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More "Belittle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out av his way to belittle himsilf an' phwat he knows, an' Oi w'udn't trust him wid a bent penny as far as Oi cud t'row a bull be th' tail fer 'tis done wid a purpose. 'Tis ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... ago." This is the well-known review by Owen, to which references occur in the "Life and Letters," II., page 300. The amende to the "Vestiges" is not so full as the author felt it to be; but it was clearly in place in a paper intended to belittle the "Origin"; it also gave the reviewer (page 511) an opportunity for a hit at Sedgwick and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... trunk, the play upon which he had worked for several years during hours that should have been devoted to rest. He would get out the play and try to breathe life into it, now that he himself was living. Lynda had said, when last they had discussed his work, "It's beautiful, Con; you shall not belittle it. It is beautiful like a cold, stone thing with rough edges. Sometime you must smooth it and polish it, and then you must pray over it and believe in it, and I really think it will repay you. It may not mean anything but a sure guide to ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... that he threw the gauntlet to Europe as a lecturer, when for days and months he could have done it so authoritatively as a Senator of the United States; could have done it from his senatorial chair, and in the fulfilment of the most sacred public and patriotic duty. How could the Senator thus belittle one of the most elevated political positions in the world, that of a Senator ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... implicit in this question the modern drama necessarily is based, since the dramatist, in any period when the theatre is really alive, is obliged to tell the people in the audience what they have themselves been thinking. Those critics, therefore, have no ground to stand on who belittle the importance of the modern social drama and regard it as an arbitrary phase of art devised, for business reasons merely, by ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... letting of blood, 'Something leaner of body—something keener of mood. 'And the men new-freed from the levies return to the fields again, 'Matching a hundred battles, cottar and lord and thane. 'And they talk aloud in the temples where the ancient wargods are. 'They thumb and mock and belittle the holy harness of war. 'They jest at the sacred chariots, the robes and the gilded staff. 'These things fill them with laughter, they lean on their spears and laugh. 'The men grown old in the war-game, hither and thither they range— ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... water, could not add a pang to her torture. All that I have described happened, of course, in a few seconds; the man had barely gone under before one of the ship's butchers, in his white clothes, was in after him. Let no one belittle the race of butchers. The life-taker knew how to save life, and Master Butcher had his man in a moment, turned him on his back, and began to swim ashore; indeed, there was no fear of the man's drowning, for there were half a dozen men in the water within half a minute of the accident. The man ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... stupidity of Aristotle's logic, and its power to belittle and benumb the intelligence of its reverential students has been shown in every college where this effete study is kept up. We have no better illustration of late than its effect on Prof. Harris, who is a very intelligent ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... the correspondence that eager devotees have found between them and the Bible is a slur that falls altogether on the religion and not on the science. This is a great error, and those who are drawn into it belittle the cause that is dear to them. While our author is catholic in his reading, he does not seem to assign to all writers in his field their just value. His quotations, the fresh, the obsolete, the trustworthy, and the doubtful, are mingled in a confusion ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... of nations in these latter times is the highest billow in humanity's evolution, the crowning effort of ages in the aggrandizement of man. Unless we take her in this altitude, we do not comprehend her; we belittle her towering stature and conceal the singular design of Providence in ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... modest, sir," the Spaniard said. "You are one of those who belittle your own good deeds. I feel indeed more grateful than I can express to you as ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... you laugh at us Chinese barbarians; you call yourselves in America the head of civilization; you claim that the glory of your civilization is your estimate of women; you sneer at us Chinese for belittling women's souls and squeezing their feet. Who belittle their capacities? Who squeeze their minds?" We must confess it. The old theory of the subservience of women still taints ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and children is shown in his published letters, written while in Canada, and he was ever looking forward to the time when he could rejoin them in his beloved chateau of Candiac, and resume the studies he liked so well. Some Canadian writers have endeavoured to belittle Montcalm, that they may more easily explain away the failings of Vaudreuil, a native Canadian, who thwarted constantly the plans of a greater man; but an impartial historian can never place these two men on the same high level. Wolfe's family was of respectable origin, and he inherited ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... can you thus ruthlessly belittle my tenderest hope, my fondest ambitions? What do you know about my future career as a brakeman? I intend to be touchingly faithful to my duty, kind and considerate to the public. In time the world will hear of me and I ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... Murdoch's judgment. My own feeling certainly is that in his admiration for the Australian Forces, and in his grief at their heavy losses (in both of which feelings I fully share) he has allowed himself to belittle and to criticize us all so that their virtues might be ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... his character, his motives, or something else that belongs to your neighbour. Some one does that in your hearing who either does not know you, or who wishes to torture and expose you, and you fall straight into the snare thus set for you, and begin at once to belittle, depreciate, detract from, and run down your neighbour, who has been too much praised for your peace of mind and your self-control. You insinuate something to his disadvantage and dishonour. You quote some authority you have heard to his hurt. And so on past all our power to picture ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... there are many who make light of any mention of the public labors of these women. Sometimes, indeed, the talents and usefulness of these women, and of the earnest women of our own day, are admitted after a fashion; but it is done in such a way as, in reality, to belittle the sex as much as possible. They are considered as occupying the same relation to men that the moon does to the sun, and all that is desired of them is to reflect a borrowed light. If she be unable to reflect a light when there ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... many others of his type, was long ago eliminated from our ranks, for a person buoyed up by no noble purpose is the first to succumb to the hardships of the winter that we have been through. . . . If his lies did nothing worse than belittle his comrades, who are here for motives that he is unable to conceive, it would be only dishonourable. But when it comes to throwing discredit on the French Government, that in all its treatment of us has been generous beyond anything that one would ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... may find still another mode of defence, entirely personal, seldom employed by husbands, but the men of superiority will not fear to attempt it. It is to belittle the lover without letting your wife suspect your intention. You ought to be able to bring it about so that she will say to herself some evening while she is putting her hair in curl-papers, "My husband is ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... do hold to a higher ideal of womanhood than some (and for all I know to the contrary, than all) of the peoples of Europe. What I am denying is that Americans have any greater reverence for women, any higher chivalrousness, than Englishmen. And this denial I make not with any desire to belittle the chivalry of American men but only in the endeavour to correct the popular American impression about Englishmen, which does not contribute to the promotion of that good-will which ought to exist between ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... idea maddens me! For I know them! I know that they will ruin every thing. At the decisive moment they are vacillating, and, in order to dishearten others, too, they exaggerate the strength of the enemy a hundred-fold, and belittle our own resources in the same proportion. Would that Heaven were to decree, 'Blucher shall command the Prussians!' Good Lord, I pledge Thee my head that I would expel Bonaparte with all his French from Germany, though I had but thirty thousand soldiers behind me!" [Footnote: Blucher's ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... of his troops were loyalists from principle, and men of good standing, especially those from the seaboard. Many of the worst tory bandits did not rally to him, preferring to plunder on their own account. The American army itself was by no means free from scoundrels. Most American writers belittle the character of Ferguson's force, and sneer at the courage of the tories, although entirely unable to adduce any proof of their statements, the evidence being the other way. Apparently they are unconscious ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... sex! You're not trying to belittle that, are you? Why, Kate, that's the beginning and the end of things. What I've always liked about you is that you look big facts in the face and aren't afraid of truth. Sex! Why, that's home and happiness and all a woman ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... at all times, the absence of ceremony, of those trivialities which obscure and belittle the one supreme fact, gave an added solemnity to the unadorned service: forced upon her a half-disturbing realisation that she was passing from an independence, dearer to her than life, into the keeping of a man:—a man of whom she knew little ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... Buzzard's Bay, with the buildings upon it, consisting of a furnished dwelling-house and barn. Scarcely was this gift accepted than he added to it an endowment of 50,000 dollars for the equipment of the school. Adjectives belittle deeds like these. The bare statement says more than ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... humbug Graham is!" whispered Roberts. "It's all to belittle our lads. He knew that as well ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... the undertaking; there was far less in the work to be performed. I simply desire to protest against the correctness of the distorted pictures drawn ostensibly to magnify the sacrifices, which were many, and to belittle the rewards, which were great, in the performance of an ordinary piece of work, by a class of persons now rapidly disappearing from the scenes that once knew them. Their work is fast being transferred ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... or widow, or every childless wife, of the power of exercising her warm sympathies for the good of others, is to deprive her of the greatest happiness of which she is capable; to rob her highest faculties of their legitimate operation and reward; to belittle and narrow her mind; to dwarf her affections; to turn the harmonies of her nature to discord; and, as the human mind must be active, to compel her to employ hers with low and grovelling thoughts, which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the incidents of that perhaps the most favourite novel in the English language, it has been so written that it would not have offended the author had he lived to read it, nor does it disgust or annoy those who most love the original. There is not a word in it having an intention to belittle Scott. It has sprung from the genuine humour created in Thackeray's mind by his aspect of the romantic. We remember how reticent, how dignified was Rowena,—how cold we perhaps thought her, whether there was so little of that billing and cooing, ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether (November, 1845, Graham's Magazine) may be rated higher, but it is not essentially a humorous story. Rather it is incisive satire, with too biting an undercurrent to pass muster in the company of the genial in literature. Poe's humorous stories as a whole have tended to belittle rather than increase his fame, many of them verging on the inane. There are some, however, which are at least excellent fooling; ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... be constantly coaxed to right-doing by promised rewards,—a new toy, a book, an excursion, nor even the pleasures of Heaven. All of these incentives are selfish, and invariably narrow the character and belittle life when made the chief motives of action. But rather begin at the earliest possible moment to instill into the mind a love for right, and truth, and purity, and virtue, and an abhorrence for their contraries; then will he have a worthy principle by which to square his life; then will he ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... the tribune and of the press combined, these two great forces of civilization,—it is not I who seek to deny or belittle them; but see how many efforts of all kinds it would have required, in every direction, and under every form, by the tribune and by the newspaper, by the book and by the spoken word, to succeed even in shaking the universal prejudice in favor of these four ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... and they are forced to ride foxes because there are no wild pig here. They know nothing of hawking or quail-fighting, but they gamble up to the hilt on all occasions and bear losses laughing. Their card-play is called Baraich [Bridge?]. They belittle their own and the achievements of their friends, so long as that friend faces them. In his absence they extol his deeds. They are of cheerful countenance. When they jest, they respect honour. It is so also with their women. The ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... short, people who never wrote a play in their lives,—that envy you. All these in their intercourse will show that they do not think much of you, will speak slightingly of you behind your back, and belittle you on purpose, so as to add an inch or two to their own height. 'Sniatynski? who is he? Yes, I remember; he dresses at the same tailor as I.' Such is ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... we must not belittle the good we have, because we look for something better. Let us be thankful for our feet, ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... be the last one to belittle the importance of knitting or the invention of a knitting machine. I know some very nice people who knit a great deal. But really, when it comes to anniversaries I don't see where Isaac Wixon Lamb gets off to crash in ahead of me or a great many other people ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... been very good to you. He has forgiven you for insulting him, and is trying to save you. Can you not forgive him for being so much better than you are? How dare you belittle him by putting yourself ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... from a third party committed to inflation. Since then it would appear that the Democratic leaders seek to change the issue. The same old questions about the rights of states to nullify the laws of the United States—the same old policy to belittle and degrade our national government into a mere confederacy of states—are now thrust ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... indeed, as Gibbon called it, "a golden volume, not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or of Tully." To belittle its originality and sincerity, as is sometimes done, with a view to saving the Christianity of the writer, is to misunderstand his mind and his method. The Consolatio is not, as has been maintained, a mere patchwork ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... successfully resisted constant pressure that was put upon him by his flock to continue the reception of "revelations." While he was prudent enough to avoid the pitfalls that would have surrounded him as a revealer, he was crafty enough not to belittle his own authority in so doing. In his discourse on the occasion of the open announcement of polygamy, he said, "If an apostle magnifies his calling, his words are the words of eternal life and salvation to those who hearken to them, just as much so as any written revelations contained in these ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... The traveller may, of course, meet a lion on the road by broad daylight; but many experienced hunters, who count their slain lions by the dozen, will tell you they were years in the country before they ever saw the kings of beasts, and these are men who do not belittle the danger incurred in hunting them. One old hunter is supposed to have said to an enthusiastic newcomer, who had heard of a lion in the vicinity, and immediately asked the old stager if he were going after it: "I have not lost any lions, therefore I am not looking for any"; but, all ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... about myself, most blessed Father, by which I know that certain friends have put my name in very bad odor with you and yours, saying that I have attempted to belittle the power of the keys and of the Supreme Pontiff. Therefore I am accused of heresy, apostasy, and perfidy, and am called by six hundred other names of ignominy. My ears shudder and my eyes are astounded. But the one thing in which I put my confidence remains unshaken—my clear and ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... details and in figures the exact character and cost of every designed alteration to this scene; but the idea, as soon as it occurred, was sternly suppressed, for however cheerful a disciple I am of that philosopher, far be it from me to belittle him ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the attitude of the religious to belittle anything that is designed for human betterment. Their philosophy is, the more you suffer here, the less you will suffer "hereafter." Their humility to and fear of this "unseen" power is the most degrading trait in ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... demanded, he will indicate a weakness of character which augurs ill for the future: and if you insist upon the sacrifice, you will establish a selfish precedent which can only make you a tyrant in your own domain, and at the same time belittle your ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... objects would fain make upon us, and to embody that impression in worthy language. It is rare to meet now even with young people who will abandon themselves to a heroic emotion, or who, if they really feel it, do not try to belittle it in expression. Byron's poetry, above most, tempts and almost compels surrender to that which is beyond the ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... American tinned-food habit, nor, on reading the chap's screed, did they impress me as being fraught with vital interest to thinking people; in truth, I was more concerned with the comparison of myself to a restaurateur of the crude new city of New York, which might belittle rather than distinguish me, I suspected. But what was my astonishment to perceive in the course of a few days that I had created rather a sensation, with attending newspaper publicity which, although bizarre enough, I am bound to say contributed not a little ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... passions have their pettinesses. Shame on the passions which belittle man! Honor to the one which makes a child ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... It is the spirit which has been the inspiration of every great religious awakening since the world began. In this country and in other parts of the English-speaking world that spirit is becoming associated with the name the New Theology. To associate it with any one personality is to belittle the subject and to obscure its real significance. There are many brave and good men in the churches and outside the churches to-day, men of true prophetic spirit, who would reject utterly the name New Theology, but who are thoroughly imbued with this new-old spirit and are leading ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... the truth were told. In August 1856 an event took place which had far-reaching consequences: the first interview between Cavour and Garibaldi. Cavour was one of Garibaldi's earliest admirers; he applauded his exploits at Montevideo and at Rome, when the old Piedmontese party tried to belittle him and obliged Charles Albert to decline his services. In one way the hero was a man after the minister's own heart: he was absolutely practical; he might be obstinate or rash, but he was no doctrinaire. Cavour never changed his opinion of people, and even after the General ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... and putting her hand kindly on his shoulder). Oh no. I am sure you have done lots of kind things and brave things, if you could only recollect them. With Gordon for instance? Nobody can belittle that. ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... last year, and on his figure, with its square shoulders and its look of obvious distinction, as of a man who had achieved results so emphatically that it was impossible either to overlook or to belittle them. How splendid he looked! And what a pity that, after all his triumphs, he should still be so nervous on the first ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... nothing of a demagogue. He did not attempt to belittle the public service. He championed the provision for higher pay for the United States Judges, and for increasing the stipend of army officers, although he denounced the system of double rations as vicious. He did not hesitate to hit an unnecessary expense ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... influence and have undoubtedly moulded public opinion. The fact is that the formation of opinion to-day is by no means confined to the educated classes, but the masses have taken it upon themselves not only to formulate opinion but to enforce it. It would be a mistake to belittle or ignore this opinion, or to ascribe it to a temporary upheaval. It would be equally a mistake to suppose that this awakening amongst the masses is due either to the activity of the Ali Brothers or myself. For the time being we have the ear of the masses because we ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... continued efforts of idealists to belittle it, there is scarcely a fact of human experience capable of more universal substantiation than that in order to live it is necessary to eat. The corollary is equally true: in order to eat ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... eyes, that worthy man allowed himself to take a general view, and he was pleased to express his high approval of the company, enlarging especially on Carmichael, whom, as a Free Kirkman, he had been accustomed rather to belittle. ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... perfected."(811) Here is the test of every man's profession. We cannot accord holiness to any man without bringing him to the measurement of God's only standard of holiness in heaven and in earth. If men feel no weight of the moral law, if they belittle and make light of God's precepts, if they break one of the least of these commandments, and teach men so, they shall be of no esteem in the sight of Heaven, and we may know that ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... belittle the achievements of modern scientists, we have the greatest admiration for them and we entertain high expectations of what ambitions they may yet realize, but we perceive a limitation in the fact, that all discoveries of the past ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... willing that you should try to belittle this family whom you do not know. Francois Darbois, the philosopher, is a fine character, of unparalleled honour and integrity: his wife has never frequented the world where people are 'taken in,' as you say, and as for Mlle. Esperance ... so much the better if you ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... fairly successful man of business. Henry permitted himself to indulge his pedagogical and ministerial instincts for the benefit and improvement of his kinsman. They seem to have carried on a mutual recrimination in their letters: Neville was inclined to belittle the divine calling of poets in their teens; while Henry deplored his brother's unwillingness to write at length and upon serious and "instructive" topics. Alas, the ill-starred young man had a mania for self-improvement. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... in minds not prone to superstition, the two events were linked by the same date, the mourning for the one rekindled the memory of the other, and King Constantine acquired a new and imperishable title to the gratitude of the nation. If all the efforts made in the past to blast his glory or to belittle his services had only heightened his popularity, all the efforts made since to blot out his image could only engrave it still deeper on the hearts of the people. His very exile was interpreted, symbolically, as the enchanted ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... thinking of one of the most serious obstacles to the furtherance of his enterprise: the stubborn hostility of the Sandstone County mountaineers. To the gentlest of them it meant changes that would make game scarcer and circumscribe and belittle their consciously small and circumscribed lives; to the wilder sort it meant an invasion of aliens who had never come before for other purpose than to break up their stills and drag them to jail. As he came out into the Susie ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... cellar to garret, neither blame nor disparagement must be placed upon the fire department if it failed to save the burning house. So with cancer; if the public refuses or neglects to operate for cancer at the time when it can be eradicated, the public cannot censure or belittle surgery. A cancer is like a green and ripe thistle. Pull up the green thistle and you have gotten rid of it. But if you wait until the thistle is ripe, and the winds have blown away the seeds, there is no use of pulling up that thistle. Early operations ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... himself; he must care so little for, and have such control of, his personality, that he can lay it down, so to speak, and let humanity cross over upon it. History may get no news of him at all; although he is then the Chief of Men, and the greatest living;—or it may get news, only to belittle him. His own and the after ages may think very little of him; he may possess no single quality to dazzle the imagination:—he may seem cold and uninteresting, a crafty tyrant;—or an uncouth old ex-rail-splitter to have in the White House;—or ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... decided advantage of which he must be dispossessed. To accomplish this two ways opened to them. Regarding the canal scandal as not a party question they could heartily join him in the crusade, thus dividing whatever political capital might be made out of it; or they could disparage his effort and belittle his character as a reformer. The latter being the easier because the more tolerable, many Republican papers began charging him with insincerity, with trickery, and with being wholly influenced by political ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Laodicean spirit will not serve! I do not ridicule or belittle the efforts of generous and genial men and women who give their spare time, or their whole time, to bettering the plight of convicts. But the diabolical spirit of the prisons sneers at them, and sits undisturbed. Let air and sunshine ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... brother's wit, dexterity, or eloquence, he seems to have joined more than his frankness to a blustering manner.] William Coventry's was one of those "unconversable" natures which moved Clarendon's aversion. A sullen temper, a censorious habit, and a pride that led him to belittle all in which he was not chief agent, were precisely the traits of character which Clarendon distrusted and disliked. He admits Coventry's abilities, and gives him credit for being exempt from the degrading coarseness which was typical of ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Kansas—issued an appeal to him which seemed to give an official stamp to the popular entreaties. Roosevelt's enemies insinuated that the seven Governors had been moved to act at his own instigation, and they tried to belittle the entire movement as a "frame-up," in the common phrase of the day. No doubt he was consulted in the general direction of the campaign; no doubt, being a very alert student of political effects, he suggested many things; but the rush ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... is necessary to point out, such reflex influence may act not in one direction only, but also in the reverse direction. From the standpoint of ascetic contemplation eager to belittle humanity, the excretory centers may cast dishonor upon the genital center which they adjoin. From the more ecstatic standpoint of the impassioned lover, eager to magnify the charm of the woman he worships, it is not impossible for the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... matter to present it in a conventional fashion, for to give a Du Barri or a Napoleon, a Nelson or a Wellington, not in accordance with the popular concept of such personages would be to seek failure. Moreover, the writer is necessarily forced to belittle the subject if not bold enough to take a simple episode in the life of his hero or heroine, and even then, unless the miracle-working power of genius is employed, the great figure comes out as ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... or a piece of fiction that told the TRUTH. Of course, I have read stuff such as Rousseau and Zola and George Moore and various memoirs that were supposed to be window panes in their respective breasts; but, mostly, all of them were either liars, actors, or posers. (Of course, I'm not trying to belittle the greatness of their ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... agreed Dick. "The jig's up with Germany and she's the only one that doesn't see it. It's fun to see the way she tries to belittle America to her own people. Almost every week she has to change the story. At first she said that America wouldn't fight at all. We were a nation of money grabbers. Then even if we wanted to fight the U-boats would keep us from getting over; ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... martyr in a world full of oppressed women, it would be difficult to say: Emeline herself would have been the last person from whom a reasonable explanation might have been expected. But it was a fact that she never missed an opportunity to belittle the male sex; she had never had much charm for men, she had none now, and consequently she associated chiefly with women: with widows and grass widows of her own type, and with the young actresses and would-be actresses of the curious social level upon which she lived. ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... snapped, cutting in. "We will say, a little indiscreet. My errand is not concerned with Monsieur Marius's morals or with his lack of them. These indiscretions which you belittle appear to have been enough to have estranged him from his father, a circumstance which but served the more to endear him to his mother. I am told that she is a very handsome woman, and that the ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... all these things used to distress his mother when she was old and much alone. She attempted to belittle the luxury of Clarence's boyhood. She told Rachael that he was treated just as the other boys were. Her conscience was never quite easy ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... friend Thuillier to the blows of his competitors; let us not deliver him over to public discussion, that modern harpy which is but the trumpet of envy and calumny, the pretext seized by malevolence to belittle all that is great, soil all that is immaculate and dishonor whatever is sacred. Let us, rather, do as the Third Party is now doing in the Chamber,—keep silence ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... did all she could to belittle Nancy's triumph. She stood on the landing and sneered at the work of the crew, and especially at "Number 6" until one evening Jennie Bruce came up behind her, caught her by both elbows, and thrust her suddenly toward ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... the farthest possible from my thought or wish to ignore or belittle the labors of earnest ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... liable to be morbidly obsessed by the physical facts of sex, and their thoughts continually directed into turbid channels. But it is possible by the grace of GOD to conquer, though there may be relapses before the final victory is won. It is important neither on the one hand to belittle the gravity of the evil, nor on the other to grow hopeless and despondent, but to have faith in GOD. It is also a counsel of common sense to distract the mind, so far as possible, in other directions, and to avoid deliberately whatever is likely to prove an occasion or stimulus ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... of Aristotle's logic, and its power to belittle and benumb the intelligence of its reverential students has been shown in every college where this effete study is kept up. We have no better illustration of late than its effect on Prof. Harris, who is a very intelligent and useful citizen, but who has been so befogged by such studies ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... being two years older than he is! It was not very kind, even if she did jilt him. It seems a small revenge to me. I wish I could have made my presence known and then I should not have heard Mr. Kinsella belittle himself, which ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... taught us that the word duty means a great deal to you, Egbert," said Mrs. Arnot, and then the matter dropped. But the animus of each man had been quite clearly revealed, and the question would rise in Laura's mind, "Does not the one belittle the occasion because little himself?" Although she dreaded the coming war inexpressibly, she took Haldane's view of it. His tribute to her cousin Amy also ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... abuse it poured upon my work a number of years ago." This is the well-known review by Owen, to which references occur in the "Life and Letters," II., page 300. The amende to the "Vestiges" is not so full as the author felt it to be; but it was clearly in place in a paper intended to belittle the "Origin"; it also gave the reviewer (page 511) an opportunity for a hit at Sedgwick and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... for his law. The "juris consultus" or the "juris peritus" was the lawyer, and as such was regarded as being of much less importance than the "patronus" or advocate, who stood before the whole city and pleaded the cause. In this trial of Murena, who was by trade a soldier, it suited Cicero to belittle lawyers and to extol the army. When he is telling Sulpicius that it was not by being a lawyer that a man could become Consul, he goes on to praise the high dignity of his client's profession. "The greatest glory is achieved by those who excel in battle. All our empire, all our republic, is defended ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... threw the gauntlet to Europe as a lecturer, when for days and months he could have done it so authoritatively as a Senator of the United States; could have done it from his senatorial chair, and in the fulfilment of the most sacred public and patriotic duty. How could the Senator thus belittle one of the most elevated political positions in the world, that of a Senator of ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... Loring turned out to be right, old Pecksniff turned out to be wrong, for he had refused a guard for the depot, and therefore was it now Pecksniff's bounden duty to himself to pooh-pooh the precautions of the Engineer and belittle the danger. Not for a moment would he admit that armed desperadoes had come at Nevins' back. As for the key in his possession, with all respect to the statements of Mr. Loring, the story of the unfortunate captain was just as plausible, and that ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... Her lips closed; not even for pride's sake, and retort's sake, will she desecrate the past, belittle her ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... right to demand this sacrifice of him? Was it not a devilish temptation to take him from his calling, from that work in which God had evidently intended him to work for the world? Had he a right to spoil his life, to belittle his soul, for any consideration? If Hepsy Ann Nickerson had claims, had not he also, and his Art? If he were willing, in this dire extremity, to sacrifice his love, his prospects of married bliss, might he not justly require the same of her? Was not Art his mistress?—Thus whispered the insidious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... a word in his favour. He had shown himself a craven in every possible way, so it was said. This silent crowd, however, had no certain knowledge of the truth of these rumours; they might be, probably were, false reports to belittle him in the minds of the populace. What this waiting multitude remembered was that James, Duke of Monmouth, was a soldier of distinction and was doomed to die a ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... humor often present themselves under aspects somewhat different from those preferred by us, we belittle their efforts unjustly. As a matter of fact, the British attainments in this direction are the best in the world, next to our own. Moreover, in the British colonies is to be found a spirit of humor that exactly parallels our own in many distinctive features. Thus, there is a Canadian story that ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... sweet, firm, human mouth were precious to him. Peter—his friend, his father, his comrade! Could he ever insult him by such a mean, cowardly feeling as gratitude? And was the woman he loved as he loved nothing else in life—was she—was Ruth going to belittle their relations with the same substitute? It was a big pin, that which Miss Felicia had impaled him on, and it is no wonder the poor fluttering wings were nigh ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... he had witnessed with his own eyes and had special opportunities of studying accurately. "The writings of my predecessors contain sometimes slanders, sometimes eulogies, but nowhere the accurate truth of the facts." He goes on to complain of the way in which they belittle the action of the Jews in order to aggrandize the Romans, which defeats its own purpose; and he contrasts the merit of one who composes by his own industry a history of events not hitherto faithfully recorded, with the more popular and the easier fashion of writing a fresh ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... trying to get your reputation or your life. You never want to take chances. Watch him. Sleep with one eye open. Listen to every breath of wind. Watch, and watch eternally. You are only safe when he is dead, or disarmed and in prison. And never belittle your enemy. Better think of him as bigger than he is, cleverer, and more cunning. When you belittle his strength you give him the advantage because you will not fight so ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... condemnation of much of his previous production. At last, it even annoyed him to hear his name invariably mentioned in connection with this single novel. "Those who call me the father of Eugenie Grandet seek to belittle me," he cried. "I grant it is a masterpiece, but a small one. They forbear to cite the ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... wrote each a letter saying that the governor was about to send them appointments, and that it would be well, if they wished to evade them, to write the governor at once, surrendering their present commissions. Well! Evade? They would evade nothing! Do you think they would so belittle themselves as to write to the usurper? They would submit to keep ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... the falls, and the sound of the surging floods below; the witchery of feathery elms reflected in its clear surfaces, and the enchantment of the full moon on its golden torrents, never twice alike and always beautiful! How is one to forget, evade, scorn, belittle it, by leaving its charms untold; and who could keep such a river out of a book? It has flowed through many of mine and the last sound I expect to hear in life will be the faint, ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the big cookstove, made the back room into sleeping quarters, and turned our front room into a sort of clubhouse. White Mountain gave us a wonderful phonograph and plenty of records. If one is inclined to belittle canned music, it is a good plan to live for a while where the only melody one hears is a wailing coyote or the wind ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... from New York. After several months of futile effort, spaced by periods of laziness that Margaret put an end to, a gentleman's job was secured for Larry, through the kindness of one of his father's friends. At first Larry was inclined to think that the work would belittle him, spoil his chances of "better things." But Margaret, seeing that as assistant secretary to the Malachite Company he could do no harm, could neither gamble nor loaf, replied to these doubts in a ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... underrate, underestimate, undervalue, underreckon^; depreciate; disparage &c (detract) 934; not do justice to; misprize, disprize; ridicule &c 856; slight &c (despise) 930; neglect &c 460; slur over. make light of, make little of, make nothing of, make no account of; belittle; minimize, think nothing of; set no store by, set at naught; shake off as dewdrops from the lion's mane. Adj. depreciating, depreciated ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... externals and irrelevances, and are moreover, greatly given to lying. From the savages we hear very little. Judging them in all things by our own standards, in default of a knowledge of theirs, we necessarily condemn, disparage and belittle. One thing that civilization certainly has not done is to make us intelligent enough to understand that the opposite of a virtue is not necessarily a vice. Because we do not like the taste of one another it does not follow that the cannibal is a person of depraved ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... that she really looked like an angel of light compared with the dark child of Nature. Agnes was tall and slender, and moved with a great air of dignity and calm self-possession, and this to the uncontrolled Chaldea was also a matter of offence. She inwardly tried to belittle her rival by thinking what a milk-and-water useless person she was, but the steady and resolute look in the lady's brown eyes gave the lie to this mental assertion. Lady Agnes had an air of breeding and command, which, with all her beauty, Chaldea lacked, and as she passed along ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... in order to see whether one is made for the other, and whether we can assure ourselves that the hearer will be, as it were, forced to surrender. We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple and natural, and not to magnify that which is little, or belittle that which is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject, and there must be in it ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... the mystery of the other's personality and mind, and as the lower lights were switched off and the alcove grew dimmer, the talk became increasingly intimate. A vein of poetry, of unsuspected romance, developed in Rimrock's mind and, far from discouraging it or seeming to belittle it, Mrs. Hardesty responded in kind. It was a rare experience in people so different, this exchange of innermost thoughts, and as their voices grew lower and all the world seemed far away, they took no notice ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... political life. Almost the only pain I have experienced during my term here has been caused by the personal attacks which are too frequently made on both sides against party men. Believe me, gentlemen, such personal attacks do no good in advancing any cause, but belittle the nation in the eyes of strangers. They are also, as a rule, as unwarrantable as they are repulsive, useless and mischievous. I have seen a good deal of the public life and of the politicians of many countries, and I unhesitatingly affirm that you have in general ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... had merely saved my life," I continued, "I might, perhaps, find words to express my gratitude, but it was my reason you saved, and there are no words that would not belittle my debt to you." I spoke with emotion, and her ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... sea-weed. Let us remember, then, that in the Silurian period the world, so far as it was raised above the ocean, was a beach; and let us seek there for such creatures as God has made to live on seashores, and not belittle the Creative work, or say that He first scattered the seeds of life in meagre or stinted measure, because we do not find air-breathing animals when there was no fitting atmosphere to feed their lungs, insects ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... chagrin Meredith produced in me was an attempt to belittle his merit. "It isn't a good novel, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the sense of evil. To illustrate: It seems a great evil to belie and belittle Christian Science, and persecute a Cause which is healing its thousands and rapidly diminishing the percentage of sin. But reduce this evil to its lowest terms, nothing, and slander loses its power to harm; for even the wrath ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... war between rival sheepmen an' cattlemen. Same old fight over water an' grass! ... Jean, my son, that is wrong. It 'll not be a war between sheepmen an' cattlemen. But a war of honest ranchers against rustlers maskin' as sheep-raisers! ... Mind you, I don't belittle the trouble between sheepmen an' cattlemen in Arizona. It's real an' it's vital an' it's serious. It 'll take law an' order to straighten out the grazin' question. Some day the government will keep sheep ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... me then that I saw Captain Whidden in a new light. We of the younger generation had inclined to belittle him because he continued to follow the sea at an age when more successful men had established their counting-houses or had retired from active business altogether. But twice his mercantile adventures had proved ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... seem to worry the princess in the least; nor did her father's appeal not to belittle him in the eyes of his fellow monarchs have ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... conclusions. In the first place, I am satisfied that to dwell with you or any of you in the Villa Buichi or any other habitation for the space of three years presents a prospect so horrifying as to belittle Death itself. Secondly, while my main object in visiting the said messuage was to insure, if possible, against the future contraction of some complaint or disease of the hams, I have, I fear, already defeated that ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... before a general engagement, or, if you prefer it, escapes through the safety-valves of an imprisoned force which promises the explosion of society. You may pooh-pooh it; you may say that this trouble, like an angry child, will cry itself to sleep; you may belittle it by calling it Fourierism, or Socialism, or St. Simonism, or Nihilism, or Communism; but that will not hinder the fact that it is the mightiest, the darkest, the most terrific threat of this century. All ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... silent," cried his mother. She had risen and stood facing him, her face deathly white. "Not one word against your father. Because you never could appreciate him, you needn't belittle him now. Not one word," as Jason would have spoken. "He was my husband and I loved him, God knows. O Ethan, Ethan, how shall I finish my span of years alone!" she ...
— Benefits Forgot - A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love • Honore Willsie
... though not wholly sympathetic listener throughout the discussion, could now no longer withhold his protest. "No wonder," he abruptly exclaimed, "that there are so few deep convictions to-day concerning the great essentials of Christianity! As I sit here and listen to you belittle God and rend the great truths of His Christ, as announced in His Word, the Bible, I am moved by feelings poignantly sorrowful! The Christ has once been crucified; and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... city. Let him know what you want and what you are willing to pay and he will do his best to find it. If a place interests you, look it over well but don't insist on so many showings that you wear out the patience of its occupants. Never, never belittle any property in the hearing of its owner. There are all too many people, cocksure but ignorant of human nature, who believe this helps to get a bargain. It works just the opposite. One would not expect to please a man by telling him that his son was wall-eyed ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... charges, but he wanted to place the blame for the whole matter where it belonged. He wanted to track the man who had conferred with known conspirators back to his home. He wanted to be able to point out the treacherous government which had so sought to belittle the United States in the eyes of ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... C. E. (by letter).—As was to be expected, this paper has brought out discussion, some of which is favorable and flattering; some is in the nature of dust-throwing to obscure the force of the points made; some would attempt to belittle the importance of these points; and some simply brings out the old and over-worked argument which can be paraphrased about as follows: "The structures stand up and perform their ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... the second guide and on most occasions Zeke professed to despise his judgment and belittle his information. ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... jealous of your dignity—of the respect that is due you. I have resented keenly any attempt to belittle you. That is why Disston was not welcome when he came to see you. It is the reason why I have not shown a pleasure I did not ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... exactly frindship, my lord; but I've my rasons why I'd wish you not to belittle the Lynches. Your lordship might forgive them all, now ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... past goods in so far as we have had them, causes pleasure; in so far as we have lost them, causes sorrow; and in so far as others have them, causes envy, because that, above all, seems to belittle our reputation. Hence the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii) that the old envy the young, and those who have spent much in order to get something, envy those who have got it by spending little, because they grieve that they have lost their goods, and that ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... attention, not of Congress, but of the people of the United States, to the causes and effects of these unhappy questions. Is there not a disposition on one side to magnify wrongs and outrages, and on the other side to belittle them or justify them? If public opinion could be directed to a correct survey of what is and to rebuking wrong and aiding the proper authorities in punishing it, a better state of feeling would be inculcated, and the sooner we would have that peace which would leave the States free indeed ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and particularly upon the economic causes need not belittle the strictly religious factor in the movement. The success of the revolt was due to the fact that many kings, nobles, and commoners, for financial and political advantages to themselves, became the valuable allies ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... between the two women belittle them as heroines, and is it, therefore, a blot upon the beauty ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... the war finance will differ in one most important respect. The war finance was purely destructive. From it came national security and the triumph of right over wrong. No one would belittle the worth of the sacrifice. But in the narrower sense of production, of bread winning, there came nothing; or nothing except a new power of organization, a new technical skill and a new aspiration towards better things. ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... to try and belittle his courage, and you say you're his dearest friend." She paused for a moment, then went closer to the young man and said in ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... he described Lake Como and compared it with Tahoe in Innocents Abroad, and while his prejudices against the Indians led him to belittle the Indian name—Tahoe—and in so doing to make several errors of statement, the descriptions are excellent and the interested reader is referred to them as being well ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... which treateth of women's trickery and wherein is a warning to whoso will be warned and an admonishment to whoso will be admonished and whoso hath sight and insight; but I fear lest the hearing of this belittle me with the liege-lord and lower my degree in his esteem; yet I hope that this will not be, because 'tis a rare tale. Women are indeed mischief-makers; their craft and their cunning may not be told nor may their ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... sentiment, and I believe in God. And I believe that facts are God's glorious handiwork. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." The man who shuns realities because they belittle him is on the wrong road; he is hopelessly lost from ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... one way or another, all the watchers of this destiny. Women whose household work was belated, whose children were strayed, who had used up their nervous strength in waiting and feeling, were now cross and inclined to belittle the affair and to be angry at Arenta and themselves for their lost day. And men, young and old, all went back to their ledgers and counters and manufacturing with a sense of lassitude ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... few of the gang, of which he had been at once the terror and inspiration, suffered a like fate. Such the career and such the fitting end of the most distinguished marauder the world has known. Thackeray, with no better guide than a chap-book, was minded to belittle him, now habiting him like a scullion, now sending him forth on some petty errand of cly-faking. But for all Thackeray's contempt his fame is still undimmed, and he has left the reputation of one who, as thief unrivalled, had scarce his equal as wit and ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... render his conduct intelligible in the catastrophe of this story, it is needful to explain how his soul had broadened at an age when young men generally belittle themselves in their relations with women, or in too much occupation with them. Its growth was due to a concurrence of secret circumstances, which invested him with ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... will, attacking the obstacles opposed to it by destiny, fortune, or circumstances." And again: "Drama is a representation of the will of man in conflict with the mysterious powers or natural forces which limit and belittle us; it is one of us thrown living upon the stage, there to struggle against fatality, against social law, against one of his fellow-mortals, against himself, if need be, against the ambitions, the interests, the prejudices, the folly, the malevolence ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... for the butcher. Don't belittle the circle of your benevolence. (She walks across the room.) Three o'clock already— and Marian asked me to give orders about the carriages. Let me see—Mr. Oberville is the first arrival; if you'll ring I will send word to the stable. I suppose ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... military authorities so that they may be burned. Those who shall dare to discuss among themselves the Shi-King and the Shu-King shall be put to death and their corpses exposed in a public place; those who shall make use of antiquity to belittle modern times shall be put to death with their relations.... Thirty days after the publication of this edict, those who have not burned their books shall be branded and sent to forced labour. The books which shall not be proscribed are those of medicine and pharmacy, of divination ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... toward others," he wrote to a friend, "but my feelings have never been regarded." He knew that Hamilton believed him to have been in sympathy with the Conway Cabal,—a suspicion of which he never cleared himself,—and attributed to the Federal leader the motive of wishing to belittle his political significance, lest he should endeavour to use his power as President of the Senate to hamper and annoy the Administration. Perhaps he was right. Far be it from anyone to attempt a journey through the utmost recesses of Hamilton's mind. He was frank by nature and habit, but he had resolved ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... seamed by the storms of half a century, and they were even more interested in the story of our voyage from Elephant Island than the younger generation was. They congratulated us on having accomplished a remarkable boat journey. I do not wish to belittle our success with the pride that apes humility. Under Providence we had overcome great difficulties and dangers, and it was pleasant to tell the tale to men who knew those sullen and treacherous ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... eyes flashed fire! With what disdain she treated me! 'What do you mean by "of a kind?" My dear Sydney, are you not aware that it is an attribute of small minds to attempt to belittle those which are greater? Even if you are conscious of inferiority, it's unwise to show it. Mr Lessingham's was a great speech, of any kind; your incapacity to recognise the fact simply reveals your lack of ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... devoted to rest. He would get out the play and try to breathe life into it, now that he himself was living. Lynda had said, when last they had discussed his work, "It's beautiful, Con; you shall not belittle it. It is beautiful like a cold, stone thing with rough edges. Sometime you must smooth it and polish it, and then you must pray over it and believe in it, and I really think it will repay you. It may not mean anything but a sure guide ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... perhaps reaches its maximum with those who have made a specialty of the investigation and application of physical laws. Young men who have learned how to harness the powers of nature and guide them to do their will are apt to belittle the difficulties they have yet to overcome, and have a false impression of the problems of life. This feeling is shown to a minimum extent by graduates of the Stevens Institute, on account of their careful practical training, in connection with the thorough study of principles; but ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... ought to share the greater benefits of the battle. Here Don Quixote interrupted with a Latin quotation, which had an evil effect on Sancho, for it made him retaliate with the blanket episode which to him still seemed the height of all his suffering in the world. But this attempt to belittle the fairness of his master's division of honors in battle was speedily parried by Don Quixote, who maintained that his squire's bodily suffering in the blanket was as nothing compared with the painful agony of his own heart and soul when he had seen his squire in such a predicament. And then he ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Englishman was freedom of speech, and the more that freedom became licence the finer the Englishman. (Cheers.) By freedom of speech he meant the right to say instantly whatever came into one's head, particularly if it appeared to belittle one's own country. Because one could not belittle England really. England was too great for that. But it was salutary to try. It was also valuable to our Allies, because it tended to prove to them how much in earnest and how united ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... wasn't meaning to belittle that science; I was only chaffing —chattering, I reckon I'd better say. I wish you would look at their palms. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that person's name in this house again, you will have to leave it forever. If she's worth anything at all it is because she has appropriated the Tresslyn name that you appear to belittle. You—" ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... contrary to custom, set aside, in deciding to leave London that day, all logical methods of reasoning and acted on what was nothing more than an irresistible impulse, he did not attempt to belittle to himself the possible consequences that might accrue from his action. He was not following the course intelligence had directed; he was not embarking on a journey his best interests would have prompted; on the contrary, he ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... also, to have her say to Royleston: "Now, to-morrow night I shall be here at the mirror when you enter; I will turn and walk towards you till I reach this little stand. I will move around this to the right," etc. It seemed to belittle her art, to render it mechanical, and yet he admitted the necessity; for those who were to play with her were entitled to know, within certain limits, where to find her in the scene. He began to regret having had anything to do with the rehearsal. It would have been so much more splendid to see ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... organization, systematic instead of loose ways of doing things, prudence, thrift, obedience and subordination of the individual to the state, discipline—in a word, an efficient society. It is a great lesson! No one to-day can belittle its meaning. Possibly the remote, hidden reason for all this seemingly useless bloody sacrifice in our prosperous modern world is to teach the primary principles of the lesson. God knows that we all need it—we in America most after ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... should come and visit him. They thought that if I went to the house with them he would be more considerate. For their sakes, I went. I had heard that his practise was to invite ministers to his house, and then to belittle Christ in their presence, to give them no opportunity to return thanks, and to make them feel as far as ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... a writer of popular fiction, however much the novel is capable of being the vehicle of imagination and poetical power, was not a really high one. James Ballantyne persuaded him to omit from one of his introductions a passage that seemed to belittle the occupation of his life,[455] but in the introduction to The Abbot he wrote: "Though it were worse than affectation to deny that my vanity was satisfied at my success in the department in which chance had in some measure enlisted me, ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... inaugurate, initiate, institute, originate, start, found. Belief, faith, persuasion, conviction, tenet, creed. Belittle, decry, depreciate, disparage. Bind, secure, fetter, shackle, gyve. Bit, jot, mite, particle, grain, atom, speck, mote, whit, iota, tittle, scintilla. Bluff, blunt, outspoken, downright, brusk, curt, crusty. Boast, brag, vaunt, vapor, gasconade. Body, corpse, remains, relics, carcass, cadaver, corpus. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... her eyes alight with mischief. That day on the edge of the butte overlooking the river, when Duncan had talked about Dakota, she had detected in his manner an inclination to belittle the latter; several times since then she had heard him speak venomously of him, and she had suspected that all was not smooth between them. And now since Duncan had related the story of the calf incident she was certain that the relations between the two men were strained ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... fix our eyes. I remember having found much entertainment in Voltaire's SAUL, and telling him what seemed to me the drollest touches. He heard me out, as usual when displeased, and then opened fire on me with red-hot shot. To belittle a noble story was easy; it was not literature, it was not art, it was not morality; there was no sustenance in such a form of jesting, there was (in his favourite phrase) 'no nitrogenous food' in such literature. And then he proceeded to show what a fine fellow David was; and what a hard knot ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... go out av his way to belittle himsilf an' phwat he knows, an' Oi w'udn't trust him wid a bent penny as far as Oi cud t'row a bull be th' tail fer 'tis done wid a ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... He does not belittle the complaints of the South, but pleads for mutual forbearance. If there are defects in the organic framework of the nation, let them be discussed and amended if necessary in a constitutional convention. No justice can be done to this inaugural in a condensation; ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... the modern fashion somewhat to belittle Puritanism. It is easy to emphasize its absurdities, to ridicule the almost fanatical fervor which goaded men to harshness and inconsistency. The fact remains that a tremendous selective force was needed ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... be laid low, and these darkened souls brought to the Light of the World. But to-night he felt strangely fearful, almost cowardly, for the whole tribe had gathered to pay tribute to their god, and it is a dangerous thing to belittle the god or the faith of any nation that is in earnest in ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... gazed reproachfully at the grinning Blake. "He tries to belittle it, Mr. Griffith, but it's quite true. Haven't you seen about it in ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... that Germany does not want to copy English institutions. The old German monarchic institutions are good enough for Germany. Read the treatise of Treitschke, the great historian and political philosopher of modern Prussia. He systematically attempts to belittle every achievement of the Parliamentary system; and every prominent writer follows in his footsteps. Prussia has not produced a Guizot, a Tocqueville, a Stuart Mill, or a Bryce. Her thinkers are all imbued with the traditions of enlightened despotism. Even the ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
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