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Depreciate   Listen
verb
Depreciate  v. t.  (past & past part. depreciated; pres. part. depreciating)  To lessen in price or estimated value; to lower the worth of; to represent as of little value or claim to esteem; to undervalue. "Which... some over-severe philosophers may look upon fastidiously, or undervalue and depreciate." "To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself."
Synonyms: To decry; disparage; traduce; lower; detract; underrate. See Decry.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Depreciate" Quotes from Famous Books



... knew to be utterly superior to him. But perhaps nearly all who knew him experienced this at one time or another; for he must have been one of the most humble men that have ever lived. His humility was almost a fault. It led him to depreciate himself so far. And yet how beautiful a thing it was! He did indeed count all men ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson

... partial, and is to be determined in reference to the truths necessary to salvation. While there are many mistakes of memory, false citations, errors in historical, chronological, geographical, and astronomical detail, these need not depreciate our general estimate of inspiration. The Scriptures have a kernel and a shell. Upon the former there is the positive and direct impress of the Holy Spirit; but upon the latter it is indirect ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... the problems which theology is trying to solve must always be before his mind, and he must have something to say about them, if he hopes to command the attention of thoughtful men. Yet while we need not depreciate the service that has been rendered by preachers and professional theologians who have sought to put the facts of the religious life into the forms of the new philosophy, we must own our deeper obligation to the poets, by whose vision the spiritual ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... in the minds of the jury. In his eagerness to carry out this laudable design, the Quarterly Reviewer cannot even state the history of the doctrine of natural selection without an oblique and entirely unjustifiable attempt to depreciate Mr. Darwin. "To Mr. Darwin," says he, "and (through Mr. Wallace's reticence) to Mr. Darwin alone, is due the credit of having first brought it prominently forward and demonstrated its truth." No one can less desire than I do, to throw a doubt upon Mr. Wallace's originality, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... enemies, or to check the violence of persecution, always appeal with special confidence to this weighty testimonial. A veteran profligate converted into a sober and exemplary citizen was a witness for the truth whose evidence it was difficult either to discard or to depreciate. Nor were such vouchers rare either in the second or third century. A learned minister of the Church could now venture to affirm that Christian communities were to be found composed of men "reclaimed from ten thousand vices," [276:1] and that these societies, compared with others around them, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... servants wish to ingratiate themselves into a child's affections by flattery! Their method of showing their attachment to a family, is usually to exaggerate in their expressions of admiration of its consequence and grandeur; they depreciate all whom they imagine to be competitors in any respect with their masters, and feed and foster the little jealousies which exist between neighbouring families. The children of these families are thus early ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... Bashi Bazouks (conspicuous among whom were the Albanian levies) was heightened by the addition of the regulars, in their soiled garments and woollen great coats, I cannot pretend to say; yet let no one endeavour to depreciate the Turkish infantry who has not seen them plodding gallantly on beneath a broiling sun, and in a country which, by its stony roughness, would tax the energies of ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... hundred women from oblivion, classify them, and set forth their distinguished traits of character, was indeed an herculean labor. This is a valuable book of reference for the girls of to-day. When our opponents depreciate the achievements of woman they can turn to the "Woman's Record" and find grand examples of all the cardinal virtues, of success in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... one-eighth in number, or from four thousand to four thousand five hundred, and one-sixth in capacity of production. It is deserving the serious notice of all proprietors of existing machines, that machines are now introducing into the trade of such power of production as must still more than ever depreciate (in the absence of an immensely increased demand) ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... his closeness in trade, and attributed to it his failure to negotiate for the Old Charlie buildings,—so to call them. They began to depreciate Belles Demoiselles. If a north wind blew, it was too cold to ride. If a shower had fallen, it was too muddy to drive. In the morning the garden was wet. In the evening the grasshopper was a burden. Ennui was turned into capital; ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... energetic and determines to be somebody in the world—which is praiseworthy so long as that energy is guided by propriety and a just conception of right—there are always scores, hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who endeavor to depreciate that man's reward. ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... seldom showed, were very even and very white, and there rested on her chin the dearest dimple that ever acted as a loadstar to mens's eyes. The fault of her face, if it had a fault, was in her nose,—which was a little too sharp, and perhaps too small. A woman who wanted to depreciate Violet Effingham had once called her a pug-nosed puppet; but I, as her chronicler, deny that she was pug-nosed,—and all the world who knew her soon came to understand that she was no puppet. In figure she was small, but not so small as she looked to be. Her feet and hands were delicately ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... said that no moral disease is ever benefited by its study. I was a living proof of the truth of the opinion that brooding over one's wrongs or infirmities seldom does much more than aggravate the evil. I greatly fear it is in the nature of man to depreciate the advantages he actually enjoys and to exaggerate those which are denied him. Fifty times during the six months that succeeded the repulse of the young baronet did I resolve to take heart and to throw myself at the feet ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... genteel, but strangely obtuse, critics it was formerly the fashion to depreciate Raphael and El Greco on the ground that they were sentimental. Sentimental they are, in a sense. Their subjects are sentimental; and the religiosity of some of Greco's is downright disgusting. But of these subjects every scrap has been passed through the blazing furnace of conception and fused into ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell

... encouraging land reclamation, so that the yield of rice increased appreciably. But this proved by no means an unmixed blessing. Side by side with an increase in the quantity of rice appearing in the market, the operation of the new currency tended to depreciate prices, until a measure of grain which could not have been bought at one time for less than two ryo became purchasable for one. In fact, the records show that a producer considered himself fortunate if he obtained half a ryo of gold for a koku of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... no reverses can depreciate. He hates to be beaten. But he gave in to Alice, as the others said so too, and we went out to collect the performing troop and sort it ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit

... which only private life (and this may be passed under various external circumstances) is capable—this consolation those may draw from history who stand in need of it; and it is craved by envy, vexed at what is great and transcendent, striving, therefore, to depreciate it and to find some flaw in it. Thus in modern times it has been demonstrated ad nauseam that princes are generally unhappy on their thrones; in consideration of which the possession of a throne is ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... February after the failure. About this time law suits were being brought against him, and as some supposed, by his friends. He was called upon, or offered himself as a witness, and I believe testified that he was worth nothing. The natural effect of this testimony was to depreciate the paper which his name was on. At the time when I saw him, he told me that the Museum was his just as much as it ever was, and that he received the profits, which had never been less than twenty-five thousand and were sometimes ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome

... Fast horses, yachts, private cars, and the feasts of Lucullus, are not to be enjoyed in solitude; they must be shared. Buying jewels and costly raiment is the purest philanthropy, for it gives pleasure to others. Sapphires and real lace depreciate rapidly in the cloister ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... some of this awe for State documents; at least she helped out the illusion that they were worth all this anxiety on the part of the post-office, and she would call the Paymaster from his breakfast. His part on the other hand was to depreciate their importance. He would take the most weighty and portentous with an ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... only a "scientist." How that name tends continually to depreciate itself as the pursuit of physical science is divorced more and more completely from a knowledge of literature, from a knowledge of the humanities! And a scientist is a poor guide to an acquaintance with man, civilised ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... therapeutics has supplied a motive for this story, and it is only proper that I should feel a certain gratitude to the advocates of the new philosophy. But the primary purpose of this novel is artistic, not polemical. The book was not written to depreciate anybody's valued delusions, but to make a study of human nature under certain modern conditions. In one age men cure diseases by potable gold and strengthen their faith by a belief in witches, in another they substitute animal magnetism and adventism. Within the memory of those ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... Gentleman Farmer against the expense of ploughing with horses and urges a return to oxen. He points out that horses involve a large original investment, are worn out in farm work, and after their prime steadily depreciate in value; while, on the other hand, the ox can be fattened for market when his usefulness as a draught animal is over, and then sell for more than his original cost; that he is less subject to infirmities than the horse; can be fed per tractive unit more economically and gives more valuable ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... of course bad, the company stupid, and the conversation turned solely upon Mrs. Pullens's exploits, with occasional attempts of Mrs. Jekyll to depreciate the merits of some of her discoveries. At length the hour of departure arrived, to Mary's great relief, as she thought any change must be for the better. Not so Grizzy, who was charmed and confounded by all she had seen, and ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... himself upon his every-day sense, his practical knowledge, rather than those visionary musings which he thought a dangerous indulgence of imagination. He could not put the compositions of Collins among the mere curiosities of literature, but he permitted himself to depreciate habits of mental excursion which he had not ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... perfection or imperfection of his dress measured by the standard of the critic, he is not only mentioned by name and his garb audibly criticised, but pointed at approvingly or derisively. The men are made the butt of their own sex among the audience; while the women praise or depreciate, according as the occasion may seem to require, the female members of the procession. Frequently, when the costume of some dusky beauty in the arena is the object of publicly expressed admiration, some other within hearing ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... action taken in favor of the plan for the emission of bills, which shall systematically depreciate!" inquired ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... Descent of Odin, in which are apparent the first streaks of the dawn of the Romantic Revival. G.'s poems occupy little space, but what he wrote he brought to the highest perfection of which he was capable, and although there is a tendency on the part of some modern critics to depreciate him, it is probable that his place will always remain high among all but the first order of poets. Probably no poem has had a wider acceptance among all classes of readers than his Elegy in a Country Churchyard. In addition to his fame as a poet, he enjoys that of one of the greatest of ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... of Bengal, "I have no idea what a Persian palace is like, so I am unable to make comparisons. I do not wish to depreciate my own palace, but I can assure you that it is very poor beside that of the King my father, as you will agree when you have been there to greet him, as I ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... he was inclined to depreciate all other men, the more he felt there was one to whom he had been grossly unjust. And, as he recalled all that had passed, he began to do justice to the man who had not flinched from warning him and braving him, who he felt ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... been usual to depreciate modern languages when compared with ancient. The latter are regarded as furnishing a type of excellence to which the former cannot attain. But the truth seems to be that modern languages, if through the ...
— Cratylus • Plato

... passing events can be but vaguely imagined by readers whose interest in the statecraft of the age is historical and not personal. Arbuthnot, like Swift, belonged to the Tory camp, and both did their utmost to depreciate the great General who never knew defeat, and to promote the designs of Harley. When Arbuthnot produced his satire, all the town laughed at the representation of Marlborough as an old smooth-tongued attorney who loved money, and was said by his neighbours ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... prognostics of Sir Philip Harclay began to be verified, that Edmund's good qualities might one day excite envy and create him enemies. The sons and kinsmen of his patron began to seek occasion to find fault with him, and to depreciate him with others. The Baron's eldest son and heir, Master Robert, had several contests with Master William, the second son, upon his account: This youth had a warm affection for Edmund, and whenever his brother and kinsmen treated him slightly, he supported him against their malicious ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve

... actual "world" so "created," not mere pastiches and plaster models of them, are still to be had, and of the very best! But the fact is, thirdly, that Mr Arnold, as all men so often do, and as he not very seldom did, was clearly trying not so much to extol one thing as to depreciate another. Probably in his heart of hearts (which is generally a much wiser heart than that according to which the mouth speaks and the pen writes) he knew his failure. At any rate, he never attempted anything of the kind again, and Merope, that queen of plaster, remains alone in his gallery, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... my Work appear of a trifling Nature, has been an Attempt to depreciate Literal Criticism. To this End, and to pay a servile Compliment to Mr. Pope, an Anonymous Writer has, like a Scotch Pedlar in Wit, unbraced his Pack on the Subject. But, that his Virulence might not seem to be levelled singly at Me, he has done Me the Honour to join Dr. ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald

... are other people in the world than the charming Lady Hermione, you will realize that she is a mere pawn around whom a number of very important persons are contending. I don't wish to say a word to depreciate her as a star of the first magnitude, but I am greatly mistaken if there is not another woman, either here or in Europe, whose personality, if known, would attract far more attention from the police. . . . By the way, has it occurred to you that Providence has certainly befriended you to-night? The ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... does not at all depreciate the value of the many semi-philanthropic and paternal aids and improvements, such as comfortable lavatories, eating rooms, lecture halls, and free lectures, night schools, kindergartens, baseball and ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... college advantages, have succeeded in about equal ratios. The men occupying the most important commercial positions in New York to-day are self-made, whose only education has come to them from contact with that greatest college of all, the business world. Far be it from me to depreciate the value of a college education. I believe in its advantages too firmly. But no young man need feel hampered because of the lack of it. If business qualities are in him they will come to the surface. ...
— The Young Man in Business • Edward W. Bok

... like the millions of which I had dreamed, but still enough. To make the most of it and to be sure that it remained, I invested it very well, mostly in large mortgages at four per cent which, if the security is good, do not depreciate in capital value. Never again did I touch a single speculative stock, who desired to think no more about money. It was at this time that I bought the Fulcombe property. It cost me about L120,000 of my capital, or with alterations, repairs, etc., say L150,000, ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... by the writers of his own age, appears to have been a man of more than ordinary abilities, great application, and uncommon integrity: nor was such an one, though of an opposite party and interest, inferior to him in any of these respects. The several antagonists who now endeavour to depreciate one another, and are celebrated or traduced by different parties, will then have the same body of admirers, and appear illustrious in the opinion of the whole British nation. The deserving man, who can now ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... well-known dictatorial temper. Does Dr. Lightfoot bring forward any evidence to contradict this piece of collegiate history? None whatever. He merely treats us to a few of his own conjectures, which simply prove his anxiety to depreciate its significance. And yet he ventures to parade the name of Bentley among those of the scholars who contend for the genuineness of these letters! He deals after the same fashion with the celebrated Porson. In a letter to the author of this review [7:2], Dr. Cureton states that Porson ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen

... his assertions to the furthest extreme, and make the most unwarrantable deductions from them. It must be acknowledged that Bunyan does not treat Fowler and his doctrines with fairness, and that, if the latter may be thought to depreciate unduly the sacrifice of the Death of Christ as an expiation for man's guilt, and to lay too great a stress on the moral faculties remaining in the soul after the Fall, Bunyan errs still more widely on the other side in asserting the absolute, irredeemable ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... the reported innovations—thus protecting themselves in case of charge from all participation in or responsibility for such proceedings. Secondly—They positively denied the statements of the Browns as to Endicot's alleged "innovations," and used every means to depreciate the trustworthiness and character of the Browns, notwithstanding their former commendation of them and their acknowledged respectability. Thirdly—They prepared and published documents declaring their adherence to the Church of England, and the calumny of the charges ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... that his memory is enshrined in an incomparable biography. It shows the strange ineptness of Englishmen for literary and artistic criticism, their incapacity for judging a work of art on its own merits, their singular habit of allowing their disapprobation of a man's private character to depreciate his work, that an acknowledged critic like Macaulay could waste time in carefully considering whether Boswell was more fool or more knave, and triumphantly announce that he produced a good book by ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... against Greek poetry, or depreciate the knowledge of the language as an attainment. I congratulate you on it, though I never should think of trying to convert other women into a ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... been the fashion to depreciate Montesinos, but I find it impossible to discover the reasons by which this depreciation can be justified. It is alleged that he uses fanciful hypotheses to explain Peru. The reply to this seems to me conclusive. In the first place, he is, in this respect, like all ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... this and following numerical examples no account is taken of the possibility that the standard metal may depreciate in the world market in terms of all other goods as a result of its diminished use as money in one or more countries. This properly belongs in a complete theoretical treatment of ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... Almost all the state universities and the great majority of the colleges and universities on private foundations are today coeducational. The results predicted by pessimists, viz., that the physical health of women would suffer, that their intellectual capacity would depreciate scholarship, and that the interests of the family would be ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... or not. The task of the theologian is a most important one—whether or not it be, as has been lately said,[4] "the noblest of all the tasks which it is given to the human mind to pursue." None but a sciolist will depreciate such a task; and none but a sceptic will doubt the value of the conclusions which may be thus reached. But all this is quite consistent with our position. The welfare of the soul is not involved in such matters as I have mentioned. A man is not good or bad, spiritual or unspiritual, according to ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch

... depreciate the original merits of this poet, as well as those of Virgil, Plautus, and Terence, because they derived so much assistance from the Greeks. But the Greeks also borrowed from one another. Pure originality is impossible. It is the mission of art to add to its stores, without hoping to monopolize the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... factory and see what can be done. Surely Wilmarth cannot oppose anything for their united interest, unless, indeed, he means to ruin if he cannot rule. There is a misgiving in Floyd's mind that he is purposely allowing everything to depreciate with a view of getting it cheaply into his own hands. Floyd has the capacity of being roused, "put on his mettle," and now he resolves, distasteful as it ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... modern humanists to the possession of the monopoly of culture and to the exclusive inheritance of the spirit of antiquity must be abated, if not abandoned. But I should be very sorry that anything I have said should be taken to imply a desire on my part to depreciate the value of classical education, as it might be and as it sometimes is. The native capacities of mankind vary no less than their opportunities; and while culture is one, the road by which one man may ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... commanding elevation in the northern part of the city where the University now stands. This was part of the tract of 150 acres known as Effingham and owned by John A. Smith. On the plea that the location of a Negro school would depreciate the remainder of his property, the owner refused to sell any part of it. After much argument, General Howard asked him to state his price for the whole farm. The rate given was one thousand dollars an acre, making ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... Potato is brought on with roast Beef, a Steake, a Chop, or Fricassee; good boiled with a boiled dish; make an excellent stuffing for a turkey, water or wild fowl; make a good pie, and a good starch for many uses. All potatoes run out, or depreciate in America; a fresh importation of the Spanish might restore ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons

... cup's Honey with wine, and driven its seed to fruit, And show a better flower if not so large: 150 I stand myself. Refer this to the gods Whose gift alone it is! which, shall I dare (All pride apart) upon the absurd pretext That such a gift by chance lay in my hand, Discourse of lightly or depreciate? It might have fallen to another's hand: what then? I pass too surely: let ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... is a poem in dactylic measure, dedicated to the women of Britain. The sentiment is noble, and the encomium well bestowed, though the metre could be improved in polish. "Gum", by Henry J. Winterbone, is a delightfully humorous sketch. It is evident that those who depreciate British humour must have taken pains to avoid its perusal, since it has a quietly pungent quality seldom found save among Anglo-Saxons. Personally, we believe that the summit of clumsy pseudo-jocoseness is attained by the average "comic" supplement of the Hearst Sunday papers. These, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... pleasures. He kept no house; had no equipage: Nobody pretended that he wanted pride: the reason therefore was easy to be guessed at.' And then did she boast of, and my brother praised her for, refusing him: and both joined on all occasions to depreciate him, and not seldom made the occasions; their displeasure against him causing every subject to run into this, if it began ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... this is true. But so long as the tax is not actually withheld from the dividends, or the dividends are not reduced in consequence of the tax, the stockholder's current income is not affected. The imposition of the tax might indeed affect his prospective income and might depreciate the value of his stocks. It is hardly likely, however, that such effects will be perceptible, at least as regards the stocks of railroads and other large corporations. If, however, it be considered that income consisting of dividends pays the tax, it follows that the stockholder's income is taxed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... joy. And who is the cause of it all? who has wrought the change? Has any man a prior claim? Then I withdraw; be his the honour and the reward. But if not—if mine was the deed, mine the risk, mine the courage to ascend and smite and punish, dealing vengeance on the father through the son—then why depreciate my services? why seek to deprive me of ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... country is more valuable to her in the way of commerce, than any colony in her possession, over and above the other advantages which I have specified: therefore, they are no friends, either to England or to truth, who affect to depreciate the northern part of the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... produced in every department of learning, have corresponded with your Majesty's gracious wishes and encouragement, and have rendered the name of Britain famous in every quarter of the globe. If there be any persons who, in these respects, would depreciate the present times, in comparison with those which have preceded them, it may safely be asserted, that such persons have not duly attended to the history of literature. The course of my studies has enabled me to speak with some confidence ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... can only reply in some words which I used in writing of the Religio Poetae, and affirm with an emphasis which I only wish to strengthen, that, here and everywhere, and never more than in the exquisite passage which Mr. Gosse only quotes to depreciate, the prose of Patmore is the prose of a poet; not prose 'incompletely executed,' and aspiring after the 'nobler order' of poetry, but adequate and achieved prose, of a very rare kind. Thought, in him, is of the very substance of poetry, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... find Curll's authors, the historian at the tallow-chandler's under the blind arch in Petty France, the two translators in bed together, the poet in the cock-loft in Budge Row, whose landlady keeps the ladder. It was Pope, I fear, who contributed, more than any man who ever lived, to depreciate the literary calling. It was not an unprosperous one before that time, as we have seen; at least there were great prizes in the profession which had made Addison a minister, and Prior an ambassador, and Steele a commissioner, and Swift all ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the author has not been influenced by any feeling of malice or ill-will, but simply by a regard for truth, and a desire to point out to his countrymen the harm which has resulted from the perusal of his works;—he is not one of those who would depreciate the talents of Scott—he admires his talents, both as a prose writer and a poet; as a poet especially he admires him, and believes him to have been by far the greatest, with perhaps the exception of Mickiewicz, who only wrote for unfortunate Poland, that Europe ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... importance to you to learn, that our plan for calling in the old paper and emitting new, was not attended with all the success that was expected. The old paper was indeed redeemed, but the new beginning to depreciate, most of the States thought it prudent to take ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

... elevate this artist's reputation above its proper level have proved signal failures, so the effort to depreciate it must ultimately be defeated. Only one kind of injustice ever proves irreparable wrong: that which a man exercises towards himself. Mr. Powers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... sorrows; than like one who has lived his whole time secluded in a monastery, or in his own study. Then he speaks with such exquisite sensibility on the subject of love, that he commends the very thing which he attempts to depreciate. I do not think my Lord Frederick would make the passion appear in more pleasing colours by painting its delights, than Mr. Dorriforth could in describing its sorrows—and if he talks to me frequently in this manner, I shall ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... hope I shall never hear you depreciate the constancy of men. Thured had better have married Bjorn ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... minds, although still inadequate to comprehend the full import of an eternity of advancing knowledge, can yet appreciate the comparative insignificance of seventy—nay of seventy thousand—years' investigation into the mysteries of Nature, is very painful. We do not, in saying this, depreciate in the slightest degree the sublime discoveries which are daily being made of the Almighty and his works;—but we say, upon the soundest principles of philosophy, that were all these discoveries multiplied ten thousand times, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... who gave few orders, hated instructions, and only asked results. It was his custom to place an agent in charge of a business without directions, except to make it pay. His only care was to see that his property did not depreciate, and that the course adopted by the agent was one likely to produce good results. So long as this was the case he was satisfied. He never interfered, made no suggestions, found no fault. As soon as he became dissatisfied the agent ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... how good it is to be satisfied. How many times we have heard people testify and rejoice that they had reached this experience! I would not depreciate this sense of satisfaction, for out of it come many enjoyable things. It is a very pleasurable feeling and one that most people very earnestly desire. There are times, however, when such a feeling would be anything but a blessing. Perhaps this surprizes you as it ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... about him. We must, however, bear in mind that, for some unknown reason, the Aretine historian bore a rancorous grudge against this Lombard whose splendid gifts and great achievements he did all he could by writing to depreciate. 'He was fond,' says Vasari, 'of keeping in his house all sorts of strange animals: badgers, squirrels, monkeys, cat-a-mountains, dwarf-donkeys, horses, racers, little Elba ponies, jackdaws, bantams, doves of India, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... commerce; the West Indian, and the North American. All these are so interwoven, that the attempt to separate them would tear to pieces the contexture of the whole; and if not entirely destroy, would very much depreciate the value of all the parts. I, therefore, consider these three denominations to be, what in effect they are, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... Clennam, 'we should make up our minds that it is not worthy of us to say any ill of Mr Gowan. It would be a poor thing to gratify a prejudice against him. And I resolve, for my part, not to depreciate him.' ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... simultaneously to do all these feats purely by mental processes, as he was allowed no paper and pencil. The strain on the faculties must have been terrific. Ordinarily men in unconscious envy are apt to depreciate such efforts by affecting to believe that they involve only the exercise of the lower functionings of the brain. It is not, however, a pure question of memory. The greater factor is the immense ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... cunning English contractors in South America took advantage of the statements in this book to depreciate the American railway system and American civil engineers, for their own private advantage in obtaining work, some Americans have been so foolish as to decry the book altogether, as traitorous to the interests of the country. Such mingled bigotry and conceit, shrinking ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... godly ancestors. No doubt the doctrine of Confucius, which the Chinese people endeavor to carry out to a letter, has played a large part in producing this effect. Instead of unfolding the possibilities of the future, he recapitulated the virtues and achievements of the past. I am not attempting to depreciate the inestimable service, which his system of philosophy has rendered toward enhancing the standard of rectitude among his disciples. But for him Asia might have sunk into the depths of moral chaos. This much at least ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... eighty, he might have lived longer, but in private as in public life, he despised caution. He was one of those statesmen whom modern critics, on the watch for the partially obsolete and with the complexity of present problems always before them, tend to depreciate. He had the first quality which is necessary for popularity: he was readily intelligible. In addition he was prompt, combative, and magnanimous; shrewd, but never subtle; sensible, but not imaginative. He had no ideas which he wished to carry out; he did ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... they are considered. In the tumult of business, interest and passion have their genuine effect; but a friendly letter is a calm and deliberate performance in the cool of leisure, in the stillness of solitude, and surely no man sits down by design to depreciate his own character. Friendship has no tendency to secure veracity; for by whom can a man so much wish to be thought better than he is, as by him whose kindness he desires to ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... were generally contracted for upon much better terms for the country than those taken by the Stock Exchange; but as they were contending against what is known by the interests of the house, they all were ruined in their turns, as the jobbers could always depreciate the value of stocks by making sales for time of that ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... people together, unanimously chose Camillus the fifth time dictator; who, though very aged, not wanting much of fourscore years, yet, considering the danger and necessity of his country, did not, as before, pretend sickness, or depreciate his own capacity, but at once undertook the charge, and enrolled soldiers. And, knowing that the great force of the barbarians lay chiefly in their swords, with which they laid about them in a rude and inartificial manner, hacking and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... Thalberg, and affected to depreciate Liszt; but having invited them both to her house on one occasion, thought proper to address the latter with some impertinent questions about a professional visit he had just been paying to Paris, winding up with, "Enfin, avez-vous fait de bonnes affaires la-bas?" To which he replied, "Pardon, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... value of sound eyes in the horse, and hence all diseases and injuries which seriously interfere with vision are matters of extreme gravity and apprehension, for should they prove permanent they invariably depreciate the selling price to a considerable extent. A blind horse is always dangerous in the saddle or in single harness, and he is scarcely less so when, with partially impaired vision, he sees things imperfectly, in a distorted form or in a wrong place, and when he shies or avoids objects ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... against the vote of some of the native-born population on the question of silver and gold. But you will observe that there are some things that it would be supposed would belong to any tradition. One would suppose it would belong to any tradition that it was better to earn a dollar that did not depreciate, and these men have simply shown that there are some common-sense elements which are international and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... Marshall and his original associates. In 1901, the centenary of his appointment was celebrated all over the country, North and South. Such a tribute was never paid before in any country to the memory of a judge. His services were commemorated for the very reason that led Jefferson to depreciate them—because they led to the establishment of a strong national government with a controlling judicial authority adequate to protect it within its sphere from interference or obstruction in any way by ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... did as bad, I lent 'em to a friend to keep out of my brother's sight, should he come and make inquisition into our papers, for, much as he dwelt upon your conversation while you were among us, and delighted to be with you, it has been his fashion ever since to depreciate and cry you down,—you were the cause of my madness—you and your damned foolish sensibility and melancholy—and he lamented with a true brotherly feeling that we ever met, even as the sober citizen, when his son went astray upon the mountains of Parnassus, is said to have "cursed ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... month of October in the year one thousand five hundred and sixty-eight, by Christovao Ponze de Leon, notary of his camp, I say that I cannot help being amazed again and again at seeing how his Grace attempts to depreciate my actions and give luster to his own—those on the one side being so different from those on the other, and done in sight of his camp yonder and of this fleet stationed here. When there are, however, so many noblemen and gentlemen ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair

... bank. When such was the general feeling, the superabundant issues of paper but increased the evil, by rendering still more enormous the disparity between the amount of specie and notes in circulation. Coin, which it was the object of the Regent to depreciate, rose in value on every fresh attempt to diminish it. In February, it was judged advisable that the Royal Bank should be incorporated with the Company of the Indies. An edict to that effect was published and registered by the Parliament. The state remained the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... likely to depreciate to you the value of What Does, after spending my first twelve lectures up here, on the art and practice of Writing, encouraging you to do this thing which I daily delight in trying to do: as God forbid that anyone ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... I make the complaint in their interest. When a tenant in Bloodstone Terrace is acting in a way calculated to bring the whole neighbourhood into disrepute, and depreciate the value of house property, the agents would probably be glad ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain

... course of the trial in the fiscal court, between Don Diego and the crown, an attempt was made to depreciate the merit of Columbus, and to ascribe the success of the great enterprise of discovery to the intelligence and spirit of Martin Alonzo Pinzon. It was the interest of the crown to do so, to justify itself in withholding from the heirs of Columbus the extent of his stipulated reward. ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... had been a Conqueror, and Mrs. Sparsit a captive Princess whom he took about as a feature in his state-processions, he could not have made a greater flourish with her than he habitually did. Just as it belonged to his boastfulness to depreciate his own extraction, so it belonged to it to exalt Mrs. Sparsit's. In the measure that he would not allow his own youth to have been attended by a single favourable circumstance, he brightened Mrs. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... I mean to depreciate your fossil remains. Forbid it all that is venerable. I should very much like to see your account of them. You gave me credit for more than is my due, when you surmised that the paper in the Quarterly (on the presumed alteration in the plane of the ecliptic) might have been mine. I write ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... a certain satisfaction. A formidable rival had been swept out of his path, and he could speak of him now without any temptation to depreciate his merits, so much so that when he took an opportunity one day of referring to his loss, he did it so delicately that Mabel was touched, and liked him better for this indication of feeling than she had ever ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... Luther and Bacon. Certainly their unsatisfactory science was one of the marked developments of the civilization of Europe, through which the Gothic nations must need pass. It has been the fashion to ridicule it and depreciate it in our modern times, especially among Protestants, who have ridiculed and slandered the papal power and all the institutions of the Middle Ages. Yet scholars might as well ridicule the text-books they were required to study fifty years ago, because they are not up to our times. We ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... having made some remarks upon the monarchy and the House of Lords, I should say something respecting that house in which I have literally passed the greater part of my life, and to which I am devotedly attached. It is not likely, therefore, that I should say anything to depreciate the legitimate position and influence of the House of Commons. Gentlemen, it is said that the diminished power of the throne and the assailed authority of the House of Lords are owing to the increased power of the House of Commons, and the new position which of late years, and especially ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... of Burns, which appeared shortly after his death, she starts with the somewhat startling statement that poetry was not actually his forte. She did not question the excellence of his songs, or seek to depreciate his powers as a poet, but she spoke of the man as she had known him, and was one of the first to assert that Burns was very much more than an uneducated peasant with a happy knack of versification. Even in the present day we hear too much of the inspired ploughman bursting into song as one that ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... interested in his friend's experiences. For Francis had had a job in the War Office—whereas Angus was a war-hero with shattered nerves. And let him depreciate his own experiences as much as he liked, the young man with the monocle kept tight hold on his prestige as a war hero. Only for himself, though. He by no means insisted that anyone else should ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... at the affectionate speech. She knew its exact value, but was not inclined to depreciate it in her own estimation. Just then she would rather have been left alone with her mother than with any one else, unless she could be left quite ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... matter further—to do so would be simply to depreciate the intellect of the hon. Gentlemen listening to me. Seven or eight months afterwards there happened another transaction of a very different but unfortunate nature—that is the transaction arising out of the seizure of two Southern envoys on board ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... will be able to sell out his holdings at the inflated prices that prevail. He alone of all the members of the Exchange knows that the greatest American financier is dead. On the morrow every stock on the list will depreciate. Now is the time for him ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... her troops, but who meanwhile was building up her navy, strengthening, extending, and protecting her commerce, seizing maritime positions,—in a word, founding and rearing her sea power upon the ruins of that of her rivals, friend and foe alike? It is not to depreciate the gains of others that the eye fixes on England's naval growth; their gains but bring out more clearly the immenseness of hers. It was a gain to France to have a friend rather than an enemy in ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... you, that nature and Turner are the same, and that he "invites the same ceaseless study as the works of nature herself." This is "coming it pretty strong." We confess we are with the majority—not that we wish to depreciate Turner. He is, or has been, unquestionably, a man of genius, and that is a great admission. He has, perhaps, done in art what never has been done before. He has illuminated "Views," if not with local, with a splendid truth. His views of towns are the finest; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... Gifford's cool assumption that everything bad in the play is Dekker's, and everything good Massinger's, will not hold for a moment; but, on the other side, it must be remembered that since Lamb there has been a distinct tendency to depreciate Massinger. All that can be said is, that the grace and tenderness of the Virgin's part are much more in accordance with what is certainly Dekker's than with what is certainly Massinger's, and that either was quite capable of the Hircius and Spungius passages which have ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... one feels, and the utter inability to move one's self; for as far as appetite is concerned, it gives the greatest satisfaction. Certainly fat and sugar would be more to one's taste; in fact those seem to me to be the great stand-by for one in this extraordinary continent: not that I mean to depreciate the farinaceous food; but the want of sugar and fat in all substances obtainable here is so great that they become almost valueless to us as articles of food, without the ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... everything that the antiquary can wish to visit at Fontevrault and at Saumur. But the ecclesiastical remains of Le Mans are far from being the whole of its attractions. Its military and civil antiquities are endless, and they are more characteristic. We have not the least wish to depreciate Chartres. It is a highly interesting city; it contains a magnificent cathedral and several other remarkable buildings. But it ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... terms could Burke, from temper or waywardness of judgment, attempt to depreciate a speech which may be said to have contained the first luminous statement of the principles of commerce, with the most judicious views of their application to details, that had ever, at that period, been ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... a wife who had such definite opinions about masculine questions such as these? But now how to find Dorothy again? She had been back and forth between Nashville and Reverdy's. We had exchanged only a few letters, with long silences between. I began to depreciate myself for allowing Zoe or anything connected with her to thwart my will with reference to Dorothy. These meetings with Abigail and these conversations and arguments had clarified my mind both as to Dorothy and as to Abigail. I wanted Dorothy and I did not want Abigail. This being the case ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... a few words upon the aims of this society: and I should be sorry either to exaggerate or to depreciate our legitimate pretensions. It would be altogether impossible to speak too strongly of the importance of the great questions in which our membership of the society shows us to be interested. It would, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... prevent action, but in others the movement had to run its fatal course. The futility of what they were doing should have been revealed to all concerned by proposals seriously made that the paper money which was issued should depreciate at a regular rate each year ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... have so often asked you to change bills into gold for me," she said. "Paper might depreciate in value, or the banks go down, but gold is gold everywhere, and I have tried so hard to earn or save the interest, denying myself many things which I should have enjoyed as well as most women, and getting for myself the reputation of closeness and even stinginess, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... I will dismiss them with a few words. They are too easily known to merit particular description. They are usually loud and bold in the drawing-room, but rather mild in the field. They are desperately egotistical, fond of exaggeration, and prone to depreciate the deeds of their comrades. They make bad soldiers and sailors, and are usually held in contempt by others, whatever they may think of themselves. I may wind up this digression—into which I have been tempted by an earnest desire to warn my ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... be thought that I would depreciate (were it possible to depreciate) the mechanical ingenuity which has been displayed in the erection of the Crystal Palace, or that I underrate the effect which its vastness may continue to produce on the popular imagination. But mechanical ingenuity is not the essence either of painting ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... whose Name it is altogether needless to mention, (the Fact being too well known to many Peoples Misfortune) having by some indiscreet Management greatly hurt his Reputation, and several Stories of a suspicious nature, tending to depreciate his Character, being whisper'd about; which coming in time to his knowledge, he thought of a notable Device to prevent the Consequences that generally ensue on those occasions to Persons in his way of Life. His first step was to order Glaziers and Painters to new-ornament his House ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson

... stranger still that some of his friends should have given credit to his groundless opinion, when they had such undoubted proofs that it was totally fallacious; though it is by no means surprising that those who wish to depreciate him, should, since his death, have laid hold of this circumstance, and insisted upon it with very ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... I have not pointed out, in order to depreciate the excellent work of Boileau; but to shew that, in the judgement of so great a writer, the method of Horace was not so ill conceived, as Scaliger pretends, even for the outline of an Art of Poetry: Boileau himself, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace

... higher classes, it was supposed that the higher would keep their money in that fund to make profit,—that the vote would be a secondary consideration, and no more than a guard to the property,—and that therefore any abuse which tended to depreciate the value of their stock would be warmly resented by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... do not presume to teach by virtue of this semiplena graduatio, for it is only honoris causa, or merely complimentary; and do not boast this title as evidence of skill or erudition in laws, for they are sounding words that signify nothing. How easy it is for envy and malice to depreciate! ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... Love and pity led him into dainty loving kindness; and when he could not find his way to say the right thing, he did better—he left her to say it. And so well did he move her courage, in his old protective way, without a word that could offend her or depreciate her love, that she for the moment, like a woman, wondered at her own despair. Also, like a woman, glancing into this and that, instead of any steadfast gazing, she had wholesome change of view, winning sudden insight into Albert's ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... not be supposed to depreciate any honest effort to arrive at truth, or to undervalue the devotion of those who have died for their religion. But surely it is a mistake to regard martyrdom as a merit, when from their own point of view it was in reality ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... the Dominie's character, and that if anything could cure his unfortunate passion, it would be a supposition on his part that the girl was not correct. I determined at all events to depreciate her, as I knew that what I said would never be mentioned by him, and would therefore do her no harm. Still, I felt that I had to play a difficult game, as I was determined not to state what was not the fact. "Pleasant, sir; yes, pleasant to everybody; the fact is; I don't like ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... time is now at hand, when the number of practical observers will be so multiplied, that ignorant and designing men will neither be able to impose their conceits and falsehoods upon the public, nor be sustained in their attempts to depreciate the valuable discoveries of those who have devoted years of observation and experiment to promote the advancement ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... impracticability. It may be read as an indication of lightness of character or of a tendency to go off on a tangent. Conversely, gestures outward from the lower part of the body denote power, or an inclination to depreciate values. ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... him. She gave it up. Ted, however, was so charmed with the idea of suicide that he spent the rest of the evening discussing ways and means. He was not going to blow his brains out, or to take poison in his bedroom, or do anything disagreeable that would depreciate Mrs. Rogers's property. On the whole, drowning was the cheapest, and would suit him best, if he could summon up spirits for it. Only he didn't want to spoil the river for her. It must be somewhere below London ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... his appearance. The years had not yet given his features the flabby look which sooner or later mars most Jewish faces, and the fine formation of his brow round about the eyes gave him an expression of countenance that inspired confidence. He did not seem in the least inclined to depreciate my intention of trying my luck in Paris as a composer of opera; he allowed me to read him my libretto for Rienzi, and really listened up to the end of the third act. He kept the two acts that were complete, saying that ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... that young HOWARD, who, having only laid low a couple of black cocks and a blue hare, was immoderately jealous of my superior skilfulness, did seek to depreciate it by insinuating that my grouse was one which, having been seriously wounded by other hands some days previously, had come up to the hills to shuffle off its mortal coil in seclusion, arguing thus from its total absence of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... is to dispute not only that sociology is a science, but also to deny that Herbert Spencer and Comte are to be exalted as the founders of a new and fruitful system of human inquiry. I find myself forced to depreciate these modern idols, and to reinstate the Greek social philosophers in their vacant niches, to ask you rather to go to Plato for the proper method, the proper ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... other auction sales there are always anxious buyers who make a practice of trying to depreciate ("crabbing," as it is called) any article or property they particularly wish to purchase, by making damaging statements or insinuations to anybody whom, they fear, is also a probable buyer. At a sale of cottage property adjoining a public-house, in a village not far from ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... Braintree, Massachusetts, foreseeing a worse condition, writing her husband, who was one of the Council assembled in Philadelphia, to send her, if possible, six thousand pins, even if they should cost five pounds. Prices continued to rise and currency to depreciate. In seventeen hundred and seventy-nine Mrs. Adams reported in her letters to her husband that potatoes were ten dollars a bushel, and writing-paper brought the ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... upon my face. Whene'er to visit light I deign, What flocks of fowl compose my train! Like slaves they crowd my flight behind, And own me of superior kind.' The farmer laughed, and thus replied: 'Thou dull important lump of pride, 30 Dar'st thou with that harsh grating tongue, Depreciate birds of warbling song? Indulge thy spleen. Know, men and fowl Regard thee, as thou art an owl. Besides, proud blockhead, be not vain, Of what thou call'st thy slaves and train. Few follow wisdom or her rules; Fools ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... discovered to have disturbed his quiet, or to have lessened his confidence in himself: they neither awed him to silence nor to caution: they neither provoked him to petulance, nor depressed him to complaint. While the distributors of literary fame were endeavouring to depreciate and degrade him, he either despised or defied them, wrote on as he had written before, and never turned aside to quiet them by civility, or repress them by confutation. He depended with great security on his own powers, and perhaps was for that reason less diligent ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... full justice to all other religions, acknowledging their partial truth and use, will not depreciate, but exalt the value of Christianity. It will furnish a new kind of evidence in its favor. But the usual form of argument may perhaps ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... the custom of most donors to depreciate their gifts, but that was not Esmeralda's way. Not a bit of it! She was a capital show-woman, and if by chance any detail of perfection passed unnoticed, she pointed it out forthwith, and dilated at length upon its virtues. Jack turned over the silver-topped ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... all of you—but remember that it's infinitely more awkward for me! I really cannot accept the freedom of the City under any suspicion of false pretences. It would be a poor reward for your hospitality, and base and unpatriotic into the bargain, to depreciate the value of so great a distinction by permitting it to be conferred unworthily. If, after you've heard what I am going to tell you, you still insist on my accepting such an honour, of course I will not be so ungracious ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... affected my heart, and from that instant began between him and me the strong attachment, which on my part still remains the same, and would be so on his, had not the traitors, who have deprived me of all the consolation of life, taken advantage of my absence to deceive his old age and depreciate me in ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... safety of the church of England he had no doubt, since the people of England possessed the most hostile feelings towards all the doctrines of Popery. The Irish church was certainly, he said, placed in an anomalous situation, and he had no wish to depreciate the dangers to which she was exposed; but instead of being increased by the measure before the house, they would be diminished by it. On the other hand, the Archbishop of Armagh argued, that the Irish church had everything to fear from Catholic ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... work more illustrious, and furnish a spacious field of which historians may treat, for such is their office. Certainly the subject matter is not scanty, and contains both serious and pleasant elements sufficient to be worthy of attention, so that it will not depreciate historians to treat of Indian occurrences and wars, which those who have not experienced undervalue. For the people of those regions are valiant and warlike nations of Asia, who have been reared in continual warfare, both by sea and by land, ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... count's partiality for me: this annoys him, and, he seizes every opportunity to depreciate the count in my hearing. I naturally defend him, and that only makes matters worse. Yesterday he made me indignant, for he also alluded to me. "The count," he said, "is a man of the world, and a good man of business: his ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... made conspicuous by her banishment from Vienna, she could not fail to make her fortune. Expulsion from Vienna, for this class of women, had become a title to fashionable favour, and when there was a wish to depreciate a singer or a dancer, it was said of her that she had not been sufficiently prized to be expelled ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... number of houses to accommodate the families of all those in its employment, and as a consequence of this and because of the general disorganization and decay of what is now called "business", all other house property of all kinds will rapidly depreciate in value. The slums and the wretched dwellings now occupied by the working classes—the miserable, uncomfortable, jerry-built "villas" occupied by the lower middle classes and by "business" people, will be left empty and valueless upon the hands of their rack renting landlords, who will ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... would not help you, since 'twas yourself brought ruin on my plans, and cast down that work which I had labored all my life to finish. Yet I will advise this, as being your most immediate plan. Smooth down this France as best you may. Remit more taxes, as I said. Depreciate the value of these shares gently, but rapidly as you can. Institute great numbers of perpetual annuities. Juggle, temporize, postpone, get for yourself all the time you can. Trade for the people's shares all you have that they will take. You can never ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... not form a part of the ordinary circulating medium; nothing could resist the eloquence of Mirabeau. Barnave, following, insisted that "Law's paper was based upon the phantoms of the Mississippi; ours, upon the solid basis of ecclesiastical lands," and he proved that the assignats could not depreciate further. Prudhomme's newspaper poured contempt over gold as security for the currency, extolled real estate as the only true basis and was fervent in praise of the convertibility and self-adjusting features of the proposed scheme. In spite of all this plausibility ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White

... slightly; and the more so because here only we willingly concede a strong motive for learning Greek; here, only, we hold the want of a ready introduction to be a serious misfortune. Our general argument, therefore, which had for its drift to depreciate Greek, dispenses, in this case, with our saying anything; since every word we could say would be hostile to our own purpose. However, we shall, even upon this field of the Greek literature, deliver one ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... feelings. This bias inclined him, not only to treat the character of Milton with a most undue asperity, but even to extenuate the atrocities committed under the government of Mary, and somewhat to depreciate the worth of those divines, whose attachment to the reformed religion led them to suffer ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... possible condition. God forbid that I should even seem to depreciate other forms of healing men's evils and redressing men's wrongs, and diminishing the sorrows of humanity! We welcome them all; but education, art, culture, refinement, improved environment, bettered ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... of the limitations of his work. He baptized with water, the symbol and means of outward cleansing. He does not depreciate his position or the importance of his baptism, but his whole soul bows in reverence before the coming Messiah, whose great office was to transcend his, as the wide Mediterranean surpassed the little lake of Galilee. His outline of that work is grand, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... who enjoys it possesses. It is worse than vain to set about considering the comparative value of different lives, in order to ascertain the momentum of the guilt of violating them in particular instances; and thus to depreciate the existence of savages, by comparing their habits, their manners, their enjoyments, and sufferings, with those of civilized people. A man's life is always valuable to himself, in the proportion of what he would give to secure and prolong it. Is not this the basis of the law, which excuses ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... get fat on the bounty of his liberal nephew. He had too many corroding cares, too many financial terrors, too many fears that the banks would break, his creditors fail, his stocks depreciate, to eat and sleep like a Christian. Misers never grow liberal as they grow old, and he was no exception to the rule. A financial panic had just swept over the land, and though he had lost nothing by it, it caused ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... the signs of property was an useless discovery, or at least only useful till the art of making paper was found out? Nay, the latter is preferable to gold and silver. If the ores were adulterated and cried down, nobody would take them in exchange. Depreciate paper as much as you will, and it will still serve all the purposes of barter. Tradesmen still keep shops, stock them with goods, and deliver their commodities for those coined rags. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... submitted. "The test of a real good missionary," she wrote, "is this waiting, silent, seemingly useless time. So many who can distinguish themselves at home, missing the excitement and the results, get discontented, morose, cynical, and depreciate everything. Everything, however seemingly secular and small, is God's work for the moment, and worthy of our very best endeavour. To such, a mission house, even in its humdrum days, is a magnificent ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... a cry among the people for more paper money, only fifteen thousand pounds being extant in the province, and that soon to be sunk.[59] The wealthy inhabitants oppos'd any addition, being against all paper currency, from an apprehension that it would depreciate, as it had done in New England, to the prejudice of all creditors. We had discuss'd this point in our Junto, where I was on the side of an addition, being persuaded that the first small sum struck in ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... blue serge apron roll about his waist, and followed up into the observatory, smiling, but ready to depreciate everything. ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... from my purpose to depreciate M. Victor Cousin. The titles of this celebrated philosopher even lay me under an obligation to praise him. He belongs to that living pantheon of France which we call the peerage, and his intelligent legs rest on the velvet benches of the Luxembourg. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot



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