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More "Contemptible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the privilege of one acquainted in no common degree with languages and their history to expose that dreary joke of the dialect of the oppressed, which superficial people have so long found funny or contemptible. The simplicity and earnestness which give dignity to any phraseology come from the humanity behind it. We are well reminded that divergences from the common use of language, never held to degrade the meaning in Milton or Shakespeare, need not render thought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... and most despised of all the families in the land.'[4] Bunyan alludes to this very pointedly in the preface to A Few Sighs from Hell:—'I am thine, if thou be not ashamed to own me, because of my low and contemptible descent in the world.'[5] His poor and abject parentage was so notorious, that his pastor, John Burton, apologized for it in his recommendation to The Gospel Truths Opened:—'Be not offended because Christ holds forth the glorious treasure of the gospel ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... suddenly, and the light died out of her face. Her image was looking back at her stiffly, superciliously, with, so it seemed to her, the contemptible simper of one who still fatuously admires the thing that has long since lost its charm. She caught her breath and clenched her hands, drawing down her rather heavy eyebrows in an expression of angry scorn. "Oh! never, never, never ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... thought ye dead ere now, but its scotched and not killed ye must hae been by that forest fire twa year back. But now I'll see to it that ye do no mair harm in this section. I hae got ye whar I want ye at last, ye contemptible dog," exclaimed the factor, unconsciously in his excitement reverting back in ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... up his position, looking the very picture of abject misery. The doctor kept him there for full half-an-hour, and then administered twenty stripes, with an unction that showed, clearly enough, his profound contempt for that most contemptible of ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... the public balls, she was asked to dance, by fellows of whom neither she nor Ned approved, but who, Ned finally came to urge, might be useful acquaintances as leading to better ones. But she found all of them contemptible, and would not ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... So, my sister, I do not want you to keep saying within yourself as I proceed: "That is the way to treat a perfect husband;" for you are to remember that no wife was ever worse swindled than this Abigail of my text. At the other end of her table sat a mean, selfish, snarling, contemptible sot, and if she could do so well for a dastard, how ought you to do with that princely and splendid man with whom you are to walk ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... his character as a philosopher or a man. He was aware that in the existing state of society at Rome, wealth was necessary to men high in station; wealth alone could retain influence, and a poor minister became at once contemptible. The distributor of the Imperial favours must have his banquets, his receptions, his slaves and freedmen; he must possess the means of attracting if not of bribing; he must not seem too virtuous, too austere, among an evil generation; in order ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... hideous white brick castle, with its paltry half-dozen acres, entered by lodges of the utmost pretension, and his coach-houses full of flashy carriages, with the family coat-of-arms(!) upon each, I thought the whole place one of the most contemptible patches of snobbery on this fair earth; and I was glad my father's toil-bleared eyes were hid in the grave, so that they should not have the shame ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... with the crown, the power of which then needed strengthening. He supported Tyzenhaus, because of the latter's beneficial activity in the most important direction, that of the economic welfare of the country. After the King's contemptible desertion to the camp of the Confederates of Targowica, all noble and patriotic men in Poland had of course to oppose him. Thus the King, and not Maciek, was the real Cock-on-the-Steeple, and our man of Dobrzyn was really always on the side of those who ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... breeder,' will doubtless be quoted.[40] In reply, we need not say what every body knows, that if Mr. Stevenson is not a 'slave breeder,' he is a solitary exception among the large slaveholders of Virginia. What! Virginia slaveholders not 'slave-breeders?' the pretence is ridiculous and contemptible; it is meanness, hypocrisy, and falsehood, as is abundantly proved by the testimony ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... sanctified Cheats, whose Follies and Vices Erasmus has so effectually lash'd, that some Countries have entirely turn'd these Drones out of their Cells, and in other Places where they are still kept, they are grown contemptible to the highest Degree, and oblig'd to be ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... that it must be, that it was ordained to be, it and all that might follow from it. He even felt almost that Hermione must already know it, have divined it, as if, therefore, any effort to hide it from her must be fruitless, or even contemptible, as if indeed all effort to conceal truth ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... was the reply. "If you think to make a cat's-paw of me in any of your dirty, contemptible pieces of work, you are mistaken. If you think that I came here with any intention of listening for one moment to any of your vile propositions, you are mistaken. I came here simply to satisfy myself on one point. My errand ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... most precious and valuable things in the world. They are only servants of the courageous hearts and pure souls that ought to be their masters. Without training, without obedience, without the instant willingness to sacrifice themselves for their masters, the human body and human life are contemptible and unworthy. I claim that it braces the mind to expose the body; that an education in the prepared emergencies of games and sport, is the best training for the unprepared emergencies with which ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... legitimate birth must be produced, and such is the complex state of society, there are as many beliefs as masters and servants. How can there be unity of mind concerning spiritual offices and blessings with people so at variance upon trivial, contemptible worldly matters? True, there must be the various earthly stations, characters and employments; but it is heathenish, unchristian and worldly for one to entertain the absurd idea that God regards a certain ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... imagined they had reached. Since their creeds were professedly based on the canonical Scriptures, it followed that, in the long run, whoso settled the canon defined the creed. If the private judgment of Luther might legitimately conclude that the epistle of James was contemptible, while the epistles of Paul contained the very essence of Christianity, it must be permissible for some other private judgment, on as good or as bad grounds, to reverse these conclusions; the critical process which excluded the Apocrypha could not be barred, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... doubt; but we, your neighbours, are simply crazy to know who and what you are?" That might strike him in various ways. He might take offence, and one could not blame him. He might see humour in it, and a proof of the contemptible meanness of human nature. I decided that I lacked courage to blurt out my desire that way. He was so very much like myself that I could not rid myself of the notion that he might prefer a milder way of approach. And as I sorted out my stock of ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... will, will you?" sneered Lem, lurching to and fro. "You're a sneak. Bart Stirling—a low, contemptible sneak, ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... willing to give. Even to love only those that love us, is, as the Lord has taught us, but a pinched and sneaking way of loving. Clare never thought about being loved. He was too busy loving, with so many about him to love, to think of himself. He was not the contemptible little wretch to say, "What a fine boy I am, to make everybody love me!" If he had been capable of that, not many would have loved him; and those that did would most of them have got tired of loving a thing that did ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... says (De Lib. Arb. i, 5): "How are they free from sin in sight of Divine providence, who are guilty of taking a man's life for the sake of these contemptible things?" Now among contemptible things he reckons "those which men may forfeit unwillingly," as appears from the context (De Lib. Arb. i, 5): and the chief of these is the life of the body. Therefore it is unlawful for any man to take another's life ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... find that the man was perfectly happy. He said that he had a faithful wife, and a business by which he earned sufficient for his wants; and, if he were to complain of his lot, he should feel mean and contemptible. Surely, if there are any "solid men" in ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... reading in the newspapers the other day that the German Emperor made a speech to some of his regiments in which he urged them to concentrate their attention upon what he was pleased to call "French's contemptible little army." [Laughter.] Well, they are concentrating their attention upon it [laughter and cheers] and that army, which has been fighting with such extraordinary prowess, which has revived in a fortnight of adverse actions the ancient fame and glory of our arms upon the Continent, [cheers,] ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... Grimshaw. Again, he could fully appreciate Cowper's taste for classical literature; considering how utterly Newton's education had been neglected, it is perfectly marvellous how he managed, under the most unfavourable circumstances, to acquire no contemptible knowledge of the great classical authors. Add to all this that Newton's native kindness of heart made him feel very deeply for the misfortune of his friend, and it will be no longer a matter of wonder that there should have been so close a friendship between the two men. It is readily ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... and feels himself bound to express or to indicate its meaning at the risk of overmoralizing. In life he finds nothing insignificant; all tells for destiny and character; nothing that God has made is contemptible. He cannot look upon human life and declare this thing or that thing unworthy of notice, any more than the scientist can declare a fact of the material world beneath the dignity of his inquiry. He feels in every nerve the equality of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... church, and the brown of the monk's robes, and evolve a thrilling mental picture therefrom. The tag game and her noisy little companions vanished. She was peopling the place with stealthy Indians. Stealthy, cunning, yet savagely brave. They bore no relation to the abject, contemptible, and rather smelly Oneidas who came to the back door on summer mornings, in calico, and ragged overalls, with baskets of huckleberries on their arm, their pride gone, a broken and conquered people. She saw them wild, free, sovereign, and there were no greasy, berry-peddling Oneidas among ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... thinking. "I think you had better tell her first, Daddy," she said. "I think it may be wiser for you to tell her. Things were said and done at that election which she must not know. They were so mean, so contemptible that she ought never to know. If I am not there she cannot ask about them. I will tell you the result and how it came about and you can tell her. Perhaps that will be sufficient. I hope it may ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... him that she was doing fairly well in journalism, and had attempted sensational fiction, but that none saw more clearly than she how worthless and contemptible her sort of work was, and none longed more sincerely than she to produce good work, serious work.... However, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... induces him to desert? This is none the less injurious when effected by getting father or brother or friend into a public meeting, and there working upon his feelings until he is persuaded to write the soldier-boy that he is fighting in a bad cause, for a wicked Administration of a contemptible government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert. I think that in such a case to silence the agitator and to save the boy is not only constitutional, but is withal a great mercy." No other man in our history has so fully possessed ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Washington, in which they say, that they are authorised to declare that his Britannic Majesty has proposed the unconditional independence of America as preliminary to a peace. This change in the British system places them in a truly contemptible light, since it is a direct disavowal of their assertion. Carleton seems to feel this, if we may judge by some expressions in the extracts ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... soul-inquiries that came one upon another close as the blows of a lash. She was then shocked at the intentions with which she had fallen asleep. The little vanities, and condescensions, and generosities which she had planned for her own glory—how contemptible they appeared! And in the darkness she could see their certain end—envy and hatred for herself and dissatisfaction and loss of friends for her father and mother. Had she not ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... profession, and country, being contemptible to the nobles of the place, he, by his wife's persuasion, came to settle at Rome, where merit also gave a title to distinction. On his way thither, say the historians, as he approached the city gate, an eagle, stooping from above, took off his hat, and flying round his chariot for some time, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... rule is not against the policy of the law. It is in harmony with it, and calculated to preserve peace and, in a great measure, prevent barbarous acts, acts of cruelty, regarded by mankind as inexcusable, contemptible, detestable. It is neither too early nor too late to promulgate the doctrine that if a husband commits an assault and battery upon his wife he may be held responsible civilly and criminally for the act, which is not only committed in violation of the laws of God and man, but in direct antagonism ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... which the necessity of winning or "making records" is constantly held up as the raison d'etre of athletic sports is that it suggests to the ordinary student, who has no hopes of brilliant success in athletics, that moderate exercise is contemptible, and that he need do nothing to keep up his bodily vigour. Thus, Dr. Birkbeck Hill found that the proportion of students who took part in some athletic sport was distinctly less at Harvard than at Oxford. Nor could I ascertain that nearly so large a proportion of the adult population themselves ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... lined Broadwater, which was then not much more than half as long as it is now, and Little Water, nearly their western length. Market square, the houses of which were almost wholly wood, and mean and contemptible in appearance, was the home of the wholesale and more respectable retail dealers in dry goods and hardware. The larger grocery dealers centred near the then head of Broadwater. The population ranged between 6,500 and 7,500, and consisted of a large infusion ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... you hadn't taken Homer for any more than a creative poet, even after a few thousand years of study, so why should my meager manuscript make such a large impact. At that, I acquiesced to them and admitted that on that end my attempt to save humanity one way or another was contemptible, but I still write, as you see, for the story's sake, and possibly for my own material immortality. But never mind that, for it is high time that I went ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... one by one; but he had struggled, until he was so entangled that he could not get out. And now he perceived that the net which seemed so fine was the strong net woven by desire. All his subtle reasonings, his chivalry, his delicacy, his sincerity itself, could be reduced to this simple and contemptible element. Positively, his whole character, as he now contemplated it seemed to slip away from him and dissolve in the irresistible stream, primeval, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... liable to that taunt now. It was a part of his punishment, and the one which lasted longest. From any other boy he might have winced under it; but really, coming from Jones, it was too contemptible ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... had come down into the country, he had been there once or twice: but the sight of the sacred stone had brought no consolation to him. A guilty man doing a guilty deed: a mere speculator, content to lay down his faith and honor for a fortune and a worldly career; and owning that his life was but a contemptible surrender—what right had he in the holy place? what booted it to him in the world he lived in, that others were no better than himself? Arthur and Laura rode by the gates of Fairoaks; and he shook hands with his tenant's children, playing on the lawn and the terrace—Laura looked ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the doctrine of personal survival has been repeatedly flung at it by satirists, and commented on by philosophers. The Christian who "hopes to be saved by grossly believing" has been felt on all hands to be as mean in his hope, as he is contemptible in his way of attaining it. To center all our religious efforts to the one end of getting joy—however we may define it—for our individual selves, has something repulsive in it to a deeply religious mind. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... "I have had a contemptible opinion of you," he said, "ever since I discovered what cowards you are, but I had no idea that you were so ungrateful, selfish, and cruel, as I now find you to be. Here was your Minor Canon, who labored ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... exercise of good dispositions being harmonised and assimilated into the divine virtue, are consequently removed to a place of unblemished sanctity and happiness; as of those who by the most flagitious arts have risen from contemptible beginnings to the greatest affluence and power, and whom you therefore look upon as unanswerable instances of negligence in the gods, because you are ignorant of the purposes to which they are subservient, and in what manner they contribute to that supreme intention of good ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... and such a woman, with her courtesy, her travel, her sharp edge of judgment, her large humanity, and her love of the comedy of the world, being dead can never be replaced. There are, growing up around you, characters quite insufficient, and to you, perhaps, contemptible, who will in their fruiting display all these things." There never was, nor has been, a time (say those who are acquainted with the great story of Europe) when Christendom has failed. Out of dead passages there has sprung up suddenly, and quite miraculously, whatever was ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... derived from the penal laws we have passed, and which, for the time, have been severe and numerous? What advances have we made towards our object by the sending of a force which, by land and sea, is no contemptible strength? Has the disorder abated? Nothing less. When I see things in this situation after such confident hopes, bold promises, and active exertions, I cannot, for my life, avoid a suspicion that the plan itself is ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... be really happy without being good, clean, square, and true. This does not mean that a person is happy because he does not use tobacco, drink, gamble, use profane language or does not do other vicious things. Some of the meanest, narrowest, most contemptible people in the world do none of these things but they are uncharitable, jealous, envious, revengeful. They stab you in the back, slander you, cheat you. They may be cunning, underhanded, and yet have a fairly good standing in the church. No person can be really ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Mrs. Rolland, 'which were simply sickening to a respectable English servant. She used to encourage him to talk to her about all his affairs—how he got on with his wife, and how pressed he was for money, and such like—just as if they were equals. Contemptible—that's ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... farce. There was something sombrely contemptible to each one in the idea of being forced into the pretence of eating, for the sake of the hired attendants who carried the dishes. For the first time in his life Greifenstein's hardy nature was disgusted by the sight of food. Rieseneck sat erect in his chair, from time ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... of the third day the pass of Thermopyae was forced, thanks to the treachery of a Greek and the contemptible policy of the Spartan government which steadily refused the plea of Leonidas for reenforcements. With Thermopyae taken there was no further reason for the Greek fleet to try to hold the straits north of Euboea, and during the night it retired unobserved. The following day the Persian ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... he is the only one that could be possible; but he is a very good-natured, good sort of a fellow; and whenever Winthrop comes into his hands, he will make a different sort of place of it, and live in a very different sort of way; and with that property, he will never be a contemptible man—good, freehold property. No, no; Henrietta might do worse than marry Charles Hayter; and if she has him, and Louisa can get Captain Wentworth, I ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... said, "that the most contemptible people in the world to-day are those politicians and others who, in years gone by, systematically cried down anything in the shape of national defence or national inclination to personal service, because ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... value and plans their meaning. With the utmost determination he held himself to his task, not willing to believe that his judgment and nerve could be so disturbed as to render him unfit for any serious business. But the result was contemptible ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... old," said Fakrash, "all men pursued wealth; nor could any amass enough to satisfy his desires. Have riches, then, become so contemptible in mortal eyes that thou findest them but ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... "It is singular that, contemptible as are these natives of India when officered by men of their own race and religion, they will fight to the death when ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... man!—that he might be sure to err on the right side, he forced Theodore to go with him to the stand, and pay Matty for the stolen fruit. He endeavored, too, to make him apologize to Jim, both for the theft of his property, and also for his contemptible meanness in keeping silent on the occasion of Jim's attack on the playground. But here he was powerless: Theodore absolutely and doggedly refused to do it; and his grandfather was obliged to content ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... in company as, much above me, when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope, as if I had been with all the princes in Europe. What I mean by low company, which should by all means be avoided, is the company of those, who, absolutely insignificant and contemptible in themselves, think they are honored by being in your company; and who flatter every vice and every folly you have, in order to engage you to converse with them. The pride of being the first of the company is but too common; but it is very silly, and very prejudicial. Nothing in the world lets ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... alone reconciled her to life. Pascal was now everything to her—her present and her future; and she solemnly vowed that she would make a noble man of him. But alas! misfortunes never come singly. One of her husband's friends, who acted as administrator to the estate, took a contemptible advantage of her inexperience. She went to sleep one night possessing an income of fifteen thousand francs, but she awoke to find herself ruined—so completely ruined that she did not know where to obtain her dinner for that same evening. Had she been ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... and cuff and laugh at me again. Oh, it is a cowardly and contemptible world, uncle, and happy is the man who wants nothing of it! He is its master, its absolute master, and everybody else is its wretched slave. Think of the people who are scrambling for fame and titles and decorations ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... inquire into all the tendencies, all the antecedents. A high fastidious spirit, jealous, because sensitive, yet far too proud to admit, much less indulge that jealousy, seemed of all others the easiest to deceive. The hide of the rhinoceros is no contemptible gift, and a certain bluntness, I might say coarseness of character, enables a man to go through the world comfortably and happily, unvexed by those petty stings and bites and irritations that worry thinner skins to death. With Lord Bearwarden to suspect ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... friend in everything, as true to you as man could be! If I had done the dastardly thing of which you accuse me, why should I come to you at all? I could have taken my bride and gone to the other end of the earth. We need not have adopted these contemptible measures. But although I did care for this girl—more than I ever cared or ever shall care for another—I knew it was you she loved and I did all I could to aid you in your suit. Have you forgotten how I brought her here, as you lay in that very chair, and removed the ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... now commenced their expedition. Summers was no contemptible antiquary; and he sought to beguile the nervous impatience of his companion by dilating on the attractions of the antient and memorable town to which his ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in yesterday's Times on the late disgraceful affair of Mr. Mazzini's letters and the Secretary of State, you mention that Mr. Mazzini is entirely unknown to you, entirely indifferent to you; and add, very justly, that if he were the most contemptible of mankind, it would not affect ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... "arming every woman, child, and cat and dog" is favorably regarded by us? Is not such a policy a sort of left-handed outcome of the Prussian contention that even their own unarmed civilian populace is contemptible and may be slaughtered without mercy if military procedure is resisted, or even if supplies are ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... deformed people. Their sensitiveness is well known.) Like the fox to whom the grapes are sour, he declares that what his stronger fellows accomplish is bad, their performance of their duty defective, and their aims contemptible, especially in the sexual sphere, where he feels himself openly most injured. The tale treats specifically from the outset the conquest of a woman. The carpet, the ring, are female symbols, the first is the body of the woman, the ring is the vagina (Greek kteis comb pudenda muliebria). ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... under a specious appearance hiding the most abandoned profligacy; like one of the players on the stage, if you strip him of his fine habits wrought with gold, all that remains behind is a ridiculous spectacle of a little contemptible fellow, hired to appear there for seven drachmas. And yet these men despise everybody, talk absurdly of the gods, and drawing in a number of credulous boys, roar to them in a tragical style about virtue, ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... high, renouncing the dulcet, but transitory enjoyments of this life, to encounter, for the salvation of their souls, and of others, privation and sorrow, and painful death. Quoe terra non plena nostri laboris? Yet, O how contemptible is the suffering, when compared with the joy of the hope which is set before us—of the starry crown that awaits the willing martyr! Feed thy soul, my son, on these divine contemplations, until they become a part of thyself, and the path that leads to a bloody grave shall be strewed with roses. ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... idle; puerile &c (foolish) 499; airy, shallow; weak &c 160; powerless &c 158; frivolous, petty, niggling; piddling, peddling; fribble^, inane, ridiculous, farcical; finical, finikin^; fiddle-faddle, fingle-fangle^, namby-pamby, wishy-washy, milk and water. poor, paltry, pitiful; contemptible &c (contempt) 930; sorry, mean, meager, shabby, miserable, wretched, vile, scrubby, scrannel^, weedy, niggardly, scurvy, putid^, beggarly, worthless, twopennyhalfpenny, cheap, trashy, catchpenny, gimcrack, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... nothing more terrible than the sense of superiority to others. It arises, not from merit or the consciousness of merit, but from sheer tin-like flimsiness of character. It arises from limited sympathies. The really great man, and the really sagacious man, is one to whom nothing is contemptible. To him, even the follies of his fellow-passengers are manifestations of human nature, revelations of the material from which scholars and politicians no less than drunkards and inconstants are gradually in course of time developed. ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... other instances shown to the British servants of the Company that the Directors were not able to protect them, here the same lesson was taught to the natives. Whilst the matter lay between the native power and the servants, the former was considered by Mr. Hastings in the most contemptible light. When the question was between the servants and the Court of Directors, the native power was asserted to be a self-derived, hereditary, uncontrollable authority, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... servile wits undertake it: who think it enough, if they can be rewarded of the printer. And so as Epaminondas is said, with the honour of his virtue, to have made an office, by his exercising it, which before was contemptible, to become highly respected: so these, no more but setting their names to it, by their own disgracefulness, disgrace the most graceful poesy. For now, as if all the Muses were got with child, to bring forth bastard ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... mean. Habitually suspicious, like all insincere people, Mrs. Beaumont now began to imagine that there was some plot carrying on against her by Sir John Hunter and Lightbody, and that Miss Hunter was made use of against her. Having a most contemptible opinion of her Albina's understanding, and knowing that her young friend had too little capacity to be able to deceive her, or to invent a plausible excuse impromptu, Mrs. Beaumont turned quick, and exclaimed, "My dear, what could Lightbody be ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... not despair for England whether Free-traders or Protectionists be in the ascendant, unless I see that the faction out of power abet the endeavours of those who would make the Government of the country contemptible. Read Montalembert's speeches. They are very eloquent and instructive. He had as full a faith in his religion, and what he considered due to his religion, as you can have in your Corn Laws. Yet observe how bitterly he now repents having aided those ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... every notion of what the truth ought to be, of what the service of the truth ought to be—their every "thou shalt" was launched against us.... Our objectives, our methods, our quiet, cautious, distrustful manner—all appeared to them as absolutely discreditable and contemptible.—Looking back, one may almost ask one's self with reason if it was not actually an aesthetic sense that kept men blind so long: what they demanded of the truth was picturesque effectiveness, and of the learned a strong appeal to their ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... would allow. As I looked on I could scarcely refrain from rushing into the sable throng, and joining them in their frisks and jumps; though I dare say, had I done so they would have considered me a very contemptible performer. At length the Queen's chamberlain clapped his hands, and gave notice that the court must break up, as her majesty was desirous of retiring to attend to her duties in putting to bed the children of her mistress to whom she was ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... tameness, however contemptible, cannot be censured; for the first drop of blood shed in civil and unnatural war will make a wound that years, perhaps ages, may not heal.... The indiscriminate hand of vengeance has lumped together innocent and guilty; with all the formalities of hostility, has ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... unjust judge, a scoundrel at heart, a mean, contemptible coward, unfit to consort with honest men, and every pure, good woman should spurn me like dirt. Say it! Louder! The lady should be interested ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... obliged!—You see, my dear fellow, I've really gotten into a deuce of a situation as far as you are concerned: either I tell you impudently to your face that I consider your method of elocution excellent—and in that case I'd be guilty of a lie of the most contemptible kind: or else I tell you that I consider it abominable and then we'd get into another ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... a great degree of folly in talking unnecessarily of one's private affairs. I have just now been interrupted by one of my new neighbours, who has made himself absolutely contemptible in my eyes, by his silly garrulous pruriency. I know it has been a fault of my own, too; but from this moment I abjure it, as I would the service of hell! Your poets, spend-thrifts, and other fools of that kidney, pretend forsooth to crack their jokes on prudence; but 'tis a squalid vagabond ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... profitable sale of bones and relics, said to be those of saints but in reality obtained from the catacombs of Rome, had arisen. To the barbarian people of the north these gloomy objects proved more acceptable than images of wood, and the traffic, though contemptible, was more honourable than the slave-trade in vassals and peasant children which had been carried on with Jews and Mohammedans. Like all the great statesmen of antiquity, who were unable to comprehend the possibility of a highly civilized society without the existence of slavery, Charlemagne ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... able to whip any boy of his size in the neighborhood. He was always ready to fight, and had, perhaps, given some hard knocks in his time; but he sustained his character rather by his talent for bullying, than by any conquests he had won. On the whole he was a miserable, contemptible little bruiser whom no decent boy could love or respect. He talked so big about "black eyes," "bloody noses" and "smashed heads," that few boys cared to dispute his title to the honors he had assumed. Probably some who felt able to contest the palm with him, did not care ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... that in the midst of our contemptible hatred of "long books" this excellent trilogy should have appeared, is an indication of the daring and ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... strongly to the conservatism of the feudal aristocracy with which he had labored so hard to connect himself; he was vigorously hostile to the democratic spirit, and, in his later years, to the Reform Bill; and he felt and expressed almost childish delight in the friendship of the contemptible George IV, because George IV was his king. The conservatism was closely connected, in fact, with his Romantic interest in the past, and in politics it took the form, theoretically, of Jacobitism, loyalty to the worthless Stuart race whose memory his novels have done so much ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... like it, dear Tess! Distinction does not consist in the facile use of a contemptible set of conventions, but in being numbered among those who are true, and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, and of good report—as you ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... husband pitifully. What would he think of her? Would he, too, regard her as a traitor, a weak and contemptible creature, forever barred from love and respect, false to her duty, her honor? His face told her nothing. He was regarding her impassively. She remembered now that he had said that he would never see her again if she disobeyed him. Then she turned away, her mind made up. ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... dullest English moralist or American humorist; a course of reading digestible only by such constitutions as could survive and assimilate a diet of Martin Tupper or Mark Twain. And yet even in the very homeliest doggrel of Heywood's or Shakespeare's time there is something comparatively not contemptible; the English, when not alloyed by fantastic or pedantic experiment, has a simple historic purity and dignity of its own; the dulness is not so dreary as the dulness of mediaeval prosers, the commonplace is not so vulgar as the commonplace of ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... assist his family with large donations, cannot be disputed. But how he came to command so much money does not appear. His frugality, bordering upon penuriousness, impressed contemporaries. This, considering the length of his life, may account for not contemptible accumulations. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... a low, contemptible trick!" returned Josiah Crabtree. "But I must say I do not think it quite as ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... that there seemed to be a strong prejudice among some of the soldiers against the Salvation Army for some reason. The soldiers stood about swearing at the Staff-Captain and his helper as they worked, and saying the most abusive and contemptible things to them. At last the Staff-Captain turned about and, looking at them, in the kindliest ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... was a vastly more formidable affair. There it may be said that the whole country was in arms, and the element of religious fanaticism came into play; but in spite of that the resistance which they opposed to the troops was absolutely contemptible; however, it is just as well that you did not see them drill, because now, if by any chance this lad should die, and inquiry were made about it, there would be no occasion for you to allude to the subject at all. You would be able to say truthfully that finding that he was ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... he is the most contemptible blockhead that the universe can furnish! Courage perhaps he possesses, but of brains ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... dollars," thought David, as he pulled out his knife and cut the rope, "and I have kept Dan and father from playing a most contemptible trick upon one who would be a good friend to them, if they would ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... little eyes snapped and her tail was carried higher than ever. "It's a disgrace! It's a disgrace to the whole feathered race, and something ought to be done about it!" sputtered Jenny. "I'm ashamed to think that such a contemptible creature wears feathers! I ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... contributed to hasten the approach of that cloudy reverse at which I have already hinted. For some time the ruin of my father's affairs had been prevented by the sums which his eloquence had wrung from the well-meaning Mr. Elford. Hugh was no contemptible orator on these occasions. Hope seldom forsook him, and he built so securely on what he hoped might come to pass as sometimes to assert the thing had already happened. Such convenient mistakes are daily made. If indeed the good graces of fortune would but have kept pace with his ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... care, and plenty seemed the lot of all. The peasant lived in an ugly and windowless house because his father and grandfather had done so before him, not because it was necessary. It was odd to see girls tall as Dian, and as fair, bending their pretty bodies to come out of the contemptible little apertures ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... of courts and towns. As to the third item—the world's opinion—I don't know that you need lay a stress on some; for, generally speaking, all that the world did, said, or thought, was alike contemptible in her eyes, in which, perhaps, she was not so very far wrong. I must add, though at the cost of interrupting the story by two or three more sentences, that Catalina had also a fifth advantage, which sounds humbly, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Well.—When a beautiful and noble-minded young woman falls in love with a contemptible scoundrel, forgives his rebuffs, compromises her own dignity to win his affection, and finally persuades him to let her throw herself away on him,—is the result a romance or a tragedy? This is a nice question; and by the answer ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Langeais;' the immoral beauty sacrificed to the ambition of her lover in the 'Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes;' the mother sacrificed to the dissolute son in the 'Menage de Garcon;' the woman of political ambition sacrificed to the contemptible intriguers opposed to her in 'Les Employes;' and, indeed, in one way or other, as subordinate character or as heroine, this figure of a graceful feminine victim comes into nearly every novel. Virtuous heroes fare little better. Poor Colonel ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... of the nation. The "option" about which we should be most solicitous was definitely expressed by Washington when he said: "There is an option left to the United States whether they will be respectable and prosperous or contemptible and miserable as a nation." Our national self-respect would not be increased when Turkey, as a debt-paying nation, shall be held as our equal and Mexico as our superior. The credit of a great nation cannot even be discussed without some loss; it cannot even ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... knowledge of the state of things in Lower Canada." There were some who had exerted themselves to defame and injure the President, with a view to their own private interests. He particularly alluded to that contemptible animal, Chief Justice Alcock; to his worthy friend and coadjutor, of whose treacherous, plausible, and selfish character, he had never entertained a doubt; and to that smoothfaced swindler, whom the Lieutenant-Governor had taken so affectionately by ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... ecstatic contemplation of heaven, became in popular opinion the highest ideal of humanity, displacing the old ideal of the patriot and hero who, forgetful of self, lives and is ready to die for the good of his country. The earthly city seemed poor and contemptible to men whose eyes beheld the City of God coming in the clouds of heaven. Thus the centre of gravity, so to say, was shifted from the present to a future life, and however much the other world may have gained, there can be little doubt that this one lost heavily by the change. A ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... rich baronetcy, I fell back upon absurd imaginings; and what with the self-satisfaction of doing my duty, what with the vanity of my baby manhood, and what with the mystery I chose to believe in and interpret according to my desires, I was fast sliding into a moral condition contemptible indeed. ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... deliberate, and therefore a juster, view of his complete achievement, we are driven irresistibly to the conclusion that the force that shaped and swayed Maupassant's prose writings was the conviction that in life there could be no phase so noble or so mean, so honorable or so contemptible, so lofty or so low as to be unworthy of chronicling,—no groove of human virtue or fault, success or failure, wisdom or folly that did not possess its own peculiar psychological aspect ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... but of inspiration emanating from an evil spirit. This hypothesis of a diabolic inspiration is rejected by the school of Van Dale. Both the power of at all looking into the future, and the fancied source of that power, are dismissed as contemptible chimeras. Upon the first of these dark pretensions we shall have occasion to speak at another point. Upon the other we agree with Van Dale. Yet, even here, the spirit of triumphant ridicule, applied to questions not wholly within the competence of human resources, is displeasing in grave discussions: ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... vehicle stopped before the largest tent, Crawford said beneath his breath, "The Amenokal is here, all right. Cliff, watch your teguelmoust. If any of these people see more than your eyes, your standing has dropped to a contemptible zero." ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the dissimilarity in the mode of election, as fatal to this argument in the mouth of an English High Churchman, I was told that "the Crown now represents the Laity!" Such a fiction may be satisfactory to a pettifogging lawyer, but as the basis of a spiritual system is indeed supremely contemptible. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... tried to terrify them: but they found to their astonishment that the Christians would not change their minds for any terror. Then their hatred became rage and fury. They could not understand how such poor ignorant contemptible people as the Christians seemed to be, dared to have an opinion of their own, and to stand to it; how they dared to think themselves right, and all the world wrong; and in their fury they inflicted on them tortures to read of which should make the blood run cold. And ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... some of their sentimental ideas about it; shake them loose from some of the schoolmasters' niggling rules about it; make them write it themselves; show 'em the big shapes of it; make a piano keyboard something they knew their way about in. That wouldn't be a contemptible job for anybody.—Oh, well, we can talk that out later. But you needn't be afraid for me, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... thoughts took this turn she would cry piteously; but not for long. She would dry her eyes, and burn with wrath all round; she would still hate her rival, but call her lover a coward—a contemptible coward. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... one of these grubstake sharks. He came to Nevada after the Tonopah excitement with a flunkey they call Flip Flappum. That's another dirty dog that I'm going to put my mark on when I get him in the door—one of the most low-down, contemptible curs that I know of—he makes his living by selling bum life insurance. Phillip F. Lapham is his name but we all call him Flip Flappum—he's the black-leg lawyer that drew up that contract that made me lose my ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... execrably bad taste our modern managers show in the extravagant and ridiculous announcement of the splendour of the star you come to contemplate! If Mr. Brooke have great merit, he needs not all this sound of trumpets; if he have it not, he is only rendered the more contemptible by it. I have some of the play-bills of John Kemble's last performances before me, and there is none of this fustian: the fact, the performance, and the name are simply announced. If our taste improves in some respects, it does not in this; it is a retrogression—a royal theatre sinking back into ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... knowledge that I would find some 'low' person, girl or man, whom I knew I could get at, who would strip himself or herself bare to me in a spiritual sense, and would be revealed disinterestedly, would have no axe to grind and no contemptible small ends to gain, and no tradesman's commercial morality and no grafting conventionality, no moral cant based on self-interest—some being so near the 'limit' that he was intellectually and morally fearless and did not need to pose, from whom some truth could be derived, whose ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... with a view of prosecuting my studies in a country retreat: and there I laid that plan of life which I have steadily and successfully pursued. I resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible except the improvement of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... Piero de' Medici, who had lately succeeded his father as chief magistrate of Florence, and pretended to the same power. The death of his friend Lorenzo had been sincerely deplored by Lodovico, who, before many months had passed, began to discover how weak and contemptible a character his son possessed, and had already consulted his astrologer as to the influence which this young man would have upon his own fortunes. Now the vain and foolish youth refused to join in the proposed embassy to the ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... great justice. At all events, the effect it produced was deep and memorable, and no wonder that the exulting typographer's one bumper more to Jedediah Cleishbotham preceded his parting stave, which was uniformly The Last Words of Marmion, executed certainly with no contemptible rivalry of Braham. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... suspicion was too trifling, no person on whom it rested too contemptible, to throw him into a panic, and induce him to take precautions for his safety, and meditate revenge. A man engaged in a litigation before his tribunal, having saluted him, drew him aside, and told him he had dreamt that he saw him murdered; and shortly afterwards, when his adversary came to deliver ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... you like. Often I felt what he was thinking, almost as if each thought of his were a hand laid upon me—a hand from which I shrank with an almost trembling repugnance. Sometimes when he thought something contemptible or evil, I shrank as ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... estimation than he was before, by showing him infinite things and his own abasement, till he falls into the frame of mind that leads to the catastrophe, from mere internal irritation, not premeditation, or envy of Abel (which would have made him contemptible), but from the rage and fury against the inadequacy of his state to his conceptions, and which discharges itself rather against life, and the Author of life, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... That you, the most effeminate of men, should threaten any man with death at your hand! Your hand! What hand! The hand of Philomela or Medea or Clytemnestra? Why, when you dance in those characters you show such contemptible timidity, you are so frightened at the sight of steel, that you will not even carry a property sword? But I am digressing. Pudentilla, seeing to her astonishment that her son had fallen lower than she ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... serious effect of the way in which the necessity of winning or "making records" is constantly held up as the raison d'etre of athletic sports is that it suggests to the ordinary student, who has no hopes of brilliant success in athletics, that moderate exercise is contemptible, and that he need do nothing to keep up his bodily vigour. Thus, Dr. Birkbeck Hill found that the proportion of students who took part in some athletic sport was distinctly less at Harvard than at Oxford. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... explanation at all. This is a mode of writing very acceptable to the multitude who have always been accustomed to make gods and daemons out of men very little better or worse than themselves; but it appears contemptible to all who have watched the changes of human character—to all who have observed the influence of time, of circumstances, and of associates, on mankind—to all who have seen a hero in the gout, a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and say whether they are willing to sacrifice all this liberty, all this greatness, and all this hope, because they have not intelligence, wisdom, and virtue enough to adjust a controversy so frivolous and contemptible."[706] ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... curious how rapidly one turns from good to bad in this book. How clever the descriptions are! how neatly some of the minor events and personalities are hit off! and yet, how astonishingly vile and contemptible the chief part of it is!—that part, we mean, which contains the adventures of the hero, and, of course, the choice reflections ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... unexpected wives. They had regarded him as a poor unfortunate, driven to crime by adversity, and after a fashion the victim of an arrogant and soulless police system, aided and abetted by the District Attorney's minions, a contemptible robber in the person of a dealer in women's hats, and a bejeweled snob who insulted their intelligence by trying to convince them that her confidence had been misplaced. But the two wives settled it. Smilk was a rascal. He ought to ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... forbid you to do it! You despise me, perhaps, and think I'm feeble. But you're mistaken. You are ungrateful and impertinent and contemptible, but I will save you in order to save Irma and our name. There is going to be such a row in this town that you and he'll be sorry you came to it. I shall shrink from nothing, for my blood is up. It is unwise of you to laugh. I forbid you to marry ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... tortured, nor did the virtuous Trajan change the policy of the government. Hadrian and Antoninus Pius permitted the laws to be enforced against the Christians, and Marcus Aurelius saw no reason to alter them. But to the mind of the Stoic on the throne, says Arnold, the Christians were "philosophically contemptible, politically subversive, and morally abominable." They were regarded as statesmen looked upon the Jesuits in the reign of Louis XV., as we look upon the Mormons,—as dangerous to free institutions. Moreover, the Christians were ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... be impressed with the idea that a high moral character is absolutely essential to the highest development of every race, white quite as much as black. There is no creature so low and contemptible as he who does not seek first the approval of his own conscience and his God; for, after all, how poor is human recognition when you and your God are aware of your inward integrity of soul! If the Negro will keep clean hands and a pure heart, he can stand up before all the world and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... said to me. "The hue and cry! Contemptible! How I hate it! But you wouldn't understand—!" he broke off, and slowly regained his usual air of self-obliteration; he even seemed ashamed, and began trying to brush his moustaches higher than ever, as if aware that his heat had robbed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to protect me! Even as (thy son) Pradyumna, they are, O Krishna, mighty warriors all! They are foremost of bowmen, and invincible in battle by any foe! Why do they bear the wrongs inflicted (on me) by the sons of Dhritarashtra of such contemptible strength? Deprived of their kingdom by deception, the Pandavas were made bondsmen and I myself was dragged to the assembly while in my season, and having only a single cloth on! Fie on that Gandiva which none else can string save Arjuna and Bhima and thyself, O slayer of Madhu! Fie ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... than he would have done though the honours of graduation had never been conferred upon him. Stage-doctors, I must observe, do not much excite the indignation of the faculty; more reputable quacks do. The former are too contemptible to be considered as rivals; they only poison the poor people; and the copper pence which are thrown up to them in handkerchiefs could never find their way to the pocket of a regular physician. It is otherwise with the latter: they sometimes intercept ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... you will," she said. "And go as soon as you like. You are a contemptible, cold-hearted ingrate. You have grudged me every minute of your company, everywhere—and every second you have given me here. If I have been foolish it is over now, and there shall be nothing to record my folly." She stepped to the easel and hurled the canvas to the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... reconciled her to life. Pascal was now everything to her—her present and her future; and she solemnly vowed that she would make a noble man of him. But alas! misfortunes never come singly. One of her husband's friends, who acted as administrator to the estate, took a contemptible advantage of her inexperience. She went to sleep one night possessing an income of fifteen thousand francs, but she awoke to find herself ruined—so completely ruined that she did not know where to obtain ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... thin. Why, the children have penetrated it. So has poor Yarra. They love you! You are brave—you rescued Mr. Macdougal from the Bushrangers. You are generous—you do not try to make him appear contemptible because of his afflictions, as some of the others have done. You are gentle—I see it in your bearing towards the little ones. You are kind, and Yarra is devoted ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... to say, in this connection, and after a longer experience of the world, that many schoolmasters, "armed with a little brief authority," are the most contemptible of petty tyrants. Their arrogance and oppression are intolerable; and I have often wondered, that where such men have been planted, they have not produced more of the evil fruit of strife and rebellion. Mr. Parasyte was one of this class; and the fact that ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... slanderous prate of servants; I am careful, whenever it intrudes itself, to discourage and rebuke it; but just at this time I felt some resentment against this lady, and hardly supposed it possible for any slanderer to exaggerate her contemptible qualities. I suffered her therefore to run on in a tedious and minute detail of the capricious, peevish, and captious ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... downwards would turn and rend her, should she dare declare herself. Nay, she was ashamed of herself for the mischief she had wrought. No one in the world cared for her; she was quite alone. The only man in whose breast she could excite love or the semblance of it was a contemptible cad. And who was she, that she should venture to hope for love? She figured herself as an item in a catalogue; "a little, ugly, low-spirited, absolutely penniless young woman, subject to nervous headaches." Her sobs were interrupted by a ghastly burst of self-mockery. Yes, Levi was right. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... rarer than is the love of Dupris and Bolingbroke. These sentiments proceed from an unknown cause. But you have brought me thus to consider love as a passion. Yes, indeed, it is the last of them all and the most contemptible. It promises everything, and fulfils nothing. It comes, like love, as a need, the last, and dies away the first. Ah, talk to me of revenge, hatred, avarice, of gaming, of ambition, of fanaticism. These passions have something virile in ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... it's a popular fallacy, an exploded idea, a contemptible humbug, to live merely for your neighbors, the rabble world at large. Thousands do it, my dear, and I've no objection to their doing it; it's their own business, and none of mine. I have moved up town because I thought it ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... believed the other things they say of you if I hadn't this to break down my faith. I heard this with my own ears. It was too contemptible to forget in a lifetime. I did not come here to discuss it with you. The thing is done. I came here to tell you that I am going to leave Chicago. You WON'T go, so I will." Bansemer still glared at him, but there was amazement mingling with rage in his eyes. "I can't look a soul in the face. I am ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... acquainted with the whole of the design: but now that I knew my man, and could see my way, I at once resolved to appear the dupe they purposed to make me. Specie too, for the payment of the garrison! This was no contemptible prize with which to commence my career. Besides the boat was well manned, and although without cannon, still in point of military equipment quite able to cope with my crew, which did not ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... commissioners, and bring them before the Revolutionary Tribunal, whose verdict could not be doubtful."—Buchez et Roux, XXXIII., 431, 436, 441. Speech by Robespierre, Thermidor 8, year II... ". Machiavellian designs against the small fund-holders of the State.. .. A contemptible financial system, wasteful, irritating, devouring, absolutely independent of your supreme oversight.... Anti-revolution exists in the financial department.... Who are its head administrators? Brissotins, Feuillants, aristocrats and well-known knaves—the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... make my bow at the Horse Guards; and my noble brother lost as little time in making me put my hand to a paper, in which, for prompt payment, I relinquished one half of my legacy. But what cared I for money? I had obtained a profession in which money was contemptible, the only purse the military chest, and the only prize, like Nelson's, a peerage or Westminster Abbey. The ferment did not cool within the week, and within that period I had taken leave of half the county, been wished ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... is the result that they should mainly be judged by, and to which they should appeal. But amongst all classes, the working itself, incessant working, is the thing deified. Now what is the end and object of most work? To provide for animal wants. Not a contemptible thing by any means, but still it is not all in all with man. Moreover, in those cases where the pressure of bread-getting is fairly past, we do not often find men's exertions lessened on that account. There enter into their ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... force a resort to common sense. Racial prejudice and ignorant, contemptible intolerance, must disappear under, and before the presence of the renewal of business activity in the South, and the necessity for Negro labor. Each soldier returning from Europe is a more enlightened man than when he went away. He has had the broadening effect of travel, the chance to ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... idiot enough to believe such a contemptible slander, when I brought her here and established her as my honored wife? Did I ever treat her with anything but reverence and respect?" thundered Sir William, ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Gower, he was a student of municipal law, having attended Chester's Inn, which stood on the site of the present Somerset House; but although he trod in the footsteps of his celebrated predecessors, it was with far feebler powers. His original pieces are contemptible, both in subject and in execution. His best production is a translation of 'Egidius De Regimine Principum.' Warton, alluding to the period at which these writers appeared, has the following oft-quoted observations: —'I consider Chaucer as a genial day in an English spring. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... to me. He could "bark" a squirrel in the top of the tallest tree, or kill it by a bullet through its eye. He used to boast, in a quiet way, that he never spoilt a skin, though it was only that of a "contemptible squir'l." ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... unquestionably have brought him and the sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close acquaintance in the present imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose a mere poor human being, such as I was, capable by those contemptible means of counteracting and limiting the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?—I say I would become emphatic and cogent, not to say rather complacent, in such an address, when it would all go for nothing by reason of the Odd Girl's ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... should have been quicker. He begged my pardon. His cold voice really maddened me, and I burst out into some foolish, contemptible diatribe, called him a machine, taunted him, then—as I felt that loathsome thing nestling once more to me,—begged him to assist me, to stay with me, not to leave me alone—I meant in the company of my tormentor. Whether he was frightened, or whether he was angry ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... his friend that a question of so great magnitude to him had been decided by the last sting which he had received from an insect so contemptible as Mr. Bonteen, but he expressed the feeling as well as he knew how to express it. "Oh, I shall be with you. I know what you are going to say, and I know how good you are. But I could not stand it. Men are beginning already to say things which ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... politicians. They canvas the civil and criminal laws of their country, and learn the value of political liberty. They talk over measures of state, judge of the intentions, sagacity and sincerity of public men, and are likely in time to become in no contemptible degree capable of estimating what modes of conducting national affairs, whether for the preservation of the rights of all, or for the vindication and assertion of justice between man and man, may be expected to be crowned with the greatest ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... say," she admitted; "but the Californian's highest duty is loyalty to his country. Ours is a double duty, isolated as we are on this far strip of land, away from all other civilization. We should be more contemptible than Indians if we were not ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... worth of Nature's womb—there have been evolved intelligence and love, sacrifice, ideals; splendours which no splendour to come can utterly dim. These things are in the power of Nature. This is what "dead matter" can mother. So much the worse for our contemptible conceptions of matter, and That of which matter is the manifestation. But if it be that from the slime, by natural processes, there can grow a St. Francis, surely our dim notions of the potencies of Nature must be exalted. The forces ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... to make things come right for you. I told Miss Wharton all about myself and tried to make her understand that you weren't in the least to blame for my misdeeds. But I only made matters worse. She is contemptible." Jean's ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death. I think I have fairly heard and fairly weighed the evidence on both sides, and I remain an utter disbeliever in almost all that you consider the most sacred truths. I will pass over as utterly contemptible the oft-repeated accusation that sceptics shut out evidence because they will not be governed by the morality of Christianity. You I know will not believe that in my case, and I know its falsehood as a general rule. I only ask, Do you think I can change the self-formed convictions ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... of the Athenaeum and a merited punishment for "that unscrupulous critic and contemptible mathematical twaddler, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... outward form, and since my own beauty has been slighted by his comparison, ye two shall be punished, she for her beauty, and thou for thy insolence, and through the means of that very beauty, on account of which my father and I have become contemptible. See, O thou who despisest a suitor, whether thou canst easily procure another. This shall be the condition of thy daughter's marriage. Whatever suitor shall lay claim to her, thou shalt send up to this terrace alone at flight. And if he ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... to meet new consequences than to heed those higher feelings that were tardily struggling for expression. She did pity Wharton, however, for it seemed to her that he was the injured party. When he was himself he was a very decent fellow, and it was a contemptible trick thus to cheat him. It would have been less ignoble to sell herself outright to a man she detested— for the transaction would then have been one of dollars and cents, purely, a sacrifice prompted by necessity, so she reasoned— whereas to ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... had faded from his face, had died upon his lips. Once more he was a soul in torments of despair and degradation; and yet once more did the absence of the abject in man and manner redeem him from the depths of either. In these moments of reaction he was pitiful, but not contemptible, much less unlovable. Indeed, I could see the qualities that had won the heart of Raffles as I had never seen them before. There is a native nobility not to be destroyed by a single descent into the ignoble, an essential honesty too bright and brilliant to be ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... attachment of Rous to the house of Beauchamp, and the dedication of his work to Henry, Would make his testimony most suspicious, even if he had guarded his work within the rules of probability, and not rendered it a contemptible legend. ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... now," was the reply. "You had better give me up to the soldiers at once. I suppose they will give me something to eat. My pride's all gone now, and I only want to get it over and bring it to an end. It's very contemptible, I know, but it is ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... expression of Richard's face was changed when he had finished speaking, while he was conscious of feeling much as he did that night when he denounced Ethie so terribly to her face. "Had it been a man, or half a man, or anybody besides that contemptible puppy, it would not seem so bad; but to forsake me for him!" Richard said, while the great ridges deepened in his forehead, and a hard, black look crept into his eyes, and about the corners of his mouth. He was terrible in his anger, which grew upon ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... 'barracking' that was carried on at football matches was a mean and contemptible system, and was getting worse and worse every day. Actually people were afraid to go to them on account of the conduct of the crowd of 'barrackers.' It took all the interest out of the game to see young men acting like ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Augustus, an inquiry was made after the author; and Virgil not declaring himself, the verses were claimed by Bathyllus, a contemptible poet, but who was liberally rewarded on the occasion. Virgil, provoked at the falsehood of the impostor, again wrote the verses on some conspicuous part of the palace, and ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... him beyond his means. Yes, she is socially very ambitious, not here in America, but abroad. To tell the truth, I do not believe her first husband is dead. She is leading a double life. She may not be so much to blame, for I have heard that her first husband was, or is, a contemptible fellow. She once had money in her own right, but the baron squandered it all. Her son has lived most of his time in Germany, and fortunately there is no family resemblance to betray the relationship. The son resembles the father; is essentially German in appearance, but he inherits from ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... an addition, by no means contemptible, to the influence exercised by these institutions on the course of events, in the Book Clubs, or Printing Clubs as they are otherwise termed, of the present day. They have within a few years added a department to literature. The collector who has been a member ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... habits—that Mr. Scully himself had only for three months mingled among the aristocracy—that his young friend Perkins was violently angry—and finally, and to conclude, that the proud vulgarity of the great Sir George Gorgon and his family was infinitely more odious and contemptible than the mean vulgarity of the ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... literature, nor philosophy reached their full development till a later era. It is enough for our purpose to say that, before the Persian wars, civilization was by no means contemptible, in all those departments which subsequently made Greece the teacher and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... with a vengeance why we should turn to truth—truth saves us from a world of that complexion. What wonder that its very name awakens loyal feeling! In particular what wonder that all little provisional fool's paradises of belief should appear contemptible in comparison with its bare pursuit! When absolutists reject humanism because they feel it to be untrue, that means that the whole habit of their mental needs is wedded already to a different view of reality, in comparison with which the humanistic world seems but the ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... were not an inspiring spectacle. A soldier, stripped of his arms and held by his foes, becomes of a sudden a pitiable, almost a contemptible object. You think instinctively of an adder that has lost its fangs, or of a wild cat that, being shorn of teeth to bite with and claws to tear with, is now a more helpless, more impotent thing than if it had been created without teeth and claws in the first place. These similes are poor ones, I'm ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... unguarded confidence, will insensibly acquire over a feeble mind that ascendant which harsh wisdom and uncomplying virtue can seldom obtain. The degenerate grandsons of Theodosius, who were invisible to their subjects, and contemptible to their enemies, exalted the praefects of their bed-chamber above the heads of all the ministers of the palace; and even his deputy, the first of the splendid train of slaves who waited in the presence, was thought worthy to rank before the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... The cardinal, however contemptible might be the triumph gained over so vulgar a being as Bonacieux, did not the less enjoy it for an instant; then, almost immediately, as if a fresh thought has occurred, a smile played upon his lips, and he said, offering ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hazarded upon these subjects, may to some appear too slight, and to others too abstruse and tedious. To those who have explored the vast mines of human knowledge, small specimens appear trifling and contemptible, whilst the less accustomed eye is somewhat dazzled and confused by the appearance even of a small collection: but to the most enlightened minds, new combinations may be suggested by a new arrangement of materials, and the curiosity and enthusiasm of the inexperienced may be ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... while that contemptible print, the Chicago Times, was instilling treason into the minds of its readers, and doing all that it could to embarrass the Government, discourage patriotism, and to give aid and comfort to the rebels; our victories, with that sheet, were always unimportant; our cause ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... these mountains, from whence they pay neighborly visits to the chicken-roosts of the ranchers in the Truckee meadows near by. Toward night a pair of these animals are observed following behind at the respectful distance of five hundred yards. One need not be apprehensive of danger from these contemptible animals, however; they are simply following behind in a frame of mind similar to that of a hungry school-boy's when gazing longingly into a confectioner's window. Still, night is gathering around, and it begins to look as though I will have to pillow my head on the soft side of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... and easily led, puerile in his gusts of passion and his complete abandonment of himself to them—selfish, fickle, boastful, cruel, superstitious, licentious—he exhibits to us the Oriental despot in the most contemptible of all his aspects—that wherein the moral and the intellectual qualities are equally in defect, and the career is one unvarying course of vice and folly. From Xerxes we have to date at once the decline of the Empire in respect of territorial ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... &c. of the Virginians are much the same as about London, which they esteem their Home; and for the most Part have contemptible Notions of England, and wrong Sentiments of Bristol, and the other Out-Ports, which they entertain from seeing and hearing the common Dealers, Sailors, and Servants that come from those Towns, and the Country Places in England ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... will have seen by Sir James' speech, the very complete triumph his firmness and energy have obtained over the factious cabal of their most contemptible assembly. Bedard will be shortly released—that fellow alone of the whole gang has nerve, and does not want ability or inclination to do mischief whenever opportunity offers; the rest, old Papineau and the blustering B——, ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... them contain. This made me reflect how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor doing himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him. And yet I have seen the moral of my own behavior very frequent in England since my return; where a little, contemptible varlet, without the least title to birth, person, wit, or common sense, shall presume to look with importance, and put himself upon a foot with the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... is hard to believe that a man of your intelligence and supposed progressive ideas would be guilty of such a contemptible act. Yet facts are facts and the facts leave little room for doubt that you were to a large extent, if not almost entirely, responsible. The persistent series of bitter and abusive articles published by your newspaper, El Universal, ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... know of this world only yesterday? Then every way seemed clear and open for me, my friends abundant, and love profuse; to-day I am in awful doubts, and yet I must not lose my will and drift with every passing fear and confusion into the fickleness which makes woman contemptible after she has given her hand. I will never give up two persons—my father, and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... he says (De Lib. Arb. i, 5): "How are they free from sin in sight of Divine providence, who are guilty of taking a man's life for the sake of these contemptible things?" Now among contemptible things he reckons "those which men may forfeit unwillingly," as appears from the context (De Lib. Arb. i, 5): and the chief of these is the life of the body. Therefore it is unlawful for ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... you young scamp!" he continued to mutter, "taking advantage of your contemptible botany to bring your two heads together in a way that Milly would never have permitted but for that ridiculous science. Ha! they've let the whole concern fall—serves 'em right—and—no! dropped it on purpose. What! Do you dare to grip my niece's hand, and—and—she lets you! Eh! your arm ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... that if their intellectual uncle would condescend to demean himself by waiting on such idiotic monkeys, they would at once admit his glorious body to their ridiculous and contemptible presence. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... didn't mind what she said. She wouldn't be saying it to Robin, but to the contemptible thing that had taken Robin's place. She still saw Robin as a young man, with young, shining eyes, who came rushing to give himself up at once, to make himself known. She had no affection for this selfish ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... first time in fifteen years Mrs. Archibald lost her temper. She turned pale with anger. "You contemptible scoundrel! Go! ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... punishment. Hospitality was formerly the virtue of the Romans; and every stranger who could plead either merit or misfortune was relieved or rewarded by their generosity. At present, if a foreigner, perhaps of no contemptible rank, is introduced to one of the proud and wealthy senators, he is welcomed indeed in the first audience with such warm professions and such kind inquiries that he retires enchanted with the affability of his illustrious friend, and full of regret that he had so long delayed his journey to ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... from the joy of putting the crown on his beloved measure; however, his must be the honor, though another may complete it; and for my part, I feel that, if I were to believe that my exertions ought to detract the millionth part from his merits, I should be one of the most unprincipled and contemptible of mankind. Ask the question simply, Who has borne the real evil, who has encountered the real opposition, who roused the sluggish public to sentiments of honor and pity? Why, Mr. Sadler; and I come in (supposing I succeed) to terminate ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... have harassed me and my men at every opportunity. I mean that you drove that bunch of my cattle off the cliff last September. I mean that within twenty-four hours another fence has been cut, and that you know who did it. I mean that your attempt to buy my horse was only another of the contemptible and cowardly tricks you have played on me. I mean, Huntington, that you are a bully, a liar and ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... in an ugly and windowless house because his father and grandfather had done so before him, not because it was necessary. It was odd to see girls tall as Dian, and as fair, bending their pretty bodies to come out of the contemptible little apertures in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... of contemptible people only, when I say so. I am not thinking of the fellow who is pulled up in court in an action for breach of promise of marriage, and who in one letter makes vows of unalterable affection, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... I deliberated about writing, it was with a view to write you sense—grave sense. What a dull thing is sense. How it mars half the pleasure of life, and yet how contemptible is all that has it not. Too much sense, by which I mean only a great deal, is very troublesome to the possessor and to the world. It is like one carrying a huge pack through a crowd. He is constantly hitting and annoying ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... about the room and coming back to her sat down in a chair at her side. A mocking hand seemed to dash the words from his lips. There was nothing on earth that he could say to her that wasn't foolish or cruel or contemptible... ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the blame on her beauty—lamented that he had not resolution enough to resist the charm of it. When did that commonplace compliment ever fail to produce its effect? Regina smiled with the weakly complacent good-nature, which was only saved from being contemptible by its association with her personal attractions. "Will you promise to behave?" she stipulated. And Amelius, ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... to this day,—he lived a hundred years ago,—dealt with men and women; that is why all are as impressive to-day as they were when originally composed. Men and women like reading about men and women, and it is becoming understood, nowadays, that the truth about men and women can never be contemptible." ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... left, heard his words in the distance, and notwithstanding she had made a show of boldness, she was really alarmed, and greatly dreaded the future. She knew that an evil-minded man, however contemptible, was capable of doing infinite harm to a fellow-being, when determinedly set thereon. Thus, between hope and ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... the time of Cicero. Aristocracy may have been based on birth, as in England, but it was sustained by wealth, as in that country. A very rich man gained, ultimately, admission to the noble class, as Rothschild has in London. Without wealth to uphold distinctions, any aristocracy soon becomes contemptible. That organization of society is most aristocratic which confers great political and social privileges on a few men, and retains these privileges from generation to generation, as in France during the reign of Louis XV. The state of society ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... myself. They never seemed to forget that they had promised Aleck should be as my brother, therefore every arrangement took us equally into account. And although the meanness of envy was held by them to be not only sinful, but contemptible, they were quite alive to the keen sense of justice which is born with most children, and would never violate it by the exercise of a partiality too common amongst those who have the charge of the young, either ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... Lord Palmerston, five Radicals had addressed the House. Without exception they had denounced the action of the Lords, and more than one had savagely attacked the Opposition for supporting the proceedings of the Upper House. They had contended that the Commons were becoming contemptible in the eyes of the nation by their failure to take a manly position in defence of their rights. To a man, they had assailed the resolutions of the Premier as falling far short of the dignity of the occasion and the importance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... This is, of course, not an original utterance, but derived from one of Napoleon's great Generals; but at all events it shows the estimate placed upon our fighting capacity by an enemy who at one time styled us as 'that contemptible little army.' There is sometimes a weird sense of disproportion revealed, as in the case of a Highlander who was visited by a brother chaplain at a Base hospital some two or three months ago, and who remarked to the patient, 'Well, Jock, what do you think of Jack Johnsons? ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... her hand, as if to check his words. What right had a man who was guilty of such conduct to begin proffering a repentance that was unavailing, nay, contemptible? Did he think that a few halting words could atone for his cruelty, could dispel the ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... God, without merit on my part, of His pure and free mercy, has given to me, an unworthy, condemned, and contemptible creature all the riches of justification and salvation in Christ, so that I no longer am in want of anything, except of faith to believe that this is so. For such a Father, then, who has overwhelmed me with these inestimable riches of His, why should I not freely, cheerfully, ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... Wrayson answered, "if possible, a more contemptible little cur than the man himself was. His only interest is to discover the source of his brother's income. He wants money! Nothing but money. The other is a much more dangerous person. His name is Heneage, and he is an acquaintance of ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sided with his mother as against the Dutchman. The more contemptible a man is, the more he contemns a man for not belonging to his race or nation. And Norman felt that he would be eternally disgraced by any alliance with a German. He threw himself into the fight with a great deal of vigor. It helped him to ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... custom to render full justice to the founder of the Tudor dynasty. His reign is stamped with a character sordid and unattractive. There is no romance in it, no clashing of arms, no valiant deeds, no suggestion of the heroic. The King's enemies are, for the most part, contemptible persons; the King himself is a cold-blooded, long-headed ruler, merciful indeed, but from policy, not from generosity, and of a meanness in money matters very far from royal. Yet he was not without virtues. He was not unjust; he was ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... following the bent of his own corrupt mind, and countenancing his neighbour in the pursuit of sensual gratifications. Here iniquity abounds, and those outward gross sins which in Europe would render a person contemptible in the public eye, and obnoxious to the civil law, are become fashionable and familiar—adultery, fornication, theft, drunkenness, extortion, violence, and uncleanness of every kind, the natural concomitants of deism and infidelity, ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... have been bitterly mistaken!... I thought, fool that I was, that these epaulettes, at least, would give me the right to hope... No, it would have been better for me to have remained for ever in that contemptible soldier's cloak, to which, probably, I was indebted ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... at this somewhat contemptible trick fate had played her that Hodder smiled in spite ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... great philosopher, "poor Richard," or "the old lightning rod." Franklin, whose researches in philosophy have placed him preeminent among the first characters in this country, or in Europe: is it possible then that such a contemptible wretch as Peter Porcupine, (who never gave any specimen of his philosophy, but in bearing with Christian patience a severe whipping at the public post) can injure the exalted reputation of this great philosopher? The folly of the Editor ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... stroking me gently with the other, after a hearty fit of laughing, asked me, whether I was a whig or a tory? Then turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff, near as tall as the mainmast of the "Royal Sovereign[60]," he observed how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects as I: and yet, says he, I dare engage these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honor; they contrive little nests and burrows, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... you mean?" says she, stopping short before Miss Knollys, and speaking with ill-suppressed rage. "Who is she, that she should refuse him? That little, contemptible child! That nobody! I tell you, she would not dare refuse him if she asked her! It would be too great ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... the Oriental display. The French consul followed in a barouche and pair, with his attaches and attendants in carriages; but the whole were mean-looking. The French court-dress, or any court-dress, must appear contemptible in its contrast with the stateliness of this people of silks and shawls, jewelled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... however is an abuse, the offspring of most sordid and contemptible motives. It is the unmistakable brand of the plebeian, and compromises the one who favors it, beyond amendment. It is well to mention it, however, for there are persons of limited observation, and there must needs be persons of a limited experience at all times who, for want of knowing the whole ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... disdainfully amused at Alec's letter, still the thought of Algie Thynne, moonlight nights on the yacht, topping weather, and his own neglect, gave him some cause for alarm. Algie Thynne was crible with debts, and probably keen on marrying for money. Contemptible young ass! Why didn't he work? Harry ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... more or less parts of science. He should be above them all, save in so far as he can without effort reap renown from the labours of others. It is a lache in him that he should write music or books, or paint pictures at all; but if he must do so, his work should be at best contemptible. Much as we must condemn Marcus Aurelius, we condemn James I. ever ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... realized her heart's desire. Heigh-ho! I believe I am making you my confessor." He turned his face toward her now, and his smile was rather sad. "When I recall the worry I have given my poor old aunt, who loves me so, I feel like a contemptible scoundrel. How many countless sacrifices has she made for me, in the days when we had nothing! But she shall have all the comforts now, and all the love and kindness I am capable of giving her. I shall never ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... people then tried to do, but, have now quite ceased trying "by the Wolf-method:"—Immortal Wolf, somewhat of a stiff, reserved humor, inwardly a little proud, and not wanting in private contempt of the contemptible, had been accused of heterodoxy by the Halle Theologians. Immortal Wolf, croakily satirical withal, had of course defended himself; and of course got into a shoreless sea of controversy with the Halle Theologians; pestering ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... nor of public morality; that he insults himself when he can find no one else to insult.—None but the son of a provincial citizen imported from Sancerre to become a poet, but who is only the bravo of some contemptible magazine, could ever have sent out such a circular letter, as you must allow, monsieur. This is a document indispensable to the archives of the age.—To-day Lousteau flatters me, to-morrow he may ask for my head.—Excuse me, I forgot you ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Now this gentleman's state of mind is far more common than he supposes; only few people care to confess even to their bosom-friends that they do not accept public opinion—or rather the opinions of authority. The age has grown contemptible from cant, and traditions which are perhaps highly respectable in their place are thrust upon us in season and out of season. Regarding matters of fact there is no room for differences of opinion when once the ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... time to chastise the Pope for his support of the enemies of France. The Papalini proved to be contemptible as soldiers. They fled before the republicans, and a military promenade brought the invaders to Ancona, and then inland to Tolentino, where Pius VI. sued for peace. The resulting treaty signed at that place (February 19th) condemned the Holy ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... even invented for its own use the right of the strongest—a divine right which quiets its conscience in the face of the conquered and the oppressed; we have outlawed all that lives except ourselves. Revolting and manifest abuse; notorious and contemptible breach of the law of justice! The bad faith and hypocrisy of it are renewed on a small scale by all successful usurpers. We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but known it, the face was that of Lord Wynchgate, one of the most contemptible of the greater nobility of Britain, and the figure was ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... of such treatment of our fathers is too manifest. It creates and lets loose upon their institutions the vandal spirit of innovation and overthrow; for, after the memory of our fathers shall have been rendered contemptible, who will uphold and sustain their institutions? The memory of our fathers should be the watch-word of liberty throughout the land; for, imperfect as they were, the world before had not seen their like, nor will it soon, we fear, behold their like again. Such models ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... I have this to say to you here and now. You came here to bring shame and distress on an honest girl,—you, an old soldier and an Irishman,—the first soldier and the first Irishman I ever knew to be guilty of so low and contemptible a piece of persecution. When I write to Major Cranston of this, and ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... or a Bernard who'll decide a la Bernard, for I believe I'm a contemptible Bernard myself," said ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Homeric phrase), and thrust down into an inferior position in the world, is a mournful spectacle indeed. And the book which sets before us, so impartially yet so eloquently, the innumerable petty misunderstandings and contemptible jealousies which brought about this direful result, is one of ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... exaggerates things— The men who wear the red badge of courage, I don't feel sorry for, they have their reward in their bloody bandages and the little cross on their tunic but those you meet coming back sick and dying with fever are the ones that make fighting contemptible—poor little farmers, poor little children with no interest in Cuba or Spain's right to hold it, who have been sent out to die like ants before they have learned to hold a mauser, and who are going back again with the beards that have grown in the field hospitals on ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... intended her to believe he loved her, and suspicious as gossips had made her with reference to his conduct, she could not suppose he was guilty of heartless and contemptible trifling. She trusted his honor; yet the discovery of his affection brought a sensation of regret—of vague self-reproach, and she felt that in future he would prove a source of endless disquiet. Hitherto she had enjoyed his ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... didn't care even to understand, because I thought you generous and nice to me—and I was so confident of you that I came with you and told you I had had some champagne which made my head swim.... And you—did this! It—it was contemptible." ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... used to get his salary and put it away, but now a hundred roubles a day is not enough for him. In old days he was afraid to talk before schoolboys for fear of saying something silly, and now he is overfamiliar even with princes . . . wretched, contemptible little creature!" ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... never went to mass—that he was denounced by the priest, and feeling that his carrying into execution the heartless and oppressive proceedings of M'Clutchy had, taken together, certainly made him as unpopular a man as any individual of his contemptible standing in life could be, resolved, in the first place, to carry arms for his own protection, and, in the next, to take a step which he knew would vex the curate sorely. Accordingly, he lost no time in circulating, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... middle-aged gentleman of sunburned appearance, looks unmistakably delighted at the prospect of a change in the game. He is married; has a large family of promising young Lisles, and a fervent passion for tennis. Mrs. Talbot having proved a very contemptible adversary, he is charmed at this chance of getting rid ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... she must be stained and marked forever, she would remain away from him. Never should any circumstance connected with him be made small or contemptible by any act of hers. I read the motive, and, reading ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
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