a weeping and lovely Magdalen by Contarini, which he had undertaken to copy, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... more justly humiliating to the national pride and nothing more hurtful to the national prosperity than the inferiority of our merchant marine compared with that of other nations whose general resources, wealth, and seacoast lines do not suggest any reason for their supremacy on the sea. It was not always so, and our people are agreed, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... his own pew is at least as much regarded as his devotions there; the regularity of his attendance, the harmony of his principles and practice, his exemplary manner of filling his different relations, more than make up for the inferiority in the tone of his religion. The commercial and religious capital of society are, in short, continually advancing by his exertions, though they don't advance so fast as they otherwise would if those exertions ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... not produce parallels to Oxford and Cambridge in opulence, buildings, libraries, professorships, scholarships, and all the external dignity and mechanical apparatus of learning. If there is an inferiority, it is in the persons, not in the places or their constitution. And here I can not help confessing that a desire to please the great, and bring them to the universities, causes a compliance with fashionable manners, a relaxation of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... thought that the unquestionable inferiority of German literature about Platonism points to an inherent defect in the German mind."—The Philosophy ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie |
