"Meanness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poems been the silly, the childish things which they were for a long time described as being; had they been really distinguished from the compositions of other poets merely by meanness of language and inanity of thought; had they indeed contained nothing more than what is found in the parodies and pretended imitations of them; they must have sunk at once, a dead weight, into the slough of oblivion, and have dragged the preface along with them. But year after ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... accompanied them with some comments of his own in regard to Cooper. "He was, as is known," said he in (p. 191) his second notice, "pretty generally despised abroad. He is now equally distinguished at home." The editor then went on to speak of the act of meanness, as he termed it, which had excited the contempt of the novelist's neighbors; and that the more precise account now furnished by the "Otsego Republican" would rather increase than diminish the measure of scorn that had been aroused. Much ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... have come to a case in point. You often dined with Mr. Effingham before he went abroad, and yet you would never allow me to ask Mr. Effingham to dine with us. That is what I call meanness." ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... "for here are letters addressed to him. I may even take the privilege of reading them tomorrow, for in that way I can perhaps discover some evidence that will force him to stop this ugly business. Oh! the meanness of Robert to strike this cowardly blow at me, his own cousin! He's a disgrace ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... brunette of sixteen. She had a good knowledge of French and Italian, graceful manners, and a dignity which endowed her with a very noble appearance. She informed me of her affairs without meanness, yet without that timidity which seems to arise from a fear of the person who listens being disposed to take advantage of the distressing position confided to his honour. She seemed neither humiliated nor bold; she had hope, and she did not boast of her courage. Her virtue was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... he lived and worked as a labourer; they gave him no credit for the work, but they despised him for the meanness and churlishness of his life. There was neither a piano nor a decanter of sherry in his house. He was utterly out of accord with the times. By degrees, after many years, it became apparent to all that he was going downhill. The stock upon the farm was not ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... hope you will pardon my outburst. I have my moments of irascibility, for which I am heartily ashamed. But—poof! Like a summer cloud, they are gone as quickly as they come. Why should I care what they say of me. They betray their own meanness of soul in their envy of my success. We part here for the time. I must ride over onto the east slope—a little matter of some horses." Again he laughed: "In a few days I shall return—I give you fair warning—return to win your love. And I will win—I am Monk Bethune—I always win!" Without waiting ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... strategic combinations we can detect the vitiating flaw. He did not know men, and therefore he did not know Cabinets. He believed them to be acting according to his own high standard of public duty and magnanimous endeavour. Consequently he never allowed for the calculating meanness which shifted the burdens on ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... derived quite as much from the influence of their private characters, as from their public measures. Their acknowledged talents were supported by a dignified demeanor, which formed a striking contrast with the meanness in mind and manners that had distinguished their predecessor. They both exhibited a practical wisdom in their own personal relations, which always commands respect, and which, however it may have savored of worldly policy in Ferdinand, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... stopped, pricked by a guilty conscience. For to expose Miss Felicia's inadequacies and enlarge on her ineligibility for the position of feminine Chief of the Staff, struck her as unworthy, a meanness to which, under existing circumstances, she could not condescend ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the typical joke about Scots' meanness appeals to Englishmen because Englishmen are mean themselves. No joke appeals to a man unless it releases some repressed wish of his own. No one expects a devout Roman Catholic to see the point of a joke about extreme unction. The professional comedian ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... JEALOUSY. I returned home, and hastened to have an interview with Martha. Hitherto I had been of a quiet, timid disposition—I was now bold from frenzy and betrayed affection. I upbraided my cousin with duplicity, with meanness in receiving the addresses of the man betrothed to her relative. She retorted by drawing comparisons between our attractions, personal as well as pecuniary. At these I smiled—bitterly perhaps, but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... even death upon the gallows seems sweet by comparison. This hatred, of course, is often, and perhaps Almost invariably, quite justified. To be the wife of an ordinary man, indeed, is an experience that must be very hard to bear. The hollowness and vanity of the fellow, his petty meanness and stupidity, his puling sentimentality and credulity, his bombastic air of a cock on a dunghill, his anaesthesia to all whispers and summonings of the spirit, above all, his loathsome clumsiness in amour—all these things must revolt any woman above ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... point. I didn't expect to do Trampas any good by not killin' him, which I came pretty near doin' three times. Nor I didn't expect to do Trampas any good by lettin' him keep his job. But I am foreman of this ranch. And I can sit and tell all men to their face: 'I was above that meanness.' Point two: it ain't any GOODNESS, it is TRAMPAS that badness has resulted from. Put him anywhere and it will be the same. Put him under my eye, and I can follow his moves a little, anyway. You have noticed, maybe, that since ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... its own intolerable anguish. Of revenge. If Myrtle rejected his suit, should he take her life on the spot, that she might never be another's,—that neither man nor woman should ever triumph over him,—the proud, ambitious man, defeated, humbled, scorned? No! that was a meanness of egotism which only the most vulgar souls could be capable of. Should he challenge her lover? It was not the way of the people and time, and ended in absurd complications, if anybody was foolish enough to try it. Shoot him? The idea floated through his mind, for he thought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... interrupted with joy. "That must be carried out. I'll see that Claire appears before that committee and confesses her frauds. But mark this: on that committee you should have the agents of Livingstone: Bradford, Bitterkin ... I owe him one for his meanness to the Senator ... Smallish in particular, and McMeeter for ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... a social and physical contact with whom would be pollution. There is in many respects a strange correspondence between the Jewish social code of twenty centuries ago and that of Hinduism to-day—the same haughty mien and abjectness of spirit—the aloofness of pride and the cringing meanness of social bondage—representing the two extremes of society. Christ also turned His face like a flint against this mean artificial classification of men. He had a burning contempt for the proud Pharisee who lived upon the husks of his own contempt ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... Themistocles was obliged to go to Sparta, and cover up by deceit and falsehood the fact that the Athenians were really repairing their walls, which they had an undoubted right to do, but which AEgina beheld with fear and Sparta with jealousy. And this unreasonable meanness and injustice on the part of Sparta, again reacted on the Athenians, and created great ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... is a perfect farce, and which puts us in a far worse condition than ever. Some say that when once we get an Irish Parliament we can arrange these small details. And mind this, we shall exact considerably more because of English distrust and English meanness." ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... diminution of men's endeavours in their several occupations; or if the aim should be to gratify some particular by livings and revenues here that will also fail, where nothing is to be had, the King himself will be loser, and so will the case be formed here; for such is the poverty and meanness of the people (by reason of the length and coldness of the winters, the difficulty of subduing a wilderness, defect of staple commodity, the want of money, etc.), that if with hard labour men get a subsistence for their families, 'tis as much as the generality are able to do, paying but very small ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... 'Their wages were left unpaid, they were docked of their food, and served with poisonous drink, while for the sick and wounded no hospitals were provided. More of them were killed by the Queen's meanness than by the enemy.' ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... Must he not feel mean and contemptible whenever he thinks that, merely to get a little bit of cake, he would deceive his kind mother? If that little boy had one particle of honorable or generous feeling remaining in his bosom, he would feel reproached and unhappy whenever he thought of his meanness. If he was already dead to shame, it would show that he had by previous deceit acquired this character. And can any one love or esteem a child who has become so degraded? And can a child, who is neither beloved nor respected, be happy? No! You may depend upon it, that when you see a person ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... abhorrent opportunity they had put in his way. Trust a boat on the high seas to bring out the Irrational that lurks at the bottom of every thought, sentiment, sensation, emotion. It was part of the burlesque meanness pervading that particular disaster at sea that they did not come to blows. It was all threats, all a terribly effective feint, a sham from beginning to end, planned by the tremendous disdain of the Dark Powers whose real terrors, always on the verge of triumph, are perpetually foiled by the steadfastness ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... comprehension, my child! Beyond all understanding! And, do you know, the calumnies that were spread about us, especially the miserable anonymous letters, all kinds of meanness, it all helped. For each time we found in each other a perfect refuge. He was not so thin-skinned in such matters as I. It was through me that he first came to understand them—how to manage the petty incidents ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... considerably reducing his fortune; and his trade, which he had given up, to be the more at leisure for the enjoyment of his pleasures, no longer enabled him to repair it. Besides, having been so long accustomed to put no restraint on his vanity and pride, he could not submit to the meanness of lessening his expenses. 'I shall always have enough for myself,' thought he, 'and let ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... penury. A man ruined by the First Consul interested the town of Alencon, to which he now returned, where royalism was secretly dominant. Du Bousquier, furious against Bonaparte, relating stories against him of his meanness, of Josephine's improprieties, and all the other scandalous anecdotes of the last ten years, ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... speak. Put up with the truth for once! [His words rush out] You are the thing that pelts the weak; kicks women; howls down free speech. This to-day, and that to-morrow. Brain—you have none. Spirit—not the ghost of it! If you're not meanness, there's no such thing. If you're not cowardice, there is no cowardice [Above the growing fierceness of the hubbub] Patriotism—there are two kinds—that of our soldiers, and this of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... got over? There was of course the shadow of a possibility that I might get out of my difficulties, could I but fabricate a sufficiently ingenious string of falsehoods; but now that it actually came to the point, I could not bring myself to the depths of meanness and cowardice which this involved. I had learned at school the maxim that "liars never prosper," and my dear old father had taught me to avoid falsehood from much higher considerations than those ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... relics, Eunapius says: "Whoever wore a black dress was invested with tyrannical power; philosophy and piety to the gods were compelled to retire into secret places, and to dwell in contented poverty and dignified meanness of appearance. The temples were turned into tombs for the adoration of the bones of the basest and most depraved of men, who had suffered the penalty of the law, and whom ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... here nor there. He will not hear the truth, of course; and, even if he did, he will not suppose you were actuated by any such Christian motives to shield his sister's meanness. You ought ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... necessary to point out to feeble-minded folk is this: that, in asserting the breadth and depth of that significance which gives to fashion and fortune their tremendous power, we do not indorse the extravagances which often disgrace the one, nor the meanness which often ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... wandering in the sunlight of silent lands. Surely there needed but a little common-sense, a little decision, to save himself from this rushing current. One word to Alma—would it not suffice? But of all things he dreaded to incur the charge of meanness, of selfishness. That had ever been his weak point: in youth, well-nigh a cause of ruin; in later life, impelling him to ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... that. Breaking trust. Meanness. It was mean and dishonorable of you when you knew you ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... very Desire of Fame is looked on as a Meanness [and [10]] Imperfection in the greatest Character. A solid and substantial Greatness of Soul looks down with a generous Neglect on the Censures and Applauses of the Multitude, and places a Man beyond the little Noise and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... neither enjoy nor understand. For a ruin or a painting or a legend that does not seem to him to deserve the appreciation in which it is held he refuses to affect an admiration he does not feel; he cannot help being honest—he was born so. For meanness of all kinds he has a burning contempt; and on Abelard he pours out the vials of his wrath. He has a quick eye for all humbugs and a scorching scorn for them; but there is no attempt at being funny in the manner of ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... charged Clementina with the pride of her family, to which she attributed their deserved calamity; [Deserved! Cruel lady! How could her pitiless heart allow her lips to utter such a word!] and imputed meanness to the noblest of human minds, for yielding to the entreaties of a family, some of the principals of which, she said, had treated him with an arrogance that a man of his spirit ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... life-like pictures of the honest man and the thief. The one with an eye that faced you, with a conscious dignity and often a cheerful countenance; the other with a shrinking eye, a conscious meanness, and never with a smile from the heart; sordid, sly and unhappy—for theft is misery. No wonder this crime degrades a man when it degrades the very animals; Look at a dog who has stolen. Before this, when he met his master or any human friend he used to run up to greet them with wagging tail and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... do," said Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders. "My former marshal, who acquired in my service a name and some fame, whom I permitted to accept the dignity of crown prince of Sweden that was offered him, a Frenchman, had the meanness to turn his arms against his country, and ally himself with the enemies of France. But still it seems that his courage is failing him. A month ago he disembarked in Germany, and is idle with his troops in Mecklenburg. He allowed Hamburg to fall; he did ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... though he was soon to learn it by hard experience, how strong, even at the imperial court, was the influence of the Portuguese party, and by what meanness and trickery it sought to maintain and augment that influence. "Where the Portuguese party was really to blame," he afterwards said, "was in this,—that, seeing disorder everywhere more or less prevalent, they strained every nerve to increase ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... prime favorite. All the household, except Melchior de la Ronda, looked at me with an eye of envy. It was curious to observe the manner in which the whole establishment, from the highest to the lowest, thought it necessary to demean themselves toward his Grace's confidential secretary; there was no meanness to which they would not stoop to curry favor with me: I could scarcely believe they were Spaniards. I left no stone unturned to be of service to them, without being taken in by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... "The meanness of human nature," he said, "is seen in the action of Parliament immediately after Charles II. came to the throne in repealing every law enacted during the period of the Commonwealth. Having wiped out every statute, what do ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... with the debates of the French Convention, and had witnessed the genius of French eloquence in its highest exertions. Nothing will cure this people of their aversion to nature. With them, all that is natural is poor—simplicity is meanness. The truth of things wants the picturesque, and thus wants every charm. I had listened to some of their public speakers with strong interest, while they were confined to detail. No man tells a story better than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... says she, turnin' round and lookin' Jacob in the face. 'Down in that ten-acre medder lot, ain't it?—and in that new barn you built last spring. A pretty elder you are, ain't you? Elders don't seem to have improved much since Susannah's times. If there ain't one sort o' meanness in 'em it's ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... be proud, you ask? No. But then the pride must be of a right fashion. It must be the pride which says, "Let me not envy, for that were meanness. Let me not covet, for that were akin to theft. Let me not repine, for that were weakness." It must be the pride which says, "I can be sufficient for myself. My life makes my nobility; and I need no accident of rank, because I have a stainless honour." It must be pride too proud to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... what I do mean," cried Madge, indignantly. "It's been almost past endurance. I haven't dared to tell any one, but he had the cruelty, the meanness, on ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... acquired, hath been acquired by him without cause, for who would offer such undue worship unto one that hath fallen off from virtue. This wretch born in the race of the Vrishnis unrighteously slew of old the illustrious king Jarasandha. Righteousness hath today been abandoned by Yudhishthira and meanness only hath been displayed by him in consequence of his having offered the Arghya to Krishna. If the helpless sons of Kunti were affrighted and disposed to meanness, thou, O Madhava, ought to have enlightened them as to thy claims to the first worship? ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... anyhow. To think of her twitting me about our house, when everybody says the colonel is likely to fail any day," and 'Lina ran off upstairs to indulge in a fit of crying over what she called Nell Tiffton's meanness. ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... 'Nothing affords me greater pleasure,' said I, 'than to confer favours.' 'What a disposition,' said Winifred, holding up her hands; 'and this is pride, genuine pride—that feeling which the world agrees to call so noble. Oh, how mean a thing is pride! never before did I see all the meanness of what ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... words:—'Endure, my soul, thou hast endured worse.' Nor must we allow our citizens to receive bribes, or to say, 'Gifts persuade the gods, gifts reverend kings;' or to applaud the ignoble advice of Phoenix to Achilles that he should get money out of the Greeks before he assisted them; or the meanness of Achilles himself in taking gifts from Agamemnon; or his requiring a ransom for the body of Hector; or his cursing of Apollo; or his insolence to the river-god Scamander; or his dedication to the dead Patroclus of his own hair which had been already dedicated to the other river-god Spercheius; ...
— The Republic • Plato
... and comport myself like a madman in the highways and byways, but for the help of God?—That is a small matter, and a question of common decency; but you must know that without the grace of God and the virtue of His Spirit, there is no impurity, meanness, infamy, drunkenness, blasphemy, or other kind of sin to which man would not give ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... to L'Assommoir; it is the fatal episode of the third act, the sacrifice of self-respect, the beginning of the end. From that time the money stands between "Trina" and her husband. Outraged and humiliated, hating her for her meanness, demoralized by his idleness and despair, he begins to abuse her. The story becomes a careful and painful study of the disintegration of this union, a penetrating and searching analysis of the degeneration of these two souls, the woman's corroded by ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... him with cruelty, the Carthaginians with covetousness; and it is true that he hated as only Oriental natures know how to hate, and that a general who never fell short of money and stores can hardly have been other than covetous. But though anger and envy and meanness have written his history, they have not been able to mar the pure and noble image which it presents. Laying aside wretched inventions which furnish their own refutation, and some things which his lieutenants, particularly Hannibal Monomachus and Mago the Samnite, were guilty ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... is no order and no regularity; where there is nothing durable, or intended to be durable; though there can be little doubt that within a few years order and beauty itself will be found here, that the misery, squalidness, and meanness will have disappeared, and the whole district, up to the railroad arches which bound it on the west and north, will be covered with palaces, like those of Tyburnia, or delightful villas, like those which ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... and sang, and that kept them antelope there like they was hypnotized. They could keep them right there all night that way. After they held them all night they'd start to slaughter at sunrise. They'd sing: 'We aren't doing this for meanness or for fun but we want you for fine food,' or something like that. I heard the song once but I never learned it all. I ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... chiefly of her enemies, and all her comforts lie at the mercy of others. So far from being willing to learn of him who was meek and lowly, she considers meekness as the want of a becoming spirit, and lowliness as a despicable and vulgar meanness. And an imperious woman will so little covet the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, that it is almost the only ornament she will not be solicitous to wear. But resentment is a very expensive vice. How dearly has it cost its votaries, even from the sin of Cain, the first ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... bestowed an infinite portion of its treasures; this is the body of Chrysostom, who was a man of rare genius, matchless courtesy, and unbounded kindness; he was a phoenix in friendship, magnificent without ostentation, grave without arrogance, cheerful without meanness; in short, the first in all that was good, and second to none in all that was unfortunate. He loved, and was abhorred; he adored, and was scorned; he courted a savage; he solicited a statue; he pursued the wind; he called aloud to the desert; he was the slave of ingratitude, whose recompense ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... out even-handed justice to my cousin and 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 with the object ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... and the protestations of friendship from the Prince of Orange, he ventured to return to Holland. He had always secretly wished to be restored; but, however ardent this desire might be, he was incapable of purchasing his restoration by any acts of meanness. They had discovered his inclination; and in 1623 a rumour spread that he was seeking to be reconciled to the States-General. He was sensible this report had reached Du Maurier, and therefore wrote to him on the 24th of September[162] that there was nothing in it; that the ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... with him like so many straws on the flood, and in the exercise of this great gift the whole man seemed transfigured; abroad, he was a languid, rather slouching priest, who crept about, a picture of delicate humility, but with a shade of meanness; for, religious prejudice apart, it is ignoble to sweep the wall in passing as he did, and eye the ground: but, once in the pulpit, his figure rose and swelled majestically, and seemed to fly over them all like a guardian angel's; his sallow cheek burned, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... at least, its size and splendor, as these require great wealth to erect them, and perpetual expense to preserve them. For the chain of terraces we find substituted a simple garden, somewhat formally laid out; but redeemed from the charge of meanness by the nobility and size attained by most of its trees; the line of immense cypresses which generally surrounds it in part, and the luxuriance of the vegetation of its flowering shrubs. It has frequently a large ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... to a ruin, to find without surprise the doors closed and only to be opened after long knocking. The round campanile that towers and seems to totter in its strange dilapidation beside the church is so beautiful that it surprises one at once by its melancholy nobility in the midst of so much meanness and desolation. It is a building of the ninth century, and may well have been used as much as a watch tower as a bell tower. Till recently it had at its base a sacristy, but this has been swept away. Of old the church ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... about the meanness of his employer, didn't you?" was what Tom replied. "Well, it proves that although Dock sounded Mr. Culpepper about being in a position to give him the paper they haven't arrived at any ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... of Him, and display the short memory which ingratitude has. All have that other feature hinted at here—the contrast, so absurd if it were not so sad, between the worth and power of the God who is left and the other gods who are preferred. The essential meanness and folly of Israel are repeated by every heart departing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... her of the suspicions which Monsieur has excited in him, she protests with artfully calculated indignation against the charge of wrong-doing with this "serpent." But the brutal and deliberate violence of her husband when he knows the truth, and the perfidious meanness with which he makes her the reluctant instrument of her lover's ruin, win back for her much of our alienated sympathy. Yet at the close her position is curiously equivocal. It is at her prayer that Bussy has spared Montsurry when "he hath him down" in the final struggle; but when her lover ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... higher than that of boys who want to do something great, or clever, or strong. As to those who want to be rich—for their ambition I have an utter contempt. How gladly would I drive that meanness out of any boy's heart! To fall in with the work of the glad creator, and help him in it—that is the only ambition worth having. It may not look a grand thing to do it in a caravan, but it takes the mind of ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... into the municipal code, at once to persuade men to be honest and to keep them so; wherever the intercourse of mankind shall aim at something more elevating than that groveling spirit of barter in which meanness, and avarice, and fraud strive for the mastery over ignorance, credulity, and folly, the name of Lord Mansfield will be reverenced, not only for adapting the inefficient system which he found to the exigencies of his ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... sordidities and poverties? The Great American Museum, the down-town scenery and aspects at large, and even the up-town improvements on them, as then flourishing?—why, they must have been for the most part of the last meanness: the Barnum picture above all ignoble and awful, its blatant face or frame stuck about with innumerable flags that waved, poor vulgar-sized ensigns, over spurious relics and catchpenny monsters in effigy, to say nothing of the promise within of the still more monstrous and abnormal living—from ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... his time. He was of an eminently social temper, although averse to large companies and shy and silent in their presence. "There is no such thing," he once said, "as real conversation but between two persons." He was free from malice, meanness, or jealousy, Pope to the contrary notwithstanding. He was absolutely loyal to his principles and to his friends, in a time when many men changed both with as little compunction as they changed wigs and swords. His personality was singularly winning; ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to de War de old overseer tried himself in meanness over de slaves as seemingly he tried to be important. One day de slaves caught him and one held him whilst another knocked him in de head and ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... iriosal, is precisely that which is the nearest to the original meaning of low, and low as the earth; and this is also the sense which humilis always bears in classical Latin, though Christianity (which first recognised humility as a virtue, instead of stigmatising it as a meanness) attached to it the sense which its derivatives in all modern Romance languages, with the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... that moment he felt willing to give up every personal pleasure, if he might lift a feather's weight of care from the fragile woman who spoke to him with such sweetness and trust. For there is nothing hopeless save meanness and poverty of nature; and any demand on Edgar Noble's instinct of chivalrous protection would ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... have experienced a change of heart. He will have come to appreciate the great, pure, noble soul of Germany, and he will be sorrowing for his past like a converted gun-man at a camp meeting. He will be a victim of the meanness and perfidy of the British Government. I am going to have a first-class row with your Foreign Office about my passport, and I am going to speak harsh words about them up and down this metropolis. I am going to be shadowed by your sleuths at my port of embarkation, and I guess ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... attacked in this manner, his house beset with spies, his conversation with his family listened to, and the most trifling actions of his life recorded, it would be deemed unfair and illiberal, and he who should practice such meanness would be thought worthy of no punishment more respectful than what might be inflicted by an oaken censor, or an admonitory heel.—But it will be said, a King is not an individual, and that such a habit, or such an amusement, is beneath the dignity of his character. Yet would it ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... respect, as the sense for beauty, whereof this symmetry is an essential element, awakens and strengthens within him! what will not one day be his respect and desire for Greece and its symmetria prisca, when the scales drop from his eyes as he walks the London streets, and he sees such a lesson in meanness, as the Strand, for instance, in its true deformity! But here we are coming to our friend Mr. Ruskin's province, and I will not intrude upon it, for he is its ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... emperor Charles V. He was an active and intrepid, but selfish, overbearing, and perfidious man. His administration bears no marks of enlarged and liberal policy; but is full of traits of arrogance and meanness. He opposed the benevolent attempts of Las Casas to ameliorate the condition of the Indians, and to obtain the abolition of repartimientos; treating him with personal haughtiness and asperity. [388] The reason assigned is that Fonseca was enriching himself ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... and women declare that I am a splendid fellow, that I am of an angelic disposition, that I have a very roguish pair of eyes, and other stupid things of a like kind that annoy, disgust, and humiliate me, although I am not very modest, and am too well acquainted with the meanness and folly of the world to be shocked ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... to Orsini with the story which they attribute to him? What a mean, treacherous, unkingly figure must he not cut as a consequence! He may have been—we know, indeed, that he was—no more averse to double-dealing than any other Cinquecentist; but he was probably as averse to being found out in a meanness and made to look contemptible as any double-dealer of our own times. It is a ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... not a model boy, but I cannot exactly define in what his wickedness consisted. He had no inclination to steal, nor much to lie; and he despised "meanness" and stinginess, and had a chivalrous feeling toward little girls. Probably it never occurred to him that there was any virtue in not stealing and lying, for honesty and veracity were in the atmosphere about him. He hated work, and he "got mad" easily; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to Dionysius. And for Rome, if Cicero, in his most excellent book "De Natura Deorum," overthrew the national religion of that commonwealth, he was never the further from being consul. But there is a meanness and poorness in modern prudence, not only to the damage of civil government, but of religion itself; for to make a man in matter of religion, which admits not of sensible demonstration (jurare in verba magistri), engage to believe no otherwise than is believed by my lord bishop, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... tell prodigious naughty tales about her: yet upon my life I do pity her from my soul: how that fellow Calcraft, by Jove—she says, you know, she's married to him, but we know better—he has half broken her heart, and treated her with most refined meanness, as I live; in the green-room, where she looks an infinity worse than on the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and after knocking him about rather severely, held him under the force pump, and nearly drowned him. Only for the respect that the crew had for his wife, I really believe they would have killed him, for they were wrought up to a pitch of fury by his tyranny and meanness. The boatswain carried him below, locked him up in one of the state-rooms, and there he was kept in confinement till the barque reached Honolulu, twenty days later, the mate acting as skipper. At Honolulu, the ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... definition of the word Caitiff, in his Dictionary, may throw some light on this part of his character. "Caitiff. [cattivo, Ital. a slave; whence it came to signify a bad man, with some implication of meanness; as knave in English, and fur in Latin; so ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... her to some desperate act of provocation if she had not herself been possessed by the Pharisaic spirit of the society which was so antagonistic to her. Her education had subjugated her nature. It was in vain that she condemned the tyranny and meanness of public opinion: she respected it: she subscribed to its decrees even when they were directed against herself: if they had come into conflict with her conscience, she would have sacrificed her conscience. She despised the town: ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... naturally pastoral a man. He carried good-temper about with him, and yet he could rebuke with a sharpness which surprised me, if there was need. He was curiously tolerant, I used to think, of sensual sins, but in the presence of cruelty or meanness or deliberate deceit he used to explode into the most violent language. I remember a scene which it is almost a terror to me now to recollect, when I was walking with him, and we met a tipsy farmer of a neighbouring village flogging his horse along a ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he shouted at the top of his voice: "Glory to God! Glory to God! another sinner's down! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory!" Then he added: "Now you poor, miserable sinners, take this as a judgment from God upon you for your meanness, and repent of your wicked ways before it is too late." With this he left them, covered with mud and ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... it was enough. If he had given more, he would have lost. He had taken the trouble of finding out a lord; and having sunk the shaft, it was but fair that the first proceeds of the mine should belong to him. Those who see meanness in the act are right, but they would be wrong to feel astonished. Barkilphedro loved money, especially money which was stolen. An envious man is an avaricious one. Barkilphedro was not without his faults. The commission ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... as a poppy, as he flashed up in honest anger that such paltry meanness should be charged ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... considerate. It seemed almost as if the reverse rule had obtained. There was one man in particular, who had practically forced a small loan upon him when George Henry was still thought to be well-to-do, who had developed an ingenuity and insolence in dunning which gave him easy altitude for meanness and harshness among the lot. He went down as "No. 120," the ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... court-martial. An inmate of the White House has recorded the eagerness with which the President caught at any fact that would justify him in saving the life of a condemned soldier. He was only merciless when meanness or cruelty were clearly proved. Cases of cowardice he disliked especially to punish with death. "It would frighten the poor devils too terribly to shoot them," he said. On the papers in the case of one soldier who had deserted and then enlisted again, he wrote: ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... those practical virtues which are the vital substance of Christianity,—in these are they superior? No. Public observation is against the fact, and the conclusion to which such observation leads is rarely incorrect. * * The very name of the sect carries with it an impression of meanness and hypocrisy. Scarce an individual that has had any dealings with those belonging to it, but has good cause to remember it from some circumstance of low deception or of shuffling fraud. Its very members trust each ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... ears - that drunkenness "may lead to vice." Now I did not think it at all proved that Burns was what is called a drunkard; and I was obliged to dwell very plainly on the irregularity and the too frequent vanity and meanness of his relations to women. Hence, in the eyes of many, my study was a step towards the demonstration of ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who has dabbled, or still dabbles, in journalism is under the painful necessity of bowing to men he despises, of smiling at his dearest foe, of compounding the foulest meanness, of soiling his fingers to pay his aggressors in their own coin. He becomes used to seeing evil done, and passing it over; he begins by condoning it, and ends by committing it. In the long run the soul, constantly strained by ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... her, beautiful as she was: I was an old man, and fancied I loved her like a father, and thought of looking out a husband for her. How it happened, I should not be able to tell you; everything might seem so untrue. She became pregnant. I had already long felt dismay at my own weakness and meanness. Shame, despair, dread of the world, waged war within my soul, and made me their recreant slave. I sent her away in my distress, provided for her, richly, prodigally; but my heart was turned to stone. Grief, sadness, doubts in herself ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... a thoroughly strong, honest youth, and the idea of meanness and duplicity were most repugnant to his feelings in general; and yet he listened eagerly to this proposition, for oppression had utterly changed his nature. The career of dissipation and pleasure proposed so adroitly by Daumon dazzled ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... the vilest misrepresentations of my conduct were being sedulously circulated in England by the partisans of the Administration. Their vituperation in Brazil could, to some extent, be met; but the petty meanness of attacking a man in a distant country, without the possibility of his defending himself, was a matter against which no prudence or ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... very dreadful and we can appreciate the sincerity of conviction which no doubt controlled most of them. But they were dangerous then, and Washington, with his honest hatred of all that seemed to him to partake of meanness or treason, proposed to put them down and render them harmless, being well convinced, after his clear-sighted fashion, that war was not peace, and that mildness to domestic ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... truly and judiciously, must necessarily be dignified and variegated and alive with metaphors and figures.... This selection will form a distinction ... and will entirely separate the composition from the vulgarity and meanness ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... 'Generous and free from all selfishness and meanness, but without political experience, adroitness and knowledge of men, he aspired to a task which surpassed his strength.' —Ihne. 4-6. By the Sempronian Laws of C. Gracchus 123 B.C. exclusive judicial rights had been given to the Equites, as a counterpoise to the power ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... all his teachings and dealings with men an enduring patience under their rebuffs, a brotherly sympathy with their weakness, and a divine pity for their sorrows. Something, too, of divine anger with the pettiness and meanness of the unworthy ones among his followers, as when, after preaching with parable and exhortation to the wrangling brothers of the monastery of Kosamb[i], he left them, saying, "'Truly these fools are infatuate; it is no ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... feet, there was no fault, save her very uniqueness. She belonged not to this era, but to the Golden Age, past or to come. Could she ever be conformed to the world of to-day? Dared her lover assume the responsibility of revealing to this noble soul all the meanness, sophistries, little pleasures, and low aims of this imperfect age? Could he change the world to suit her needs? or endure to see her change to suit the world? Moreover, changing so much, might she not change towards him? The Balder she loved was a grander ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... remains a monument of his artistic taste. He was a patron and friend of men of letters, and himself skilled in the "gay science" of the troubadour. But of the political capacity which was the characteristic of his house he had little or none. Profuse, changeable, false from sheer meanness of spirit, impulsive alike in good and ill, unbridled in temper and tongue, reckless in insult and wit, Henry's delight was in the display of an empty and prodigal magnificence, his one notion of government was a dream of arbitrary power. But frivolous as the king's ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... are farther removed from real goodness than publicans and harlots. And, as usual, it rushes to the extreme opposite to that which it quits. It considers a high religious profession as a sure mark of meanness and depravity. On the very first day on which the restraint of fear is taken away, and on which men can venture to say what they think, a frightful peal of blasphemy and ribaldry proclaims that the short-sighted policy which aimed at making a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I look into the glass, and I seem to have something in my face that is a promise of a glory to come—a light, a something,—I love to imagine it. And then, that a thought should knock me prone, and make me cringe—from the mere fact of its lowness and meanness! ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... brightly. 'It was such a charming, snatched, forbidden thing.' But she suddenly stopped speaking. She had spoiled the remembrance of Frederick's visit to herself by her own cowardice. Of all faults the one she most despised in others was the want of bravery; the meanness of heart which leads to untruth. And here had she been guilty of it! Then came the thought of Mr. Thornton's cognisance of her falsehood. She wondered if she should have minded detection half so much from ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... must be modest; but he should make a point of never sacrificing his own liberty of judgment. To obey his master in dishonorable things would be a derogation from his dignity; and if he discovers any meanness in the character of the prince, it is better to quit his service.[1] A courtier must be careful to create beforehand a favorable opinion of himself in places he intends to visit. Much stress is laid upon his choice of clothes and the equipment of his ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Jupiter, that loveth business (for the contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly); but as a man born under an excellent sovereign, that deserveth the dedication of all men's abilities.... Again the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me; for though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get. Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... merely upon the strength of knowing that his temperament was the proper mixture of the sanguine and the phlegmatic. Science is not able to teach us concerning men as it teaches us of horses, though I am very far from saying that there are not traits of nobleness and of meanness that run through families and can be calculated to appear in individuals with absolute certainty; one family will be trusty and another tricky through all its members for generations; noble strains and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... who hovered about Paris till he heard the city had taken up arms, posted to Havre-de-Grace, where he fawned upon the Prince de Conde with a meanness of spirit that is hardly to be imagined; for he wept, and even fell down on his knees to the Prince, who treated him with the utmost contempt, giving him ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... you done!" exclaimed Levi, indignantly. "Besides being guilty of meanness and treachery, you have committed a crime which will send you to the state prison ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... the proceedings of the men who came off in the steamer. After the exhibition of meanness on the part of Mr. Parasyte, it seemed that the rebellion was more serious than any of us had supposed. We made up our minds, with Bob Hale, that it would be impossible for us ever to be reconciled ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... them—yes, stealing them, by highway robbery. And you have spent the afternoon in putting me in the wrong about them—in assuming that it was I who wanted to steal YOUR letters—in explaining that it all came about through my meanness and selfishness, and your goodness, your devotion, your ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... intelligence characteristic of children, in whom observation begins with naughtiness. Once she had let them loose upon their aunt, she allowed them to laugh at all her absurdities, her figure, her nose, her dresses, whose meanness, nevertheless, provided their own elegant attire. Thus incited and upheld, the little ones soon arrived at insolence. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had the quick temper that accompanies kindness of heart. With her the hand, as well as ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... would defy Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will, When fenced by power and master of the world. Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind, Free from heart-withering custom's cold control, 585 Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued. Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee, And therefore art thou worthy of the boon Which thou hast now received: virtue shall keep Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod, 590 And many days of beaming hope shall bless Thy spotless life of ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... hour of a woman's birth to her death, there is a continuous system of belittling her, which, if it does not succeed in destroying her self-respect, thus teaching her that she may, as her only means of retaliation, allow herself in any little meanness which may occur to her, is so galling to that self-respect, that the wonder is that her very nature has not become revolutionized. But women have so long been trained in this school, that they have, to a large extent, adopted the language ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... Thackeray was always trifling, and yet always serious. In attempting to understand his character it is necessary for you to bear within your own mind the idea that he was always, within his own bosom, encountering melancholy with buffoonery, and meanness with satire. The very spirit of burlesque dwelt within him,—a spirit which does not see the grand the less because of the travesties which ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... ask our friends," said Judy, "only we mustn't give them anything to eat. And of course no wine to drink. I wonder if we might light the gas? It is expensive, when you burn enough of it. Such meanness!" exclaimed Judy with ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... toned gentleman, and every subsequent interview is certain to confirm it. He is a man of strict business habits, and expects his dues, and yet his large benevolence and goodness of heart not only prevents the slightest approach to meanness, but often causes him to suffer wrong rather than be thought to be doing wrong himself. Were it otherwise, he would have been one of the richest men in Cleveland to-day, for he posseses ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... years before he would have claimed his share of power; but she was forced, by a threatened rising of the Alexandrians, to make her elder son king. Before, however, she would do this she made a treaty with him, which would strongly prove, if anything were still wanting, the vice and meanness of the Egyptian court. It was, that, although married to his sister Cleopatra, of whom he was very fond, he should put her away, and marry his younger sister Selene; because the mother hoped that Selene would be ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... say such a thing? John is above such meanness, and I won't listen to you a minute if you talk so," cried Meg indignantly, forgetting everything but the injustice of the old lady's suspicions. "My John wouldn't marry for money, any more than I would. We are willing to work and we mean to ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... and the Memoirs of a Peeress, edited by Lady Charlotte Bury, both of which books dealt with persons whom Lady Hester had known in her youth. In return she regaled him with stories of her own glory, of Mr. Pitt's virtues, of the objectionable habits of the Princess of Wales, and of the meanness of the Regent in inviting himself to dinner with gentlemen who could not afford to entertain him, the whole pleasantly flavoured by animadversions on the social presumption of medical men, and descriptions of the methods by which formerly they were kept in their proper place by ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... individuality of a partisan or of a theorist, but the individuality of a broad-minded, high-minded, chivalrous gentleman. With a soul open to the finest sentiments and ideas of the age in which he lives, tolerant of frailty, but intolerant of meanness, falsehood, and malignity, and writing with the frankness with which a cultivated man of decided opinions might speak to a company of chosen associates, the most obstinate bigot can hardly fail to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... failures right! But what cared they whether the provisions of a solemn treaty were kept or broken? They had no thought of honor—they wanted power to overturn the throne—not to uphold it.—The masterful meanness of such creatures ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... said of his father that he could speak well, and it may be said of him that he could write well—the only thing he could do which was worth doing, always supposing that there is any merit in being able to write. He was of a mean appearance, and, like his father, pusillanimous to a degree. The meanness of his appearance disgusted, and his pusillanimity discouraged the Scotch when he made his appearance amongst them in the year 1715, some time after the standard of rebellion had been hoisted by Mar. He only stayed ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... his bread by such a means of livelihood: enough for him that there was the name of Durie dragged in the dirt on the placard, and the sometime heir of that proud family set up cross-legged in public for a reproach upon his brother's meanness. And in so far his device succeeded that there was murmuring in the town and a party formed highly inimical to my lord. My lord's favour with the Governor laid him more open on the other side; my lady (who was never so well received in the colony) met with painful innuendoes; in a party ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clothes, and a carriage, I have already paid twenty-eight thousand livres, and have still more to pay. For the greatest part of this, I have been obliged to anticipate my salary, from which, however, I shall never be able to repay it. I find, that by a rigid economy, bordering however on meanness, I can save perhaps, five hundred livres a month, at least in the summer. The residue goes for expenses so much of course and of necessity, that I cannot avoid them without abandoning all respect to my public character. Yet I will pray you to touch this string, which I know to be a tender one ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... away. Before she reached the end of the frowsy street, whose meanness and monotony of tiny-bow-windows exemplified intensely the most deplorable characteristics of a district where brutish licence is decreasing, she was overtaken by a lanky girl in ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... cruelty, for ever hungry; until the malady of his spirit, unrestrained by any limitations, and with the right medium for its development, became unique—the tragic type of pathological desire. What more than all things must have plagued a man with that face was probably the unavoidable meanness of his career. When we study the chapters of Suetonius, we are forced to feel that, though the situation and the madness of Caligula were dramatically impressive, his crimes were trivial and, small. In spite of the vast scale ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... another reason yet. Although, as we have said, it is impossible to cover the walls of a large building with color, except on the condition of dividing the stone into plates, there is always a certain appearance of meanness and niggardliness in the procedure. It is necessary that the builder should justify himself from this suspicion; and prove that it is not in mere economy or poverty, but in the real impossibility of doing otherwise, that he has sheeted his walls so thinly with the precious ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... to go up and claim acquaintance, but it chanced that he became witness of a piece of meanness ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... you, then, think that it can befall a wise man to be oppressed with grief, that is to say, with misery? for, as all perturbation is misery, grief is the rack itself. Lust is attended with heat, exulting joy with levity, fear with meanness, but grief with something greater than these; it consumes, torments, afflicts, and disgraces a man; it tears him, preys upon his mind, and utterly destroys him: if we do not so divest ourselves of it as to throw it completely off, we ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... dwindles, frittered away upon the infinitely small objects which it strives to exalt. Herein lies the secret of the avarice and tittle-tattle that poison provincial life. The contagion of narrow-mindedness and meanness affects the noblest natures; and in such ways as these, men born to be great, and women who would have been charming if they had fallen under the forming influence of greater minds, are balked of ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... puts it into everybody that goes up against his game. The fear of the Poor-House is with him yet, though he doesn't realize it. It's the mainspring of his religion. There's nothing so mean as fear; and Elias M.'s fear is back of all his meanness, his despotism in business, his tyranny as an employer. I tell you, Boss, if you ever saw a hellion in a cutaway coat, Elias M. Pierce is it, and you're going to smell sulphur when he gets here. Better let him do the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... lively encounter with the authors and sponsors of these misrepresentations, which at the time were full of interest to me. But it would be a dreary thing now to go over the record of exploded mendacity, or to expose the meanness and malice shown by some men of high official position. A favorite argument was to call the reform Chinese, because the Chinese had constructed an inefficient governmental system based in part on the theory of written competitive examinations. The argument ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... me alone there, and I sat with my head on my arms for a long time, I did not think of anything at all; I was too utterly done up with my struggles, and there was nothing to be thought about. I had grown to accept the meanness of things as if I had aged a great deal. I had seen men scratch each other's faces over coat buttons, old shoes—over Mercer's trousers. My own future did not interest me at this stage. I sat up and looked ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... perfection our natures are capable of; possibly perfection may consist in a certain medium which we have already stepped beyond; but certainly all this refinement is utterly incomprehensible to an uncivilized mind which cannot discriminate the ideas of humility and meanness. We appear to the Sumatrans to have degenerated from the more splendid virtues of our predecessors. Even the richness of their laced suits and the gravity of their perukes attracted a degree of admiration; and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... submissively approached and anxiously propitiated before the petitioner's prayers can reach the ears of Jove himself, seated aloft on his remote Olympian throne. He may be, and for the most part really is—if he belongs to the old stock of aristocratic divinities—generous and gracious, incapable of meanness, baseness, or cruelty. But the tenant has to do, not with the absentee divinity, but with his priest—not with the good spirit, but his medium; and this go-between is not always noble, or disinterested, or unexacting. To him power may be new—a ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... good terms, madame; her deportment is timid, respectful, but without meanness. I will say more. Notwithstanding the extreme sweetness of her voice and her look, there is at times in her accent, in her attitude, a kind of sorrowful pride which confounds me. If she did not ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... conquering their right to create their own government, and erect a free commonwealth on the ruins of the tyranny they have overthrown. And Kansas, at no distant period, will be welcomed by her Free Sisters to her place among them, with no stain of bribes in her hands, and with no soil of meanness upon her garments. And then the "peace" and "prosperity," which President Buchanan saw in vision on the eve of May-day, will indeed prevail and be established, while the blackness of infamy will brood forever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... same thing. They want a thing to stay as it is—or they want it to stay just as it is—upside down. The same inefficiency, fear and weakness, meanness—merely another set of people running the inefficiency and trying to make fear, weakness, ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... molehills. But they agree only in shrinking from the task. To take only the last half-century: we have had one supreme satirist who harped eternally on the failings of fashion and the vanity of things. In his novels society saw itself reflected in all its attitudes and postures and posings. Not one meanness or folly escaped. What Professor Huxley has done for the crayfish, that Thackeray did for the Snob. He studied him lovingly, he dissected him, he classified every variety of him. A thousand disciples, less gifted ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... of the soil gains as many friends as the tobacco-grower. His table is well supplied from the choicest his larder affords and he cheerfully welcomes all to its side. He is the friend of the poor and the companion of the rich. No meanness or low chicanery is his. His attachment for home, friends, and country is as firm and strong as for ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... counterfeit. Do not pass for current coin what is base alloy. Let transparent honor and sincerity regulate all your dealings; despise all meanness; avoid the sinister motive, the underhand dealing; aim at that unswerving love of truth that would scorn to stoop to base compliances and unworthy equivocations; live more under the power of the purifying and ennobling influences ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... if she faced about now a second time she would indeed attract attention. So, while her cheeks flamed hot at the meanness, the miserable ridiculousness of the imposture, she assumed a brisk, determined gait, as though she knew just where she were going, and, turning out of the square down a by-street, walked around the block, even stopping once or twice before a store, pretending ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... violently they write; as Lucifer and his companions were only proud when angels, but grew malicious when devils. Let them rail, since it is the only solace of their miseries, and the only revenge which, we hope, they now can take. The greatest and the best of men are above their reach; and, for our meanness, though they assault us like footpads in the dark, their blows have done us little harm: we yet live to justify ourselves in open day, to vindicate our loyalty to the government, and to assure your lordship, with all submission ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... saint in every grove. By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd, The sports of children satisfy the child; Each nobler aim, repress'd by long control, 155 Now sinks at last, or feebly mans the soul; While low delights, succeeding fast behind, In happier meanness occupy the mind: As in those domes, where Caesars once bore sway, Defac'd by time and tottering in decay, 160 There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed, And, wond'ring man could want the larger pile, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... and moist; but it was not the memory it recalled that made her emotion come welling up. The look that had been in Tony's eyes as he turned away, the change that had come over his face as she asked her purposely pointed questions, and the recollection of the fair face of Ailleen and the crafty meanness of Dickson's, all combined ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... is humanly speaking possible, the individual can attain this. My struggle is a struggle for the happiness of all men. The condition of my happiness would be the happiness of all; nothing could content me until I saw an end of sickness and poverty, of servitude and spiritual meanness. I could take my place at the banquet table of life only as the last ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... enough, sordid capitalists and miserly landlords don't. I offered the other day to fund all my personal debts, in the shape of a long loan at three per cent, but my creditors did not take kindly to the idea. Such is the sordid meanness which is too sadly characteristic of the merely commercial mind. But to return to our subject, which is, I ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... day she hearn him and Mrs. Ostrich giggling about something, and she has a reg'lar tantrum, and jest fur meanness goes out and falls down on the race track, pertending she has fainted, and they can't move her no ways, not even roll her. But finally they rousted her out of that by one of these here sprinkling carts backing up agin her and ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... a shrivelled little shell of a woman at sixty-five, always had a warm welcome for her oldest daughter and her beautiful grandchild. She would limp about her bare, uninviting little rooms, complaining of her husband's increasing meanness and of her own physical ills, while with gnarled, twisted old hands she filled a "Rebecca" teapot of cheap brown glaze, or cut into a fresh loaf ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... symbol for me, and the less none because of his animal humour, his queer indecent side, and because of such lapses into utter meanness as that which made him sound the note of the begging-letter writer even in his "Dedication," reminding His Magnificence very urgently, as if it were the gist of his matter, of the continued malignity of fortune ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... added aloud. Ray went down the back stairs, swinging an empty millet-bag in his hand. For another five minutes Clara remained standing, to show that she was anxious to get away, while Ada abused her husband, giving detailed accounts of his meanness and neglect. Suddenly ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... The pitiful meanness of these pilferings revolted the major, and, moreover, he was enraged at having been duped a second time, deceived by the simple, stupid dodge of falsified additions. He rose at last and paced his office for a whole hour, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... magnificent bombardment of Greytown! It ordered General Taylor into the heart of the Mexican country with a feeble force, and when his victories had won the grateful plaudits of his countrymen, it had the unparalleled meanness, while he was still fighting our battles, to censure the capitulation of Monterey. It had the baseness to call General Scott from the head of a victorious army, and to attempt to disgrace him in the eyes of his own country and the world. It ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... that I should study the character of the Corsicans. "Go among them," said he, "the more you talk with them, you will do me the greater pleasure. Forget the meanness of their apparel. Hear their sentiments. You will find honour, and sense, and abilities among these ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... who made any pretension to the character of a gentleman. Granting that Sir Hudson Lowe was not an officer of the first distinction—it must be admitted that he did no wrong in accepting a duty offered to him by his government; and that Napoleon was guilty, not only of indecorum, but of meanness, in reproaching a man so situated, as he did almost at their first interview, with the circumstances—of which at worst it could but be said that they were not splendid—of his previous life. But this is far too little. Granting that Sir Hudson Lowe had been in history and in conduct, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... on the other hand, had no real interest whatever in anybody's affairs but her own, and combined in the highest degree those qualities of personal extravagance and general meanness which not unfrequently ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in such a witherin' way that I should most probable withered him, only he is blind in one side, and I wuz on the blind side, but he argued with me, and said that it wuz no worse than to give licenses for other kinds of meanness. ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... a thrifty man, whose thrift extended to meanness, and his wife was thoroughly selfish. They had but one child—a daughter—who bade fair to ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... was this, that it was at least one generation ahead of the colored heads of our people. We may, if we please, refuse to emigrate, and crouch like spaniels, to lick the hand that beats us; but children's children at the farthest, will have outgrown such pitiful meanness, and will dare to do all that others have dared and done for the sake of freedom and independence. Then all this cowardly cant about the unhealthy climate, the voracious beasts, and venomous reptiles of Africa, will be at a discount, instead ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... that was done, and the city in an uproar, Megacles, with all his family, at once fled; but Solon, though he was now very old, and had none to back him, yet came into the marketplace and made a speech to the citizens, partly blaming their inadvertency and meanness of spirit, and in part urging and exhorting them not thus tamely to lose their liberty; and likewise then spoke that memorable saying, that, before, it was an easier task to stop the rising tyranny, but now the greater ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of the meanest white people in the United States in Mississippi up there on the Yellow Dog River. That's where the Devil makes meanness. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... the weak, sometimes get punished for their meanness in an unexpected manner. This truth was very effectually impressed upon Oscar, one March morning, as he was going to school. The streets were in a very bad condition, being several inches deep with a compound of snow, water, and mud, ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... beauty of a summer's dawn breaking the shadows of a sleeping city, but one cannot set it down. I often met her, and, when talking to her, I knew myself—I, hack-journalist, frequenter of Fleet Street bars, retailer of smoke-room stories—a great gentleman, incapable of meanness, fit ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... bow out of doors; you whom the policeman tells to move on; you who are jostled in the crowd of this world, and amongst the Snobs our brethren: consider how much harder it is for a man to escape who has not your advantages, and is all his life long subject to adulation; the butt of meanness; consider how difficult it is for the Snobs' idol not ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the wall, he looked at it from different angles, and then came across to me with a wound and a grievance: 'Why have you put that thing there? How can you, who have me, tolerate such a looking object as that? See the meanness in his face! See how used up he is and how sick of life! See what a history is written all over him—his crimes and disgraces! And you can care for him when you have me, your Brown.' After I am dead, I expect him to publish a memorial volume entitled 'Reminiscences of ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... stifle contemptuous motions of heart, and not to vent them in vilifying expression. Particularly, it is a barbarous practice, out of contempt to reproach persons for natural imperfections, for meanness of condition, for unlucky disasters, for any involuntary defects; this being indeed to reproach mankind, unto which such things are incident; to reproach Providence, from the disposal whereof they ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... furiously. "That bull I imported last fall for three thousand dollars," he went on, turning back to the foreman. "They shot him up and drove off his twenty-five cows from the Coyote Bluff pastures. Dirty spite an' meanness. The white-livered scum!" Then with a fierce oath the usually even-tempered Bud hurled his wrath upon the waiting man. "Gorl darn it, you're standin' around like a barbed wire fence post. What in hell's brought you around now? What ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum |
