"Contemptible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... Sir, you flatter yourself. You have lied over the reason. Pip, remember that I know you as you don't know yourself. You have been everything to me, though you are—(Fan-guard.) Oh, what a contemptible Thing it is! And so you are ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... There was no traitor so treacherous as circumstance. He would not believe the lie that fate was thrusting down his throat. Roma was faithful, she would die rather than betray him, and he was a contemptible hound to allow himself to think of her in that connection. He recalled her letters, her sacrifices, her brave and cheerful renunciation, and the hard lump that had settled at his heart rose up to ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... at the height of his autocracy, he was visited by a composer named Gluck, whom we think of to-day as a revolutionist in music, and a man of the utmost historical importance. To the lordly Haendel, however, he was more or less contemptible, and people who know nothing else of either genius, know that Haendel said, "Gluck understood about as ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... however strong her affection for Florestan, she would no sooner get him home than she would ask him how he came to be such a fool as to get into Pizarro's clutches. Anyhow, Ternina's conception of Leonora as a mixture of the contemptible will-less German haus-frau with the strong-willed woman of action, was to me a mixture of contradictions. Yet, despite all these things, the opera made the deep impression it ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... the Royal Society, there can be little doubt but that the judgment pronounced on Mr. Landells remains unaltered. He deserted his leader on the eve of the fight; and such an act, so subversive of all discipline, and so far from the thoughts of the smallest drummer-boy, renders all explanations contemptible. In the present instance, Mr. Landells' explanations make his act the more inexcusable. He is still of opinion that the camels are indispensable to the safety of the party, and that he is indispensable to the safety of the camels. The inference is, ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... remained as they were upon earth, but of more monstrous growth in all respects, resembling giants greater and more vicious than man. War and cannibalism still prevailed in heaven, and the character of the inhabitants seems to have been fiendish or contemptible as on earth; for the spirits of women who were not tattooed were unceasingly pursued by their more fortunate sisters, who tore their bodies with sharp shells, often making mince-meat of them for the gods to eat. Also the shade of any one whose ears had not been pierced was condemned to carry ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... wish to know the reason of their failure in these things, they need only turn to the opening of Pope's superb attack upon Addison. The Henleyite's idea of satirising a man is to express a violent contempt for him, and by the heat of this to persuade others and himself that the man is contemptible. I remember reading a satiric attack on Mr. Gladstone by one of the young anarchic Tories, which began by asserting that Mr. Gladstone was a bad public speaker. If these people would, as I have said, go quietly and ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... congenial to you in those lonely places you thought that the original must be the same? You were wrong. Physically and temperamentally we belong to different worlds. You couldn't rest in mine, and I couldn't enter yours. If you knew me," she added, in a hushed voice, "you'd find me contemptible, in all my weaknesses." She lowered her head, then, raising her eyes, which were full of fear, besought him, "Tear it out of ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... fierce,—the flaming Orator, if he is born for this alone, and only practices and applies himself to this, without tempering his copiousness with the two inferior characters of Eloquence, is of all others the most contemptible. For the plain and simple Orator, as speaking acutely and expertly, has an appearance of wisdom and good-sense; and the middle kind of Orator is sufficiently recommended by his sweetness:—but the copious and diffusive Speaker, if ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... an ill will to this inoffensive creature, and several times pricked him on the proboscis with their awls. The noble animal did not chastise them in the manner he might have done, and seemed to think they were too contemptible to be angry with them. But he took other means to punish them for their cruelty. He filled his trunk with water of a dirty quality, and advancing towards them in his ordinary manner, spouted the whole of the puddle over them. The punishment was highly applauded by those ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... Marlan[468] Colledge, also Balliols Colledge, which is not so pittiful and contemptible as many would have it. Before the utter gate is a pretty pallisade of tries. Within the building is tolerable; in their dining roome be battered[469] up Theses Moral, political, and out of all the others sciences. ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... to secure justice for others or justice for ourselves, save as conditioned upon the attitude we are willing to take toward our Army, and especially toward our Navy. It is not merely unwise, it is contemptible, for a nation, as for an individual, to use high-sounding language to proclaim its purposes, or to take positions which are ridiculous if unsupported by potential force, and then to refuse to provide this force. If there is no intention of providing ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... frontier in connection with Tories and Indians. The war thus assumed a more cruel character. This was chiefly due to the influence of Lord George Germaine, the secretary of state for the colonies. He was a contemptible creature, weak and cruel. He had been dismissed from the army in 1759 for cowardice at the battle of Minden, and he was so generally despised that when in 1782 the king was obliged to turn him out of office and tried to console him by raising him to the peerage ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... near New-York, and here he commenced his career as an author. His first book was Precaution. It was undertaken under circumstances purely accidental, and published under great disadvantages. Its success was moderate, though far from contemptible. It is a ludicrous evidence of the value of critical opinion in this country, that Precaution was thought to discover so much knowledge of English society, as to raise a question whether its alleged author could have written it. More reputation ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the prowess of the mutineers, and proves that we had no contemptible foe to deal with, that so many sorties and attacks were made by them during the siege. They amounted in all to thirty-six—all of these being regularly organized actions and assaults—besides innumerable others ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... the march of those Teutonic folk, whose women were virile and could give birth to men; a folk among whom the woman received on the morning of her marriage, from the man who was to be her companion through life, no contemptible trinket to hang about her throat or limbs, but a shield, a spear, a sword, and a yoke of oxen, while she bestowed on him in return a suit of armour, in token that they two were henceforth to be one in toil and in the facing of danger; that she too should dare with him in war and suffer with him ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... than a modern tourist: audivi voces divinas. His memory was prodigious, his eloquence in the Latin language studied and yet forcible, his knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy far from contemptible. He enjoyed the society of Sophists and distinguished rhetoricians, and so far affected authorship as to win the unenviable title of Graeculus in his own lifetime: yet he never neglected state affairs. Owing to his untiring ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... all. But Micky had gone too far. His original weak good-nature was foundered in rum. Always blustery and frothy, he divided the world in two—superior officers, before whom he grovelled, and inferiors to whom he was a mouthy, foul-tongued, contemptible bully, in spite of a certain lingering kindness of heart that showed itself at such rare times when he was neither roaring drunk nor crucified by black reaction. His brother's child, fortunately, had inherited little of the paternal family traits, but in both body and brain favoured ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... were in my mind, the cringing, foul-mouthed, brutal, contemptible ruffian who had caused all this misery stood within two paces of me! I could have reached out my hand, and, with half an effort, have crushed him, and—I did not do it! Some invisible Power held my arm, for murder was in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... sea, and brought them all to the same camp. There he was informed that the enemies relied much upon an ancient oracle, that the family of the Scipios should be always victorious in Africa. There was in his army a man, otherwise mean and contemptible, but of the house of the Africani, and his name Scipio Sallutio. This man Caesar, (whether in raillery, to ridicule Scipio, who commended the enemy, or seriously to bring over the omen to his side, it were hard to say,) put at the head of his troops, as if he were general, in all ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... himself for having allowed himself to be made a fool of by "that little country goose," when he was well aware that there were hundreds of women of the best families of the land who would feel honored at receiving his attentions. But this sort of reasoning he knew to be both weak and contemptible, and his better self ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... why I allowed you to read it to the end. I was of the same mind as that English girl whose name we both know. I could not believe that a man, brave as I knew you to be, could outside his bravery be so contemptible." ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... pleases me to hear you say that. I should like to see you lose your water right, of course; it would mean much money in my pocket; but I'll not do contemptible things or crooked things to ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... married woman, on the contrary, breaks a most sacred engagement, and becomes a cruel mother when she is a false and faithless wife. If her husband has still an affection for her, the arts which she must practise to deceive him, will render her the most contemptible of human beings; and at any rate, the contrivances necessary to preserve appearances, will keep her mind in that childish or vicious tumult which destroys all its energy. Besides, in time, like those people who habitually take cordials to ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... man who threw a girl over as something contemptible, and he certainly did not want to appear to himself in that light; or, for her sake, that people should think he had tired of her, or found her wanting in any one particular. He knew only too well how people would talk. How they would say he had never really cared for her; that he didn't ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... is the head of passion. It is no anatomical knife, it is a weapon. Its object is its enemy, which it will not refute but destroy. For the spirit of the conditions has been refuted. In and for themselves they are no memorable objects, but existences as contemptible as they are despised. Criticism has already settled all accounts with this subject. It no longer figures as an end in itself, but only as a means. Its essential pathos is indignation, its essential ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... you expect your employer to hitch up his team every Saturday night and carry you home?" This seemed a poser, but it wasn't. "No," said the man promptly, "I wouldn't expect that; but if the farmer had his team hitched up and was going my way, I should call him a contemptible fellow if he would not let me ride." Mr. Employe came out three minutes afterwards with a pass ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... of wealth is bad enough; but the aristocracy of dress is perfectly contemptible. Could Raphael visit Canada in rags, he would be nothing in their eyes beyond ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... armies are badly disciplined, and want skill to attack, or temper to retreat; and therefore, I must confess, it seemed strange to me, when I came home, and heard our people say such fine things of the power, glory, magnificence, and trade of the Chinese; because, as far as I saw, they appeared to be a contemptible herd or crowd of ignorant, sordid slaves, subjected to a government qualified only to rule such a people; and were not its distance inconceivably, great from Muscovy, and that empire in a manner as rude, impotent, and ill governed as they, the Czar of Muscovy might with ease ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... 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
... to kill more of our fellowmen than we can kill with existing appliances?' Is it a new engine, a new amalgam of metals, a new explosive, a new field of electrical energy, one hears the same vulture's cry— 'How many, how far, how safely can we slay?' I regard this lust for destruction as contemptible. It is a strange and ignominious feature of modern life. Forgive me, Mr. Theydon, if I speak strongly on this matter. The men who spread the bounds of science today are, nominally, at any rate, Christians. They tell of peace and goodwill to all, yet prepare unceasingly for some ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... now I have it, leave me; y'are infectious, the plague and leprosie of your baseness spreading on all that do come near you; such as you render the Throne of Majesty, the Court, suspected and contemptible; you are Scarabee's that batten in her dung, and have no palats to taste her curious Viands; and like Owles, can only see her night deformities, but with the glorious splendor of her beauties, you are struck blind as Moles, that undermine the sumptuous Building ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... and yet you turned your head away. You thought"—here an actual oath escaped the girl's lips—"you were afraid of what that stuck-up fool of a woman would think. She knows about us—she's heard; she recognized me. I saw it in her eyes. She deliberately sneered at me, and you—you contemptible puppy!—you didn't even raise your hat to me after all your sickening, gushing protestations. I want to tell you right now, Dick Mostyn, that you can't walk over me. I'm ready for you, and I'm tired ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... first order. But not even the words of a Webster or an Everett could adequately express the profound emotion of the vast concourse of people then assembled. For it was one of those occasions when, as the elder Webster said, "Words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible." ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... strengthen me and dome good! Everything that surrounds me is so hollow, so insipid, so contemptible—what I hear is so small. A strong, highly spiced word, even if it is sharp, refreshes me—When you have finished a picture, do you like to hear nothing but how well your friends ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... no matter how base and contemptible, and whether by lying, bribery or treachery, all and every means were welcome to him if they led to the attainment of his ambitious desires." But Oom Paul was absolutely wrong in thinking that it was the personage he was thus describing who practised all these abominations. ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... power, by urging an incessant pressure of petty, vexatious, and provoking, but useless annoyances. Caesar's demands may have been unjust, but they were bold, manly, and undisguised. The eunuch may have been right in resisting them; but the mode was so mean and contemptible, that mankind have always taken part with Caesar in the sentiments which they have formed as spectators of ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... Should I say to him, "Look here, it is very nice, no doubt; but we, your neighbours, are simply crazy to know who and what you are?" That might strike him in various ways. He might take offence, and one could not blame him. He might see humour in it, and a proof of the contemptible meanness of human nature. I decided that I lacked courage to blurt out my desire that way. He was so very much like myself that I could not rid myself of the notion that he might prefer a milder way of approach. And as I sorted out my stock of ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... him. Figures seemed to have lost their value and plans their meaning. With the utmost determination he held himself to his task, not willing to believe that his judgment and nerve could be so disturbed as to render him unfit for any serious business. But the result was contemptible as compared with ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... sanction of an illiterate, ignorant, self-sufficient, and most contemptible old man; and much good may it ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... a popular fallacy, an exploded idea, a contemptible humbug, to live merely for your neighbors, the rabble world at large. Thousands do it, my dear, and I've no objection to their doing it; it's their own business, and none of mine. I have moved up town because I thought it would be more ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... not pretended, it is real. It arises from his total want of faith in all virtue; he is no more capable of conceiving goodness than she is capable of conceiving evil. To the brutish coarseness and fiendish malignity of this man, her gentleness appears only a contemptible weakness; her purity of affection, which saw "Othello's visage in his mind," only a perversion of taste; her bashful modesty, only a cloak for evil propensities; so he represents them with all the force of language and self-conviction, and we are obliged to listen to him. He rips ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... at all but his arrogance, since he was clearly incapable of hitting where he aimed. But his very presence and his swift escape, running beside the hart, made failure seem double; for the derision he excited recoiled on the deriders, who could not bring this contemptible foe to book. After that day many saw him, sometimes at a great distance, sometimes near enough to be lashed by his insolent tongue. He always kept beside the coveted quarry, as though to guard it, and ran when it ran, with incredible speed; but ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... A day or so before, when lamenting to Baltic that Dr Pendle had proved innocent, the man had rebuked him for his baseness, and had given him to understand that the bishop was fully aware of the contemptible part which he had acted. Deserted by his former ally, ignorant of Dr Pendle's secret, convinced of Mosk's guilt, the chaplain was in anything but a pleasant position. He was reaping what he had so industriously sown; he was caught in his own snare, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... the German armies were receiving—we knew nothing about it at the time—undoubtedly was partly responsible for the harsh treatment extended to us. Unable to smash the "contemptible little army," which was certainly proving capable of looking after itself, vengeance was visited upon our ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... so genuinely surprised at this somewhat contemptible trick fate had played her that Hodder ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... you study the noble and beautiful stars for their own sakes to find out what they are, and what they are doing, what is their nature and what their place in the great scheme, or do you peek and pry at them through the keyhole of a contemptible curiosity in order to discover what you think they can do for you, to set you on high, to puff you out into a personage and cause you to be noticed of the foolish ones of this world? Which are you, sir, a young man of parts whose hand I can grasp fraternally, or an insulter of planets, sir, ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... king, protested "that he had not, and would never have desired to, put forward anything against the prince's honor, and that he had been neither the author nor the instigator of his imprisonment." "Sir," said Conde, "I consider wicked and contemptible him or them who caused it." "So I think, sir," answered Guise, "and it does not apply to me at all." Whereupon they embraced, and a report was drawn up of the ceremony, which was called their reconciliation. Just as it was ending, Marshal Francis de Montmorency, eldest son of the constable, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the patriot's, soldier's, and gentleman's language, is a very comprehensive word, of great honor, meaning, and import, and of which the generality of idle quidnuncs and coffee-house politicians can hardly form any but a very mean and contemptible idea. However having had the command of a body of hussars, I went upon several expeditions, with discretionary powers; and the success I then met with is, I think, fairly and only to be placed to my account, and to that of the brave fellows whom I led on to conquest and to victory. We ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... of consequence, enabled them to rule over others; thus the Assyrian and Egyptian empires were great, powerful, and extensive, while the nations that were beyond their reach were divided into small states or kingdoms, on the most contemptible scale. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... expected an answer," he went on. "Accordingly, I'll proceed to name the men who I believe must know about this contemptible action, and notify them that they will ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... she could not but see something in his coarse eyes she had never seen before; could not but hear something in his brutal voice she had never heard before! Was it possible that somewhere in the depths of his sordid nature he had his own contemptible sense of honor? A hysterical feeling came over her hitherto passive disgust and scorn, but it disappeared with his next sentence in a haze of anxiety. "No!" he said hoarsely, "he had ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... the artless virtues of his successor, derived from his heart, and not borrowed from the schools. He despised and moderated the stately magnificence of the Byzantine court, so oppressive to the people, so contemptible to the eye of reason. Under such a prince, innocence had nothing to fear, and merit had every thing to hope; and, without assuming the tyrannic office of a censor, he introduced a gradual though visible reformation ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... But with these spurts of volcanic energy alternate moods of the deepest depression. His journal for 1850 says, 'This seems really the Nadir of my fortunes; and in hope, desire, or outlook, so far as common mortals reckon such, I never was more bankrupt. Lonely, shut up within my contemptible and yet not deliberately ignoble self, perhaps there never was, in modern literary or other history, a more solitary soul, capable of any friendship or honest relation to others.' By this time he was feeling the need of another task, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... mind of a general, there always exists some fear that his spies will not prove as diligent and self-sacrificing as they could be. I had not, in my treatment of General Morell, intentionally played upon this fear: such a course would have been contemptible; yet I could see at once the effect of my speech, and I endeavoured to set myself right in ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... 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 ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... works of the philosopher of Sans Souci, or rather of the man who is no philosopher, and who had more Souci than any man now in Europe? How contemptible they are! Miserable poetry; not a new thought, nor an old one newly expressed.(60) I say nothing of the folly of publishing his aversion to the English, at the very time they are ruining themselves for ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... drewe nere he perceaved his longe eares, and made him a jeste unto all the beastes of the forrest. In like manner wee (upon perill of my life) shall make the Spaniarde ridiculous to all Europe, if with pierceinge eyes wee see into his contemptible weakenes in the West Indies, and with true stile painte hym oute ad vivum unto the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... greatest disaster in the death of Elizabeth. After ruling England so wisely and well for more than fifty years, she died on March 24th, 1603. This great queen left her throne to one of the most paltry and contemptible of men. ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... midst of an order of things which tempts them to close the eyes of their hearts and minds to all the real and unseen glories above and around them, and that might be within them, and to live for the comparatively contemptible and trivial things of this present. Just as when a man sleeps, he loses his consciousness of solid external realities, and passes into a fantastic world of his own imaginations, which have no correspondence in external facts, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... talked of Paris she always spoke in a tone of disdain, and referred to the city as though it were some ridiculous, contemptible, far-away place, in which she only condescended to ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... of our fathers is too manifest. It creates and lets loose upon their institutions the vandal spirit of innovation and overthrow; for, after the memory of our fathers shall have been rendered contemptible, who will uphold and sustain their institutions? The memory of our fathers should be the watch-word of liberty throughout the land; for, imperfect as they were, the world before had not seen their like, nor will it ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... allow. As I looked on I could scarcely refrain from rushing into the sable throng, and joining them in their frisks and jumps; though I dare say, had I done so they would have considered me a very contemptible performer. At length the Queen's chamberlain clapped his hands, and gave notice that the court must break up, as her majesty was desirous of retiring to attend to her duties in putting to bed the children of her mistress to whom she was nurse. The bearers of her palanquin came forward, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... is positive. Every man surrenders his fancy to a general tone which is itself a surrender. And over all the heartless and fatuous unity spreads this new and wearisome and platitudinous press, incapable of invention, incapable of audacity, capable only of a servility all the more contemptible because it is not even a servility to the strong. But all who begin with force and conquest will ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... it part of the oath that the monarchy should be destroyed by murder without warning? You know it is not! You know that there is nothing more dastardly, more cowardly, more utterly loathsome and contemptible than to kill a man defenceless and unarmed! We speak of a Monarchy, not a King;—not one single individual,—for if he were killed, he has three sons to come after him. You have called me the Soul of an Ideal—good! But I am not, and will not be ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... measures for the promotion, and measures for the counteraction, of his own plans? When we find him ordaining all the contradictions and vacillations by which human conduct is diversified and disgraced?—when every example of the most contemptible folly that ever turned the laugh, or the sneer, or the frown, or the sentiment of pity upon its immediate perpetrators, can be traced to the free counsels and designs of God, and finds ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... variety used by the softer-hearted landlords—quite contemptible in their clemency. The jaws of these resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left nothing but gums. There were also the intermediate or half-toothed sorts, probably devised by the middle-natured squires, or those under the influence of their wives: two inches of mercy, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... rulers, and her mighty men shall sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake, saith the King who is the Lord of Hosts." And truly it seemed as if the curse which had blighted the city's bygone splendor had doomed even its ruins to appear contemptible. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Lake Whitney, and if, moreover, on coming off the lake there burned in you a thirst for ginger-beer—as is common in the gullet of a freshman—doubtless you have gone from the boathouse to a certain little white building across the road to gratify your hot desires. When you opened the door, your contemptible person—I speak with the vocabulary of a sophomore—is proclaimed to all within by the jangling of a bell. After due interval wherein you busy yourself in an inspection of the cakes and buns that beam upon you from a show-case—your ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... in belief leads almost inevitably to disintegration of morals, Jose had kept himself untainted. For his vital problems he had now, after many days, found "grace sufficient." In what he had regarded as the contemptible tricks of fate, he was beginning to discern the guiding hand of a wisdom greater than the world's. The danger threatened by Cartagena was, temporarily, at least, averted by Rosendo's magnificent spirit. Under the spur of that sacrifice his own courage ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... whom I allude, would be disgusted at the very mention of any thing so old-fashioned and city-like, as a visit to this famous cathedral. And even if that were not the case, it is proper to be provided with more than one scheme for the execution of so necessary a purpose. The question is of no contemptible magnitude, between instructions viva voce, and a circular letter. In favour of the first it may be said, that a letter is the worst and most definite evidence to a man's disadvantage that can be conceived. It may easily ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... it said, he appears not to have become inoculated with the same spirit of honesty and perseverance that characterizes the greater portion of his countrymen. He arrived here nearly twenty years ago, and since that time he has been a lazy, contemptible thief, a shocking contrast with ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... 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 ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... young Brown, however ill-bred and disagreeable, are objects too contemptible for serious displeasure; yet I grieve much that my Evelina should be exposed ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... of runaways," and South Carolina "the delight of buccaneers and pirates," but Virginia "the happy retreat of true Britons and true Churchmen." Unluckily these Virginians, well nourished "by the plenty of the country," have "contemptible notions of England!" We shall hear from them again. In the meantime the witty William Byrd of Westover describes for us his amusing survey of the Dismal Swamp, and his excursions into North Carolina and to Governor Spotswood's iron mines, where he ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... hair, and soft, loving eyes and quiet ways. Where are they all now? Charley went to London, was first the favorite of the clubs, next a heartless rake, and finally, being worn out, and, like Solomon, convinced that all was vanity, went into the Church to become that most contemptible of all creatures, a fashionable preacher; my father and mother are laid side by side in the aisle of the old church on the hill, where their virtues are sculptured in marble, for the information of anxiously curious mankind; sister Mary no longer talks to dolls, though a flock ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... man who would have been a remarkable personality if he had not written a note of music. His faults—and he was far from being a paragon—were never petty or contemptible: they were truly the defects of his qualities—of his honesty, his courage, his passionate and often reckless zeal in the promotion of what he believed to be sound and fine in art and in life. Mr. Philip Hale, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... in Madge, vehemently, 'to save anybody whom you love. Is a contemptible little two-foot measuring-tape to be applied to such ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... Betty's disappointment was not the worst thing. Betty would make other friends— find other interests. Dora Carlson was different; she had not the talent for making many friends, and in losing Eleanor she would lose all she had. For the first time Eleanor realized how mean and contemptible her action had been, because it did not concern herself alone, but involved every one of the people who cared about her—Jim and her father, Dora, Betty, Miss Ferris. It was a short list; perhaps Jean and Kate Denise cared a little too. She felt no resentment against Beatrice. There was no ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... reported that the Allies mean to strip this Museum [of sculpture and painting]. No! it cannot be, they never surely can be guilty of such an act of Vandalism and contemptible spite. I am aware that there is a great clamour amongst a certain description of English for restoring these statues and pictures to the countries from whence they came, and that it is the fashion to term the translation of them to Paris a revolutionary robbery; but let us ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... as beautiful and even pathetic, rather than contemptible, that he should humbly wish to learn of her the small refinements he had missed in the past—that mysterious past which mattered less and less to Annesley as the present became ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... of genius—a philosopher like the doctus Laurentius, not be contented with his fame as discoverer of the art of printing; but to leave his manuscripts, and pica, and pie, to strive for a contemptible triumph, to look with an eye of envy on a competitor for the applauses of a music room! Alas! too true. Who is the man, let me ask you, who can put bounds to his pretensions? Who is the man that does not feel as if the praises of his neighbour were an injury ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... potent adversaries: that seeing the plummet is now in the hands of our Zerubbabels, all mountaines may become plains, and they may bring forth the capstone of the Lords House with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it: and that how weak and contemptible builders soever we be, the Lord would enable us to build with them, that none may have cause to despise the day of our small beginnings, nor to stop our progresse in the work which he hath given us to do, And as for us, who cannot but take notice of the ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... louder, "he's one of these grubstake sharks. He came to Nevada after the Tonopah excitement with a flunkey they call Flip Flappum. That's another dirty dog that I'm going to put my mark on when I get him in the door—one of the most low-down, contemptible curs that I know of—he makes his living by selling bum life insurance. Phillip F. Lapham is his name but we all call him Flip Flappum—he's the black-leg lawyer that drew up that contract that made me lose my mine. Did Dusty tell you about it—then ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... labour had produced. In every hamlet we heard the bells ringing, and saw the poor peasants crowding to the church to put up prayers against the coming hail, which at this season of the year is peculiarly fatal. If this be a superstition, it is surely not a contemptible or uninteresting one to witness: nor can one wonder at the influence gained over peasants thus instructed to associate Heaven with their daily hopes and fears. To our great satisfaction, after two or three vivid flashes of lightning, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... witnesses) a great combat between a mouse and a snake, and after a long fight the mouse prevailed and killed the snake. The pastor of Boston, Mr. Wilson, a very sincere, holy man, hearing of it, gave this interpretation: that the snake was the devil, the mouse was a poor, contemptible people, which God had brought hither, which should overcome Satan here and dispossess him of his kingdom." The reader of Winthrop's Journal comes every-where upon hints which the imagination has since shaped into poetry and ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... to death, banish, or fine, not only those who were suspected or hated, but those also from whom he could obtain nothing else but plunder. The number of the fathers more especially being thus diminished, he determined to elect none into the senate, in order that the order might become contemptible by their very paucity, and that they might feel the less resentment at no business being transacted by them. For he was the first king who violated the custom derived from his predecessors of consulting the senate on all subjects; he administered ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... have been to blame. The sentiments thus expressed were not illegal or criminal; yet I will freely acknowledge that they were violent, intemperate, and reprehensible. For, by attempting to render the office contemptible, they tended to diminish that respect for the execution of the laws which is essential to the maintenance of a free government; but whilst I feel regret at the remembrance, though no hesitation in this open confession of that my ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... a fish—tippling in silence, and answering such questions as I put to him in abrupt monosyllables. The thing was intolerable, but I saw into it: Julia had played me false; the "Mountain" was the man of her choice, and I his despised and contemptible rival. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... should not molest us." To Hood he wrote a week later: "I believed ourselves safe under your Lordship's wing." At this moment he thought the French to be nine sail-of-the-line to the British thirteen,—no contemptible inferior force. Yet that he recognized the possible danger from such a detachment is also clear; for, writing two days earlier, under the same belief as to the enemy's strength, and speaking of the expected approach of an important convoy, he says: "I ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... of play-houses, in horses, in every thing else, is to be avoided, but in young men, extravagance in dress particularly. This sort of extravagance, this waste of money on the decoration of the body, arises solely from vanity, and from vanity of the most contemptible sort. It arises from the notion, that all the people in the street, for instance, will be looking at you, as soon as you walk out; and that they will, in a greater or less degree, think the better of you on ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... responding to the pope as their duty prompted; so that they resolved, after some deliberation on the subject, to lay the brief before Frederic, and to square their reply according to his remarks. These were a tissue of the most contemptible subterfuges and trifling,—as for example, "that he had issued no edict against his clergy passing into Italy as pilgrims, and all others that wished to go thither, on reasonable grounds, attested by their bishops, could still do so; that he was chiefly actuated ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... instead of sharing the honour with his consorts. I anticipated that, if he should yield to my blandishments, he would make a dash straight for the galleon without troubling himself about the schooner, the sluggish movements of which would render her in his eyes an altogether contemptible adversary, utterly beneath his notice, and only to be tackled and submitted to an exemplary punishment after the recapture of the galleon had been achieved. And, should I prove correct in this line of reasoning, he would run away to leeward after the galleon, ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... she cried. "You shall see the connection if it kills you, Henry! You have had a mistress—I forgave you. My sister has a lover—you drive her from the house. Do you see the connection? Stupid, hypocritical, cruel—oh, contemptible! —a man who insults his wife when she's alive and cants with her memory when she's dead. A man who ruins a woman for his pleasure, and casts her off to ruin other men. And gives bad financial advice, and then says he is not responsible. These, man, are you. You can't ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... was seen hanging about this part of the world for years, spying into everybody's business: but I am the only one who has seen through him from the first—contemptible, double-faced, stick-at-nothing, dangerous fellow." ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... unprincipled, wicked, rascally, and quarrelsome scoundrels upon the face of the globe. I have sometimes, indeed, suspected that those papers are the manufacture of foreigners among you, who write with the view of disgracing your country, and making you appear contemptible and detestable all the world over; but then I wonder at the indiscretion of your printers in publishing such writings. There is, however, one of your inconsistencies that consoles me a little, which is that though, living, you give one another the character ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... dances, dresses, and spends his time in drawing rooms, instead of being a good lawyer, divine, or physician; Cleanthes is a down-right coxcomb, and will remain to all that knew him a contemptible example of talents misapplied. It is to this affectation the world owes its whole race of coxcombs; Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making, by applying his talents ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... impossible to say where false principles may lead, when they are permitted to make head and to become widely disseminated, in a country like ours. Still, the disturbances, as such, are utterly contemptible, and could and would be put down by an energetic executive in ten days after he had time to collect a force to do it with. In some particulars, the present incumbent has behaved perfectly well; while in others, in my judgment, he has inflicted injuries on the right that it will ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... up the Euclid, "you can hold a corner of the book and listen to what I read, and perhaps you can repeat some of it after me, you contemptible boy." ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... American Government is seriously menaced. The storm will probably burst in New Orleans, where I shall meet it, and triumph or perish!" Just five days later he wrote a letter to the Viceroy of Mexico which proves him beyond doubt the most contemptible rascal who ever wore an American uniform. "A storm, a revolutionary tempest, an infernal plot threatens the destruction of the empire," he wrote; the first object of attack would be New Orleans, then Vera Cruz, then ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... in apologising for the crime of slavery. They get behind the contemptible subterfuge, that it was entailed upon the planters. As if the continuance of the horrid system were not criminal! as if the robberies of another generation justify the robberies of the present! as if the slaves had not an inalienable right to ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... senior brigadiers, to the rank of major general. These were evidences that, if the hold which the Commander-in-chief had taken of the affections and confidence of the army and of the nation could be loosened, the party in congress disposed to change their general, was far from being contemptible in point of numbers. But to loosen this hold was impossible. The indignation with which the idea of such a change was received even by the victorious troops who had conquered under Gates, forms the most conclusive proof of its strength. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... that ends "si negat id quoque nego." Black was white, and white was black with toady, if his lordship pleased; he messed in the cabin, did much mischief in the ship, and only escaped kicking, because he was too contemptible to ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... not the courage either to order a surrender, or to provoke real warfare by reinforcing the place. In vain did the unfortunate Major Anderson seek distinct instructions; the replies which he received were contradictory and more obscure than Delphic oracles. This unfair, vacillating, and contemptible conduct indicated the desire to lay upon him alone the whole responsibility of the situation, with a politic and selfish reservation to the government of the advantage of disavowing and discrediting him, whatever he might do. On January ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... uninterrupted and monotonous succession, he condescends to utter a single delightfully modulated strain. He often brings his tiresome extravaganzas to a magnificent climax of melody, and just as often concludes an inimitable chant with a most contemptible bathos. But the notes of the Robin are all melodious, all delightful,—loud without vociferation, mellow without monotony, fervent without ecstasy, and combining more of mellowness of tone, plaintiveness, cheerfulness, and propriety of execution, than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... a leader of men in battle, he may not be contemptible," answered the young lady, not quite liking Jack's remarks; "but, for my part, I should prefer acknowledging the sovereign 'who is every inch a king,' as ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... shorter.” Upon the whole, also, these Letters are less happy in style and manner. It is evident that Pascal, if he gave blows which made his opponents and the opponents of Port Royal wince, also received some bruises in return. The shamelessness of the attacks made upon his friends and himself, contemptible as they were in their nature, left scars upon a mind and temper so sensitive and reserved as his. The “insufferable audacity” with which “holy nuns and their directors” had been charged with disbelieving the mysteries of the faith was “a crime which God alone was capable of punishing.” To bear ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... and rejoice in those ceremonies, and say that the church of Christ was never in so flourishing a state, and that divine worship was never so well conducted as in this day; and that the first prelates were very contemptible preachers in comparison with those of modern times. They certainly had not so many golden miters, nor so many chalices; and they parted with those they had to relieve the necessities of the poor; our prelates get their chalices by taking that from the poor which is their support. But dost thou know ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... kept still about me," said Frank, "I should not have known you were in this town, but you tried to hurt me in a mean, contemptible manner, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... the discussion, for a profitable sale of bones and relics, said to be those of saints but in reality obtained from the catacombs of Rome, had arisen. To the barbarian people of the north these gloomy objects proved more acceptable than images of wood, and the traffic, though contemptible, was more honourable than the slave-trade in vassals and peasant children which had been carried on with Jews and Mohammedans. Like all the great statesmen of antiquity, who were unable to comprehend the possibility of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... grumbling, and looking for his hat. Magdalen sat down patiently to wait for him. She gratefully contrasted his treatment of her with the treatment she had received from the women. Resist it as firmly, despise it as proudly as we may, all studied unkindness—no matter how contemptible it may be—has a stinging power in it which reaches to the quick. Magdalen only knew how she had felt the small malice of the female servants, by the effect which the rough kindness of the old sailor produced on her afterward. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... 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
... owing to the real worth of its respectable members; and on the contrary, whatever contempt we fling upon the fashionable world, is the result of the misconduct of individuals of that order, prominently contemptible. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... of incredulity rose 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 that landed squarely between the eyes of Dupont. The monster's head went back, ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... less than two months after his death married his brother Claudius, which was noted by all people at the tim for a strange act of indiscretion, or unfeelingness, or worse; for this Claudius did no way resemble her late husband in the qualities of his person or his mind, but was as contemptible in outward appearance as he was base and unworthy in disposition; and suspicions did not fail to arise in the minds of some that he had privately made away with his brother, the late king, with the view of marrying his widow and ascending the throne of Denmark, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... claim had Henry to her inheritance? This attachment of Rous to the house of Beauchamp, and the dedication of his work to Henry, Would make his testimony most suspicious, even if he had guarded his work within the rules of probability, and not rendered it a contemptible legend. ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... making a fortune out of an estate that is lying all but barren. Before the emancipation of the niggers, the Bahamas flourished wonderfully; now they are fallen to decay, and ruled, so far as I understand it, by a particularly contemptible crew of native whites, who ought all to be kicked into the sea. My friend's father is a man of no energy; he calls himself magistrate, coroner, superintendent of the customs, and a dozen other things, but seems ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... are, some of them, the most contemptible whelps upon earth. Hang me, but any fellow with a long-bodied coat, tight-kneed breeches, or stockings and pantaloons, with a watch in each fob, and a frizzled wig, is considered a perfect gentleman—a ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... too modest, honoured Sir!" I told him, seeing that flattery was requisite; "but I am not the ignoramus of how highly your character and virtues are esteemed, and I can assure you that you are not so contemptible a nonentity as you imagine. Listen to me; I am now to go to the Foreign Office, and shall there assume the liberty of mentioning your distinguished ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... good men with some turn for soldiering. But most were of the wastrel and wharf-rat kind. Wolfe expressed his opinion of them in very vigorous terms: 'About 500 Rangers are come, which, to appearance, are little better than la canaille. These Americans are in general the dirtiest, most contemptible, cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There is no depending upon 'em in action. They fall down dead in their own dirt, and desert by battalions, officers ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... and rolled out his Irish with gusto: "'Th' longer th' wurruld lasts th' more books does be comin' out. They's a publisher in ivry block an' in thousands iv happy homes some wan is plugging away at th' romantic novel or whalin' out a pome on th' typewriter upstairs. A fam'ly without an author is as contemptible as wan without a priest. Is Malachi near-sighted, peevish, averse to th' suds, an' can't tell whether th' three in th' front yard is blue or green? Make an author iv him! Does Miranda prisint no attraction to the young men iv th' neighbourhood, ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... fear. Now she was at liberty to fulfill her mission of winning souls to Christ. True, her children were widely scattered, a bare twenty-five thousand out of a population of about three millions, whose wants were administered to by no more than twenty-five priests. Yet out of this contemptible little body there emerged a people, honorable, respectable, and of such consequence as to deserve commendation from the First President for "the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their Revolution and the establishment ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... individual in literature any more than it 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... guilty of no crimes, was the friend of men, was no deceiver of man or woman; that I first served my own country faithfully, and after, every other in which I found bread; that I was never, during life, once intoxicated; was no gamester, no night rambler, no contemptible idler; that yet, through envy and arbitrary power, I have fallen to misery such as none but the worst of criminals ought ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... county, Suffolk, with the exception of that part watered by the Waveney, is not famed for its fly-fishing: therefore I was no adept in the gentle art, but in ground-bait angling I consider myself no contemptible performer. ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... a ruinous misjudgment, too contemptible to be asserted, but not too contemptible to be acted upon, that the end of poetry is ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... old was learning to dance on the stage, which gave the ladies and mandarins infinite satisfaction. 'I am sorry,' said I, 'to see the pretty creature so early learning so bad a trade; dancing being, I presume, as contemptible here as in China.'—'Quite the reverse,' interrupted my companion; 'dancing is a very reputable and genteel employment here; men have a greater chance for encouragement from the merit of their heels than their heads. One who jumps ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... young man here to-night, "I have been told all my life that if a person has money he is very dishonest and dishonorable and mean and contemptible." My friend, that is the reason why you have none, because you have that idea of people. The foundation of your faith is altogether false. Let me say here clearly, and say it briefly, though subject to discussion which I have not time for here, ninety-eight out of ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... contemptible, is a sufficient defense against Indians, who have no cannon. Finding ourselves now posted securely, and having a place to retreat to on occasion, we ventur'd out in parties to scour the adjacent country. We met with no Indians, but we found the places on the neighbouring ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin |
