"Contemptible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "mingled yarn," spun from many-colored yet invisible threads, is it in the creative mind of a Shakespeare, and how it looms up into "a dome of many-colored glass, staining the white radiance of eternity," under the magic touch of a Shelley! And yet how is it dwarfed down to a contemptible piece of "molecular machinery" by the scientist—one so utterly contemptible in its manifestations that it is ordered to take "a back seat" in this universe of ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... calling it the Primrose Hill and the Devil's Dyke of Switzerland, the paradise of trippers, a mountain whose sides are hidden under cataracts of beer-bottles; but from our point of view, the vulgarities of the maligned mountain were mellowed by distance, and I neither could nor would look upon it as contemptible. ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... I can hardly restrain my anger, such fierce indignation fills my soul. That you, the most effeminate of men, should threaten any man with death at your hand! Your hand! What hand! The hand of Philomela or Medea or Clytemnestra? Why, when you dance in those characters you show such contemptible timidity, you are so frightened at the sight of steel, that you will not even carry a property sword? But I am digressing. Pudentilla, seeing to her astonishment that her son had fallen lower than she could have deemed possible, went into the country ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... flower growing in a carcass. Then at little intervals there are frequent prizes from the docks of Richmond, tugs, transports, barges, some of which show under our beautiful banner the Rebel cross, pale and contemptible. These malcontents committed as great crime against good taste in substituting for our starry emblem this artistic abomination, as against law and policy in changing the configuration of the Union. There is another flag, however, which we see, half ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... have played upon my good nature too long already; but the spell is at last dissolved. They would play me off with assurances of the personal and particular esteem of the King, to induce me to do what would render me contemptible, even in the eyes of my own servants! Accustomed to speak untruths themselves, they would also have me give, under my hand, that I am a liar and a scoundrel! They are mistaken, and I could tell them what you did your wayward servant, "We have too contemptible ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... perhaps you were an agent of the claimant; but I didn't know you were passing under a false name, that you were aware in whose house you were staying. I thought you an honest man, on the wrong side—nothing so contemptible ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... of any moral sustaining from her, any invisible thread of love binding him to the daughter of the Resident. He knew that until he parted from Bootea at Mandhatta his soul would be torn by a strife that was foolish, contemptible, that should never ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... buy whatever dresses she thought proper, instead of being crippled by an allowance; have the legal right of speaking first in society, even to gentlemen rich in ideas but bad starters, instead of sitting mumchance and mock-modest; to be Mistress, instead of Miss—contemptible title; to be a woman, instead of a girl; and all this rational liberty, domestic power, and social dignity were to be obtained by merely wedding a dear fellow, who loved her, and was so nice; and the bright career to be ushered in with several delights, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... spangled gold before him softly heaving and appearing to send the star reflections sweeping at last in a golden cream upon the sands, life seemed, after all, worth living, and his cares and sufferings petty and contemptible. ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... foregoing Mr. Burchard's indignation knew no bounds. He blamed himself for not having recollected the existence of that scurrilous journal, which now seemed more mean and contemptible than ever. Those persons who understood how great a control Mr. Burchard had over his passions could nevertheless see that an earthquake was pent up in his bosom. He was almost beside himself with rage. When his indignation had somewhat subsided his pride ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... perhaps more keenly. The enterprise that was to have glorified the name of McMurrough, that was to have raised that fallen race, that was to have made that distant province blessed among the provinces of Ireland, had come to an end, derisive and contemptible, before it was born. Her spirit, unbroken by experience and untrained to defeat, fearing before all things ridicule, dashed itself against the dreadful conviction, the dreadful fact. She could hardly believe that all was over. ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... at the end of his rule (which had kept peace in the country for a whole fifteen years) there was more fatuous imbecility, plenty of cruelty and suffering still, but much less of the old-time fierce and blindly ferocious political fanaticism. It was all more vile, more base, more contemptible, and infinitely more manageable in the very outspoken cynicism of motives. It was more clearly a brazen-faced scramble for a constantly diminishing quantity of booty; since all enterprise had been stupidly killed in the land. Thus it came to pass that the province of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... murders; rather, if anything, good; for the thought of death operates very powerfully with the poor in the creation of brotherhood and a sense of human dignity. I do not believe there is a pennyworth of harm in the police news, as such. Even divorce news, though contemptible enough, can really in most cases be left to the discretion of grown people; and how far children get hold of such things is a problem for the home and not for the nation. But there is a certain class of evils which a healthy man or woman can actually go through ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... and a real longing to help and joy in it that I do not feel in the face of suffering humanity. You can explain it any way. If all these crippled numberless that I have seen all these days had been maimed dogs, I don't know what I would have done. There is something in human nature that is so contemptible and poor that I ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... reflect how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor doing himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him. And yet I have seen the moral of my own behavior very frequent in England since my return; where a little, contemptible varlet, without the least title to birth, person, wit, or common sense, shall presume to look with importance, and put himself upon a foot with the greatest persons of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... depository and treasury of chivalry and highest notions. Marry, when somebody persuaded Cervantes that he meant only fun, and put him upon writing that unfortunate Second Part with the confederacies of that unworthy duke and most contemptible duchess, Cervantes sacrificed his instinct to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... singularly handsome man, surpassed by few among our nobility, and I had remarked how he dwarfed Vedius, how he made him appear stunted and contemptible. He had a head well shaped and well set, curly brown hair, fine and abundant, a high forehead, wide-set dark blue eyes, a chiseled nose, a perfect mouth and a fine, rounded chin. His neck was the envy of half our most beautiful women. His carriage was noble and he always ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... But men are not learned at the billiard table, nor in the barroom, nor by meeting them in an endless round of debauch, nor does a man know the world because he has been to Paris. It is a sad thing for a young man to seek applause by surpassing his companions in that which makes them contemptible. The best men of our own time have little leisure, and the best of other days have committed their better part to books, wherein we ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... if singular eagerness in pursuit of preferment, and singular homage to the influence of the queen's bed-chamber-woman, could stamp them with shame, the brand would be at once broad and indelible. But it must be remembered, that there are contemptible minds in every profession, that these men acted in direct violation of the principles of their religion, and that the church is no more accountable for the delinquencies of its members, than the courts of law for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... "A contemptible dreamer," I said. "Pity him, Sire. He has his uses. To remove him would be to remove a channel through which we can always obtain knowledge precisely of what ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... such delight in the act of venery? A. Because this act is such a contemptible thing in itself, that all creatures would naturally abhor it were there no pleasure in it; and therefore nature readily uses it, that all kinds of living things should ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... Mr. Burnett, there are miserable squabbles in the law practice, and contemptible pettifoggers and knaves, and men who will sell themselves for any dirty work, as there are in most professions and occupations, but the profession could not exist for a day if it was not on the whole on the side of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the aristocracy—they called them lackeys. This word "lackey" served as the strongest expression, when all others were exhausted, to designate human meanness. Under the old French monarchy, to denote by a single expression a low-spirited contemptible fellow, it was usual to say that he had the "soul of a lackey"; the term was enough to convey all that was intended. [Footnote a: If the principal opinions by which men are guided are examined closely and in detail, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... are successful. They never sight the returning Texans, nor these them. The Rangers go down the river; the savages up stream. Of all Apaches, of all Indians, the Jicarillas are the most contemptible cowards. Dastards to the last degree, the young "braves" who mutilated the slain lancers will return to their tribe to tell of scalps ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... make use of many of those lies, which, unfortunately for the virtuous part of these States, and the peace and happiness of the world, had too much success during the American rebellion: they will tell you that they are come to give you freedom—yes, the base slaves of the most contemptible faction that ever distracted the affairs of any nation—the minions of the very sycophants who lick the dust from the feet of Bonaparte will tell you that they are come to communicate the blessing of liberty to this province; but you have only to look at your ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... it to me. (He takes the caricature and looks at it, but shows no anger.) So you prefer to spend your time in an unamiable, contemptible occupation like this, to acquiring ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... Freelance" a power in the land. He set himself to found a school of journalists who wrote for the love of truth and scorned the mean and paltry things of life. As with "The Mercury," Denis Quirk made his new organ a censor of all that is contemptible. ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... a very contemptible liar," she said, disinterestedly, "and that is what makes it so queer that I should care for him more than I do for anything else in the ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... she said, speaking very steadily and distinctly, "that you will go back to South Africa without her after all. I mean that by your hateful and contemptible brutality you have driven her from you for ever. I mean that you have forced her into taking a step that will compel you to set her free from your tyranny. I mean that simply and solely to escape from you she has run away ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... succeeded him at Cordova. He was already King of Seville, and as he soon occupied many other cities he became the most independent and powerful sovereign of Mahometan Spain. His chief rival, Yahia Alkadia, King of Toledo, was so contemptible to his people that they expelled him. He appealed for aid to Alfonso VI, King of Leon [Alfonso of Castile]; but that Christian soldier was persuaded by Mahomet to oppose, instead of assisting, Yahia. The latter ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... extraordinary than all, that is that Shakespeare is a genius. The Italians, the French, the men of letters of all other countries, who have not spent some time in England, take him only for a clown, for a joker far inferior to Harlequin, for the most contemptible buffoon who has ever amused the populace. Nevertheless, it is in this same man that one finds pieces which exalt the imagination and which stir the heart to its depths. It is Truth, it is Nature herself who speaks her own language with no admixture of artifice. It is of the ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... men who waited their call to the work. Only a small proportion remain to see that justification with their own eyes; the Land has claimed the rest. Ypres, the Marne, Neuve Chapelle, Festubert—names well-nigh forgotten in the greater battles of to-day—in each and all of them the seed of "a contemptible little Army" has been sown. Thus it was ordained ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... mother good-by, and set out for Nashville to bring the mail; but he stopped on the way to have a talk with the owner of the privateer. Under almost any other circumstances Marcy would have thought he was playing a contemptible part; but being as certain as he wanted to be that Beardsley was trying to get a hold upon him for some purpose of his own, the boy thought himself justified in adopting heroic measures for self-defense. The ship-keeper was not the Union man ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... Club! our adventures, thus far, have not been altogether contemptible. We have a President and a Secretary; ought we not also to have a Recording ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... not bound to see that my girl be not united to a man who would disgrace her, misuse her, drag her into the dirt,"—that idea of dragging George out was strong in Emily's mind as she listened to this,—"make her wretched and contemptible, and degrade her? Surely this is a father's duty; and my child should not turn from me, and almost refuse to speak to me, because I do it ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... heard Boyd mutter to himself, as he stood slapping the dust from hunting-shirt and leggings and smoothing the fringe. And, "Damme, Loskiel," he said, "we're like to cut a most contemptible figure among such grand folk—what with our leather breeches, and saddle-reek for the only musk we wear. Lord! But yonder stands a handsome girl—and my condition mortifies me so that I could slink off to the mews for shame and lie on straw ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... a fine specimen of a savage, but his spirit was not equal to his body. Like his father he was over six feet high, and firmly knit, being of both larger and stronger build than Leo, whom he now regarded, and of course hated, as his rival—a contemptible one, no ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... ruled square, and chipped—(I am trying to give an idea of the strange flood of epithets he used)—and pranked out, and polished, and muscadined—until, for all honest purposes of true high poetry, it was mere unavailable and contemptible jargon. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... roused from my writing by her cry that I am making strange faces again. It is my contemptible weakness that if I say a character smiled vacuously, I must smile vacuously; if he frowns or leers, I frown or leer; if he is a coward or given to contortions, I cringe, or twist my legs until I have ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... other hand, were at the proper time soundly berated. "The short campaign of fifteen days," wrote one of them, "made us ten years older." There was also danger in advancing beyond reach of the commissary department,—deficient and contemptible as it was in the hands of unscrupulous speculators,—and there was indeed little to be gained by such a pursuit as was possible, except prestige, which at that moment and at that distance from France was not a ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... his throne in Italy, and to revive the institutions of the Roman monarchy. But his successors only once in their lives appeared on the banks of the Tyber, to receive their crown in the Vatican. [140] Their absence was contemptible, their presence odious and formidable. They descended from the Alps, at the head of their barbarians, who were strangers and enemies to the country; and their transient visit was a scene of tumult and bloodshed. [141] A faint remembrance of their ancestors still tormented the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... raising the term of military service from three to three and a half years; France with a bill raising the term of service from two to three years (but this was not until in June, 1913). Great Britain, with voluntary service, still had a comparatively small army: in size "contemptible," as Kaiser Wilhelm called it later, but in morale and spirit unsurpassed. Evidently the military force of Germany, which lay like a glittering sword in her ruler's hand, was larger, better organized and equipped, than any other in ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... believe in and act upon; what they believe they believe, but do not act upon, the child will acquire also as a non-operative belief; their practices, habits, and prejudices will be enormously prepotent in his life. If, for example, the parent talks constantly of the contemptible dirtiness of Boers and foreigners, and of the extreme beauty of cleanliness and—even obviously—rarely washes, the child will grow to the same professions and the same practical denial. This home circle it is that will ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... of the insurgents was thus raised to about a hundred and fifty—a very small body of men, contemptible in point of numbers compared with the overwhelming forces by which they were opposed, but all animated by a determined spirit, and commanded by fearless and indomitable leaders. The band was divided into three ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... scathingly, as if to decline from a Bocardon to a Bondon was unthinkable. This Bondon was a regular client of the hotel, and such a client!—who never ordered a bottle of vin cachete or coffee or cognac. A contemptible creature. For a long time he had his suspicions. Now he was certain. He tossed off his glass of Dubonnet, ordered another, and spoke incoherently of the opening and shutting of doors, whisperings, of a dreadful incident, the central fact ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... "The contemptible greaser!" he muttered and leaped up. Throwing down the amount of his check on the cashier's desk he hurried from the restaurant. As he had supposed there was a hallway next door, where the talking he ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... Second was a Roman Catholic, and Calvert, on that score alone, might have expected some sympathy and favor: he might, at least, have expected justice. But James was heartless and selfish. The Proprietary found nothing but cold neglect, and a contemptible jealousy of the prerogatives and power conferred by his charter. James himself claimed to be a proprietary on this continent by virtue of extensive royal grants, and was directly interested with William Penn in defeating the claims of the Baltimore ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... you come into the presence of a Princess inventing such slanderous monstrosities against your superior. A nephew, sir, of the Chevalier de Bailleul, acknowledged by him as such to myself in his own chateau, is above the aspersions of a contemptible plebeian. Let this be a lesson to you, and never dare again to enter my sight. Footmen, conduct him out of my presence and service. No reply! ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... spinister and the Friends, glad to be rid of that contemptible, mundane bevy, assailed the Professor with questions. Must he really not tell where the modern Catacombs were? How many people met there? Women also? What were the subjects of his discourses? What did the monks of Sant' ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... David's demise, and on his ransom being remitted, but in March 1364 his Estates rejected the proposal, to which Douglas had assented. Till 1369 all was poverty and internal disunion; the feud, to be so often renewed, of the Douglas and the Steward raged. David was made contemptible by a second marriage with Margaret Logie, but the war with France drove Edward III. to accept a fourteen years' truce with Scotland. On February 22, 1371, David died in Edinburgh Castle, being succeeded, without opposition, by the Steward, Robert II., son of Walter, ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... whose Muse began to bud with his Youth, which produced early Blossomes, of not altogether Contemptible Poetry, in a Collection of Poems entituled Fancys Theater; which was usher'd into the World by divers of the Chief Wits of that age. He was afterwards City Poet, making those Speeches and Representations used at the Lord Mayors show, and other Publick Meetings. ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... that," replied Ned, "and I'm awfully sorry it happened. It was a mean, contemptible trick under the circumstances. But what ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... believe, now. But the knowledge that you could change would be death to me—a death to die daily. Yes, I tell you again, it was an insult to offer a lot so miserable, so contemptible, to a woman you profess to love. How could you do it? If only you had never spoken the hateful words! If only you had left me the ideal I had of you—noble, glorious, above the whole world of men. But after all you are selfish,—cruel. If you had said 'I love you, yet we must part, for Duty ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... must have been awful—awful, as you say. It is impossible for us really to imagine quite what it was, or to picture up such scenes as you must have witnessed. I can understand that all this must seem frivolous and contemptible ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... time to chastise the Pope for his support of the enemies of France. The Papalini proved to be contemptible as soldiers. They fled before the republicans, and a military promenade brought the invaders to Ancona, and then inland to Tolentino, where Pius VI. sued for peace. The resulting treaty signed at that place (February 19th) ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... excellent at telling a story, and provided with a plentiful stock of them, which they can draw out upon occasion in all companies; and considering how low conversation runs now among us, it is not altogether a contemptible talent; however, it is subject to two unavoidable defects: frequent repetition, and being soon exhausted; so that whoever valueth this gift in himself hath need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company, that he may not discover the weakness of his fund; for ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... him? O, well, they were all alike anyway! Even if she had not already done so, Helen would pass him by sooner or later, like so many of the others. But Will Fairmont had stuck to him. Maybe he had got his sister to pity him. Al winced at the thought. "I am getting contemptible. Will Fairmont would not do that. O, well, I might as well be done with them all right now!" His eyes flashed defiantly. Then he caught sight ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... own purse and magnanimity saves all the fugitive slaves that run to us, and protects our colored fellow-citizens, and leaves the other work to the government, so-called. Is not that government fast losing its occupation, and becoming contemptible to mankind? If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services. Of course, that is but the shadow of a government who existence necessitates ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... sustained by courage from on high, renouncing the dulcet, but transitory enjoyments of this life, to encounter, for the salvation of their souls, and of others, privation and sorrow, and painful death. Quoe terra non plena nostri laboris? Yet, O how contemptible is the suffering, when compared with the joy of the hope which is set before us—of the starry crown that awaits the willing martyr! Feed thy soul, my son, on these divine contemplations, until they become a part of thyself, and the path that leads to a bloody grave shall be strewed ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... sorrows of the vast majority condemned to keep starvation at bay by unceasing labour. His incapacity for speculation makes his pamphlets worthless beside Burke's philosophical discourses; but the treatment, if wrong and defective on the theoretical side, is never contemptible. Here, as elsewhere, he judges by his intuitive aversions. He rejects too hastily whatever seems insipid or ill-flavoured to his spiritual appetite. Like all the shrewd and sensible part of mankind he condemns as mere moonshine what may be really the first faint dawn of a new daylight. But then ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... tools on the premises; and that, as to this trumpery story of the poisoning a dog, four years before, apparently only for the purpose of showing some sort of animus, he regarded it as altogether contemptible. When a man meant to commit a burglary in a house, he did so in order to obtain possession of the goods, and not from any spite against the owner. Had this young fellow felt any malice, for this ridiculous charge ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... agitation must be considered quite as much a political as a moral warfare) the transition is natural to satire and humorous poetry. Here we find no lack of matter, but a grievous short-coming in quality. The Americans are no contemptible humorists in prose, but their fun cannot be set to verse. They are very fond of writing parodies, yet we have scarcely ever seen a good parody of American origin. And their satire is generally more distinguished for personality and buffoonery than wit. Halleck's ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... old," said Fakrash, "all men pursued wealth; nor could any amass enough to satisfy his desires. Have riches, then, become so contemptible in mortal eyes that thou findest them but an ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... himself with no better behavior than would most unquestionably have brought him and the sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close acquaintance in the present imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose a mere poor human being, such as I was, capable by those contemptible means of counteracting and limiting the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?—I say I would become emphatic and cogent, not to say rather complacent, in such an address, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... were to his soul as a sword of fire might have been to his flesh. They scorched and shrivelled it. He saw himself as she would have him see himself—a mean, contemptible craven; a coward who made big talk in times of peace, but faced about and vanished into hiding at the first sign of danger. He felt himself the meanest, vilest thing a-crawl upon this sinful earth, and she—dear God!—had ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... everywhere rolling his eyes and waving his hands, now shrieking frantic denunciations against the selfish, the criminal, the traitorous nobles who had brought the war to Italy and sustained it there by their wicked machinations and contemptible cowardice; now congratulating his hearers that the people had at last taken the conspirators by the throat and had elected a fearless consul, an incorruptible consul, an able consul, one who would soon show the world that there were men outside of the ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... is not the blow I received from a wicked, perjured, and contemptible enemy that has broken in upon my spirit; which, as she well knows, has carried me on through greater disasters than these. But it has been the injustice, unkindness, and, I must say inhuman, dealing of my own son, which has both ruined my family, and in a word ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... going home she sprawled lazily on the sofa with her head upon one elbow, and settled in for some more talk. But her talk was different to-night. She usually talked about herself, but to-night she talked of us instead, of our contemptible content. And presently through her talk I felt that she had some surprise to spring. In a few moments Eleanore felt it too, I could tell that by the vigilant way she kept glancing up ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... or less parts of science. He should be above them all, save in so far as he can without effort reap renown from the labours of others. It is a lache in him that he should write music or books, or paint pictures at all; but if he must do so, his work should be at best contemptible. Much as we must condemn Marcus Aurelius, we condemn James ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... which has in it too many circumstances for your present consideration; let us take the case to be as the Gentleman states it, that the cheat in the case of Lazarus was detected; what consequence is to be expected? In all other cases, impostors, once discovered, grow odious and contemptible, and quite incapable of doing further mischief; so little are they regarded, that even when they tell the truth, they are neglected. Was it so in this case? No, says the Gentleman; the Jews were the more careful that Christ should not cheat them in his own resurrection. Surely this is a most ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... I care?" she cried. "Because you accuse me in this letter of being the cause of your death—I, who have been your friend in spite of your dishonesty. Oh! it's despicable, contemptible! Above all, it's ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... estimation than among us. These men wore a sort of uniform, namely, high-crowned white hats, with flowers in the front, gray frocks, and half-boots; and their performance, I am bound to add, was by no means contemptible. They played one or two airs very sweetly under the burgomaster's window, which, as the said window looked out into the square, enabled us, as well as a multitude of the town's-people, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... is an expression of contempt? and that uncommon, extraordinary, distinguished, denote approbation? Why is everything that is common contemptible? ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... law of war you are beaten again and again, but you never seem to know it!' This is, of course, not an original utterance, but derived from one of Napoleon's great Generals; but at all events it shows the estimate placed upon our fighting capacity by an enemy who at one time styled us as 'that contemptible little army.' There is sometimes a weird sense of disproportion revealed, as in the case of a Highlander who was visited by a brother chaplain at a Base hospital some two or three months ago, and who remarked to the patient, 'Well, Jock, ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... peace. It was your right, it was your duty to victimize us all in order that you might save a whole nation.... But what you now propose to do.... Oh, the shame of it!... Listen, if you did that ... I should think of you as one thinks of ... I don't know what ... as one thinks of the most contemptible, the most ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... war. He will be a restive fellow, knowing his own mind better, and possibly his real interest less well; he will play less for safety, since safety will have become to him a civilian sort of thing, rather contemptible. He will have at once a more interesting and a less reliable character from the social and political point ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... left to themselves, in fact, and treated with a sense of humour, were on the highroad to the greatest political fiasco the world had ever seen, and could only have made themselves ridiculous and contemptible in the eyes of their own countrymen ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... the housetopped philosopher, appears to be but a creeping, contemptible beetle. Brokers, poets, millionaires, bootblacks, beauties, hod-carriers and politicians become little black specks dodging bigger black specks in streets no ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Gil Blas, in a very different and far more serious way. But the second part altogether will not bear enquiry. In the second part of Don Quixote are some of the finest things. But the second part of Robinson Crusoe is perfectly contemptible, in the glaring defect that it exhibits the man who was 30 years on that desert island with no visible effect made on his character by that experience. De Foe's women too—Robinson Crusoe's wife for instance—are terrible dull commonplace fellows without breeches; and I have no doubt he was ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... seemed a very trivial piece of information announcing the motions of a beggardly Scottish knight, than whom Thomas of Gilsland knew nothing within the circle of gentle blood more unimportant or contemptible; and despite his usual habit of passively beholding passing events, the baron's spirit toiled with unwonted attempts to form conjectures ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... company as, much above me, when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope, as if I had been with all the princes in Europe. What I mean by low company, which should by all means be avoided, is the company of those, who, absolutely insignificant and contemptible in themselves, think they are honored by being in your company; and who flatter every vice and every folly you have, in order to engage you to converse with them. The pride of being the first of the company is but too common; but it is ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... economy, and forecast has amassed a fortune, is not necessarily a successful man. If his object was to amass a fortune, he is so far successful; but it is a mean and miserable object, and his life would be a contemptible, if it were not a terrible, failure. We do not keep this sufficiently in mind. American society, and perhaps all society, is too apt to do homage to material prosperity; but material prosperity may be obtained by the sacrifice ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... would not have believed it if I hadn't seen it. I knew Jim was a bully and a tyrant, but I didn't think he was as contemptible as ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... must be impressed with the idea that a high moral character is absolutely essential to the highest development of every race, white quite as much as black. There is no creature so low and contemptible as he who does not seek first the approval of his own conscience and his God; for, after all, how poor is human recognition when you and your God are aware of your inward integrity of soul! If the Negro will keep clean hands and a pure heart, he can ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... frank enjoyment of his late and simple dinner. The conversation, with its pleasant assumption of untold wealth of power and travel and regal luxuriousness, burned its memory across Norma's mind like a corroding acid. They were not contemptible, they were not robbers or brutes or hideous old plutocrats who had grown wealthy upon the wrongs of the poor. No, they were normal pleasant girls whose code it was to be generous to maids and underlings, to speak ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... torments of despair and degradation; and yet once more did the absence of the abject in man and manner redeem him from the depths of either. In these moments of reaction he was pitiful, but not contemptible, much less unlovable. Indeed, I could see the qualities that had won the heart of Raffles as I had never seen them before. There is a native nobility not to be destroyed by a single descent into the ignoble, an essential honesty too bright ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... what was right, and watched her go in; and, as I did so, I loathed my errand, and the mean contemptible curiosity which it had planted in my mind, more than at any former time. These women—I could find it in my heart to hate them for their frankness, for their foolish confidence, and the silly trustfulness that made ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... that snug comfortable fellowship of yours? Do you suppose I'm so much in love with you, Herbert Walters, that I can't let you go without wanting to fawn upon you and run after you ever afterwards! Pah! you miserable, pitiable, contemptible cur and coward, are you afraid even of a woman! Go away, and don't be frightened. I never want to see you or speak to you again as long as I live, you wretched, lying, shuffling hypocrite. I'd rather go back to my own people ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... words, she believed he knew far more about than he did, mingled with her anger and feelings of repugnance. "Oh," she moaned, "it was just horrible; it was coming straight down from the sublime to the contemptible. That noble old colonel took me to the very gate of heaven. Now I'm fairly trembling with passion and fear. Oh, why will Cousin Mad always stir up the very worst of my feelings! I'd rather suffer and die as poor Yarry did than marry a man who WILL think ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... even Epicurean advice is only the way to ignominious, contemptible happiness. I must have an ideal life or else annihilation—splendid misery or ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... said he, "I have a piece of advice to give you, which you'll find useful through life. Never go and repeat what you hear about anybody. It's done by people through idleness sometimes, and often through ill-nature, or with a downright evil intention; but whatever is the cause, it's a contemptible propensity, and is certain to lead to harm." I promised that I would follow this advice, ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... without first of all demonstrating upon what grounds they have the right to be so. Satire is a wholly laudable thing if it is directed in a fair minded manner, but if it is only an excuse for bitter cynicism it is altogether contemptible. Thus he says of the Thackerean treatment of 'Vanity Fair,' 'he was attacking "Vanity Fair" from the inside.' It comes to this: if you want to make an extract from Thackeray you must dive about all over the place to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... well-meaning governors, could in so short a space of time have produced such wide-spreading miseries. But the principles of evil have a fatal activity. With every exertion, the best of men can do but a moderate amount of good; but it seems in the power of the most contemptible ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... statement appears at first thought contradictory or absurd, while it may be really true. Anything is irrational when clearly contrary to sound reason, foolish when contrary to practical good sense, silly when petty and contemptible in its folly, erroneous when containing error that vitiates the result, unreasonable when there seems a perverse bias or an intent to go wrong. Monstrous and preposterous refer to what is overwhelmingly absurd; as, "O monstrous! ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... contemptible old darling, if you hadn't asked me to pretty soon, I—I'd have asked you. I've tried to get along without you, and I just ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... even in the history of Greece—could not but make the Cretan's rule both odious and despicable. What made it more hateful still in the eyes of the people was the fact {214} that it had been imposed upon them by foreign arms, and what made it more contemptible still was the fact that it functioned under false pretences. As free men, the Greeks resented the violence done to their liberty; but as intelligent men they would have resented open violence less ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... night, as he undressed, he wondered what contemptible impulse had forced from him his last words to Alexa Trent. It was bad enough to interfere with the girl's chances by hanging about her to the obvious exclusion of other men, but it was worse to seem to justify his weakness by dressing up the future in delusive ambiguities. He saw himself ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... demonstration in response to the secret stirring of the soul. The man in the far corner of the carriage turned and looked at her. When she heard this movement Domini remembered her irritation against him at El-Akbara. In this splendid moment the feeling seemed to her so paltry and contemptible that she had a lively impulse to make amends for the angry look she had cast at him. Possibly, had she been quite normal, she would have checked such an impulse. The voice of conventionality would have made itself heard. But Domini could act vigorously, and quite carelessly, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Ackermann and Annie, and never met them but in public. His wickedness and her weakness made them both contemptible in my eyes. And my mind was occupied in other matters. Miriam resolved to make the tour of Europe, and I was to accompany her—for she would take no denial. For many weeks we were busied in preparations for our departure; Miriam had settled all her affairs satisfactorily, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... contemptible work here," he whispered—"spite and a mean spirit of reprisal. I have been making a secret investigation, and I find that this blow at your son and you, and at the good name of our college was struck by one man, a man with a grievance—Doctor Gilman. Doctor Gilman has repeatedly desired ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... hopeless was the circumstance that the civilians accepted it with contemptible humility. It was almost pathetic to observe how people, just on the border-line, received with humble thankfulness such crumbs of recognition as were occasionally thrown to them. Snobbery increases in offensiveness when ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... birth must be produced, and such is the complex state of society, there are as many beliefs as masters and servants. How can there be unity of mind concerning spiritual offices and blessings with people so at variance upon trivial, contemptible worldly matters? True, there must be the various earthly stations, characters and employments; but it is heathenish, unchristian and worldly for one to entertain the absurd idea that God regards a certain individual a better Christian than another upon the contemptible grounds of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... overcolouring the sufferings which await the spendthrift. It is painful to own that such cases are but too common in society. Think of an extravagant man married to an extravagant woman—the mean and contemptible conduct to which they are driven—the insolence and cruelty with which they are baited through large towns, hunted down into an obscure cottage in the country, or chased into exile. Think of the hateful reflections ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... speak like it, dear Tess! Distinction does not consist in the facile use of a contemptible set of conventions, but in being numbered among those who are true, and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, and of good report—as you are, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... to see that she is happy and has realized her heart's desire. Heigh-ho! I believe I am making you my confessor." He turned his face toward her now, and his smile was rather sad. "When I recall the worry I have given my poor old aunt, who loves me so, I feel like a contemptible scoundrel. How many countless sacrifices has she made for me, in the days when we had nothing! But she shall have all the comforts now, and all the love and kindness I am capable of giving her. I shall never leave ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... right, sir," I replied in an equally cheery tone, the old chief's genial address making me forget at once my anger at Spokeshave's contemptible nonsense. "Mr Stoddart directed me to tell the cap'en that he may go on ahead as usual, as he likes, for everything has been made taut and secure below and there need be no fear of another mishap. He says he intends driving the engines as they were never driven before, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... ruffian. It was impossible to maintain an attitude of righteous iciness with him. I might loathe his mode of life, and hate him as a representative—and a leading representative—of one of the most contemptible trades on earth, but there was a sunny charm about the man himself which made it hard to feel hostile to him ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... further in his own estimation than he was before, by showing him infinite things and his own abasement, till he falls into the frame of mind that leads to the catastrophe, from mere internal irritation, not premeditation, or envy of Abel (which would have made him contemptible), but from the rage and fury against the inadequacy of his state to his conceptions, and which discharges itself rather against life, and the Author of life, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... nobleness is shadowed by an unequal yoke! Hapless am I, to whose pedigree is bound the lowliness of a peasant! Luckless issue of a king, to whom a common man is equal by law of marriage! Pitiable daughter of a prince, whose comeliness her spiritless father hath made over to base and contemptible embraces! Unhappy child of thy mother, with thy happiness marred by consorting with this bed! thy purity is handled by the impurity of a peasant, thy nobility is bowed down by ignoble commonness, thy high birth is impaired ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... houses in every part of the colony. It is cut into very thin slices, and eaten with bread and butter, or with bread and the melted fat of the sheep's tail, which is a common substitute for butter; either way it is no contemptible dish when one is a little hungry, and many a time I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... in which humour dwells, are wanting in Browning. It is true he has the charity of humour, though not its pathetic power. But, all the same, he is too keen, too brilliant, too fierce at times for a humourist. The light in which we see the foolish, fantastic, amusing or contemptible things of life is too bright for humour. He is a Wit—with charity—not a humourist. As for Tennyson, save in his Lincolnshire poems and Will Waterproof's Soliloquy, he was strangely devoid either of humour ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Senate of the United States is the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action. A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... no reason to think the queen inventing here: what could she gain by it? the point indeed was rather against Hamlet, as showing it was not Polonius he had thought to kill. He was more than ever annoyed with the contemptible old man, who had by his meddlesomeness brought his death to his door; but he was very sorry nevertheless over Ophelia's father: those rough words in his last speech are spoken with the tears running down his face. We have seen the strange, almost ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... He took up his quarters in a low-class tavern—in the lowest kind of company, of course; drank, and stood drinks to others, as long as he had any money left; and then began to abuse the whole lot of them as a contemptible rabble—and, indeed, as far as that goes he was quite right. But the result was, that he got a thrashing and was ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... have been evolved—such is the worth of Nature's womb—there have been evolved intelligence and love, sacrifice, ideals; splendours which no splendour to come can utterly dim. These things are in the power of Nature. This is what "dead matter" can mother. So much the worse for our contemptible conceptions of matter, and That of which matter is the manifestation. But if it be that from the slime, by natural processes, there can grow a St. Francis, surely our dim notions of the potencies of Nature must ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... lot of valuable stuff under the water these days." I think he said that just so's to kind of make a joke about what he was saying, so as maybe it wouldn't seem so serious like. Anyway, he was awfully trice. "It seems pretty contemptible to be talking about money," he said, "after my pal's life was saved by you folks, but it's just because the money has to be paid out pretty soon that he's worrying about it. He didn't want me to come over ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... In the lower order of ladies' boarding-schools, and indeed, too much everywhere, the same sickening, mincing tone is too often found. Do, pray, good people, do talk in your natural tone, if you don't wish to be utterly ridiculous and contemptible." ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... as the end of 1818, he described the way in which Byron spent his life, after he had been partly exiled, partly emancipated from the ordinary restraints of society. At that time, "the Italian women were the most contemptible of all who existed under the moon,—an ordinary Englishman could not approach them"; "but," writes Shelley, "Lord Byron is familiar with the lowest sort of these women,—the people his gondolieri pick up in the streets." Byron's curiosity, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... the most dense part of a plumb-pudding, or steeped in a hogshead of thick English Port. Heavens! is it possible, that a man of some fame for joking, possessed of no unlaughable talent in punning, and endued with no contemptible degree of liveliness in letter-writing, should all of a sudden have become more impenetrably stupid than a Hottentot legislator, or a moderator of the general assembly of the Kirk of Scotland. By that smile which enlivens your black countenance, like a farthing candle ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... does in different periods as to fashions and manners. The world is pretty well agreed, and always has been, as to the qualities that make a gentleman. And yet there was a time when the vilest and perhaps the most contemptible man who ever occupied the English throne,—and that is saying a great deal,—George IV, was universally called the "First Gentleman of Europe." The reproach might be somewhat lightened by the fact that George was a foreigner, but for the wider fact that no person of English stock has ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Work of the Propagation of the Faith was recommenced, and on this occasion still more distastefully to me. The priest asked me many questions as to the contemptible faith of my fathers, and received my replies with a kind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... course—she would as soon have talked of her esophagus. Her formula was "charm," and she had taught Sylvia that the preservation of "charm" was the end of woman's existence, the thing by which she remained a lady, and without which she was more contemptible ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... to see Lear acted, to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm in which he goes out is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements than any actor can be to represent Lear. In the acted Othello, the black visage of the Moor is obtruded upon you; in the written ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... receive a single response. I wrote for an abstraction; and spoke to empty space. I cannot help claiming some pity and even respect for the class to which I belonged. I have heard them called all kinds of hard names, hacks, drudges, and something even more contemptible, but the injustice done to them is monstrous. Their wage is hardly earned; it is peculiarly precarious, depending altogether upon their health, and no matter how ill they may be they must maintain the liveliness of manner which ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... the kind, sir. If I had put in so contemptible a plea, you would have lost your cause. What I did was this: I asked what testimony he could adduce as to the original loan, and he gave me the name of one witness, a certain Count well known in this city, who was at breakfast ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... the eye—that is quite another matter. It was this sort of conquest that Jane Hastings delighted in—and sought to gain with any man who came within range. If the men had known what she was about, they would have denounced her conduct as contemptible and herself as immoral, even brazen. But in their innocence they accused only their sophisticated and superbly masculine selves and regarded her as the soul of innocence. This was the more absurd in them because she obviously excelled in the feminine art of inviting display of charm. ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... same line of reflection to this Holy Coat business. Contemptible as it is to the eye of reason, it excites the piety of millions of persons who never reasoned on religion in the whole course of their lives. Hundreds of thousands of men and women will visit these sham relics of a Savior whose own existence is open to dispute. Superstition ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... broke in, "where the bodily presence is weak and the speech contemptible, surely there cannot be error in making written language the medium of better utterance than faltering ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... even to the Devils themselves most astonishing, That after all the rest of their Observations they should find this whole immense Work was adapted for, and made subservient to the Use, Delight and Blessing only of one poor Species, in itself small, and in Appearance contemptible; the meanest of all the Kinds supposed to inhabit so many glorious Worlds, as appeared now to be form'd; I mean, that Moon call'd the Earth, and the Creature call'd Man; that all was made for him, upheld by the wise Creator, on his account only, and would necessarily end and cease ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... our motive of examination will entirely alter the result. To paint birds that we may show how minutely we can paint, is among the most contemptible occupations of art. To paint them, that we may show how beautiful they are, is not indeed one of its highest, but quite one of its pleasantest and most useful; it is a skill within the reach of every student of average capacity, and ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... man render to the State adequate to such a compensation that the making of laws, upon which the happiness of millions is to depend, shall be lodged in him and his posterity, however depraved may be their principles, however contemptible their understandings? ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... The Jews, contemptible outcasts, have become great lords, and their pride and arrogance know no bounds.... Take not such men for thy ministers, but abandon them to curses, for the whole earth crieth out against them—ere long it will quake and we shall all perish. Turn thine eyes to other lands ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... calumny by an exact rehearsal of the facts; but should I justify myself in this manner by, so to speak, accusing the Emperor at a moment especially when the Emperor's enemies manifested much bitterness? When I saw such a great man made a mark for the shafts of calumny, I, who was so contemptible and insignificant among the crowd, could surely allow a few of these envenomed shafts to fall on me. To-day the time has come to tell the truth, and I have done so without restriction; not to excuse myself, for on the contrary I blame myself for not having completely ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... silence, not loud, but deep, succeeded this artful feeler. Father O'Murtagh (or words to that effect) to the rescue! The Rivirind Gintleman arose and delivered a bitter attack on Parnell, whom he characterised as mean, base, untruthful, treacherous, and contemptible. The foinest pisintry in the wuruld could not be soiled by contact with anybody like Parnell, and therefore the Catholic bishops had been compelled to give him up, and to say, Get thee behind me, Satanas. The ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... would be obliged to remain. Besides, he wished to go to court; and since his testimony would carry considerable weight with the jury, it was his duty to be present on account of Florentin. It would be a contemptible cowardice to fail in this duty, and more, it would be an imprudence. In the eyes of the world he must appear to have nothing to fear, and this assurance, this confidence in himself, was one of the conditions of his safety. Now, if he went to court, and from every point of ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... once sent to Paoli with a renewed request for such documents as would enable the writer to complete his pamphlet on Corsica. The patriot again replied in a very discouraging tone: Buttafuoco was too contemptible for notice, the desired papers he was unable to send, and such a boy could not in any case be a historian. Buonaparte was undismayed and continued his researches. Joseph was persuaded to add his solicitations for ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... questions immediately raised was how we might gain our liberty if arrested in a raid on an immoral resort which we might be investigating. This was a vital and serious question, in Philadelphia. There vice is a thousand times too abundant, but it is contemptible, suspicious, ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... till she was thirty; and I thought myself so with her when she was forty. I never felt a stronger passion; which she returned with equal ardour.... She had been sacrificed, almost before she was a woman, to one whose mind and body were equally contemptible in the scale of creation; and on whom she bestowed a numerous family, to which the law gave him the right to be called father. Strange as it may seem, she gained (as all women do) an influence over me ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... After the tragical catastrophe of her misguided husband and of lady Jane Grey her eldest daughter, the duchess was suffered to remain in unmolested privacy, and she had since rendered herself utterly insignificant, not to say contemptible, by an obscure marriage with one Stoke, a young man who was her master of the horse. There is a tradition, that on Elizabeth's exclaiming with surprise and indignation when the news of this connexion reached her ears, "What, hath she married her horse keeper?" Cecil replied, "Yes, madam, and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... As he sat with Gloria and found little to say, he was conscious of her eyes probing at him when she thought that he did not see. He looked away, a shadow in his eyes, and chanced to see Gratton. Gratton, who had struck him as contemptible in the woods, a misfit and a poor sort of man at best, was here on his own heath. He carried himself well, he talked well; he bore himself with a certain distinction. Clearly he was much in favour among the girls and women, much envied by the younger men. Yes; Gloria was ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... champagne, and did not let me depart until I had promised to dine with him again. Others, when I would ask information about various things, would hardly answer me, as if they were trying to show me that I was troublesome, so that I would say to myself, "How contemptible they are!" But the next day they would send me all the details neatly and clearly written out, and minute in a higher degree than I desired. One evening I asked a gentleman to point out to me something in that ocean ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... corps from France. It was this interference with their vital plans in France, coupled with the panic produced by the Belgian advance, which provoked the Germans into their barbarities at Louvain, Malines, and Termonde. Schrecklichkeit was to deter the contemptible Belgian Army from spoiling a mighty German success. That was the view of the German staff, and a soldiery prone as ever to pillage and rapine, needed little encouragement to extend to civilians, women, and children the violence which their leaders organized against cathedrals ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... care little for a custom in which there was no manifest utility. He had declared that the gewgaws of office delighted him not; and I dare say he would fain bring his mind to believe that all ceremonial was idle, perhaps contemptible. But it is the greatest mistake to suppose that Lord Brougham is inattentive to the ceremonies with which his high place is surrounded. A careful observer will see clearly that imposing forms are perfectly agreeable to his mind; nobody ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... out of the crowd. To the forest man such a blow was the deadliest of insults. It was calling him an Iskwao—a woman—a weakling—a thing too contemptible to harden one's fist against. But the murmur died in an instant. For Reese Beaudin, making as if to step back, shot suddenly forward—straight through the giant's crooked arms—and it was his fist this time ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... do it!" leered again the same contemptible fellow. "Yer a city kid an' hain't got sand 'nuff to make an ant-hill. I hearn tell yer get the old man to button yer clothes, and yer cry in the dark—guess it's so, ain't ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... when he seems fully resolved to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender emotions by the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love. He is not long soft and pathetick without some idle conceit, or contemptible equivocation. He no sooner begins to move, than he counteracts himself; and terrour and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... poetry. Our traveller, partly by way of practice in the Tartar language, and partly to inspire his eastern friend with greater respect for the bards of the Occident, used to translate English and German songs into Tartar. Mirza Shaffy, the name of the Tartar sage and poet, proved himself no contemptible critic of these foreign productions. Not once could he be induced to tolerate a poem whose only merit was the beauty and melody of its language in the original, nor to swallow the mere sentimentalism which plays so great a part in German poetry especially. This sentimentalism, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... reward waiting at Salem for every man here. What's more, it'll be an honest reward, with credit from the owners and all law-abiding men. But enough of that! It's a matter of ordinary decency—of common honesty! The man who will conspire against the owners of this ship is a contemptible cur, a fit shipmate with the brute who horsed poor ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... thinking whither his own follies had driven him; he was thinking of his own utter failure as a man, a strong, big-principled man. He was wondering, too, what this kindly soul would think and feel when he realized how little he was changed from the contemptible creature his father had turned out of doors, and when he finally learned of the horrors of degradation his ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... reason, John Derringham felt annoyed; but it was too contemptible to be annoyed by a child, so he laughed as ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... afraid to tell you the truth about yourselves, or who were so like you that they couldn't see the truth—products of the same code of morals—a code truly European! In a word, then, I think you are both blackguards—blackguards of the most nasty and contemptible kind—the kind that preys upon women! I may add that you have deeply shaken my faith in human nature, for, to look at you, one would mistake you ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... Christ will be so strong, and the things that are not seen will so overwhelmingly outweigh the things that are seen, that the solemn majesty of the eternal will make the temporal look to our awed eyes the contemptible unreality which it really is. They who humbly receive and faithfully use that engrafted word, have in it a sure touchstone against which their own sins and errors are shivered. It is for the Christian ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... at an enormously high valuation—the honest old man!—that he might be sure to err on the right side, he forced Theodore to go with him to the stand, and pay Matty for the stolen fruit. He endeavored, too, to make him apologize to Jim, both for the theft of his property, and also for his contemptible meanness in keeping silent on the occasion of Jim's attack on the playground. But here he was powerless: Theodore absolutely and doggedly refused to do it; and his grandfather was obliged to content himself with relieving his own feelings, and further expressing his sentiments on the ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews |
