"Contumelious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He took at their hands the most outrageous treatment; I have heard him bleating like a sheep, I have seen him streaming blood, and his ear tattered like a regimental banner; and yet he would scorn to make reprisals. Nay more, when a human lady upraised the contumelious whip against the very dame who had been so cruelly misusing him, my little great-heart gave but one hoarse cry and fell upon the tyrant tooth and nail. This is the tale of a soul's tragedy.[15] After three years of unavailing chivalry, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... well-judged an aim that he was never (like Burke) above his mark—rarely, if ever, below it, or beside it. When, in the exultant consciousness of personal superiority, as well as the strength of his cause, he trampled upon his opponents, there was nothing coarse, nothing virulent, nothing contumelious, nothing ungenerous in his triumph. Whether he addressed the Liverpool electors, or the House of Commons, it was with the same ease, the same adaptation to his auditory, the same unrivalled dexterity, the same command of his subject and his hearers, and the same success. His only faults ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... reproach of his birth, into which bastardy and plebeianism entered in equal proportions. He was always "William the Bastard," and he is so to this day. "William the Conqueror," says Palgrave, "the founder of the most noble empire in the civilized world, could never rid himself of the contumelious appellation which bore indelible record of his father's sin. In all history, William is the only individual to whom such an epithet has adhered throughout his life and fortunes. Was the word of affront ever applied to Alphonso, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... incident took place which has passed down in the form of an inspiriting proverb. Yuen Yan had conscientiously delivered at the door of his abode the last of his company and was turning his footsteps towards his own arch when he encountered the contumelious Ho, who was likewise returning at the close of a day's mendicancy—but with this distinction: that, whereas Ho was followed by two stalwart attendants carrying between them a sack full of money, ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... and scornes, and contumelious taunts, In open Market-place produc't they me, To be a publique spectacle to all: Here, sayd they, is the Terror of the French, The Scar-Crow that affrights our Children so. Then broke I from the Officers that led me, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Company, and to excite a resistance to their lawful orders, frame a supposition that the Court of Directors had intended the restoration of the Rajah of Benares, and on that ground did presume in the said libel to calumniate, in disrespectful and contumelious terms, the policy of the Court of Directors, as well as the person whom he did conceive to be the object of their protection, as followeth. "Of the consequences of such a policy I forbear to speak. Most happily, the wretch whose hopes may be excited by the appearances ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... But it happened he had given Phoebe unintentional offence by speaking of her under the classical epithet of Rustica Fidele, the which epithet, as she understood it not, she held herself bound to resent as contumelious, and declaring she was not fonder of a fiddle than other folk, had ever since shunned all intercourse with Dr. Rochecliffe which she could ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... character is her grand passion, and her special weakness is a fancy for the singular and incongruous. I have seen her stand in silence, and regard with positive interest one of her former patronesses who was overwhelming her with contumelious violence, seeming entirely unconscious of all else but that the woman was of a species novel to her, and therefore ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... indeed assist them, but only promised them fair. They also again blamed Moses, and made a clamor against him and his brother Aaron, the high priest. Accordingly they passed that night very ill, and with contumelious language against them; but in the morning they ran to a congregation, intending to stone Moses and Aaron, and so to return ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... from such a man as Mr. Middleton. You have heard the audacious and insulting language he has held to them, his declining to correspond with them, and the mode of his doing it. There are, my Lords, things that embitter the bitterness of oppression itself: contumelious acts and language, coming from persons who the other day would have licked the dust under the feet of the lowest servants of these ladies, must have embittered their wrongs, and poisoned the very cup ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... dreads he other harm? Or sees he aught that with a bashful awe Fills him? the bashful poor are poor indeed. To whom, Eumaeus, thou didst thus reply. He hath well spoken; none who would decline The rudeness of this contumelious throng Could answer otherwise; thee he entreats To wait till sun-set, and that course, O Queen, 700 Thou shalt thyself far more commodious find, To hold thy conf'rence with the guest, alone. Then answer thus ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... party, though that monarch at first made no declaration of his intentions. And what he chiefly valued, he formed a treaty with the Swiss cantons, who, enraged by some neglects put upon them by Lewis, accompanied with contumelious expressions, had quitted the alliance of France, and waited for an opportunity of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... to communicate to his irritable and contumelious auditors the sense of Muriel's charm, or the reasonableness of her request that he commit burglary merely to assist her in settling a family row. Mary could not understand it; Humpy paced the room nervously, shaking his head and muttering. It was their judgment, ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... o'er earth's chosen heroes,—they were souls that stood alone, While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone, Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... great dread of appearing before these proud patrician people, who had always openly scorned his deceased brother; and once accidentally encountering them at a public fete, the contumelious bearing of the young ladies towards the little brown gentleman deterred him from any nearer approach. No doubt, he argued, his brother's daughter was deeply imbued with similar principles, and would blush to own a 'Mr Budge' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... motley crowd which usually is in following at such affairs, beside the little troop of horse which was my escort, and my brother and Parson Downs riding on either side. Parson Downs, though some might reckon him as being somewhat contumelious in his manner of leaving the tobacco-cutting, yet was not so when there was anything to be gained by his service. He was moreover quit of any blame by his office of spiritual adviser, though it was not customary for a criminal to be ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... injury in divers ways, and so may yield a fruitful grievance even apart from offences against the person or property of the nation's businessmen; as, e.g., through neglect or disregard of the conventional punctilios governing diplomatic intercourse, or by disrespect or contumelious speech touching the Flag, or the persons of national officials, particularly of such officials as have only a decorative use, or the costumes worn by such officials, or, again, by failure to observe the ritual prescribed for parading the national ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... by Holinshed, and vaguely stated to have occurred soon after "the stir of Wyat" and the troubles of Elizabeth for that cause. A servant of the princess's had summoned a person before the magistrates for having mentioned his lady by the contumelious appellation of a jill, and having made use of other disparaging language respecting her. Was it to be endured, asked the accuser, that a low fellow like this should speak of her grace thus insolently, when the greatest personages in the land treated her with every mark of respect? ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... me o'er earth's chosen heroes—they were souls who stood alone, While the men they agonized for, hurled the contumelious stone, Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline, To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes |
