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Narrow-minded   Listen
adjective
Narrow-minded  adj.  
1.
Of narrow mental scope; lacking tolerance or breadth of view; illiberal; mean. Opposite of broad-minded, open-minded, liberal. (Narrower terms: dogmatic, dogmatical; little, petty, small, small-minded)
Synonyms: narrowminded, narrow, illiberal, intolerant.
2.
Capable of being shocked by behavior of others. Opposite of unshockable.
Synonyms: shockable.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Narrow-minded" Quotes from Famous Books



... with members of both sexes in varied costumes and "headgears"—not forgetting the boatman in the tiny skiff who is here, there, and everywhere in case he is needed—the scene is a very pleasant one to look upon. Of course there are always some narrow-minded individuals to find fault, some "maiden" aunts "with spinster written on their brows," who will put up their gold-rimmed glasses with that peculiar sniff that invariably prefaces some extra sweet remarks, ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... travelled. We Chinese are great sinners in this regard. A Chinese maxim says, "It is dangerous to ride on horseback or to go on a voyage": hence until very recently we had a horror of going abroad. A person who remains all his life in his own town is generally narrow-minded, self-opinioned, and selfish. The American people are free from these faults. It is not only the rich and the well-to-do who visit foreign countries, but tradesmen and workmen when they have saved a little money also often cross the Atlantic. Some years ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... despised. The dauphin's brothers, for such mere boys, were singularly selfish and unamiable; and the only female relations of her husband, his aunts, to whom, as such, it would have been natural that a young foreigner should look for friendship and advice, were not only narrow-minded, intriguing, and malicious, but were predisposed to regard her with jealousy as likely to interfere with the influence which they had hoped to exert over their nephew when he ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... in a superior way. "They might" he said. "Nurses generally do. We are not particularly good, and nurses are so narrow-minded." ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow

... refused even to argue,—that life amid free Negroes was simply unthinkable, the maddest of experiments. The agents which the Bureau could command varied all the way from unselfish philanthropists to narrow-minded busybodies and thieves; and even though it be true that the average was far better than the worst, it was the one fly that helped to spoil the ointment. Then, amid all this crouched the freed slave, bewildered between friend and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... conscience, can justify himself in indulging the feeling. The removal of this prejudice is not a matter of opinion—it is a matter of duty. We have no right to palliate a feeling, sinful in itself, and highly injurious to a large number of our fellow-beings. Let us no longer act upon the narrow-minded idea, that we must always continue to do wrong, because we have so long been in the habit of doing it. That there is no necessity for the prejudice is shown by facts. In England, it exists to a much less degree than ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... fond of Anaitis. Barring her eccentricities when roused to passion, she was a generous and kindly creature, although in Jurgen's opinion somewhat narrow-minded. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... their great wars, with the exception of that concerning Sicily, even those with Hannibal and Antiochus, either by direct aggression or disturbance of settled political relations. "The policy of Rome was that of a narrow-minded but very able deliberate assembly, which had far too little power of grand combination, and far too much instinctive desire for the preservation of its own commonwealth, to devise projects in the spirit of a Caesar or a Napoleon." Nor did ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... is some assignable reason against the events taking place as described,—when men are represented as acting contrary to the character assigned them, or to human nature in general; as when a young lady of seventeen, brought up in ease, luxury and retirement, with no companions but the narrow-minded and illiterate, displays (as a heroine usually does) under the most trying circumstances, such wisdom, fortitude, and knowledge of the world, as the best instructors and the best examples can rarely produce without the aid of more mature age and longer experience.—On the other hand, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... be the centre of their domestic system, and even lovely Lilian revolved contentedly around him as a kind of satellite; he could do no wrong in his owner's eyes, his prejudices (and he was a narrow-minded animal) were rigorously respected, and all domestic arrangements were made with a primary view to ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... she considers it the signal for her to quit all mental acquisition except what she may gather from her desultory reading, and, henceforth, her family and her immediate neighborhood absorb her whole soul under ordinary circumstances. The great majority of our countrywomen thus grow careworn, narrow-minded, self-absorbed. Now this is not right—it is not necessary. A woman's first, most important duty is in her home; but this need not clip the wings of her spirit, so that thought and affection cannot go out into the great world, and feel themselves a part of its restless, throbbing, many-sided ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... incomplete state of mental and moral development. He would not let them think themselves educated till they had seen more of the world than could be done in Edinburgh, which was a city he had rather a contempt for, as a mere provincial capital, too superstitious and narrow-minded for his taste. Paris and London were the schools for men, and therefore, according to his notions, for women also; but when the time arrived for the tour on the Continent and the winter in London, which had been promised to the girls, he felt his health had ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... compact—strange at least for her, considering that only a few hours before she had thought of him as a friendly, but narrow-minded, old stranger. Something weak and malleable in her nature made her enter lightly into the compact, although all the time she knew that something more deeply serious and responsible would never allow her to break it. A faint regret for ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... and the most ordinary man is aware what a virtue becomes, when it is ordinary virtue no longer. Moral beauty, indeed, though it be of the rarest kind, never passes the comprehension of the most narrow-minded of men; and no act is so readily understood as the act that is truly sublime. We may admire a deed profoundly, perhaps, and yet not rise to its height; but it is imperative that we should not abide in the darkness that covers the thing we blame. Many a happiness ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... sincerity! Hypocrisy, in every form, should be denounced. Those who profess to believe what they do not, or to be what they are not—who assume the Christian name when they are in fact, but bitter and narrow-minded bigots—are only worthy ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... theatre; but Dr. Carlyle states that they regretted not taking the opportunity of witnessing a display of her talent, and of giving their sanction to the theatre as a place of recreation. Dr. Carlyle evidently considered it a narrow-minded intolerance and bigoted fanaticism that clergymen should be excluded from that amusement. At a period far later than 1784, the same opinion prevailed in some quarters. I recollect when such indulgence on the part of clergymen was treated with much ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... mean as he could be!" exclaimed Nannie. "He was so little and so narrow-minded, and he had no excuse for it either, for he had a good education and he'd been all ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... more impatient, more aspiring, less sensuous art which belongs to Western civilisation may bear many a change and not die utterly; nay, may feed on its intellect alone for a season, and enduring the martyrdom of a grim time of ugliness, may live on, rebuking at once the narrow-minded pedant of science, and the luxurious tyrant of plutocracy, till change bring back the spring again, and it blossoms once more into ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... 'Serving narrow-minded masters dwarfs high natures to their size:— Seen before a convex mirror, elephants do ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... opened my eyes, and there he stood before me, a large, dark, hairy man, heavy-jawed, slant-browed, fierce-eyed. How I got off my horse I do not know. But it seemed that the next I knew I was clasping his hand with both of mine and crying. I would have embraced him, but he was ever a narrow-minded, suspicious man, and he drew away from me. Yet did I cling ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London

... substantiate a bluff or settle a dispute with some other outfit riding the high country. And because Gary imagined that Bailey of the Concho had deliberately sent such youngsters as Andy White and Young Pete to the Blue Mesa to settle the matter of a boundary line, Gary felt insulted. He was too narrow-minded to reason that Bailey could hardly know whom Houck of the T-Bar-T would send. Gary's ill-humor was not improved by the presence of Young Pete nor by Pete's pugnacious attitude. Strangely enough, Gary was nervous because he knew that Young Pete ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... spent together before communion, and the directness and reverence with which both served God were combined with an utter abhorrence of all intolerance. Such qualities are generally misunderstood by the narrow-minded, who have only their own "shibboleths" to test all faith, and the one Church—whatever it may be—that they regard as "true." The queen and the prince rose above such distinctions; they shared the Catholicism ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... upon the subject of religion, and that this is the cause of his tolerant spirit; but is it possible you can intend to give us such dreadful and unamiable notions of religion. Are we to understand that the moment a man is sincere he is narrow-minded; that persecution is the child of belief; and that a desire to leave all men in the quiet and unpunished exercise of their own creed can only exist in the mind of an infidel? Thank God! I know many men whose principles are as firm as they are expanded, who cling tenaciously to their own ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... his own glory? Do we want the generous philanthropist there—the man who loves justice for its own sake—the man of strong natural powers, rendered stronger and clearer by honest principles?—or the narrow-minded timeserver—the man who would sacrifice any thing, even the liberties of his country, for a selfish end—the legal oppressor of the widow and the fatherless? Need these questions be answered from honest, high-souled voters? No! let every man answer for himself, when he goes to assert the rights ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur

... attitude to-day. But a more potent cause and a real justification of this attitude is the neglect of due balance of qualities and acquirements by so many educators and educational systems. Great educators have themselves rarely been narrow-minded men; but the traditions they have founded have gone the way of ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... She couldn't be straitlaced anyhow, nor narrow-minded. Doris would do anything under the sun that suited her ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... should all take the economical point of view—whether it would be wise for humanity to do so. There is a prosperity other than material. Some solitary artist or poet, drawing inspiration from scenes like this, might have contributed more to the happiness of mankind than a legion of narrow-minded, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... mixed with great hardships, and is often executed by those worthy neither of confidence nor respect. I am sure that we shall all have to go through many humiliations before this matter is settled. I know, darling, that you will say I am making a rather narrow-minded fuss. But I do hate publicity, and if it doesn't kill Robert outright, it will have some shattering effect upon his character and his health. Really, I am not thinking so much of myself. Your own reckless bravery, however, would quail a little, I fancy, at the idea of having your most ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... bad for the cause; but the majority of them were, at starting, men of generous instincts, a quick sense of that which is pure and true, and a genuine love of mankind. They dwelt upon their idea—they lived upon it for a few years—and then they "showed their keeping." If I should wish to find a narrow-minded, uncharitable, bigoted soul, in the smallest possible space of time, I would look among those who have made temperance the specialty of their lives—not because temperance is bad, but because one idea is bad; and the men afflicted by this particular idea ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... to tell you is this: in a real revolution—not a simple dynastic change or a mere reform of institutions—in a real revolution the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left out the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... was no narrow-minded sectarian, he still loved to foster in the minds of his own children a preference for the people that had, under God, saved his soul, and made him what he was, and he tried to bind his family to the Church of his choice. Spending a Sunday in the ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell

... foundation, the progress and the consequent success of any library. Where a liberal intelligence and a hearty cooeperation are found in those constituting the library board, the affairs of the institution will be managed with the best results. Where a narrow-minded and dictatorial spirit is manifested, even by a portion of those supervising a public library, it will require a large endowment both of patience and of tact in the librarian, to accomplish those aims which ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... views. The workman's whole business was now so different from what is was in the days of the arts and crafts guilds of the Middle Ages; they now found him ground down into some little division of industry, and it was quite impossible for him to work in his own way. Thus he got narrow-minded, because concentrated on some minor process. He was kept at work with his nose to the mill the whole time, and it became too exhausting for him to try and take these larger views of life. He often thought of the amount of talent and energy and practical beauty which was wasted ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... capitalists set about the realisation of this their great object with that strong common sense and that contempt for traditional principles which has ever distinguished them from their more narrow-minded compeers on the Continent. Chartism was dying out. The revival of commercial prosperity, natural after the revulsion of 1847 had spent itself, was put down altogether to the credit of Free Trade. Both these circumstances had turned the English working-class, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... faithful adherents of the exiled family are recorded, had been held up to the gaze of bleeding Caledonia, Chesterfield recommended mild measures, and advised the establishment of schools in the Highlands; but the age was too narrow-minded to adopt his views. In January, 1748, Chesterfield retired from public life. 'Could I do any good,' he wrote to a friend, 'I would sacrifice some more quiet to it; but convinced as I am that I can do none, I will indulge my ease, and preserve my ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... unrebuked? Hear His reply—"If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee!" He would have allowed no such narrow-minded exclusiveness to have interfered with the interchange of kindly civilities with a stranger. Nay, He would have given thee, better than all, the "living water" which "springeth ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... of narrow-minded bigots, who paint the Deity from their own gloomy conceptions, the young are too often frighted from the paths of virtue; despairing of ideal perfections, they give up all virtue as unattainable, and ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... handsome leather-bound volumes telling of curious arts, obscure speculations, half-fabulous histories, voyages, and adventures, which still constitute the almost unique value of the Brockhurst library. He might claim to be a man of science, moreover—of that delectable old-world science which has no narrow-minded quarrel with miracle or prodigy, wherein angel and demon mingle freely, lending a hand unchallenged to complicate the operations both of nature and of grace—a science which, even yet, in perfect ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... grandmother's interest regularly, but were not pleasant people to speak to. They had been part owners with her father in the Dolphin, the ship in which he had been wrecked. Having neglected to insure her they had lost a good deal of money by the circumstance, and being especially narrow-minded entertained an ill feeling even for poor Jessie herself, which they exhibited whenever she went to their office. She had been to a good school in Exeter, but the lady who kept it, and who would have been of great assistance, was dead, and the ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston

... is narrow-minded, or, perhaps it would be more correct to say, being narrow-minded he is Low Church. He is an indifferent scholar, and occupies himself with his religious fancies and those of his flock. He can reign supreme there. He is not ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... suggested to me that he would like to have you take lunch with him. I told him that you didn't go out with any one, and with coldbloodedness he replied, 'Ah, she hasn't been here long.' I hated him from that moment. Don't you see what a narrow-minded fellow I am?" ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read

... various characters of nature (which it is possible to do), but the various narrownesses of taste, which it is impossible to do. Rubens is not more vigorous than Titian, but less vigorous; but because he is so narrow-minded as to enjoy vigour only, he refuses to give the other qualities of nature, which would interfere with that vigour and with our perception of it. Again, Rembrandt is not a greater master of chiaroscuro than Titian;— ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... blame these men; at least we need not blame them overmuch. To say that they acted as they did is to say that they were human, were narrow-minded, and were the apostles of a lost cause. But they could not know this; they had no experience of the past to guide them; the conditions under which they found themselves were novel, and had ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... and consequently narrow-minded and ignorant mothers, of sceptical and libertine fathers, they spend five or six years at school, where they consummate the loss of what may have escaped the baneful example of ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... came. He had prepared, I believe, a pompous and proper oration, wherein he was to pardon her and even bestow a sort of qualified blessing; but the wan face and wild, hollow eyes, not seen for twelve years, frightened all his grandeur out of his head; and the obstinate, narrow-minded tyrant collapsed all at once into a foolish, fond old man. Something too late (that's one comfort) to avail him much. In Mabel's nature, soft and yielding as it appeared, there was the black spot that nothing but harshness and cruelty could have ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... the bitter quarrel between Newton and Leibnitz,—a quarrel exaggerated by narrow-minded partisans, and in truth not very creditable, in all its ramifications, to either party. Newton, in the course of a scientific correspondence with Leibnitz, published in 1712, by the Royal Society, under the title, "Commercium Epistolicum de ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... of course . . . they've many faults, like all nations. I don't dispute that. But are the Jews to blame for it? No, it's not the Jews who are to blame, but the Jewish women! They are narrow-minded, greedy; there's no sort of poetry about them, they're dull. . . . You have never lived with a Jewess, so you don't know how charming it is!" Susanna Moiseyevna pronounced the last words with deliberate emphasis and with no eagerness or laughter. She paused as though frightened ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... politic and influential of the emigres, a man who had been in touch with the Girondins in Normandy, who had obtained the ear of ministers at Whitehall, and who had been washed in so many waters that the genuine, exclusive, narrow-minded managers of Vendean legitimacy neither understood nor believed him. They brought a vast treasure in the shape of forged assignats; and in confused memory of the services rendered by the titular of Agra, they brought ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... hero of the story, is represented as a human being endowed with every natural charm, gift, and grace, who, by the one false step of an unsuitable marriage, wrecked his whole life. A narrow-minded, cold-hearted precisian, without sufficient intellect to comprehend his genius, or heart to feel for his temptations, formed with him one of those mere worldly marriages common in high life; and, finding that she could not reduce him to the mathematical proprieties ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... ascribed to God would have induced him to intervene at an earlier stage. The kind of father who co-operates with the more gifted and ambitious of his children, and does nothing for the less gifted and sluggish, is a narrow-minded and narrow-hearted man. Affection turns rather to those who cannot help themselves, or who need judicious and constant inspiration. This view we are considering is even less flattering to God, because the aspiring children of the nineteenth ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe

... Negro, as he bade his black comrades "Good-bye! Good luck! God bless you! Take keer o' yo' self!" felt in his heart that all America ought to forget her prejudices. He felt that if she did not do so, she was indeed only fit to be characterized as narrow-minded, mean-spirited, illiberal and warped—entirely unfit for the position of leadership in ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... all, and I think Mr. Shine is a well intentioned man whose faith, such as it is, is honest; but he is ignorant, coarse-fibred, and narrow-minded. He is doing right according to his own poor, dim light, and could not be convinced otherwise by any word or act of ours; but his preachings can do me no injury. They do not irritate me in the least—indeed, I am not sure that they do ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... character in literary history, that Demosthenes spoke to a people of brutes;—to a barbarous people;—that there could have been no civilisation before the invention of printing. Johnson was a keen but a very narrow-minded observer of mankind. He perpetually confounded their general nature with their particular circumstances. He knew London intimately. The sagacity of his remarks on its society is perfectly astonishing. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and to hold intercourse with minds which are immature and feeble compared with our own, we gradually acquire habits that the rough collisions and the friction of active life prevent from gathering around other men. Narrow-minded prejudices and prepossessions are imbibed through the facility with which, in our own little community, we adopt and maintain opinions. A too strong confidence in our own views on every subject almost inevitably comes from ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... they remained sitting on the doorstep until the day came. Neither found a word to appease or to conciliate; each felt fear and scorn of the other. The one measured the other by the standard of his own anger, and they found each other narrow-minded ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... just impeached Aurelius Cotta, a senator, and the judices, from spite against him, had refused to convict. So he turned to the Italian land-owners, and became the mouthpiece of their selfishness, for a selfish or at best a narrow-minded end. The nobles must have, at heart, disliked his allies; but they cheered him in the Senate, and he succeeded in practically strangling the commission by procuring the transfer of its jurisdiction to the consuls. The consul for the ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... opposite to her was a member of the City Council. She remembered that some time ago, three or four years back at least, some disagreeable person had expressed indignation that an ex-German, one only just naturalised, should be elected to such a body. She had thought the speaker narrow-minded and ill-natured. An infusion of German thoroughness and thrift would do the City Council good, and perhaps ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... notably the case in 1820. The Faubourg Saint-Germain might very easily have led and amused the middle classes in days when people's heads were turned with distinctions, and art and science were all the rage. But the narrow-minded leaders of a time of great intellectual progress all of them detested art and science. They had not even the wit to present religion in attractive colours, though they needed its support. While Lamartine, Lamennais, Montalembert, and other ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... order and discipline in the shop; a quiet, diffident, secretive, tedious, and obstinate youngish man, absolutely faithful, absolutely efficient in his sphere; without brilliance, without distinction; perhaps rather little-minded, certainly narrow-minded; but what a force in the shop! The shop was inconceivable without Mr. Povey. He was under twenty and not out of his apprenticeship when Mr. Baines had been struck down, and he had at once proved his ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... boughs over it, in the most lavish and reckless way. Almost all our crops, too, are sown broadcast, even peas and turnips. A farmer among us, who should go about his twenty-acre field, poking his finger into it here and there, and dropping down a mustard seed, would be thought a penurious, narrow-minded husbandman. The dandelions in the river-meadows, and the forget-me-nots along the mountain roads, you see at once they are put to no economy in space. Some seasons, too, our rye comes up here and there ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville

... valour and devotion of Champlain, had been in existence for more than half a century. Yet it was still in a pitiable state of weakness and destitution. The care and maintenance of the settlement had devolved upon trading companies, and their narrow-minded mercantile selfishness had stifled its progress. From other causes, also, there had been but little growth. Cardinal Richelieu, the great French minister, had tried at one time to infuse new life into the colony; [Footnote: For the earlier history ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais

... one of the latter kind but the longer the grace he said, the better a man he thought he was. In every other way, so liberal and kind, it was not consistent for him to act so narrow-minded regarding religion. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... writing this work to show that the American Government has always construed people of African parentage to be aliens, not only when the Constitution was tortured by narrow-minded men to shield the cruel, murderous slave-holder in the possession of his human property, but even now, when the panoply of citizenship is, presumably, all-sufficient to insure to the late slave the enjoyment of full manhood ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... ended in disaster. Then, in quick succession, arose a series of military leaders who aimed to secure by the sword what was no longer to be obtained through constitutional and legal means. Marius, a great general but no politician, could only break down and destroy. Sulla, a sincere but narrow-minded statesman, could do no more than prop up the structure— already tottering—of senatorial rule. Pompey soon undid that work and left the constitution to become again the sport of rival soldiers. Caesar, triumphing over Pompey, gained ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... where we can find it best and cheapest, we are restricted to a small portion of the earth's surface, and have to pay a third part more than we might obtain the article for without any loss to the revenue. By this narrow-minded system of buying, we deprive ourselves of valuable markets for our manufactures, as you have shown is likely to be the case with the Brazils on the expiry of the commercial treaty with that country if the matter is left in the hands of Ministers, "and no effort ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... certain class of gentlemen habitually assume on such occasions,—that I mistake the case completely: that no wish is entertained in any quarter to invalidate the truth of Revelation, or to shake Men's confidence in the Bible as the Word of GOD: that it has been the way of narrow-minded bigots in all ages, and is so in this, to raise an outcry of the Bible being in danger, and so to rouse the prejudices of mankind: that the error lies in claiming for the Bible an office which it nowhere claims for itself, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... following in the Colonel's speech, which was delivered at Rockford, Ill., on Tuesday, October 5, 1880. We publish it in order to show the utter fallacy of the infidel's claim that Christianity is necessarily in conflict with education; that Christians are necessarily bigots, narrow-minded men, dangerous to the liberty of man, woman and child. Read it, ye fault-finding skeptics and infidels, and save your claims against the Christian religion if you can. Correllate it with the hollow utterances of Colonel Ingersoll, which are so often repeated by him in ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various

... say, Stoffel, people ought not to be so narrow-minded. What difference does it make what a person's religion is, just so he's upright, and not a ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... some more lawful business. For Dr. Upround, possessing as he did great influence with Robin, and shocked as he was by what Carroway had said, refused to have anything more to do with his most distinguished parishioner until he should forsake his ways. And for this he must not be thought narrow-minded, strait-laced, or unduly dignified. His wife quite agreed with him, and indeed had urged it as the only proper course; for her motherly mind was uneasy about the impulsive nature of Janetta; and chess-men to her were dolls, without even the merit of encouraging the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... is the very extravagance of folly to tax Jerome with "extreme ignorance of early Christian literature." Those who are acquainted with his writings will decline to subscribe any such depreciatory certificate. He was undoubtedly bigoted and narrow-minded, but he had a most capacious memory; he had travelled in various countries; he had gathered a prodigious stock of information; he was the best Christian scholar of his generation; he has preserved for us the knowledge of not a few important ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen

... go where common kindness is shut out," said Dr. Prince. "You have done a great deal to make those poor children happy, this summer. They had been treated in a very narrow-minded way. It was not like Tideshead, I must say," he added, "but people are shy sometimes, and Mrs. Foster herself could not bear to see the pity in her neighbors' faces. It will be ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett

... adventure, recounting the circumstances with great minuteness and glee. It is as follows: Once in 1768, Elwert and he had to repeat their catechism together on a certain day publicly in the church. Their teacher, an ill-conditioned, narrow-minded pietist, had previously threatened them with a thorough flogging if they missed even a single word. To make the matter worse, this very teacher chanced to be the person whose turn it was to catechise on the appointed day. Both the boys began their answers with dismayed ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... threat doesn't frighten me at all, deacon. After what you have said, I should refuse to remain in this church"—the deacon stepped forward eagerly—"were it not that I realise more than ever before how much you need me, how much you ignorant, narrow-minded creatures need to be taught the meaning of true Christianity." The ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo

... and selfish desertion of his country at the moment of its utmost peril. "The men who oppose a strong and energetic government," wrote Washington to Hamilton on July 10, 1787, the day of Yates' and Lansing's retirement from the Philadelphia convention, "are, in my opinion, narrow-minded politicians, or are under the influence of local views." This reference to "local views" meant George Clinton, upon whose advice Yates and Lansing acted, and who declared unreservedly that only confusion could come to the country ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... to be sincerely hoped that the American public, in its detestation of the ungenerous, narrow-minded, and inconsistent conduct of the majority of Englishmen toward the Federal Union since the present war began, will not lose sight of the fact that, here and there in Great Britain, men of superior intelligence and information ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... mourners appeared with bands and streamers of crape, this was voted by the majority as "too gay." That circumstance alone was sufficient to render that funeral famous, but it was remembered, too, as having shocked the proprieties in another and more serious manner. No one would be so narrow-minded as to object to the custom of the return procession falling into a series of horse-races of the wildest description, and ending up at Latour's in a general riot. But to race with the corpse was considered bad form. The "corpse-driver," as he was called, could hardly be blamed on this occasion. ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor

... would leave it to "private enterprise." A promising enterprise truly, when every landholder in Ceylon, on referring to his title-deeds, observes the reservation of all precious metals to the crown. This is a fair sample of the narrow-minded, selfish policy of a government which, in endeavoring to save a little, loses all; a miserable tampering with the public in attempting to make a ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... posterity. He is reminded that "MERIT may be pardoned, but not intrigue," and that he is to "propagate in all uncivilised and barbarous countries the benefits of Christianity and civilisation. Religious ideas have more influence than certain narrow-minded philosophers are willing to believe. They are capable of rendering great services ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... habits of life, daily thrift, and a rank above the lowest. I longed to be acquainted with them, in order to investigate what manner of folks they were, what sort of households they kept, their politics, their religion, their tastes, and whether they were as narrow-minded as their betters. There can be very little doubt of it: an Englishman is English, in whatever rank of life, though no more intensely so, I should imagine, as an artisan or petty shopkeeper, than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... physical laws. It is to be regretted that one of the sects which has sprung from the Hebraic creed, and which worships the same God, has been unable to emancipate itself or its people from the idea of an arbitrary theological doctrine of the origin and control of disease. It is this creation of a narrow-minded theology of a vaccilating, unintelligent, unphilosophical, and arbitrary God, who would neither respect nor regard the laws of his own creation, that has led the great body of physicians out of the modern churches. They do ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... perform some astonishing piece of work for the purpose of attracting attention or to secure a well-salaried position, or even if he be so wedded to his specialty as to fail to be sensitive to the relations of it to the body of truth in general. And the same holds good of the narrow-minded reformer, of whom Emerson has said that his virtue so painfully resembles vice; the man who puts a moral idol in the place of the moral ideal, who erects into the object toward which all his enthusiasm ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... Northumberland." Percy is sensible that you did not mean to injure him; but he is vexed to think that your behaviour to him upon that occasion may be interpreted as a proof that he is despised by you, which I know is not the case. I have told him, that the charge of being narrow-minded was only as to the particular point in question; and that he had the merit of being a martyr to his ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... uttered opinions that cut like the blade of a knife. He created the impression that his mind was full of ready-made views instilled into him by his father and mother, who had themselves got them from their ancestors. He never hesitated, but on every subject immediately made narrow-minded suggestions, without showing any embarrassment and without realizing that there might be other ways of looking at things. One felt that his head was closed up, that no ideas circulated in it, none of those ideas which renew a man's mind and make it sound, like a breath of fresh ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... received by Charlotte with ill-concealed embarrassment. He was himself out of humour; his business was unfinished; and he had just discovered that the neighbouring official with whom he had to deal, was an obstinate and narrow-minded personage. Many things had ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... events which took place years ago, but I have seen no reason to change the opinion then formed, that Mr. Parasyte, the principal, was a "toady" of the first water; that he was a narrow-minded, partial man, in whom the principle of justice had never been developed. He was a good teacher, an excellent teacher; by which I mean only to say that he had a rare skill and tact for imparting knowledge, the mere dry bones of art, science, and philosophy. He was a capital scholar himself, and ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic

... narrow-minded man, painfully conscientious in his statements lest he should be unjust to somebody; a slow thinker, unable to let a subject drop when once he had started upon it. He had no sooner uttered his remark about hard times than he was ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... Public Schools. Men considered as: 1. Belonging to the old aristocratic class. 2. The conservatives of society. 3. Politicians of small vision. 4. Residents of rural districts. 5. The ignorant, narrow-minded, and penurious. 6. Taxpayers. 7. Lutherans, Reformed-Church, Mennonites, and Quakers. 8. Southern men. 9. Proprietors of private schools. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... lordship held forth with great taste and erudition and discovered an intimate knowledge of the authors of antiquity, "Here's a book," said he, taking one from his bosom, "written with great elegance and spirit; and, though the subject may give offence to some narrow-minded people, the author will always be held in esteem by every person of wit and learning." So saying, he put into my hand Petronius Arbiter, and asked my opinion of his wit and manner. I told him, that, in my opinion, he wrote with great ease and vivacity, but was withal so lewd and indecent ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... of approaching age, a certain habit of his race began to affect him, and the idea of a quieter life, with a woman whose possession would make him envied, grew mildly attractive. A brilliant marriage in another county would, besides, avenge him on the narrow-minded of his own, who had despised his first choice! With judicial family-eye he surveyed the eligible women of his acquaintance. It was, no doubt, to his disadvantage that already an heir lay "mewling and puking in the ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... have even debased the noblest and most beneficial art that ever engaged the study of mankind, which cannot be too much cultivated, and too little restrained, in seeking to limit the practice of it to a set of narrow-minded, illiberal wretches, who, like the lowest handicraftsmen, claim the exclusive privileges of a corporation. Had you doubted my ability, you ought to have satisfied yourself in a manner consistent with decency and candour; but your behaviour on this occasion is such a malicious outrage upon good manners ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... He's a north-country man by birth, and has been out in New Zealand all his life. This little Devonshire farm is all he has now. He had a large "station" in the North Island, and was much looked up to, kept open house, did everything, as one would guess, in a narrow-minded, large-handed way. He came to grief suddenly; I don't quite know how. I believe his only son lost money on the turf, and then, unable to face his father, shot himself; if you had seen John Ford, you could imagine that. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... various exigencies of the times, and the low state of the royal treasury, rendered any new expedition highly inexpedient. They intimated also that Columbus ought not to be employed, until his good conduct in Hispaniola was satisfactorily established by letters from Ovando. These narrow-minded suggestions failed in their aim: Isabella had implicit confidence in the integrity of Columbus. As to the expense, she felt that while furnishing so powerful a fleet and splendid retinue to Ovando, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... us out another text, O man morose and narrow-minded! Come turn the page—I read the next, And then the next, and ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Saxony suffered much in her youth by a narrow-minded, bigoted mother, a Sadist like the monstrous Torquemada; marriage, she imagined, spelled a rich husband, more lover than master; freedom from tyranny, paltry surroundings, interference. To her untutored mind, life at the Saxon Court meant right royal splendor, liberty to do as one ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... America against England, or rather made him see that it would be the real advantage of England to conciliate America, made him also take the side of liberty on the Catholic question. The short-sighted and narrow-minded politicians who resisted the reasonable demands of a colony until it was too late to yield, were enabled, unfortunately, to resist more effectually the just demands of several millions ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... been shocked to put these surging thoughts into words, and Bessie was her only intimate who would avow that there could be anything to be found fault with in a clergyman. When alone together, Bessie would sometimes regretfully, sometimes in a tone of amusement, go over bits of narrow-minded folly that had struck her in the clergy, and more especially in her uncle's curate, Mr. Lifford, whose dryness was, she owned, very ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... take an ell. Adj. selfish; self-seeking, self-indulgent, self-interested, self- centered; wrapped up in self, wrapt up in self[obs3], centered in self; egotistic, egotistical; egoistical[obs3]. illiberal, mean, ungenerous, narrow-minded; mercenary, venal; covetous &c. 819. unspiritual, earthly, earthly-minded; mundane; worldly, worldly- minded; worldly-wise; timeserving[obs3]. interested; alieni appetens sui profusus[Lat]. Adv. ungenerously &c. adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... like to hear such things; and to me they appeared to be insolent, as well as narrow-minded. For if you came to that, why might not men, as well as women, be divided into the same three classes, and be pronounced upon by women, as beings even more devoid than their gentle judges of reason? ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... dealt with in the book, and he was naturally shocked at the freedom shown by the rector of St. Chad's in criticising men whose names have been held in the highest esteem for some thousands of years. He at once perceived that the rector of St. Chad's had been very narrow-minded in his views regarding the conduct of the men whom he had attacked. It occurred to him, as it had to Mr. Ayrton, that the writer had drawn his picture without any regard for perspective. That was very foolish ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... I expected," said Mrs. Hardyng. "The true state of the case is this: that woman is a jealous, narrow-minded, illiberal creature, with a tongue 'hung in the middle.' She wanted to get you there simply to satisfy her own idle curiosity, and insult you with her insolent patronage. You have made another enemy, and that is all there ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... policy with him. He cared nothing about human rights. His dark and cruel nature was unsusceptible of a noble or generous impulse. While he preached liberal generalities, he ruled his subjects with an iron rod. He was bigoted, narrow-minded, and brutal. The sense of right was not in his nature. His ambition was to be an object of heathenish idolatry to his subjects—whether as a god or devil it mattered nothing; fear was the only incense he was capable ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... it yourself?" said Mrs. Morley. "The more you examine the narrow-minded prejudices, the English arrogant man's jealous dread of superiority—nay, of equality—in the woman he 'can only value as he does his house or his horse, because she is his exclusive property, the more ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... She was a delicate, narrow-minded woman, with no open vulgarity about her, but simply ignorant of the fact that bragging of one's distinguished relatives had fallen into disuse. Her daughter, was like her in manner, with the likeness imposed by having such ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... lines noticed, to extend, enlarge, and fortify the good beginnings of President Polk and Secretary Buchanan, by inaugurating several new lines, and establishing a permanent and recognized basis of action. But in all this he was thwarted by the machinations of narrow-minded men, who deemed it a higher effort to agitate the country and endeavor to separate the North and the South, than establish and secure those mighty aids to industry which should give development, wealth, strength, and security to the whole American ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey

... That shows your ignorance and narrowness. The Y.M.C.A. is a splendid organization, and it has proved the anchor that has kept many a young man from dashing onto the rocks of destruction. Those who sneer at it should be ashamed of themselves, but, as a rule, they are too bigoted, prejudiced, or narrow-minded to recognize the fact that some of the most manly young men to be found belong ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)

... the man who from the bottom of his heart, laying aside his prejudices and speaking the unbiased truth, will not say that women should have the same rights that he himself enjoys, and we will show you a narrow-minded sycophant, a cruel, selfish tyrant, or one that has not the moral courage to battle for a principle he knows to be just. Equal rights before the law is justice to all, and the more education we give our children ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... who lead an honest, stupid existence. They are contented with their lot—because ignorant of any other. They are resentful of all innovations—because they are narrow-minded and full of deep ruts; they are guiltless of one clever thought; they sometimes stumble into somewhat of a clever action, but humbly deprecate the move, unconscious of having done a clever thing. Such men used to float about me in shoals of delicious stupidity. I was such a new creature! I was ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.

... had but one qualification for the position in which he had placed her—namely, extreme personal beauty. She was indeed kind-hearted and amiable, and among the temptations of a court as dissolute as was that of Louis XV. she preserved her reputation unspotted. But she was narrow-minded and unintellectual, a bigoted Catholic, and so blinded by national and religious prejudices that many of the most fatal mistakes of the Empire are directly traceable to her influence. An alliance with a royal princess ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... help any girl in any way possible. Not only to help weak girls to grow strong, and timid girls to grow brave, and helpless girls to become useful, and lonely girls to find friends and social opportunities—it is for all these things, but for more—much more besides. It is to show selfish, narrow-minded girls—like that poor little Sadie—the beauty of unselfishness and generosity and thoughtful kindness to others. Don't you see that we have no right to refuse to give Sadie her chance just because she doesn't know any better than ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston

... comparison may be made between Taine's pages and the observations on American education recently made by M. Paul Bourget in his excellent book, "Outre-Mer." He, too, after having noted that our education merely produces narrow-minded bourgeois, lacking in initiative and will-power, or anarchists—"those two equally harmful types of the civilised man, who degenerates into impotent platitude or insane destructiveness"—he too, I say, draws a comparison that cannot be the object ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... John Mller, well characterized by saying that "God permitted the act, to show the morality of kings;" and it is twenty-four years since down-trodden Poland made the greatest—not the last—manifestation of her imperishable vitality, which the cabinets of Europe were either too narrow-minded to understand, or too corrupt to appreciate. Eighty-one years of still unretributed crime, and twenty-four years of misery and exile! It is a long time to suffer, and not ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... a narrow-minded, or a stupid woman, cannot feel nor understand the rationality, the propriety, or the beauty of this relation; and she it is, that will be most likely to carry her measures by tormenting, when she cannot please, or by petulant complaints or obtrusive ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher

... superstition. Thy grandsire was a good and excellent man, but narrow-minded, like other priests; and, deceived by their example, he wished but to open a small wicket in the gate of truth, and admit the world only on that limited scale. Seest thou, Hereward, thy grandsire ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... effect of having also given that theory consideration. "She's not magnanimous, poor soul. I fancy she is rather a narrow-minded person, with strict limitations in regard to people who think ill—or too well—of ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... faithful and intelligent translation of my novels into the Italian language—has long since informed you, that there are certain important social topics which are held to be forbidden to the English novelist (no matter how seriously and how delicately he may treat them), by a narrow-minded minority of readers, and by the critics who flatter their prejudices. You also know, having done me the honor to read my books, that I respect my art far too sincerely to permit limits to be wantonly assigned to it, which are imposed in no other civilized country on the face of the ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... crime which he was too timid to perpetrate? According to the horrified expressions of Catholics that must have been the situation. Luther, in their view, says to Melanchthon: Philip, you are a simpleton. Why scruple about a sin? You are still confined in the trammels of very narrow-minded moral views. You must get rid of them. Have the courage to be wicked, Make a hero of yourself by executing some bold piece of iniquity. Be an "Uebermensch." Sin with brazen unconcern; be a fornicator, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... departure at length arrived. Clerval spent the last evening with us. He had endeavoured to persuade his father to permit him to accompany me and to become my fellow student, but in vain. His father was a narrow-minded trader and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son. Henry deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education. He said little, but when he spoke I read in his kindling eye and in his ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... attributive clauses: "which men call Earth" and "(in which) men strive," etc. low-thoughted care; narrow-minded anxiety, care about earthly things. Comp. the form of the adjective 'low-browed,' L'Alleg. 8: both epithets are borrowed by Pope ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... week for every day's absence, without leave. I suspect this must have been at a very early period, while the governments were in the hands of the first emigrants, who, being mostly laborers, were narrow-minded and severe. I know that in Virginia, the laws allowed their servitude to be protracted only two days for every one they were absent without leave. So mild was this kind of servitude, that it was very frequent for foreigners, who carried to America money enough, not only to pay their passage, but ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... Whigs are too finical to join heartily with the popular advocates, the Reformers are too cold. They hated literature, poetry, and romance; nothing gives them pleasure that does not give others pain; utilitarianism means prosaic, hard-hearted, narrow-minded dogmatism. Indeed, his pet essay on the principles of human nature was simply an assault on what he took to be their fundamental position. He fancied that the school of Bentham regarded man as a purely selfish and calculating animal; and his whole ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... Generals Joubert and Smit, who had been described with admirable truth and candour, were so enraged that they demanded the instant dismissal of the 'conceited young popinjay' who had dared to criticise his masters. The President, however, who had been described as an ignorant, narrow-minded, pig-headed, and irascible old Boer whom—with the others thrown in—the writer could play with and twist round his finger as he chose, was not disturbed by the criticism. In reply to appeals for forgiveness on the score of youth, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... authority for so doing,—for by the charter which he represented, the establishment of judicial courts was a function of the General Court,—he proceeded to institute a special commission of Oyer and Terminer, consisting of seven magistrates, first of whom was the hard, obstinate, narrow-minded Stoughton. The commissioners applied themselves to their office without delay. Their first act was to try Bridget Bishop, against whom an accusation twenty years old and retracted by its author on his death-bed, had been revived. The court sentenced her to die by hanging, and she was accordingly ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various

... the validity of the facts by which it may be refuted. This empiricism, the melancholy heritage transmitted to us from former times, invariably contends for the truth of its axioms with the arrogance of a narrow-minded spirit. Physical philosophy, on the other hand, when based upon science, doubts because it seeks to investigate, distinguishes between that which is certain and that which is merely probable, and strives incessantly to perfect theory by ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... were thrust out, with every aggravation of cruelty and robbery. No nation can commit crimes like this without suffering more than its victims. Spain has never to this day recovered from the blow to her own prosperity, to her commerce, her manufactures, and her civilisation dealt by the narrow-minded and ignorant King, led by a despicable favourite, and the fanatical bigot, Ribera. With the Moors went almost all their arts and industries; immense tracts of country became arid wastes: Castile and La Mancha barely raise crops every second year where ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... maintained, and rigorously. In the houses of the Sadducees Joseph heard these very words, and their crude scepticism revolted his tender soul: he was drawn back to his own sect, the Pharisees, for however narrow-minded and fanatical they might be he could not deny to them the virtue of sincerity. It was with a delightful sense of community of spirit that he returned to them, and in the conviction that it would be well to let pass without protest the observances which himself long ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... when they have been there rediscovered, promulgating them, not as discoveries, but with authority as what men still profess to believe. The danger is, lest the formula itself be dismissed by clear-headed narrow-minded logicians, and the connotation fixed by them (in order that the denotation may be extended) in accordance with the present use of the term. Then, if the truths be at any time rediscovered, the prejudice is against them as novelties. The selfish theory of morals partly fell ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing

... intervention in behalf of the outcasts of their sex readily exposed the English women to misrepresentation and degrading remarks from the quarter of narrow-minded men, the women did not allow themselves to be held back from energetically opposing the introduction of the law that was an insult to their sex. In newspaper articles and pamphlets the "pros" and "cons" were discussed by men and women; ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... prudery and pruriency are already alive in the popular mind, but yet we see also that some of the most distinguished thinkers of the early Christian Church, in striking contrast to the more morbid and narrow-minded mediaeval ascetics, clearly stood aside from the popular movement. On the whole, they were submerged because Christianity, like Buddhism, had in it from the first a germ that lent itself to ascetic renunciation, and the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... well. There are a great many of them, and as regards beauty, if not wit—of a limited kind indeed, but still wit—it is hard to say that the animal kingdom has the advantage. The views of plants are sadly narrow; all dissenters are narrow-minded; but within their own bounds they know the details of their business sufficiently well—as well as though they kept the most nicely-balanced system of accounts to show them their position. They are eaten, it is true; to eat them is our bigoted and intolerant way of trying to ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... scene is laid in Westphalia. The impoverished Baron Schnuck-Puckelig-Erbsenscheucher, a faithful representative of the narrow-minded and prejudiced nobility, lives with his prudish, sentimental daughter, Emerentia, in the dilapidated castle, Schnick Schnack-Schnurr. Their sole companion is the daft school-teacher, Agesel, who, having lost, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... wonderfully narrow-minded in business, and, being new to the country, had no notion that Indian banking is totally distinct from Home work. Like most clever self-made men, he had much simplicity in his nature; and, somehow ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... Americans he represented as a people at once honest and narrow-minded. If they are still far from our level—and this must necessarily be true, in an artistic and literary point of view—we are not, however, at liberty to despise a country which counts such names as Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emerson, Cooper, Poe, Washington ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... as Catholic. It was not the fault of religion; it was the fault of that short-sighted linking of theological dogmas to scriptural texts which, in utter defiance of the words and works of the Blessed Founder of Christianity, narrow-minded, loud-voiced men are ever prone to substitute for religion. Justly is it said by one of the most eminent among contemporary Anglican divines, that "it is because they have mistaken the dawn for a conflagration that theologians have so often been ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... much attention to theory, by too close a study of books, we may become narrow-minded and pedantic, and gradually may become unable to appreciate natural beauties, our whole attention being concentrated on the defects in art. We want to listen to the call of ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... in that way, found her harsh judgment insensibly relaxing, as she stepped to the counter where Pease stood, and asked quite amiably to see some of the best calicoes, just in from New-York. Pease, the narrow-minded idiot, thought this a good time to play off a smart trick on one of Smith's regular customers. So he paraded a large variety of goods before her, and took occasion to recommend a very pretty article, for which he charged a monstrous ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... Moore's "Life of Byron," and has fallen in love with the latter and in hate with his wife. She declares that he was originally good, generous, humble, religious—indeed, everything that a man can be, short of absolute perfection. She thinks me narrow-minded and prejudiced because I do not care to read his life, and because, in spite of all Moore's assertions, I maintain that with Byron's own works in one's hand his character cannot possibly be a riddle to anybody. I dare say the devil may sometimes be painted ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... for a year as teacher. In 1847 Charlotte's novel 'Jane Eyre' (pronounced like the word 'air') won a great success. Her three later novels are less significant. In 1854 she was married to one of her father's curates, a Mr. Nicholls, a sincere but narrow-minded man. She was happy in the marriage, but died within a few months, worn out by the unremitting physical and moral ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... freely, as fervently, and as hopefully, as if no such thing as a Republic, one and indivisible, with a keen scent and an unappeasable thirst for the blood of aristocrats, existed. They forgot all about "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality"—these egotistical, narrow-minded young people;—they also forgot the characteristic alternative to those unparalleled blessings—"Death." But Prosper Alix did not forget any of these things; and his consternation, his provision of suffering ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... beat her in Russian fashion, and she, as an Englishwoman, was narrow-minded enough to resent this; or perhaps, merely, I had the misfortune to ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.' There are some Christian people who are simply very unscrupulous and think themselves very strong; and whose consciences are not more enlightened, but less sensitive, than those of the 'narrow-minded brethren' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... scarcely in her teens. There had been terrible scenes with this child, who evinced a mystical disposition, and was ever talking of becoming a nun when she grew up. Gaston, her brother, resembled his father; he was brutal in his ways, narrow-minded, supremely egotistical. Very different was the little girl Andree, whom La Catiche had suckled. She had become a pretty child—so affectionate, docile, and gay, that she scarcely complained even of her brother's teasing, almost bullying ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... school days happy, but I even liked being at school in preference to staying with my aunt. I hated the thought of going to her for the holidays. She was a narrow-minded, selfish woman—a clergyman's widow, and seemed to take a delight in mortifying me by continually reminding me that all the money left by my father was L500, which would just pay for my education and ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke

... through causes which it is not the place to investigate here, lost their power on the ocean; the temporary maritime supremacy of Holland having passed away, because the people of that flat country were too close and narrow-minded to grasp the world for any length of time; France, the only modern rival of England as a naval power, having been compelled, owing to the revolutions of the last and the present centuries, to concentrate her whole strength on the Continent of Europe; the young giant of the West, America, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... one reflects that more than half of the enormous crowd came, probably, from tiny villages in France—where a rocket is as rare as an angelic visitation; and, on the carnal side, as beautiful in their eyes—it seems a very narrow-minded thing to object. It is true that you and I connect fireworks with Mafeking night or Queen Victoria's Jubilee; and that they seem therefore incongruous when used to celebrate a visitation of God. But it is not so with these people. For them ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson

... was sneaped into silence. Once more he could not keep from his face a look that seemed to apologise for his opinions. And all the heroic and passionate grandeur of Parnell's furious career shrivelled up to mere sordidness before the inability of one narrow-minded and ignorant but vigorous woman to appreciate its quality. Not only did Edwin feel apologetic for himself, but also for Parnell. He wished he had not tried to be funny about Parnell; he wished he had not mentioned him. The brightness of the birthday ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... mind, her unmethodical manners, were still badly suited to the nice precision of a country housewife; and as the prudent mistress of a family sneered at her pretensions, she, in her turn, scorned the narrow-minded mistress of a family. ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... pointedly on the moral and intellectual apathy that prevailed outside a few places like York or other centres of intelligence; but they forgot to make allowance for the difficulties that surrounded these settlers. The isolation of their lives had naturally the effect of making even the better class narrow-minded, selfish, and at last careless of anything like refinement. Men who lived for years without the means of frequent communication with their fellow-men, without opportunities for social, instructive intercourse, ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot

... Panine the fears his friends entertained on his account. The Prince smiled disdainfully, saying these fears were the effect of plebeian timidity. The mistress understood nothing of great speculations, and Cayrol was a narrow-minded banker! He knew what he was doing. The results of his speculations were mathematical. So far they had not disappointed his hopes. The great Universal Credit Company, of which he was going to be a director, would bring him in such an immense ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... is a quick saying with the Spaniards, Artes inter haeredes non dividi. {25b} Yet these have inherited their fathers' lying, and they brag of it. He is a narrow-minded man that affects a triumph in any glorious study; but to triumph in a lie, and a lie themselves have forged, is frontless. Folly often goes beyond her bounds; but ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... not a blackguard, Sabina, and you ought to know that as well as the rest of the world. I'm poor, unfortunately, and the poor have got to be politic. Daniel may be just, but it's a narrow-minded, hypocritical justice, and if I tell him I'm engaged to you, he'll sack me. That's the plain English ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... creed have much to answer for. The murderer who destroys human life for wicked passion and wantonness is less criminal than the proudly learned, yet egotistical, and therefore densely ignorant scientist, who, seeking to crush the soul by his feeble, narrow-minded arguments, and deny its imperishable nature, dares to spread his poisonous and corroding doctrines of despair through the world, draining existence of all its brightness, and striving to erect barriers of distrust between the creature and the Creator. ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... assembly is an evil master, but when it is narrow-minded and bigoted as well, it becomes indeed intolerable. The following tit-bits from the debates in the two Raads show the intelligence and spirit of the men who were ruling over one of the most ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... her head for a minute. "It is true I did not love her," she said, "in the past, but I have changed my views. I have been narrow-minded, and small, and silly. She herself has opened my eyes. I cannot tell you more now. Maggie will come down, and will be able to go on with her lessons just as usual this afternoon; but I want a day off, and I ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... the colony, if he had remained there. But he thought he had duties in England: his family needed him; he must defend his people from the religious oppression still prevailing; and Lord Baltimore had gone to England to resist him in the boundary dispute. One of the more narrow-minded of his faith wrote to Penn from England that he was enjoying himself too much in his colony and seeking his own selfish interest. Influenced by all these considerations, he returned in August, 1684, and it was long before he saw Pennsylvania again—not, indeed, until October, 1699, and then ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... systems briefly stated were as follows: Chutsz 'a teaching produced many learned men in this country, but not infrequently these men were inferior, being narrow-minded, prejudiced, and behind the age. Wang's doctrines, on the other hand, while they cannot escape the charge of shallowness on all occasions, serve the moral purpose for which they were propagated ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... been accused of overturning revelation with regard to the constitution and history of the earth. Indeed, there has scarcely been a discovery in astronomy, in natural history, or in physical science, that has not been attacked by the bigoted and narrow-minded as leading to infidelity. ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... tradition, which may become either offensive pride or defensive self-respect. With the Cure, Ferrol was not quite so successful. The ascetic, prudent priest, with that instinctive, long-sighted accuracy which belongs to the narrow-minded, scented difficulty. He disliked the English exceedingly; and all Irishmen were English men to him. He resisted Ferrol's blarney. His thin lips tightened, his narrow forehead seemed to grow narrower, and his very cassock appeared to contract austerely on ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... narrow-minded good men were supplemented by the knavery of unscrupulous bad men. The Indian trader, in accordance with the teachings of the times, not only looked upon the savages as the offspring of Satan, but also as fair objects ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... faintest sound, his glance would be directed expectantly upon the door of the connecting apartment. It seemed to be his object to keep his position as an enemy as much as possible in the background, trying to show he was not narrow-minded or a bigoted patriot, laughing and joking pleasantly over certain rather ridiculous requisitions. For example, a demand was made one day for a coffin and a shroud; that shroud and coffin afforded him ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... was alone, she forgot the narrow-minded arguments of the countess; and calling to recollection the generous permission with which her father had endowed her the night before, she wrapped herself in her mantle, and, attended by her page, proceeded to the armory. The ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... don't want you to think I'm an idiot and I don't want you to think Roger is narrow-minded. If ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... sister, to say so. He is far too good for any of you, and whatever he has done wrong, you are to blame for it. You never tried to understand him or help him. You just left him drift away because he didn't fall in with your narrow-minded ideas. I may have done wrong, I have done wrong; but he has always been all that is good and true and honourable. He may leave me, but he'll never go back to you, never, ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... this celebrated statesman, this eminent orator, this mediocre writer, this narrow-minded man, an indefinable sentiment ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... Churchman, sir," said the Major. "And even if I were not, one must set an example, you know. I may be narrow-minded, but I'm particular about all that sort of thing. I shall be with ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... it necessary for me so to do, I read all the books I could find about the new region, which now began to become real to me. All the books about the Indians, a paltry collection, truly, yet which furnished material for many thoughts. The most narrow-minded and awkward recital, still bears some lineaments of the great features of this nature, and the races ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller



Words linked to "Narrow-minded" :   dogmatic, closed-minded, opinionated, narrow-mindedness, broad-minded, petty, opinionative, small-minded, unshockable, illiberal, narrow, shockable, sectarian, dogmatical



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