"Despicable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all our centres of activity to find whether there be any friction with the British The whole machine moves very well. For neither side hesitates to come to me whenever they strike even small snags. All our people are at work on serious tasks and (so far as I know) there are now none of those despicable creatures here who used during our neutrality days to come from the United States on peace errands and what-not to spy on the Embassy and me (their inquiries and their correspondence were catalogued by the police). I have been amazed at the activity of some of them ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... manners of what is called "genteel society;" hence, they are ever regarded as a privileged class; and are sometimes greatly envied, while others are bitterly hated. And too often justly, for many of them are the most despicable tale-bearers and mischief-makers, who will, for the sake of the favor of his master or mistress, frequently betray his fellow-slave, and by tattling, get him severely whipped; and for these acts of perfidy, and sometimes downright falsehood, he is often rewarded by his master, who ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... mind, he would not in any thing keep his faith with the Romans inviolate." He requested that he would exhort and stimulate Scipio not to delay. Though driven from his kingdom, he said he would join him with no despicable force of foot and horse. Nor was it right, said he that Laelius should continue in Africa, for he believed that a fleet had set sail from Carthage, with which, in the absence of Scipio, it would not be altogether ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... the impression which can be made, it seems, upon a heart by a middle-aged gentleman with the manners of a bear and the composure of a prig. Furthermore, it is through women's novels that we have had brought home to us most adequately what women who have tasted it, or seen it, can best relate, the despicable egotism of a weak man. Anzoleto ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... of despicable water" (Koran xxxii. 7) ex spermate genital), which Mr. Rodwell renders "from germs of life," ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... A desperate resolve to find some way up toward the light, if not to it, formed itself within her. She would not fall into the pit opening before her. Somehow, somewhere lay The Way. She must never fall lower; never be utterly despicable in the eyes of the man she had loved. There was no dream of forgiveness, of purification, of re-kindled love; all these she placed sadly and gently into the dead past. But in awful earnestness, she turned toward the future; struggling blindly, groping in half formed ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... miserable if she married him: her own sister was continually hinting as much. Mr. Roscorla cared nothing for her except in so far as she might prove a pretty housewife for him. The selfishness that would sacrifice for its own purposes a girl's happiness was of a peculiarly despicable sort which ought to be combated, and deserved no mercy. Therefore, and because of all these things, Harry Trelyon was justified in trying to win ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... inheriting it. None of the emperors during this interval had male children. Marcus Aurelius made the mistake of associating with him in power his son Commodus, who was eighteen years old when his father died, and reigned alone from 180 to 192. He began his despicable career as sole ruler by buying peace of the Marcomanni and the Quadi. He turned out to be a detestable tyrant, who was likewise guilty of the worst personal vices. He was strangled in his bedroom by one of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... compass. He was an ignorant man, with a vulgar mind; he had some reverence for a corpse, but none whatever for a ghost. His mind had undergone a change concerning the dead the moment he had heard him move, and he looked upon his charge now as equally despicable and gruesome. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... intendant's wife, who had never forgiven me for taking her victim away from her, had suggested this hint as an excuse for withdrawing the Countess from me, without obliging the Count to keep house with her, and becoming the attentive husband, who seemed, to his perverted notions, a despicable being. Perhaps neither of them had expected the matter to be taken up so seriously, and an old country-bred Huguenot as Madame Croquelebois had originally been, thought that as we were at Court, gallantry ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... four men's bread: shall I disdain to defile my fingers by holding them out relief in their necessity? It is you who are mean—you Normans—not we of the ancient race. You have your vulgar measurement for great things and small. You call a thousand pounds respectable, and a shekel despicable. Psha, my Codlingsby! One is as the other. I trade in pennies and in millions. I am above or ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... point. I am going to fulfill your wishes in perhaps a little different way from what you desire. To lie, to act a degrading comedy, to bribe women of the streets for evidence—the ugliness of it all disgusts me. I am a bad man, but this despicable thing I am utterly unable to do. My solution is after all the simplest. You must marry to be happy. I am the obstacle, consequently that obstacle must ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... But she could not do away with the memories which lingered obstinately. Not since the days when Dick had offered his blind loyalty had any one tried to understand her as Austin Selwyn had done. She was grateful for that. She might even have valued his friendship if he had not been so despicable that awful night. To insult her with his talk of pacifism, and then, heedless of her intensity, to propose to her! She could not forgive him for that. She was glad her words had ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... [261] 'The despicable wretchedness of teaching,' wrote Carlyle, in his twenty-fourth year, when he was himself a teacher, 'can be known only to those who have tried it, and to Him who made the heart and knows it all. One meets with few spectacles ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... gave her his likeness in miniature,' related the macaroni, never minding; 'set round with diamonds, and, will you believe it? when she came to examine it, they were not brilliants, but rose-diamonds—despicable fellow!' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... prisoner," she said. "Isn't that enough? Why do you jab at me by saying that? A wounded prisoner. Isn't that enough despicable trickery for God even to play on Teddy—our Teddy? To the very last moment he shall not be dead. Until the war is over. Until ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... race, he sent the man himself word by a Seneca Indian that he was looking for him, and intended to keep it up until able to draw a bead on him. Evans sent word back in reply, that he was also looking for the Mohawk, and dared him to shoot him if he could. The only palliating characteristic of the despicable wretch was his bravery, and he really did do his utmost to gain a shot at the Indian who had threatened him. But he engaged in a game in which his antagonist was his superior, and ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... against them. That, although he had fallen into their hands, in forfeiting the protection of the divine power, by some impurity or other, yet he had still so much virtue remaining, as would enable him to punish himself more exquisitely than all their despicable, ignorant crowd could possibly do, if they gave him liberty by untying him, and would hand to him one of the red hot gun-barrels out of the fire. The proposal, and his method of address, appeared so exceedingly bold ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... which is attached to it, as a direct agent in producing social reforms, in no other European country. The journalist lays every day a mass of facts before all people capable of thought; the adult, who has learnt only to write and read, acquires his remaining education—often not despicable in amount—from his weekly paper. Jeremy Bentham, speaking of those old superstitious rites by which it was intended to exorcise evil spirits, says very truly, "In our days, and in our country, the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... the United States had been immensely popular in Rumania. But Mr. Hoover's action made us about as popular with the Rumanians as the smallpox. He and we were charged with being actuated by the most despicable and sordid motives. The King himself told me that he was convinced that Mr. Hoover was in league with certain great commercial interests which wished to take their revenge for their failure to obtain ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... mistake to let the story of the Confessions carry us into exaggerations. The brutality of his master and the harshness of his life led him to nothing very criminal, but only to wrong acts which are despicable by their meanness, rather than in any sense atrocious. He told lies as readily as the truth. He pilfered things to eat. He cunningly found a means of opening his master's private cabinet, and of using his master's best instruments by stealth. He wasted his time in ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... much the Chinese countenance. I remarked an exception to this rule in a grenadier battalion, who, with tall, elegant persons, possessed remarkably fine, commanding faces. The officers in general are the most despicable wretches I ever saw: accustomed, as they have always been, to fight with troops much inferior to themselves, they thought themselves invincible. They take the field with an immense number of artillery, with which they cover their front and flanks, and ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... nothing but abuse and slander, and that he shall be allowed to abuse as much and as purulently as he likes, that is, as he can;—in short, a mule,—quarrelsome by the original discord of his nature,—a slave by tenure of his own baseness,—made to bray and be brayed at, to despise and be despicable. 'Aye, Sir, but say what you will, he is a very clever fellow, though the best friends will fall out. There was a time when Ajax thought he deserved to have a statue of gold erected to him, and handsome Achilles, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... be misleading to suggest a narrow definition of Pope's Dunces. Some were critics of worth, such as Dennis and Gildon; some were not despicable minor poets, such as Welsted and Cooke. But if we leave these aside, as well as his aristocratic enemies, Lady Mary and Lord Hervey, some valid generalizations emerge. The very persistency of the Dunces' attacks on Pope (I have located over one hundred and fifty ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... ourselves but onwards, and take strength from the leaf and the signs of the field. He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to the ideal life of man. Not to do so is to deny our birthright of ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... the despicable and miserable creatures I have ever known it is the poor starving devil, with latent genius, who attempts to pay court to a cad, snob, or drunken lord around the refuse of literary or ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... fight him with his own weapons. He accordingly sent a message to the prince in the proposed terms; but Cacamatzin understood the manner in which his uncle was constrained to act, and declared his determination to assail our quarters within four days, saying that Montezuma was a despicable monarch, for having neglected to attack us at the Port of Chalco, as he had advised. That he was resolved to be avenged of the wrongs which we had heaped upon Montezuma and his country, and that if the throne of Mexico should ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... the bright side of the European situation as I saw it. Unfortunately, to complete the picture, it is necessary to acknowledge the numerous evidences of a widespread revival of one of the most despicable, brutal, and dangerous forms of racial hatred and antagonism known to mankind—anti-Semitism. Even in England, long hitherto so free from Jew-baiting, the land in which the Jew Disraeli became Prime Minister, I found an extensive, active, and skillfully ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... she instantly burned, and her husband was restored to liberty. John Muller was among the more remarkable of the servants of the state who had remained at Berlin. This sentimental parasite, the most despicable of them all, whose pathos sublimely glossed over each fresh treason, was sent for by Napoleon, who placed him about his person. Among other things, he asked him, "Is it not true the Germans are somewhat thick-brained?" to ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... as a slight evil in relation to the person, just as we are wont to think little of the defects of children and imbeciles: and then to make game or fun of a person, is to scorn him altogether, and to think him so despicable that his misfortune troubles us not one whit, but is held as an object of derision. In this way derision is a mortal sin, and more grievous than reviling, which is also done openly: because the reviler would seem to take another's evil seriously; whereas ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... repugnance at the thought that the tailor's daughter had the presumptuous idea of becoming his wife. He forgave her low origin for the sake of her immense fortune, and thought it not a despicable lot to be the husband of the beautiful Anna Prickerin. He assured her of his love in impassioned words, and Anna listened with beaming eyes and a happy smile. Suddenly a loud weeping and crying, proceeding from the next room, interrupted this ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... guided through a thousand perils and dangers that Nature has set before it, with disease as Nature's agent, crouching and ready to destroy the child's life, not in open combat, but invisibly concealed by the limitation of our senses. This is one of Nature's unspeakable crimes; one of God's despicable impositions. ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... independence, and must foster the secret calculations of a vicious ambition. If it be asserted that evil passions are displayed in all ranks of society, that they ascend the throne by hereditary right, and that despicable characters are to be met with at the head of aristocratic nations as well as in the sphere of a democracy, this objection has but little weight in my estimation. The corruption of men who have casually risen to power has a coarse and vulgar ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... violence, of treason heaped on treachery, of insult repaid by fraud, would be easy enough. Indeed, a huge book might be compiled containing nothing but the episodes in this grim history of despotism, now tragic and pathetic, now terror-moving in sublimity of passion, now despicable by the baseness of the motives brought to light, at one time revolting through excess of physical horrors, at another fascinating by the spectacle of heroic courage, intelligence, and resolution. Enough however, has been said to describe the atmosphere ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... in them, the wheels that move the meanest perversion of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought. Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers; shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered, is, that ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... despicable of me even to listen to you. I don't think I would have listened, if you had not been frank. But you have had the honesty not to pretend. I must be ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... they do, and the ruin they work, would require much more space to adequately ventilate than we can devote to it here. The healing art is a noble one, and duly qualified men, interested in their profession, are public benefactors; but the despicable race of charlatans not only rob their victims, but frequently ruin their health, and drive them to the verge of insanity. There is probably hardly a reader of this page who has not met, within the circle of his or her acquaintance, some unfortunate individual whose hopes in life ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... the matter with us republicans? Liberty, fraternity and equality; we flaunt that flag as much as we ever did. Yet, what a howdy-do when a title comes along! What a craning of necks, what a kotowing! How many earldoms and dukedoms are not based upon some detestable action, some despicable service rendered some orgiastic sovereign! The most honorable thing about the so-called nobility is generally the box-hedge which surrounds the manse. Kotow; pour our millions into the bottomless purses of spendthrifts; give them our ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... motives already mentioned, we may add another. He who had refused, must inevitably have been branded with the name of coward: and, so despicable was the condition of a coward, in those times of general heroism, that death itself appeared the more preferable choice. Nay, such was the rage of fighting for women, that it became customary for those who could not be honored with the decision of their real quarrels, to create fictitious ones ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... haunted her parlour; yet was I assured that in London he was assiduous in waiting on Miss Gunning—a young lady with every advantage of fortune, beauty, and connection. I own the thought sometimes occurred to me that he might be that most despicable of characters—a male flirt. I had thoughts sometimes also of a word of warning to Miss Burney, but was restrained by fear ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... pestilence to Greece would that man have been, if incredible and godlike virtue had not checked the enterprise and audacity of that frantic man. What promptness was there in Brutus's conduct! what prudence! what valour! Although the rapidity of the movement of Caius Antonius also is not despicable; for if some vacant inheritance had not delayed him on his march, you might have said that he had flown rather than travelled. When we desire other men to go forth to undertake any public business, we ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... in even still greater disgrace than his fellow-cardinalists. He longed, he said, to be in Burgundy, drinking Granvelle's good wine. His patience under the daily insults which he received from the government made him despicable in the eyes of his own party. He was described by his friends as pusillanimous to an incredible extent, timid from excess of riches, afraid of his own shadow. He was becoming exceedingly pathetic, expressing frequently a desire to depart and end his days in peace. His faithful ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Aberdeen had been stripped off by the order of the Scottish Council, and shipped to be sold in Holland. He continues:—'Let us not however make too much haste to despise our neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence, and we are in danger of doing that deliberately, which the Scots did not do but in the unsettled state ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... that Reginald Eversleigh could be mean or base. People liked him, and trusted him, in spite of themselves; and it was only when their confidence had been imposed upon, and their trust betrayed, that they learned to know how despicable the handsome young officer could be. Women did their best to spoil him; and his personal charms of face and manner, added to his brilliant expectations, rendered him an universal ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Ladies have their Share in the Possession; and if they have not the Devil in their Heads, or in their Tails, in their Faces or their Tongues, it must be some poor despicable She-devil that Satan did not think it worth his while to meddle with; and the Number of those that are below his Operation, I doubt is very small. But that Part I have much more to say to in ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... old father had taught me to avoid falsehood from much higher considerations than those of mere temporal prosperity. I determined therefore that, whatever the danger, I would not endeavour to shield myself by anything so despicable as ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... is gross till clothed upon: I must take what men offer, with a grace As though I would not, could I help it, take! An uniform I wear though over-rich— Something imposed on me, no choice of mine; No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake And despicable therefore! now folk kneel And kiss my hand—of course the Church's hand. Thus I am made, thus life is best for me, And thus that it should be I have procured; And thus it could not be another ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... next? If this were not an insult, a gross, flagrant, and unendurable outrage, he was totally at a loss to comprehend what was meant by offended pride. Optimism, indeed! He felt far more inclined to embrace the faith of the Manichee! And what a fool was he to have submitted to such a despicable, such a degrading situation! What infinite weakness not to be able to resist her influence, the influence of a woman who had betrayed him! Yes! betrayed him. He had for some period reconciled his mind to entertain the idea of Henrietta's treachery ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... toady to them in the old way just on account of their name. Why, it began with Eldon's father—didn't he put his pride in his pocket, and try to make cash by speculation? Now I can respect him: he at all events faced the facts of the case honestly. The despicable thing in this Hubert Eldon is that, having got money once more, and in the dirtiest way, he puts on the top-sawyer just as if there was nothing to be ashamed of. If he and his mother were living in a small way on their few hundreds a ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... at last that his enemy was not so despicable, took vigorous measures to remedy his mistake, and, preparing himself to meet the Christians in front, he despatched the Sultan Soliman of Roum to attack them in the rear. To conceal this movement, he set fire to the dried weeds ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the true apogee of Napoleon's power. From the November day in 1799 when the successful general had overthrown the corrupt and despicable Directory down to 1808, his story is a magnificent succession of the triumphs of peace and of war. Whatever be the judgment of his contemporaries or of posterity upon his motives, there can be little question that ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... much finer mould than the chief of the Green Mountain Boys, was well educated and had a personal following of his own in the Grants, second only to Allen's. But there was never any jealousy between them. Allen's was a nature too frank and generous to harbor such a despicable feeling, while Warner was too deeply interested in the cause ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... those wretches on the plantation. They, through their ignorance, have learned to wield the tyranny of petty power; they look upon us with suspicious eyes. They know we are negroes (white negroes, who are despicable in their eyes), and feeling that we are more favoured, their envy is excited. They, with the hope of gaining favour, are first to disclose a secret. Save my child first, and then ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... broke out, Major Waldron treacherously seized a band of Indians at Dover in New Hampshire and sent them to Boston, where several of them were hanged for alleged complicity in Philip's war[5] and others sold into slavery. This despicable act the ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... in the end to a general war and carnage—a result in the case of these particular Indians, utterly abhorrent to the generous sympathies of the whole American people. Every possible kindness compatible with the necessity of removal must therefore be shown by the troops; and if in the ranks a despicable individual should be found capable of inflicting a wanton injury or insult on any Cherokee man, woman, or child, it is hereby made the special duty of the nearest good officer or man instantly to ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... imagination. Whether or not his testimony gave a clew to the police, the one irrevocable issue was that somewhere in London there was a girl named Evelyn who would regard a certain young man, Francis Berrold Theydon to wit, as a loathsome and despicable ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... and they end by believing that the man whom they are acclaiming is almost divine; yet it is certain that they elected this man on the whole because of the two he had more points in common with them, this poor despicable and very unheroic thing was the person whom they delighted to honour because they themselves were very unheroic and somewhat despicable. We cannot see the greatness of a truly great man unless there is just a bit of greatness in ourselves; Christ was too ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... marriage up to this moment no man could have fought better the bitter struggle of life than David Cable; yet, now, in this hour—his hour of travail and temptation, he piteously succumbed. Cowardice, the most despicable of all emotions, held ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the road he had trodden like heavy milestones, telling his story to every passer-by. She could read them, as everyone else could read them. He had wasted his substance, he had bartered his birthright for a moment's pleasure; there was no one so low and despicable who could not call him comrade, to whom he had not given himself without reserve. There was nothing left, and now the one thing he had ever wanted had come, and had found him like a bankrupt, his credit wasted ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... these general observations an instance, which Mr. Locke has given us of providence, even in the imperfections of a creature which seems the meanest and most despicable in the whole animal world. We may, says he, from the make of an oyster, or cockle, conclude, that it has not so many nor so quick senses as a man, or several other animals: Nor if it had, would it, in that state and incapacity of transferring ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... Platen, the wife of the Elector's chief minister of state, was—with the connivance of her despicable husband, who saw therein the means to his own advancement—the acknowledged mistress of Ernest Augustus. She was a fleshly, gauche, vain, and ill-favoured woman. Malevolence sat in the creases of her painted face, and peered from her mean eyes. Yet, such as ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... so this morning?' he answered loftily. There is always a despicable joy in resuscitating a lie which events have changed ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... chest felt heavy, as if a load were dragging it down. He heard voices. He saw his wife, Angele, wringing her hands. Suddenly he thought he was to blame for her illness, that he was a criminal; and all his thoughts of Ingigerd Hahlstroem made him doubly despicable in his own eyes. His ideas grew confused. In a wave of absolute credulity, he thought the voice of his conscience was condemning him to death. He thought that his life was being demanded as an atonement, that he must sacrifice ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... trembling with rage, while his eyes lightened scorn and indignation. "You hulking, stupid, cowardly bully,"—here Barker seized him, and every word brought a tremendous blow on the head, but blind with passion Eric went on—"you despicable bully, I won't touch that cap again, you shall pick it up yourself. Duncan, Russell, here! do help ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... upon as a nobody, slow, patient, and ever courageous, he unites to a complete technical knowledge a marvellous intuition of the beautiful, and his treasures are for him pride, bliss, and life. There is no show in this case, no desire for show, no ambition of the despicable shoddy-genteel sort—a more than powerful creation of fiction. A strikingly opposite career of selfishness is suggested by the fairly well-known story of Don Vincente, the friar bookseller of Barcelona, who, in order to obtain a volume which a rival bookseller, Paxtot, had secured ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... dresses fast. Remember that while good looks are a kindly gift of God wrinkles or accident may despoil them. Remember that Byron was no more celebrated for his beauty than for his depravity. Remember that Absalom's hair was not more splendid than his habits were despicable. Hear it, hear it! The only foundation for happy marriage that ever has been or ever will be, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... had the satisfaction of meeting Piet and Mohanycom, who had fortunately seen and recaptured the truant. Returning to the giraffe, we all feasted merrily on the flesh, which, although highly scented with the rank mokaala blossoms, was far from despicable, and losing our way in consequence of the twin-like resemblance of two scarped hills, we did not finally regain the wagons until after the setting sunbeams had ceased to play upon the trembling leaves of the light acacias, and the golden splendor which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... be resisted: and that the only means to that end was for the people to defend themselves, since they had no other help: that four-and-twenty lictors waited on the consuls, and they men of the common people: that nothing could be more despicable, or weaker, if only there were persons to despise them; that each person magnified those things and made them objects of terror to himself. When they had excited one another by these words, a lictor was despatched ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... cause and effect, the principle and the result? Well, no man knows what I love, nor what I wish. Perhaps what I have loved, or what I may have wished will be known, as a drama which is accomplished is known; but to let my game be seen—weakness, mistake! I know nothing more despicable than strength outwitted by cunning. Can I initiate myself with a laugh into the ambassador's part, if indeed diplomacy is as difficult as life? I doubt it. Have you any ambition? Would you like ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... offer it to them as so much capital, for whatever it may be worth. In pondering the fancy, I need hardly say that I do not assess myself at any extravagant value. I but venture to think that the devotion of one human creature, however humble, throughout a lifetime, is not a despicable offering. To use me as they would, to fetch and carry with me, to draw on me for whatever force resides in me, as they would on a bank account, to the last penny, to use my brains for their plans, my heart for their love, my blood ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... and yet it was absolutely necessary to have the house. Napoleon learned what was passing, and was angry, but allowed the offer of the forty thousand. Again the dealer retracted, and demanded fifty thousand. "He is a despicable creature," said the Emperor. "I will have none of his paltry hut: it shall remain where it is, as a testimony of my ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... suspect that if he had the power, Paris would become for him as little interesting as an ant-heap by the roadside to a hurrying passer-by. The circle of the sciences was for Castanier something like a logogriph for a man who does not know the key to it. Kings and Governments were despicable in his eyes. His great debauch had been in some sort a deplorable farewell to his life as a man. The earth had grown too narrow for him, for the infernal gifts laid bare for him the secrets of creation—he saw the cause and foresaw its end. He was shut out from all that men call "heaven" ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... sure," said Lord Airlie, "that I could pardon anything sooner than a lie; all that is mean, despicable, and revolting to me is expressed in the one word, 'liar.' Sudden anger, passion, hot revenge—anything is more easily forgiven. When once I discover that a man or woman has told me a lie, I never care to ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... mother, was entrusted, by Lord Altham, to the charge of a woman of indifferent character, named Joan or Juggy Landy. Juggy was a dependent of the family, and lived in a cabin on the estate, about a quarter of a mile from the house of Dunmain. This hut is described as a 'despicable place, without any furniture except a pot, two or three trenchers, a couple of straw {p.304} beds on the floor,' and 'with only a bush to draw in and out for a door.' Thus humbly and inauspiciously was the boy reared under the care of a nurse, who, however unfortunate ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... proved not to be despicable; the measures she recommended relieved the little one, and by the time Percy and the apothecary made their appearance, it was asleep on Theodora's lap, and Mr. Legh pronounced that it was in a fair way to do ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... large number of the spectators had seen the despicable act and roared their disapproval. Some shook their fists at the monster dwarf, and cried for speedy punishment for his vile trick. This outburst of indignation made him fear again to ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... is drawn under two widely different characters: In classic story he is depicted as an admirable archer, slain by Diomed, and honored as a hero-god in his own country; but in mediaeval romance he is represented as a despicable pimp, insomuch that the word pander is derived from his name. Chaucer, in his Tro[:i]lus and Cresseide, and Shakespeare, in his drama of Troilus and Cressida, represent him as procuring for Troilus the good graces of Cressid, and in Much Ado About Nothing, it is said ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... would come to that; unhappy, miserable Alice! how could you bestow the affections of a warm, true heart on a despicable wretch like Theophilus Moncton. The old fiend's ambition and this fatal passion ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... Highness will graciously come this way," said the despicable Xuriel, bowing low. Poor Edna had to follow him up a steep outside staircase to a gloomy room where deep-set windows commanded a view of the Courtyard below. He found some sheets of parchment and a reed pen, and lent ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... British territory and cut off a detachment of British sepoys. It was evident that the Burmese were bent on the conquest of Bengal. Lord Amherst, who had assumed charge early in 1824, sent an expedition against them under Sir Archibald Campbell. The resistance of the Burmese was despicable. The British soldiers nowhere found foes worthy of their steel. In May, the British expedition, having marched straight to Burma, occupied the capital Rangoon, which was found deserted and denuded of all supplies. Ill fed and far from succor, the British had to spend a rainy season there. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... growing of a soul is an almost Divine act of faith. How pardonable, surely, the impatience of deformity with itself, of a consciously despicable character standing before Christ, wondering, yearning, hungering to be like that? Yet must one trust the process fearlessly, and without misgiving. "The Lord the Spirit" will do His part. The tempting expedient is, in haste for abrupt or visible progress, to try some method less ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... characters better because they are of our own time. There is a definite and grievous wrong committed against the young woman with whom the central character is in love, therefore the wrong is committed indirectly against the lover himself. We are made to realize the despicable nature, the utter heartlessness, of the young woman's betrayer, and we actually hate him as soon as the facts are made clear to us. We realize how great has been the love for her cherished by the man who ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... did his wolves,'[186] or Berkeley, that 'if ever man deserved to be denied the common benefits of bread and water, it was the author of a Discourse of Freethinking,'[187] and that 'he should omit no endeavour to render the persons (of Freethinkers) as despicable and their practice as odious in the eye of the world as they deserve.'[188] But we find almost as truculent notions in writings where we might least expect them. It was, for example, a favourite accusation ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... over the despicable behaviour of Rouquin's servant. She kept on berating the creature and advising Rouquin to dismiss her, until at last Mrs. Bingle announced that the poor thing undoubtedly had acted for the best and out of the goodness of her heart. ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... ye despicable creatures! do you come poste to fetch a Lady from me? from a poor School-boy that ye scorn'd of late, and grow lame in your hearts when you should execute? Pray take her, take her, I am weary of her: What did you bring to ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... had men of all dispositions; and wanting a buffoon, he went into the senate-house for that which the senate-house would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to shew an usurper and a murderer not only odious, but despicable; he therefore added drunkenness to his other qualities, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that wine exerts its natural power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of petty minds; a poet overlooks the casual distinction ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... braggarts followed the valorous Dona Gorja with their eyes; and then with a despicable gesture drew their knives across their sleeve as though wiping off the blood there might have been, sheathed them at one and the ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... told by Johnson in the Lives of the Poets. Congreve "disgusted him [Voltaire] by the despicable foppery of desiring to be considered not as an author but a gentleman; to which the Frenchman replied, 'that, if he had been only a gentleman, he should not have come ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... herself. Judy, in her way, was stately too; a curiously-fine lace cap on her head, which had not been allowed to see the light since Charley's christening, with a large white satin bow in front, almost as large as the cap itself. And that was no despicable size. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... child, thou art over-young to have any knowledge of so despicable an intrigue. But the matter is naturally of deep concern for us all," she added, as Ecciva, having recovered her perfect self-control lifted her eyes to Madama di Thenouris with a smile that was intended to thank ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... His mind was clearly made up. Whatever weakness may have been his there was none to be traced in his actions now. He saw ahead of him the possibilities of furthering his own interests, and he revelled in the thought of George Iredale's wealth. The despicable methods he was adopting troubled him not in the least. Iredale should pay dearly if his work partook of the ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... that you yourself are a traitor to your Order. You prostitute a great cause when you stoop to use its machinery to assist your own private vengeance. I ask you for your own sake to consider your words. Lucille is mine—mine she will remain, even though you should descend to something more despicable, more cowardly than ordinary treason, to wrest her from me. You reproach me with the failures of my life. Great they may have been, but if you attempt this you will find that I am ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to control their flocks. If they only had the nerve to pick us up, turn our hearts inside out, show us the black corners, and the ossifications, and call sin, sin, we should begin to realize what despicable shams we are. Dr. Douglass, the Bishop, is the only one I know who lays us on the dissecting table, and who does not speak of 'human fallibility' when he means vice. He told us one day that the Gospel required a line of demarcation between ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the same line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction. How little Christian work even is a protection against unchristian feeling! That most despicable of all the unworthy moods which cloud a Christian's soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we are fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly needs the Christian envy, the large, rich, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... forward, with her hands about her knees, she began to brood over tumbled images of a wrong done to her. She had two distinct visions of herself, constantly alternating and acting like the temptation of two devils. One represented her despicable in feature, and bade her die; the other showed a fair face, feeling which to be her own, Emilia had fits of intolerable rage. This vision prevailed; and this wicked side of her humanity saved her. Active despair is a passion that must be superseded by a passion. Passive despair comes later; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with its contents I was obliged again to submit to the officious intervention of my indefatigable servitor. Various other dishes followed, the chief manifesting the most hospitable importunity in pressing us to partake, and to remove all bashfulness on our part, set us no despicable example ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... city. So many died that there were not boats enough to bear them away to their sepulture in the lakes, and the bodies rotted in the streets. There was not wanting at this time the presence of a traitor in the devoted city; and that this wretch was a Swiss will be a matter of no surprise. The despicable valor of these republicans has everywhere formed the best defense of tyrants, and their fidelity has always been at the service of the highest bidder. The recreant was a lieutenant in the Swiss Guard of the Duke; and when he had led ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... obtaining brilliancy or splendour. The urn was of thick and solid silver, as were also the tea-pot, coffee-pot, cream-ewer, and sugar-bowl; the cups were old, dim dragon china, worth about a pound a piece, but very despicable in the eyes of the uninitiated. The silver forks were so heavy as to be disagreeable to the hand, and the bread-basket was of a weight really formidable to any but robust persons. The tea consumed was the very best, the coffee the very blackest, the cream ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... at Rose. Francie, with her gilded wretchedness, thinks Rosie's lot quite despicable; but I can tell you, Molly, she is the most utterly comfortable and contented little soul on the face of this earth. She would not change places with a queen." "But Rose is not plain. Rose is the happy medium. And THEY are the lucky ones—the ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... innocence in boys is proportioned to the amount of mischief with which they are stuffed. They seem to be determined to risk their lives on mow-poles where the hay lies thin. They come out from under the stable floor in a despicable state of toilet, and cannot give any excuse for their depreciation of apparel. Hens flutter off the nest with an unusual squawk, for the boys cannot wait any longer for the slow process of laying, and hens have no business ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... to England! Our oysters are small I know; they are said by Americans to be coppery, but our hearts are of the largest size. We are thought to excel in shrimps, to be far from despicable in point of lobsters, and in periwinkles are considered to challenge the universe. Our oysters, small though they be, are not devoid of the refreshing influence which that species of fish is supposed to exercise in these ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... this time with sufficient agility—the sword of Sporus had inflicted a severe wound upon his right leg; and, incapacitated to fly, he was pressed hard by the fierce swordsman. His great height and length of arm still continued, however, to give him no despicable advantages; and steadily keeping his trident at the front of his foe, he repelled him ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... has to wonder what the dictator of Iraq is thinking. If he thinks that by targeting innocent civilians in Israel and Saudi Arabia, that he will gain an advantage—he is dead wrong. If he thinks that he will advance his cause through tragic and despicable environmental terrorism—he is dead wrong. And if he thinks that by abusing coalition P.O.W.s, he will ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George H.W. Bush • George H.W. Bush
... Dirt from any Place without finding some of it sticking to his skirts." Such dirty clods were undoubtedly thrown by nameless antagonists, as unworthy of Fielding's steel as was one whose name has come down to us, the despicable Dr John Hill, who once suffered a public caning at Ranelagh; and one clod, "more filthy perhaps than all the rest," soiled the hands of Smollett. [2] But the dirt which was very freely flung on to our eighteenth-century Hercules has, by now, fallen ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... to me!' he said quickly, with a tender glance. 'My God! I shall quit France with less regret if I can leave one man behind me in whose eyes I am not half a swindler, nor a spendthrift, nor a man of illusions! Alain, I have loved an angel in the midst of my misery. A man who truly loves cannot be despicable.' At those words I stretched out my hand to him. He took it and wrung it. 'May heaven protect you!' I said. 'Are we still friends?' he asked. 'Yes,' I replied. 'It shall never be that my childhood's comrade ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... continued the Captain, laying his huge hand on his companion's knee, and gazing earnestly into his face, "I don't mean for to hurt your feelin's by sayin' that you are mean, or contemptible, or despicable, for I don't suppose you've thought much about the matter at all, and are just following in the wake of older men who ought to know better; but I say that the thing—gambling for money—is the meanest thing a man can do, short of stealing. What does it amount to? Simply this—I ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... is impossible to blame the trader and the man of commerce for this. The real fault, the real sin, is not individual, it is collective—the guilt properly belongs to Society. Men do not descend to these mean subterfuges and these despicable trickeries merely to make money, to pile on hundreds on hundreds and thousands on thousands. In their hearts all the best of them despise the methods by which they are forced to earn their incomes and make their fortunes; but the penalties which the laws ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... "Your despicable villainy is known!" said Barnabas. "Ha!—smile if you will, but while you knelt, pistol in hand, in the barn there, had you troubled to look in the loft above your head you might have murdered me, and none the wiser. As it ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... philosopher," said Meldon, "or rather he was, for he's dead now. He divided all morality into two kinds—slave morality, which he regards as despicable, and master morality, which is of ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... of a pistol told that his threat was executed. The brutal monster waited a moment for the smoke to clear away from his vision, not liking to venture upon that ominous looking dagger until assured of a bloodless victory. Poor, despicable coward! ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... went along, were to pass for fine stratagems; for witty sport; and to demonstrate a superiority of inventive talents!—O my cruel, cruel brother! had it not been for thee, I had not been thrown upon so pernicious and so despicable a ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... into her eyes. Never, in any novel that she had read, had a defenceless young woman been confronted with a situation like this. Sir John, the Hugo of her imagination, was, if anything, rather more depraved and despicable than Robert Bludward. He was mean, evasive, callously indifferent to his country's interests, a cheat, a man who habitually broke his word, and who was responsible, with his associates, for most of the poverty, misery, crime, and national degradation with which the country was afflicted. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... stooped to a course of conduct as to which there can be but one judgment among brave and upright opponents. No one knew better than the Czar the German Emperor's love of peace. This love of peace was reckoned upon in the whole despicable game. Fortunately the plan was perceived on the German side at the right time. Advices received by Germany's representative in St. Petersburg concerning the actual Russian mobilization against Germany moved him to add to the report given him upon the Russian word of honor a statement ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... that contained scarce a trace of virility—only a keen selfishness and a crafty faithlessness. And of a verity, if ever a human visage revealed truly the soul within, this one did; for a more scheming sycophant, vacillating knave and despicable traitor than Thomas, Lord Stanley, England had not seen since the villain John ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... and moral improvement, these churchmen asserted that the highest property possible to be acquired in servants could not cancel the obligation to take care of the religious instruction of those who "despicable as they are in the eyes of man are ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... snarl and hunger for their due, Till there seems naught so despicable as you In all the grin o' ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... and Frobisher breathed a sigh of thanksgiving. He had set his heart on commanding her, and he would have been bitterly disappointed if so fine a ship had been lost to him and the Navy through the despicable cupidity of a mandarin and the incompetence ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... Provencal student declared that history was a thoroughly despicable exercise of rhetoric. According to him, the only true history was the natural history of man. Michelet was in the right path when he came in contact with the fistula of Louis XIV., but he fell back into the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... their fortunes destroyed, their affections crushed, their bleeding hearts; to forget themselves, and to feel thenceforth but a single wound—the wound of France to cry aloud for justice; never to suffer themselves to be appeased, never to relent, but to be implacable; to seize the despicable perjurer, crowned though he were, if not with the hand of the law, at least with the pincers of truth, and to heat red-hot in the fire of history all the letters of his oath, and ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... practically that plain and wholesome, though humble fare at the board, was all that they ought to desire, and that luxuries and delicacies, such as load "the rich man's table," were truly a matter of small moment, and utterly despicable when compared with those luxuries of the mind, and that superiority of character, which are derived from moral and intellectual culture. These latter, accordingly, were day by day pressed on their attention as the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... trying to be agreeable. I pointed out—when I succeeded in seizing a place in the conversation—that if Gorman's theory were applied to Ireland Belfast would come out as a reality while Cork, Limerick, and other places like them would be as despicable as Dorsetshire. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... entirely physical. When Paganism rose men had not begun to reflect upon themselves, or the infirmities of their own nature. The bad man was a bad man—the coward a coward—the liar a liar—individually hateful and despicable. But in hating and despising such unfortunates, the old Greeks were satisfied to have felt all that was necessary about them; and how such a phenomenon as a bad man came to exist in this world, they scarcely cared to inquire. There is no evil spirit in the mythology as an ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... lectures.) They are simply perfect. They ought to be largely advertised; but it is very good in me to say so, for I threw down No. IV. with this reflection, "What is the good of writing a thundering big book, when everything is in this green little book, so despicable for its size?" In the name of all that is good and bad, I may as well shut up shop altogether. You put capitally and most simply and clearly the relation of animals and plants to each ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... or arduous performances: the most unskilful hand and unenlightened mind have sufficient incitements to industry; for he that is resolutely busy, can scarcely be in want. There is, indeed, no employment, however despicable, from which a man may not promise himself more than competence, when he sees thousands and myriads raised to dignity, by no other merit than that of contributing to supply their neighbours with the means of sucking smoke through a tube of clay; and others raising contributions upon those, whose ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... drew aside and watched, his eyes losing their hard glare, and some of his old expression returned to his face. It was as if his resurging emotions were bringing back to him the shame and remorse of a gentleman inveigled into performing a despicable action. He, too, saw Dolores approaching; saw the tensity of her expression; sensed some of the tremendous hopes that actuated her, now that she saw the rapid culmination of all her ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... lover's smile. Frank sprang up, and his brother, smiling even more affectionately, took his chair. At the same moment the widow stopped playing, and the scales seemed suddenly to fall from the young soldier's eyes. He saw himself as the most despicable villain in Europe, and Ellen as lost for ever, whether as sister or friend. So distraught was he that he had nearly tried to open a mid-Victorian cabinet before he discovered it was not the door. Downstairs he hurried wildly, threw on an ulster ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... dismissal of four officers, so they say. And so I'm to be boycotted in this manner! Is that argument, Mr. Machin? Tell me. You're a man, but honestly, is it argument? Why, it's just as mean and despicable as brute force." ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... bankboys who delighted in what they called "stringing skirts." Those fellows were despicable to him; they were scarcely worth despising. And their numbers were altogether too large. He had met others—very many—who were not in the despicable class, but who also were guilty of unfaithfulness. Why, he asked himself, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... their defeat he is again taken prisoner. But the main interest of the last act is concentrated in Adelheid, who now reveals all the depths of her sensual nature and her unscrupulous ambition. Weislingen she has discovered to be a despicable creature, and she attaches herself to Sickingen, in whom she finds a man after her own heart, able to satisfy all the cravings of her nature. She poisons Weislingen, who dies as he has lived, the victim of weakness rather than of wickedness. ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... small sticks, around which in hard zero weather all the family of ten persons shivered, and beneath which in the morning we found our socks and coarse, soggy boots frozen solid. We were not allowed to start even this despicable little fire in its black box to thaw them. No, we had to squeeze our throbbing, aching, chilblained feet into them, causing greater pain than toothache, and hurry out to chores. Fortunately the miserable chilblain pain began to abate as soon as the ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir |
