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Contempt   Listen
noun
Contempt  n.  
1.
The act of contemning or despising; the feeling with which one regards that which is esteemed mean, vile, or worthless; disdain; scorn. "Criminal contempt of public feeling." "Nothing, says Longinus, can be great, the contempt of which is great."
2.
The state of being despised; disgrace; shame. "Contempt and begarry hangs upon thy back."
3.
An act or expression denoting contempt. "Little insults and contempts." "The contempt and anger of his lip."
4.
(Law) Disobedience of the rules, orders, or process of a court of justice, or of rules or orders of a legislative body; disorderly, contemptuous, or insolent language or behavior in presence of a court, tending to disturb its proceedings, or impair the respect due to its authority. Note: Contempt is in some jurisdictions extended so as to include publications reflecting injuriously on a court of justice, or commenting unfairly on pending proceedings; in other jurisdictions the courts are prohibited by statute or by the constitution from thus exercising this process.
Synonyms: Disdain; scorn; derision; mockery; contumely; neglect; disregard; slight.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Contempt" Quotes from Famous Books



... movement as a basis of education. As for the wealthy remainder, they must first be taught to respect the sacredness and the true purpose of human life, before they can contemplate any form of social or co-operative progress, with feelings other than contempt, or at least angry opposition. This is to be expected. It is the natural outgrowth of the teachings of a society, which is controlled by the hierarchy of competition. Both the co-operative farm and the broader educational movement, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... his appearance. He had arrayed himself in a long overcoat, shiny with grease and wear, and falling below his knees; in place of his elegant satin cravat he had knotted a gaudy silk neckerchief about his throat; his boots were worn, and out of shape; and his hat would have been treated with contempt even by a dealer in old clothes. Of the prosperous Fortunat, so favorably known round about the Place de la Bourse, naught remained save his face and his hands. Another Fortunat had taken his place, more than needy in aspect—wretched, famished, gaunt with hunger, ready for ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... the Frenchmen are held in contempt on account of their hooks, which are of soft metal and can be rebent and used again. The fish often get away with them, however, and these hidden hooks slit many a finger ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... drawing himself up with a look of defiance and a laugh of contempt, that caused the two men to shrink back ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... cars the first day we drew rations, "Thank heaven that at least required no cooking." It was our first taste of British bully, and we thought it "really quite decent," and so it was, but familiarity breeds contempt, and finally loathing. It was the monotony that did it. You would weary of the tenderest chicken if you had it every other day for months. As luck would have it, Bridget was again out shopping when, the ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... responsibility as entailing on the mother country a position not of contempt of, but rather of deference to, the wishes of the colonies cannot but have a ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... Kshatriya woman bringeth forth a son. If you allow the time to slip without your achieving anything, then, though at present ye are respected by all the world, ye will be only doing that which would be regarded as contemptible. And if contempt touches you, I will abandon you for ever. When the time cometh, even life, which is so dear, should be laid down." O foremost of men, thou must also say unto Madri's sons that are always devoted to Kshatriya customs.—"More ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... of purple were in the gloom; objects all that caught, through the muslin, with their high rarity, the light of the low windows. Nothing was clear about them but that they were precious, and they brushed his ignorance with their contempt as a flower, in a liberty taken with him, might have been whisked under his nose. But after a full look at his hostess he knew none the less what most concerned him. The circle in which they stood together was warm with life, and every question between ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else.' He now appeared to me Jean Bull philosophe, and he was, for the moment, not only serious but vehement. Yet I have heard him, upon other occasions, talk with great contempt of people who were anxious to gratify their palates; and the 206th number of his Rambler is a masterly essay against gulosity. His practice, indeed, I must acknowledge, may be considered as casting the balance of his different opinions upon this subject; for I never knew any ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... for her crimes, her evil nature, her flint-like callousness, her more than inhuman cruelty, her contempt for the laws of God and man, she was condemned to bury her magnificent personalty, her transcendent beauty, her superhuman charms, in gilded obscurity at a King's left hand. A ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... need that threatened her, but the disgrace too which would fall upon her, the dislike she had incurred—she who had been liked by every one from her youth up—and the painful feeling of having been treated with scorn and contempt in the presence of others by the powerful lady whose favor she had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Robin Oig removed the cloth, and gazed with a mournful but steady eye on the lifeless visage, which had been so lately animated that the smile of good-humoured confidence in his own strength, of conciliation at once and contempt towards his enemy, still curled his lip. While those present expected that the wound, which had so lately flooded the apartment with gore, would send forth fresh streams at the touch of the homicide, Robin Oig replaced the covering with the brief exclamation, "He was ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... French, the Romans have a passion for the game of Dominos. Every caffe is supplied with a number of boxes, and, in the evening especially, it is played by young and old, with a seriousness which strikes us Saxons with surprise. We generally have a contempt for this game, and look upon it as childish. But I know not why. It is by no means easy to play well, and requires a careful memory and quick powers of combination and calculation. No caffe in Rome or Marseilles would be complete without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... and the 'paid perjurers of Somerset House.' The group of financiers who control the syndicate stand to win enormous sums by the creation of a more 'elastic' currency, and subscribe largely to a Free Money League, which includes a few sincere paper-money theorists who have been soured by the contempt of the professional economists. A vigorous and well-known member of parliament—a not very reputable aristocrat perhaps, or some one loosely connected with the Labour movement—whom everybody has hitherto feared and no one quite trusted, sees his opportunity. ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... I entered, but notwithstanding his presence, proceeded at once to business, instructing my men in exactly what they were to do that night. And he listened intently, first with anger and even rage, then with scorn and contempt, but finally with wonder and genuine fear. I had arranged the affair for the purpose of teaching Ivan de Echeveria a moral lesson. I had determined to save him, even against himself—for ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... on the one side by being too cautious, and too exclusive in our attachments. We may be supercilious, and disdainful in our estimate of men. Contempt always blinds the eyes. Every man is vulnerable somewhere, if only like Achilles in the heel. The true secret of insight is not contempt, but sympathy. Such disdain usually means putting all the eggs into one basket, when ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black

... The Chinese themselves, until the material superiority of Western civilization forced them to a certain degree to conform to its standards, looked down from the height of their superior culture with contempt on the "Western barbarians." Nor was their attitude wholly without justification. Their civilization was already old at a time when Britain and Germany were peopled by half-naked barbarians, and the philosophical and ethical principles on which it was based remain, to all appearances, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... come solely from those months in Venice I should still have realized the power of his personality and the force of his influence. He seemed to pervade the place, to colour the atmosphere. He had stayed in Venice only about a year. In the early Eighties little had been written of him except in contempt or ridicule. But to the artist he had become as essentially a part of Venice, his work as inseparable from its associations, as the Venetian painters like Carpaccio and Tintoretto who had lived and worked there all their lives and about whom a voluminous literature had grown up, culminating in the ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... my case; or to what can my supposed voluntary going off with Mr. Lovelace be imputed?] to reflect one moment on the exaltation she gives him, and the disgrace she brings upon herself,—the low pity, the silent contempt, the insolent sneers and whispers, to which she makes herself obnoxious from a censuring world of both sexes,—how would she despise herself! and how much more eligible would she think death itself ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... the "angel" and Fogg to the station and saw them both safely on the train. The lady resolved to abandon all histrionic ambition, and never after sought the fickle fame of the footlights, and Fogg ever since shows an affected contempt for anyone who sees anything to laugh at over the button episode of his extraordinary one-night season ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... triumphant over me because I had persistently mocked at the whole thing. As for Job, he had long since abandoned any attempt to call his reason his own, and left it to drift upon the sea of circumstance. Mahomed, the Arab, who was, by the way, treated civilly indeed, but with chilling contempt, by the Amahagger, was, I discovered, in a great fright, though I could not quite make out what he was frightened about. He would sit crouched up in a corner of the cave all day long, calling upon Allah and the Prophet to protect him. When I pressed him about it, he said that ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... may not be far off.—Oh if men could only look at these national questions with calm scientific vision, understanding the laws that govern national and racial life! There would be none of these idiotic jealousies then; no heart-burnings or contempt or hatred as between the nations; there would be none of this cock-a-doodling arrogance that sometimes makes nations in their heyday a laughing-stock for the Gods. Instead we should see one single race, Humanity; poured now into one national mold, now into another; but always with ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... its 1st division, of which it had just recovered the remains at Rheims; in all, one hundred and twenty thousand at the outside, including the cavalry, Bonnemain's and Margueritte's divisions. When the sergeant took a hand in the quarrel, however, speaking of the army in terms of the utmost contempt, characterizing it as a ruffianly rabble, with no esprit de corps, with nothing to keep it together,—a pack of greenhorns with idiots to conduct them, to the slaughter,—the two bourgeois began to be uneasy, and fearing there might be ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... himself over the wall, Vickers saw the outline of the pistol in the revolver pocket, and remembered the afternoon when Cairy had shown them the weapon and displayed his excellent marksmanship. And now, as then, the feeling of contempt that the peaceable Anglo-Saxon has for the man who always goes armed in a peaceable land ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... the young lady whose name will be remembered in connection with the anecdote of "Puss in Boots." Her mother was one of the most haughty of the ancient nobility, who affected to look upon Napoleon with contempt as not of royal blood. The evening after her marriage Madame Junot was to be presented to Josephine. After the Opera she drove to the Tuileries. It was near eleven o'clock. As Josephine had appointed the hour, she was expected. Eugene, hearing the wheels ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... Southern Synods.—Tennessee was conscious of representing nothing but the pure truth of unadulterated Lutheranism also over against the Synods of South Carolina, Virginia, and South West Virginia. Despite enmity, contempt, and slander, they were unwilling to enter into any unionistic compromise at the expense of the truth as they saw it. As for the Synod of South Carolina (organized 1824), the Tennessee Report of 1838 recorded ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... excitement about what possibly won't happen. He cannot very well help being sentimentally interested in what he knows has happened. On the other hand, he owes a duty to his country. And, if his country be America, he ought to try to feel a vivid respect for the future, and a cold contempt for the past. Also, if he be selected by his country as a specimen of the best moral, physical, and intellectual type that she can produce for the astounding of the effete foreigner, and incidentally for the purpose of raising that foreigner's ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... dress, from the very cut of his loose travelling coat, to the luxurious rug of fine fox-shins, that lay so carelessly cast on the shore at a little distance from him. Then she gave a gesture of hauteur and half-contempt. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... precise simile, if I remember; and he prided himself on penning his full tale each day. I could not subscribe to this, and think that Trollope's work, of which I am fond, shows the bad effect; but I did imbibe contempt for yielding to the feeling of incapacity, and put myself steadily to my desk for my allotted time, writing what I could. Whether the result were ten words or ten hundred I ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... had said to me one day, "that you despise us for being happier in London than at Hopton; we are conscious of your contempt." ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman

... hoodwinked humour, lives more like a suitor than a husband; standing in as true dread of her displeasure, as when he first made love to her. He doth sacrifice twopence in juniper to her every morning before she rises, and wakes her with villainous out-of-tune music, which she out of her contempt (though not out of her ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... dreadful a manner? What might not that Savage Greatness of Soul which appears in these poor Wretches on many Occasions, be raised to, were it rightly cultivated? And what Colour of Excuse can there be for the Contempt with which we treat this Part of our Species; That we should not put them upon the common foot of Humanity, that we should only set an insignificant Fine upon the Man who murders them; nay, that we should, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... miserably ill. She despised herself for it and then she lost even the sensation of self contempt in utter misery. She didn't care about anything—who helped her undress or where the undressing was done or what happened to her. Mercifully nobody talked; it would have killed her, she thought, to have to try to talk. They didn't even ask her how she felt. They only ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist

... too hard, Captain Sinclair," said Alfred. "Martin has a contempt for wolves, and that wolf would not have stood his ground had it been a man instead of two young women who were in face of him. Wolves are very cunning, and I know will attack a woman or child when they will fly from a man. Besides, it is very unusual for a wolf to remain till ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... breath he cursed. The Dane's throat was open to Kazan. But between the beasts had passed the voiceless pledge of peace. Kazan did not leap. He turned. And shoulder to shoulder—splendid in their contempt of man—they stood and looked through the bars of their prison into the one of ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... acquittal certain. The decree of death was read amidst the deepest silence; but Barnave'a firmness was immovable. When he left the court, he cast upon the judges, the jurors, and the public looks expressive of contempt and indignation. He was led to his fate with the respected Duport du Tertre, one of the last ministers of Louis XVI. when he had ascended the scaffold, Barnave stamped, raised his eyes to heaven, and said: "This, then, is the reward of all that I have done for liberty!" ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... places where they have met, in regard to the seats and places which each shall occupy, and their precedence—so that it has resulted in their coming to blows, to the great scandal and indecorum of their offices, and particularly in contempt of this said royal Audiencia: therefore it is necessary in this matter to provide some regulation to be kept and observed in like cases by the aforesaid officials, so that the said disturbances shall cease. In ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various

... Civa as the only manifestation of the supreme divinity, he will notice that such an one quickly becomes obscene, brutal, prone to bloodshed, apt for any disgusting practice, intellectually void, and morally beneath contempt. If the Civaite be an ascetic his asceticism will be the result either of his lack of intelligence (as in the case of the sects to be described immediately) or of his cunning, for he knows that there are plenty of ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... human consciousness is not nothing; that a whole is greater than its part, and a butterfly than a chrysalis? But it was the assumption that it was therefore in any way great in the abstract that occasioned my profound astonishment, and indeed contempt. Civilisation, if it means anything, can only mean the art by which men live musically together—to the lutings, as it were, of Panpipes, or say perhaps, to triumphant organ-bursts of martial, marching dithyrambs. Any formula defining it as "the art of lying back and getting elaborately tickled," ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... of house brought a curve of contempt to the girl's lips, but she offered no opinions. Suddenly, without a remark, her father checked the horses, as a small group came to a halt in the middle of the road and began waving ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... bar were attentive and alert; they were beginning to see the legal escape open up. The audience were puzzled; they did not yet understand. Mason turned to the counsel for the People. His ugly face was bitter with contempt. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... ruining Po I-k'ao, this wretched woman wished also to ruin Wen Wang. She therefore advised the King to have the flesh of the murdered man made up into rissoles and sent as a present to his father. If he refused to eat the flesh of his own son he was to be accused of contempt for the King, and there would thus be a pretext for having him executed. Wen Wang, being versed in divination and the science of the pa kua, Eight Trigrams, knew that these rissoles contained ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... only by an unlettered loyalty to the flag. They had no notion of the real purpose of these invaders. The white men had only contempt for the authority of a handful of red men calling them to account, and they foolishly fired into the Indian band. It was a fatal foolishness. Two braves fell to the earth, pierced by their bullets. The little body of red men dropped over on the sides of their ponies ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... The latter she looked upon as a rival, for she was said by every one to have the most beautiful face in Frankfort. This greatly displeased Mrs. Carrington, who, before Kate's arrival, had been considered the belle of the town, so far as beauty was concerned. She also felt great contempt for Kate's occupation as a teacher, and said, "She didn't see why folks should make such an ado over a poor ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... on himself. It was doubtless thought that the rewards and honors conferred on the great minister would have a conciliatory effect on the public mind. Perhaps, too, it was thought that his popularity, which had partly arisen from the contempt which he had always shown for money, would be damaged by a pension; and, indeed, a crowd of libels instantly appeared, in which he was accused of having sold his country. Many of his true friends thought that he would have best consulted the dignity of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... young girls, or, indeed, to all the world, than to see a piece of mischief, an insult, or a biting speech, miss its effect through the contempt or the indifference of the intended victim. It seems as if hatred to an enemy grows in proportion to the height that enemy is raised above us. Ginevra's behavior was an enigma to all her companions; her ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac

... conduct, a prodigious concourse of natives still kept possession of the shore; and some of them came off in canoes, and had the boldness to approach, within pistol-shot of the ships, and to insult us by various marks of contempt and defiance. It was with great difficulty we could restrain the sailors from the use of their arms on these occasions; but as pacific measures had been, resolved on, the canoes were suffered to return unmolested. In pursuance of this plan, it was determined, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... his Preface (Works, v. 50) he anticipated errors and laughter. 'A few wild blunders and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter and harden ignorance into contempt' In a letter written nearly thirty years later he said:—'Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.' Piozzi Letters, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... The confident contempt for me had gone now, and there was no laughing looking round at the boys for their approval, but, pale, excited, and with marks beginning to show in an ugly way, Burr major seemed to be prepared to do his best to crush me by ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn

... preserved their self-respect as men;—that with them the power of the tyrant ends with the coercion of the body—that the soul is free, and the inner man retaining the original uprightness of the image of God. You may know them by the stern sobriety of their countenances, and the contempt with which they regard the jests and pastimes of their miserable and degraded companions, who, like Samson, make sport for the keepers of their prison-house. These men are always feared as well as hated by their task-masters. Harry had never been whipped, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... University of Victoria College. But the reverend gentleman's arm was far-reaching, and stretched across the broad expanse of the Atlantic. In common with a large and respectable portion of the Upper Canadian population, he cherished a feeling of personal contempt for Mackenzie, whose character he thoroughly despised, and whose projects he regarded as prejudicial to the welfare of the colony. The publication of the baneful domination letter had convinced him that rebellion and separation were among the cherished schemes of the Radicals. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... for love of their Lords-Master; he was sure of that. Even from the beginning, they had found it impossible to disguise their contempt.... ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper

... Whitechapel for several years, but her work lay mostly in the West End. She belonged to the old-fashioned order of needlewomen. She could do the most perfect work with that right hand which was so soon to be useless. Machine-made work excited her strongest contempt, but work of the best order, the finest hand-made needlework, could be given over to her care with perfect satisfaction. She had a good connection amongst the West End shops, and had year after year earned sufficient money to bring up the six orphan children comfortably and well. ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... I know she had other reasons for her contempt—that the words she wrote were in rebuke to the brother rather than to the man, I feel my guilt and deplore my anger. I cannot say more. I should but insult your grief by any lengthy expressions of regret ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... the distinction of caste is very strong. A first-classman—cadet officers are selected from this class—looks down upon lower grade men, while second-class cadets view their juniors with something nearly allied to contempt, and third-class men are amusingly patronizing in their treatment of 'plebes' or new-comers. For the first year of their Academy life the 'plebes' have rather a hard time of it; but no sooner do they emerge from their chrysalis state than they are as hard upon their unfortunate successors as the ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... the family lawyer to remain on good terms with him nothing more than a very perfunctory account of his stewardship had been demanded. The late owner of Carnaby had been a man of simple tastes and unbending pride, who had a faint contempt for his kinsman, and refrained from inquiries respecting finances while there was no stoppage of supplies. There were one or two men who suspected that Deringham had profited by his relative's supineness, but it was only a vague surmise, and they did not know that the ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... light of the sun, than to be in Hades and rule over all the dead. But tell me, Odysseus, how fares my noble son? Does he fight in the wars, and is he in the front ranks? And Peleus, my aged father, tell me of him. Is he still king of the Myrmidons? Or do they hold him in contempt, now that he is old, and I am ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer

... be offended by acts or speeches of an insane patient, to bear a grudge or expect an apology. Very frequently such a patient will turn savagely upon the nearest and dearest, and make cutting remarks and accusations or exhibit baseless contempt. All this conduct must be ignored and forgotten; for the unkind words of an unaccountable and really ill person should not be ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various

... to get supper, and she sat up quickly. With stern control she forced herself to seem composed and quiet, while within her passions raged like a tornado. Self-contempt, wonder, amazement, pity for her husband, for Lawrence, and hatred for Philip Ortez swept round and round in ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... a glance at Sargent. "Come on," said the latter with polished contempt, reining his horse homeward. "Just as if we lived on beans at The Wagon! Just as if our porcelain-lined graniteware wasn't as good as their tin plates! Catch us ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... meaner men Resist thy royal purpose then? My shafts, if rebels court their fate, Shall lay Ayodhya desolate. Then shall her streets with blood be dyed Of those who stand on Bharat's side: None shall my slaughtering hand exempt, For gentle patience earns contempt. If, by Kaikeyi's counsel changed, Our father's heart be thus estranged, No mercy must our arm restrain, But let the foe be slain, be slain. For should the guide, respected long, No more discerning right and wrong, Turn in forbidden paths to stray, 'Tis meet ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... fossil remains of shells, &c., were evidence in favour of orthodox views, Voltaire, Sir Charles Lyell (Principles, p. 56) tells us, "endeavoured to inculcate scepticism as to the real nature of such shells, and to recall from contempt the exploded dogma of the sixteenth century, that they were sports of nature. He also pretended that vegetable impressions were not those of real plants." ... "He would sometimes, in defiance of all consistency, shift his ground when addressing the vulgar; and, admitting the true ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... accept the disguised suitors, and even consent to a marriage. Dolores appears in the shape of a notary, without being recognized by the men. The marriage-contract is signed, and the lovers disappear to return in their true characters, full of righteous contempt. Isabella and Rosaura make believe to be conscience-stricken, and for a long while torment and deceive their angry bridegrooms. But at last they grow tired of teasing, they present the disguised Dolores, and they ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... verily perswaded. As for these good fellowes, if they know any such matter by themselues or others, let them disclose it. We doe altogether scorne these, being so vaine things, and breeding so great contempt against the Maiesty of God our creator, neither do we ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... brooches which Miss Starbrow had given her; and this reminded her of an ornament she possessed, an old-fashioned gold brooch with an amethyst in it, and which in the pride of philosophy she had looked on with a good deal of contempt. Now the rose was flung away, and the despised jewel put in its place. Taking her book and sunshade she finally left the house, and turned her steps towards the wood. Scarcely had she left the gate behind before a tumult of doubts and fears began to assail her. She ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... hands they cannot imagine the difference that work makes in Americans; that it coarsens and classes them, especially if they have been in immediate contact with rich people, and been degraded or brutalized by the knowledge of the contempt in which labor is held among us by those who are not compelled to it. Some of my Altrurian friends have talked it over with me, and I could take their point of view, though secretly I could not keep my poor American feelings from being hurt when they said that to have a large number of people from ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... some contempt, As Ralph Morton was a young man, and he had determined that John Todhunter was an old man, he sought another private interview with Clare, and getting her alone, said: "Clare, I've come to you for the last time. Will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... being conscious that they regarded him with contempt and distrust, for their language and gestures betrayed their feelings, and pride suggested to him to give back the money as an offering for the Temple, in order to make them suppose his intentions to have been just and disinterested. But they rejected his proposal, because the price ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... refer to as the Earl of Chester. He was sorry that the season prevented him from placing game upon the table, but there was so much sitting round it that it would perhaps be hardly missed (cheers and laughter). The sports of the ring had, in his opinion, tended to that contempt of pain and of danger which had contributed so much in the past to the safety of the country, and which might, if what he heard was true, be very quickly needed once more. If an enemy landed upon our shores it was then that, with our small army, ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and sat down on a log with his letter. He told himself that it was likely one of those fool letters the fellows were getting all the time from silly girls who were uniform-crazy. He wouldn't answer it, of course, and he felt a kind of contempt with himself for being weak enough to read it even to ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... 'have, even on their deathbeds, with tears confessed that they have received, at these spectacles, such evil infections as have turned their minds from chaste cogitations, and made them, of honest women, light huswives; . . . have brought their husbands into contempt, their children into question, . . . and their souls into the assault of a dangerous state;' or that 'The devices of carrying and re- carrying letters by laundresses, practising with pedlars to transport ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... his sword, for he manifested an intention to kill himself if he were not to sink the ship; and sent to the Spaniards to demand terms. These were granted. The second or third day after, Greenville died of his wounds aboard the Spanish flagship, leaving his contempt upon the "traitors and dogs" who had not chosen to do as he did and engage fifty vessels, well found and fully manned, with six inferior craft ravaged by sickness and short of stores. He at least, he said, had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... been, in pomp and luxury; conscious that my wealth was my chief security from the contempt of the proud and bigoted, and my chief title to the station to which I had been raised, and which I the more delighted in because it enabled me to confer so great obligations on my husband,—what reverse could be harder than this, and how much bitterness ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... ago it seemed now, he had allowed to be destroyed that first instinctive purity, that fragile, delicate innocence which dies young in almost every human being, and that one sees evaporating under the earliest taint of vice with a smile partly of contempt, partly of pity, partly of ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... Not look down upon me with eyes of contempt. This "marrying below one" is still an Eastern idea, very little known to women in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... de B—on the subject." This pinch of powder cost 4 or 5,000 livres, but we may divine the turn and tone of the note. The extreme of profusion must accompany the height of gallantry, the man of the world being so much the more important according to his contempt for money. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... juniors at least, imbued like himself with a love of old-time romance and of ancient story, he inspired a passion of gratitude that abides to this day. Mr Stevenson not only never laughed, as the other boys and girls did, nor treated the memory of delightful childish plays with contempt, as was the fashion of the generation just grown up, he never even smiled over the unfeminine tastes of a child who went pirate-hunting in an upturned table with a towel for a sail and dried orange skins for provender—or whose dolls were not ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black

... it was the young man, the companion of Bigot in his revels, against whose chateau Father Drouillard had raised his threatening hands. Now the priest spoke the name with the most intense scorn and contempt, and Robert, feeling that he might encounter de Mezy again in this pent-up Quebec, gazed at his vanishing figure with curiosity. They had their gay blades in New York and Albany and even a few in Boston of the Puritans, but he had not seen ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... element of unsoundness at the heart of an institution which, if sincere, might be dangerously powerful. The wisest and best of its bishops have found their influence impaired, their position made equivocal, by the element of unreality which adheres to them. A feeling approaching to contempt has blended with the reverence attaching to their position, and has prevented them from carrying the weight in the councils of the nation which has been commanded by men of no greater intrinsic eminence in ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... sympathetic with the movement, and martial law became the order of the day. But the cruel measures adopted by the Duke of Alva did not put an end to the rebellion in the Netherlands. On the contrary, the contempt shown by him for the constitution of the country and the rights of individual citizens, the excessive taxation, and the license given to the soldiers in their treatment of civilians served only to embitter ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... each other, but both held the Church in contempt as a "rough philosophy for the people." Yet the Church included the true parts for both, not by asserting anything about the atoms but by recognising two different worlds, the world of bodies and the world of spirits, in a dramatic ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... effort to rally, but they joked him so hard that he remained silent, while James regarded him with a look of cool contempt ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes

... to now, has been chiefly in the clearing of the way. It is always more difficult to destroy than it is to create, and when what one has to destroy is vulgarity and stupidity, the task of destruction needs not merely courage but also contempt. Yet it seems to me to have been, in a measure, done. We have got rid of what was bad. We have now to make what is beautiful. And though the mission of the aesthetic movement is to lure people to contemplate, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... the Hare the feelings of conceit, contempt, and laziness; of surprise, fear, and excitement; of chagrin and disappointment. In the Tortoise we see a little of resentment and some self-confidence; then courage, determination, and persistence; at last, calm enjoyment and joy at winning. The ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... a cloak as from a hidden lanthorn; I bethought me I would catch the tiny wanderer from the floor and hold it in my hand. It came crawling and crawling, on and on, wavering to my feet. So many times that night had I manned myself valiantly to fight a shadow, I only laughed in silence and contempt at this. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... marriage upon us; that it doomed women to the drudgery of their homes and children, and forbade them loneliness and contemplation. The charge was actually reversed. Or, again, certain phrases in the Epistles or the marriage service, were said by the anti-Christians to show contempt for woman's intellect. But I found that the anti-Christians themselves had a contempt for woman's intellect; for it was their great sneer at the Church on the Continent that "only women" went to it. Or again, Christianity was reproached ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... executive and legislative branches of the Government of the United States, designing and intending to set aside the rightful authority and powers of Congress, did attempt to bring into disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt, and reproach the Congress of the United States and the several branches thereof, to impair and destroy the regard and respect of all the good people of the United States for the Congress and legislative power ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... General; but how indeed should it be otherwise, while Fellows (that for Twenty Years together were never paid but as their Master was in the Humour) now presume to pay others more than ever they had in their Lives; and in Contempt of the Practice of Persons of Condition, have the Insolence to owe no Tradesman a Farthing at the End of the Week. Sir, all I propose is the publick Good; for no one can imagine I shall ever get a private Shilling by it: Therefore I hope you will ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... capable of gathering to its support all those elements of strength which had been misunderstood or neglected by the feeble descendants of Charlemagne. But it found the royal authority reduced to insignificance and treated with open contempt. By permitting those dignities which had once been conferred as a reward for pre-eminent personal merit to become hereditary in certain families, the crown had laid the foundation of the feudal system; while, by neglecting ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... waste their time in idle chatter over the relative status of their race as compared with the white barbarians who have intruded themselves upon them with their grotesque customs, their heathenish ideas, and their childishly new religion. The Hindu regards with veiled contempt the racial pretensions of his conqueror, and, while biding the time when the darker races of the earth shall once more come into their own, does not bother himself with such an idle question as whether ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... who presumed too much upon his forbearance. In his feelings and social associations he was aristocratic and select. He could not tolerate presumptuous ignorance; but to the modest and unobtrusive he was respectful and tolerant. For the whining hypocrisy of pretended piety he had the loftiest contempt, while he gave not only his confidence, but his most sincere respect, to him whose conduct squared with his religious professions. He was a Protestant in religion, as his father had been; but was superior to bigotry or the intolerance of little ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... alone; And peace, oh, virtue! peace is all thy own. The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain; But these less taste them, as they worse obtain. Say, in pursuit of profit or delight, Who risk the most, that take wrong means, or right; Of vice or virtue, whether blessed or cursed, Which meets contempt, or which compassion first? Count all the advantage prosperous vice attains, 'Tis but what virtue flies from and disdains: And grant the bad what happiness they would, One they must want, which is, to ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... nothing that flesh and blood could inspire on such an occasion, and represented to him the danger of causing the death of his mother by grief. He on the contrary spoke to them in so moving a manner, on the contempt of the world, and the love of virtue, that they both yielded to the force of his reasons for his quitting the world, and, by his persuasion, devoted themselves to a sincere practice ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... poised and ethereally frail. Daylight had never seen anything like it. Slowly his gaze wandered from it to all that was about him. He took off his hat, with almost a vague religious feeling. This was different. No room for contempt and evil here. This was clean and fresh and beautiful-something he could respect. It was like a church. The atmosphere was one of holy calm. Here man felt the prompting of nobler things. Much of this and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... always ends in tears and the chattering of teeth. I've never understood how that holy night, the first in which two souls embrace each other in love, can end in the shedding of blood, in quarrelling, hate, mutual contempt—and lint! ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... her eyes resolutely and pretended not to hear her. She was filled from head to foot with contempt for Gladys. Sahwah was heedless and hot-tempered and undiplomatic, but in matters where honor was concerned she was true blue. All her admiration for Gladys vanished when she tried to lead her into dishonor. As she lay there thinking over her attempts to win Gladys's friendship she saw clearly ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... least levity of his words and actions with the character of a Christian Hero. Thus he found himself slighted, instead of being encouraged for his declarations as to religion; but happily those who held him in contempt for his defence of piety and goodness were characters, with whom to be at variance is virtue. But Mr. Steele, who could not be content with the suffrage of the Good only, without the concurrence of the Gay, set about recovering the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... ever troubled himself on the subject; though he had none of that contempt for a good pedigree which is sometimes found in men of his school of politics. As regarded fortune, he owed every thing to nature and to himself; no man of our age had so thoroughly fought his own way; and no man of any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... begun, and the whole country was swarming with militia regiments. "We'll get him a commission in a marching regiment," said my father. "As we have no money to purchase him up, he'll FIGHT his way, I make no doubt." And papa looked at me with a kind of air of contempt, as much as to say he doubted whether I should be very eager for such a dangerous way of ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray

... everybody, undertook the defense of his future sister-in-law in the most vehement and positive manner. In his estimation, his brother's choice was something sacred and indisputable. The lady might, and did, treat him with unconcealed contempt, laugh at his awkwardness, grow impatient at his stammering—it made no difference to Uncle George. She was to be his brother's wife, and, in virtue of that one great fact, she became, in the estimation of the ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... Xerxes commanded Vashti, the queen, to be brought in before him, but she did not come!' And this very day the ladies of Persia and Media who have heard of the refusal of the queen will tell it to all the king's officials, and there will be contempt and strife! If it seems best to the king, let him send out a royal command, and let it be written among the laws of Persia and Media, in order that it may not be changed, that Vashti may never again come before King Xerxes; and let the king give her place as queen to another who is better than she. ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... agonies of the wicked, when the last trumpet shall tear the veil from their faces, and exhibit in undisguised truth that most fearful of spectacles—a naked human heart. Casting aside, perhaps with undue contempt, the adventitious aids derived from finishing, colouring, and execution, he threw the whole force of his genius into the design, the expression of the features, the drawing of the figures. There never was such a delineator of bone and muscle as Michael Angelo. His ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... weakness in his system is found in his ideas concerning women. He made no provision for their education, and, indeed, expressed great contempt for their abilities of either mind ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... Lord Ripon had already made ineffectual representations to that Government concerning the contempt with which it was treating the Convention ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot

... From this moment I regret to say that Link Andrew treated me with contempt. He next ordered a dozen small boys aloft, to reef and set her upper square-sail. When I urged that it was as good as asking them to commit suicide, he cursed me openly. 'Drown the poor pups, will I? I thought—damn you all!— you laid yourselves out to breed seamen! ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... whaler and was therefore not wholly unacquainted with iron pyrites. Indeed this was the most intelligent Tchuktchi I ever met, although his language would have startled an English bargee. The white man he regarded with extreme contempt, alluding to us indiscriminately as "disfellah" as he sat in our tent, calmly sharing (without invitation) any repast that was going on, and occasionally pausing to exclaim, between the mouthfuls, "By G—! you come ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... his presence there; though he would probably have been surprised at Johnny's reason for doing so. Johnny himself was surprised, bewildered even. That he, who had lorded over Bland with such patronizing contempt, should actually be afraid of ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... they held in society, and the probability of their being, upon this account, more devoted to the will and caprice of a master, from whose notice alone they derived consideration, and in whose favor they might seek refuge from the general contempt ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... say that it is not the easiest task in the world to fan a lively flame in the bosom of a cousin. The love of cousins is proverbially not of a very romantic character. 'Tis well I have not seen her much in my life, and very little of late. Familiarity breeds contempt, they say. Will she dare to despise me?' He glanced at the mirror. The inspection was not unsatisfactory. Plunged in profound meditation, he paced ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... of contempt, of which the meaning is not obvious. It might seem to indicate a person employed in attending to a house ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... dresses cheap and common by comparison. It was so easy for her to look well turned out; and it would never be easy to dress Avice, who bade fair to resemble her mother in build, and had already a passion for frills and trimmings, and a contempt for plain things. Mrs. Rainham had an uneasy conviction that the girl who bore all her scathing comments in silence actually dared to criticize her in her own mind—perhaps openly to Bob, whose blue ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... Marechal heard of it at Villeroy, he flew into a strange passion against Charost (of whom he spoke with the utmost contempt for having accepted his place), but above all against Frejus, whom he called a traitor and a villain! His first moments of passion, of fury, and of transport, were all the more violent, because he saw by the tranquillity reigning everywhere that his pride had deceived him in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... curled derisively. 'No, it was you, when you looked at her. And now you have told me again.' She had a moment of thoughtful contempt for the blundering of men. There was Charles, who always seemed to wander in a mist, and now this Francis Sales, who revealed what he wished to hide. He was mentally inferior to Mr. Jenkins, who had a quickness of wit, a vulgar sharpness ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... Mr Adams, the second mate, turning out of his cabin at the same time to take his watch, the two managed to raise "Snowball"—the captain and the Irishman easing the burden by lifting him from below. As for the grand Mrs Major Negus, she had to content herself with looking on with an undisguised contempt at the whole proceeding, wondering all the while that they should dare to introduce a negro into the saloon in that manner without ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... with a tone of slight contempt. "We don't think of Hanover now in our ideas of school-life. We had a fairly good time, for a German school; but to compare it with Mrs. Ward's house! Oh, I cannot tell you what a dream of a life I have lived during the last term! It is only to see Mrs. Ward to love her; and all the other ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... who had mated without love, and lived without affection, the slave, the drudge, but not the wife or companion of her master, should die with imprecations on her lips for a race who were the natural foes of her people, and who had reduced her to be an object of scorn and contempt to both. It is no wonder therefore poor Jessie had a repugnance to the union, when she remembered her mother, and the sad lesson her unhappy life and fearful death contained. It was ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... conversations of a similar kind, I always maintained that a Commander-in-Chief can only be held in contempt who allows any member of his staff, or, indeed, any officer under his orders, to bear blame which must always most properly belong to him and to him alone. A chief in supreme command has always the absolute power ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres

... before the woman could catch herself upon a sunken branch of an imbedded tree; and, as she gasped there, the body of the pungy captain swept past her and she caught him by the hair, and he clutched her with the drowning instinct, and down they went together, like husband and wife, in nature's contempt of ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... troops entered the state, and almost immediately the strike collapsed. The high officials of the Railway Union, for ignoring a court injunction restraining them from interfering with the movement of the mails, were imprisoned for long terms for contempt of court. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... from their impotence of enjoyment, enamoured of destruction, because they are themselves unreal, abortive, half-existences—who become sublime from their exemption from all human sympathies and contempt for all human affairs, as Lady Macbeth does by the force of passion! Her fault seems to have been an excess of that strong principle of self-interest and family aggrandisement, not amenable to the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... which since the reform it has not been notoriously guilty. It was not, therefore, a matter of surprise to your Committee, that the General Court, so composed, has at length grown to such a degree of contempt both of its duty and of the permanent interest of the whole corporation as to put itself into open defiance of the salutary admonitions of this House, given for the purpose of asserting and enforcing the legal authority of their own ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... even those open sinners, when they knew that they were sinners, were nearer salvation, and in a better state, than the covetous and irreligious Pharisees, who added to their other gross sins, hypocrisy, blindness, a contempt of others, and a haughty and superstitious reliance on the availing ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... may find that after which it feels, and yet, finding it, must feel after it all the more; therefore, high above all other delights of search, high above all other blessednesses of pilgrimage, high above all the buoyancy and concentration of aim and contempt of hindrances which pour into a soul, before which the unattained ideal burns beckoning and inviting, there stands the blessedness of the man 'in whose heart are the ways' which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... lot he'll care for your letting him off!" exclaimed Paul, in dire contempt. "He wouldn't touch ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... born actors but have a keen sense of humour. They are quick to imitate the white man. If a Georgia darkey, for example, wants to abuse a member of his own race he delights to call him "a fool nigger." It is the last word in reproach. In the Congo when a native desires to express contempt for his fellow, he refers to him as a basingi, which means bush-man. It is a case of the pot calling the ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... most human of all our emotions—I mean the emotion of love—that we conceive the deepest of our errors. Suppose we met Euclid on Westminster Bridge, and he took us aside and confessed to us that whilst he regarded parallelograms and rhomboids with an indifference bordering on contempt, for isosceles triangles he cherished a wild romantic devotion. Suppose he asked us to accompany him to the nearest music-shop, and there purchased a guitar in order that he might worthily sing to us the radiant beauty and the ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm

... audacity of his occasional coarseness and personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly been exceeded by the license of former days. Yet, when all coarseness, all scurrility, all Mephistophelean contempt for the reverent feelings of other men, is removed, there will be a plenteous remainder of exquisite poetry, of wit, humor and just thought. It is apparently too often a congenial task to write severe words about ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... would think, had been more welcome. For indeed our British periodical critics, and especially the public of Fraser's Magazine (which I believe I have now done with), exceed all speech; require not even contempt, only oblivion. Poor Teufelsdrockh!—Creature of mischance, miscalculation, and thousand-fold obstruction! Here nevertheless he is, as you see; has struggled across the Stygian marshes, and now, as a stitched pamphlet "for Friends," cannot be burnt ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... resumed its functions. The contempt and jealousy of one race for another; what was God's idea in implanting that in souls? Hawksley was at base Russian. The boy's English education, his adopted outlook upon life, made it possible for Cutty to ignore the racial antagonism of the ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... three months' men, had expired while at Centreville; and though requested and importuned to remain a few days longer, they basely withdrew, even while they were on the very verge of the battlefield. This regiment left, and carried with it the scorn and contempt of the loyal and true men, who were as ready to fight the battles of their country on one day ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... For some reason or other, the Count of Artois conceived a strong aversion to the Earl of Salisbury, and treated Longsword with the utmost insolence. And, though the Earl only retaliated by glances of cold contempt, it was known that his patience was wearing away, and it was feared that there ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... December, Mrs. Lee took the train for Washington, and before five o'clock that evening she was entering her newly hired house on Lafayette Square. She shrugged her shoulders with a mingled expression of contempt and grief at the curious barbarism of the curtains and the wall-papers, and her next two days were occupied with a life-and-death struggle to get the mastery over her surroundings. In this awful contest the interior of the doomed house suffered as though ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... search'd the classic page, [v] And fear'd the Master, though we lov'd the Sage: Retir'd at last, his small yet peaceful seat From learning's labour is the blest retreat. POMPOSUS fills his magisterial chair; POMPOSUS governs,—but, my Muse, forbear: Contempt, in silence, be the pedant's lot, [vi] His name and precepts be alike forgot; No more his mention shall my verse degrade,— To him my tribute is already paid. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... to the domain of speculative thought, yet what Roman ever showed such a comprehension and appreciation of Greek philosophy as did Cicero? He was profoundly versed in all the learning the Grecians ever taught. Like Socrates, he had a contempt for physical science, because science in his day was based on imperfect inductions. There were not facts enough known of the material world to construct sound theories. Physical science at that time was the most uncertain of all knowledge, although there were ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... the money an' Dick blows it in," went on Brown, with something of contempt in his voice. "Dick plays, an' they say he's a rotten gambler. He drinks like a fish, too. I don't run around much in this burg, believe me, but I see Dick often. I heard he'd fetched a ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... barefaced attempt to destroy the steamer touched Mayo's pride as deeply as it stirred his wrath. Fogg evidently viewed the pretensions of the new ownership with contempt. He must have belief in his own power to ruin and to escape consequences, pondered the young man. He had put Mayo and his humble associates on the plane of the ordinary piratical wreckers of the coast-men who grabbed without law ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... looking at him a moment with a face of infinite contempt, than sank back into the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... rent, Mr. O'Hare," exclaimed Phil, gathering up the money into a lump, and with all his force flinging it at the man's head; "this is your rent, Mister O'Hare," placing an emphasis of contempt on the word Mr.; "thirty shillings short, Mr. O'Hare, but I'll tell you what, Mr. O'Hare, by —-, if you don't have the full rent for me in two hours, Mr. O'Hare, I'll make short work, and you ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... his own hands, and it is well to remember this and to grade his punishments with much caution, so as to make all pass for their full value. In some schools even suspension is so common that it does not seem to the pupil a very terrible thing. "Familiarity breeds contempt," and frequency implies familiarity. A punishment seldom resorted to will always seem to the pupil to be severe. As we weaken, and in fact bankrupt, language by an inordinate use of superlatives, so, also, do we weaken any punishment by its frequent repetition. Economy of resources ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... of God, so precious, so inspiring, is treated with such utter irreverence and contempt in the calculations of us mortals as this same air of heaven. A sermon on oxygen, if one had a preacher who understood the subject, might do more to repress sin than the most orthodox discourse to show when and how and why sin came. A minister gets up in a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... Your sense of honour does not forbid you to reap the fruits of my treachery, but you punish the traitress with the full weight of your contempt." ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... gradually changed his mind, quieted his imagination, and taught him something of a Christian's duty. When Mr Arabin left Oxford, he was inclined to look upon the rural clergymen of most English parishes almost with contempt. It was his ambition, should he remain within the fold of the church, to do somewhat towards redeeming and rectifying their inferiority, and to assist in infusing energy and faith into the hearts of Christian ministers, who were, as he thought, too often ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... step or two and then came suddenly to a halt. For all around him in the darkness he seemed to hear voices breathing and soft footsteps. He realised that his fear had overstepped his reason; he forced himself to remember the contempt he had felt for Lance's manifestations of terror; and swinging round again he flung open the ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... Bosenna. "You ninny!" she went on with sovereign contempt. "Do you really suppose I'd marry a man that could handle my money, or was vain enough to ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... that Sarah was more to blame for Hagar's conduct than she was herself, when Mr. Lee observed 'that Abraham was more to be pitied than either of them, for he was unable or unwilling to protect either of the women whom he loved,—his wife from the contempt of her bondmaid, or the bondmaid from the fury ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... a starved one, As he had nothing left but skin and bone. The shady substance of a living man, Or object of contempt wheree'er he came. Yet had hee able parts, and could discourse, Presse moving reasons, arguments enforce, Expresse his readings with a comely grace, And prove himselfe a ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... constantly constrained them, I could not resist the temptation to indemnify myself upon the Chief-President; I perseveringly overwhelmed him, therefore, a hundred different times during the sitting, with my hard-hitting regards. Insult, contempt, disdain, triumph, were darted at him from my eyes,—and pierced him to the very marrow often he lowered his eyes when he caught my gaze once or twice he raised his upon me, and I took pleasure in annoying ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... contempt for Alicia's mentality overcame any suspicion she might have entertained. Also, she had come determined to discover what she could about The Author, and she was not one lightly to be put aside. She ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... blue skies for justice. He pleaded for the farmer, the first, the oldest, the most necessary of all the world's workers; for the man who was the foundation of civilized society, yet who was yearly gravitating downward through new depths of slighting indifference, of careless contempt, of rank injustice and gross tyranny; for the man who sowed so plenteously, so laboriously, yet reaped so scantily and in such bitter and benumbing toil; for the man who lived indeed beneath the heavens, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... seeing in the Commander of the Nautilus one of those unknown servants who return mankind contempt for indifference. For him, he was a misunderstood genius who, tired of earth's deceptions, had taken refuge in this inaccessible medium, where he might follow his instincts freely. To my mind, this explains but one side of Captain Nemo's character. Indeed, the mystery of that ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... expected by Grant that Buell long before that time would have swept everything before him. But for three hours Buell had been fighting to keep himself from being swept away. The Southern troops seemed animated by that extraordinary battle fever and absolute contempt of death which distinguished them so often during this war. Buell's army was driven in on both flanks, and only the center held fast. It began to seem possible that the South, despite her reduced ranks might yet defeat both Northern armies. Another battery dashed ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler



Words linked to "Contempt" :   contemptuous, disrespect, dislike, law, discourtesy, sneer, civil contempt, criminal contempt, disobedience, noncompliance, disdain, rudeness, leer



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