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Despise   /dɪspˈaɪz/   Listen
Despise

verb
(past & past part. despised; pres. part. despising)
1.
Look down on with disdain.  Synonyms: contemn, disdain, scorn.  "The professor scorns the students who don't catch on immediately"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Despise" Quotes from Famous Books



... no husband, that fellow is incapable of the feeling with which I am inspired towards the beautiful young creature whom he treats like a doll. I say he is as incapable of it, as he is unworthy of her. I say she is sacrificed in being bestowed upon him. I say that I love her, and despise and hate him!' This with a face so flushed, and a gesture so violent, that his sister crossed to his side, and caught ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... sentence about the estates passed by her, hardly noted. The bitterest sting lay in the assurance thus placidly given her, that her loving little Richard would be consigned to the keeping of a woman whom she knew to hate her fiercely—that he would be taught to hate and despise her himself. He would be brought up as a stranger to her; he would be led to associate her name with scorn and disgrace. And how was Joan likely to treat the children, when she had perpetually striven to vex and humiliate ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... glad. He tried to shut out the girl's picture from his heart. Impossible. She was the picture; all else was but frame. He knew that he had lost her irrevocably. What must she think of him? How she must utterly despise him! ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... could even question her upon that point. "And, after all," she added forlornly, "he's my husband. I couldn't—I had to do what I could to shield him—just for sake of the past, I suppose. Much as I despise him, I can't forget that—that I cared once. It's because I wanted your ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... bit of rodomontade in him about the charms of the country, from beginning to end; if there were, we should despise him. He can find nothing to say of Skiddaw but that he is "a great creature"; and he writes to Wordsworth, (whose sight is failing,) on Ambleside, "I return you condolence for your decaying sight,—not for anything there is to see in the country, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... always entertained a particular attachment towards Monmouth-street, as the only true and real emporium for second-hand wearing apparel. Monmouth-street is venerable from its antiquity, and respectable from its usefulness. Holywell-street we despise; the red-headed and red-whiskered Jews who forcibly haul you into their squalid houses, and thrust you into a suit of clothes, whether you will or not, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... was appalled at this terrible confession, at the absence in one of its sons of even the common garden variety of courage. It did its best for a while to despise William. But it is hard work despising an honest, quiet, just and lovable man. So gradually William was allowed to come home into Green Valley's life. And it was only on this one holiday that he was an outcast. Neither did any one ever remind William's children of what years ago their ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... the old sinner's stuff," said Anne, "when your own sons laugh at him and say he is a fool? Besides, I am told he is ever abusing the Catholics, and I heartily despise his ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... Blois, where I was pining away my existence, your royal looks, full of light and life, were first bent upon me. I love you still, sire; it is a crime of high treason, I know, that a poor girl like myself should love her sovereign and should presume to tell him so. Punish me for my audacity, despise me for my shameless immodesty; but do not ever say, do not ever think, that I have jested with or deceived you. I belong to a family whose loyalty has been proved, sire; and I, too, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... politeness by the aid of "the lie to follow." English people, Puritan by ancestry and by inclination, are nevertheless driven into frequent subterfuge by their good nature, and having pared their language and gesture of that extravagance in expression which they despise in the foreigner, they are thrown back upon a naturalness that betrays them in delicate situations. The consequence is that it is in Anglo-Saxon Society at its best that the art of delicate fence in conversation ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... worship vanities, And consecrate dumb idols in their heart— Who their own Maker, God on high, despise, And fear the works of their own hands and art! What fury, what great madness doth beguile Men's minds that man should ugly shapes adore Of birds, or bulls, or dragons, or the vile Half-dog, half-man, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various

... themselves by troubling her heart and confusing her mind; they excite her vanity, they compass her round with homage, with flattery, with temptation, and when they grow tired of fooling her, they despise and insult her. Tell me, was this all a preconcerted plan? This love, this ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... see no Reason why we should neglect to examine those imaginary Scenes we are presented with in Sleep, only because they have less Reality in them than our waking Meditations. A Traveller would bring his Judgment in Question who should despise the Directions of his Map for want of real Roads in it, because here stands a Dott instead of a Town, or a Cypher instead of a City, and it must be a long Day's Journey to travel thro' two or three Inches. Fancy in Dreams gives us much ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... painting, a style which has made modern Italy as immortal as the arms of the legions did the ancient. But the very grandeur of his conceptions, the vigour of his drawing, his incomparable command of bone and muscle, his lofty expression and impassioned mind, made him neglect, and perhaps despise, the lesser details of his art. Ardent in the pursuit of expression, he often overlooked execution. When he painted the Last Judgment or the Fall of the Titans in fresco, on the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel, he was incomparable; but that gigantic style ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... you,' he said with a long breath. 'But I stole it—I despise myself. Why should you pity me? What is there to pity me for? My troubles, such as I have, are ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... often enough,' said I, 'that I despise you. I have shown you now, more plainly, that I do. Why should I dread your doing your worst to all about you? What else ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... sea is kept before us by an accompaniment made out of a phrase of the sailor's song. "They will land"—that means to Isolda that she will become the property of the old man she has never seen, and lose for ever the man she has no hope of gaining, the man whom she has every good reason to hate and despise. This is a drama of passion pitted against reason—against everything excepting passion, and Wagner loses no chance of making the situation clear. Here, as in every other opera, he is, if not first ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... you must be exhausted. Be seated. Here is a chicken had round from the Boar, here is a tongue had round from the Boar, here's one or two little things had round from the Boar that I hope you may not despise. 'But do I,' said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again the moment after he had sat down, 'see afore me him as I ever sported with in his times of happy infancy? And may I—may I—?' This 'May I?' meant might he shake hands? ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... Mrs. Beaumont means politeness, I admire it as much as she does; but I disclaim and despise all that paltry system of artifice, which is sometimes called address. No person of a great mind ever condescends to use address in that sense of the word; not because they cannot, but because ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... brief, was the famous battle of Marathon. The Persians were strong in the terror of their name, and in the renown of their conquests; and it required a most heroic resolution in the Athenians to face a danger that they had not yet learned to despise. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... crown to carry on the government." Lord Lyndhurst, in explaining the part he had taken in the matter, bitterly complained of being calumniated by the press, which, he said, now reigned paramount over the legislature and the country. "As far as I am myself concerned," he said, "I despise these calumnies. They may wound, however, the feelings of those allied to me by the dearest ties, and so far they are a source of pain to myself; but apart from the feelings of others, I hold them in the utmost scorn." ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... landscape upon which the sunset pours its crimson dyes. Motley's hero was William the Silent, Prince of Orange; and Macaulay's hero was William III, King of England, Prince of Orange. Motley will bear being ranked as a great historian. He hates Philip II, as I suppose good folks ought who despise egotism, intolerance, vindictiveness, and horrible cruelty. He lauds William the Silent as soldier and statesman, Prince Maurice as a soldier, and John of Barneveld as statesman. Motley marches across old battle-fields like a soldier ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... got that disease. The Power which you profess to despise has sent it to me. If you so much as touch me, your doom ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... It is true: the English despise men who cannot drink. I must make myself wholly drunk [he takes ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw

... there are people," she went on, "who have never known what it was to—really to care for some one else. They would despise me for clinging to a man after he has shown me that—that his love ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... Cicero, with all his virtues, was not practical. Not that Cicero was to him the same as Cato, who with his Stoic grandiloquence must, to his thinking, have been altogether useless. Cicero, though too virtuous for supreme rule, too virtuous to seize power and hold it, too virtuous to despise as effete the institutions of the Republic, was still a man so gifted, and capable in so many things, as to be very great as an assistant, if he would only condescend to assist. It is in this light that Caesar seems to have regarded Cicero as time went on; admiring him, ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... showing the enemy the number of his troops, and the shifts which he had been put to to to arm them, he thought that he should have less chance of beating him than by not letting him have a sight of them, and thus learn how good a right he had to despise them. He accordingly picked out a hundred and fifty heavy infantry and, putting the rest under Clearidas, determined to attack suddenly before the Athenians retired; thinking that he should not have again such a chance of catching them alone, if their reinforcements ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... scepticism as life repels death; all dwelt on the sufferings of the cross as a door through which the penitent and believing could surely enter heaven, yet based the justice of the infinite Father of Love on what, when it appeals to consciousness, seems to be the direst injustice. We cannot despise the Middle Ages, which produced such beatific and exalted saints, but we pity those dismal times when the great mass of the people had so little pleasure and comfort in this life, and such gloomy fears of the world to come; when life ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... is frightened by ghosts, burns mock money to maintain his ancestors in the future state, worships a bit of rusty old iron as an infallible remedy for droughts; I have seen him shoot at clouds from the city walls to frighten away the rain—and I despise him for it all. As I revise this copy, a rumor is current in the town in which I am resting to the effect that foreigners are buying children and using their heads to oil the wheels of the new Yuen-nan railway, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... be boldness to predict that a time may arrive when the energy of the wind or tide will be employed to produce from the magnetic lines of force given out by the earth's magnetism electrical currents far surpassing anything we have yet seen or of which we have heard. Therefore let us not despise the smallness of the force, but rather consider it an element of power from which might arise conditions far higher in degree, and which we might not recognize as the same as this developed in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various

... stained; how much it is conversant with the flesh. Many other such things they have in store; as also its periodical changes, and the harmonious vicissitudes of its seasons. They diligently impress them on the youth that they may learn to trust in God, to mistrust the flesh, to despise the threats of the world, to endure the darkness of this age. And this is right, however others may not even dissemble their neglect of ecclesiastical history; for how little any knowledge of it is now required even from ecclesiastics, or how, where it is found, it is sold ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... slavish respect for his rank or wealth. The working man has no want for real reverence. Mr. Carlyle's being a "gentlemen" has not injured his influence with the people. On the contrary, it is the artisan's intense longing to find his real lords and guides, which makes him despise and execrate his sham ones. Whereof let ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... rheumatiz. And if they do not heed the hunch that's given by the bleachers bunch, they find, when next they start to play, that all the fans have stayed away. The talking graft is all in vain, and loafers give the world a pain. The fans who watch the game of life despise the sluggard in the strife. They'll have but little use for you, who tell what you intend to do, and hand out promises galore, but, somehow, never seem to score. No matter what your stunt may be, in this the country of the free, you'll find that loafing never pays; cut out the flossy ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... though it was again some days before she appeared at the dinner-table. The distance between Hugh and her seemed to increase instead of diminish, till at length he scarcely dared to offer her the smallest civility, lest she should despise him as a hypocrite. The further she removed herself from him, the more he felt inclined to respect her. By common consent they avoided, as much as before, any behaviour that might attract attention; though the effort was of a very different nature ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... and witty Callus, Subtile Tibullus, and learned Catullus, It was Cynthia, Lesbia, Lychoris, That made you poets all; and if Alexis, Or Corinna chance my paramour to be, Virgil and Ovid shall not despise me." ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... list'ning senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... persons attached to study are at present not only not imitated nor venerated, but even detested. "Happy indeed would be the arts," observes Fabius, "if artists alone judged of the arts;" but, as Sydonius says, "it is a fixed principle in the human mind, that they who are ignorant of the arts despise the artist." ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... black ant were burrowing in the ground, when a wild elephant appeared and said "Why are you burrowing here; I will trample all your work to pieces;" the ants answered "Why do you talk like this; do not despise us because we are small; perhaps we are better than you in some ways;" The elephant said "Do not talk nonsense: there is nothing at which you could beat me; I am in all ways the largest and most powerful animal on the face of ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... veins? He tried to brace himself with the remembrance of his wife's scorn. He had not forgotten the note on which their conversation had closed. If he had ever wondered how she would receive the truth he wondered no longer—she would despise him. But this lent a new insidiousness to his temptation, since her contempt would be a refuge from his own. He said to himself that, since he no longer cared for the consequences, he could at least acquit ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton

... from the root tem-, as in temnere, to despise, or possibly from the root tum-, as in tumere, to swell, with anger, &c.), a stubborn refusal to obey authority, obstinate resistance; particularly, in law, the wilful contempt of the order or summons of a court (see CONTEMPT OF COURT). In ecclesiastical law, the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... world of common men, and not of philosophers; for one of these, when he appears (which is very seldom) among us, is distinguished, and very properly too, by the name of an odd fellow; for what is it less than extreme oddity to despise what the generality of the world think the labour of their whole lives well employed in procuring? we are therefore to adapt our behaviour to the opinion of the generality of mankind, and not to that of a few ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... behind them, the north at their right, and the south at their left. They have the east behind them because they hate the Lord; they have the north at their right, because they love fallacies and falsities therefrom; and they have the south at their left, because they despise the light of wisdom. They may turn themselves round and round, and yet all things which they see about them appear similar to their love. All such are sensual-natural; and some are of such a nature as to imagine that ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg

... paid as well as common soldiers: and though every man may have his price, and money and dignities may be a sufficient reward for the most part, there are some who despise any reward under that of royal power.—Caesar was one of those men; and both ancient and modern history shew, that though, perhaps, in his abilities, he has had no equal, there have been others who have rated theirs at as ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... Florrie?" he exclaimed, in amazement. "Was it me you thought of? I supposed you had grown to despise me." ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... much-prized runs on the prairie, and resisting all the children's entreaties to play with them, till the Christmas gift was finished. It was no small task, for Maud most heartily hated to sew, and her fingers were anything but nimble in the operation. "I always did despise to sew, Miss Fanny," she said, "but I'm going to make this cushion for ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... their life or the other man's. They will do this, because they know what a prison is, and also what spies outside prison are. But they will spare your life, if possible; not because they care for you—they hate and despise you, as being a man who would be and have in the past been merciless to them, and as a hypocrite who is either a rascal on the sly or would be if you possessed the courage or were subjected to the temptation—they spare you not from mercy but ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... half of the book is both the most interesting and the most valuable,—the second half being so largely made up of personal grievances (which, if Mr. Russell had not the dignity to despise them, he might at least have been wise enough to be silent about) as to be tedious in comparison. We regret that Mr. Russell should have been subjected to so many personal indignities for having written what we believe to have been as impartial ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... him, and the unhappy lover writes in his Diary: "I feared lest he should mention Liza. But my good lieutenant was not a gossip, and, moreover, he despised all women, calling them, God knows why, salad." This is all the description Turgenef devotes to this lieutenant; but this making him despise women under the appellation of half-sour, half-sweet conglomerate of egg-and-vegetable salad, describes the lieutenant in two lines more faithfully than pages of scientific, realistic photography. (3) Before the ruin of poor Liza becomes known, and while the prince, her ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... continued, "I'm not ashamed of my name—not a mite. It's a good, honest name; but being as the Holy Father's gone and made me a noble, I prefer being addressed by my title. All Americans are above titles. They despise them. But being in Rome, you see, we must do as the Romans do; and so you needn't know me as Rufus K. Gunn, but as the Baron Atramonte. As for you, Min—you and I won't stand on ceremony—you may call me 'Roof,' or any other name you fancy. I ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... assure you it is a heavier cross than you can ever know to speak thus unbidden where I am regarded only as a serving-man. But should I not be false and cowardly if I held my peace? And if you afterward should know that I claimed the name of Christian, would you not despise me as ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... young girl, without raising her eyes, "do not despise me, monseigneur Phoebus. I feel that what I ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... deemed necessary, there will be a great deal expected from you by your country, and I trust they will not be disappointed in the high expectations formed of your gallantry and judgment. I will barely make an observation, which was impressed upon my mind by an old soldier; that is, 'Never despise your enemy.'"[76] ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... that Thou wert as my brother, That sucked the breasts of my mother! When I should find Thee without, I would kiss Thee; Yea, and none would despise me. ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor

... despise me, do you?" he demanded, holding me by the sleeve and studying me with a slightly mystified eye. It was an eye as wistful as an old hound's in winter, an eye with a hunger I'd not seen ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... god of a savage, unpolished people, is commonly some material object, upon which the mind has exercised itself but little; this god appears very ridiculous in the eyes of a more polished community, whose minds have laboured more intensely upon the subject. A spiritual god, whose adorers despise the worship paid by the savage to a coarse, material object, is the subtle production of the brain of thinkers, who, lolling in the lap of polished society quite at their leisure, have deeply meditated, have ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... mirth, overflowing with the genial laughter which makes us love the very men at whom we are laughing. But the three comedies of this Third Period are bitter and sarcastic in their wit, making us despise the people who furnish us fun, and leaving an unpleasant taste in the mouth after the laugh is over. Some have assumed that the dark tinge of this period was due to an unknown sorrow in the poet's own life, but there seems to ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... was originally followed by a couple of paragraphs meant to conciliate the intellectualist opposition. Since you love the word 'true' so, and since you despise so the concrete working of our ideas, I said, keep the word 'truth' for the saltatory and incomprehensible relation you care so much for, and I will say of thoughts that know their objects in an intelligible sense that they ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... prudence and his own dignity indicated a very different line of treatment. If Tasso was to be great and honored, he must feel that his reputation flowed wholly from the princely favor, not from his studies and illustrious works. Alfonso accordingly affected to despise the poems which Tasso presented, and showed his will that: 'I should aspire to no eminence of intellect, to no glory of literature, but should lead a soft delicate and idle life immersed in sloth and pleasure, escaping like a runaway from the honor of Parnassus, the Lyceum ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... Upton, a blush arose in her cheeks, and her eyes, which before she had scarce lifted up, were turned upon Jones with a glance of disdain. He understood this silent reproach, and replied to it thus: "O my Sophia! my only love! you cannot hate or despise me more for what happened there than I do myself; but yet do me the justice to think that my heart was never unfaithful to you. That had no share in the folly I was guilty of; it was even then unalterably yours. Though I ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... will know no obedience. [233]Some to love their wives dearly at first, and after a while to forsake and hate them; begetting children, with much care and cost for their education, yet when they grow to man's estate, [234]to despise, neglect, and leave them naked to the world's mercy. [235]Do not these behaviours express their intolerable folly? When men live in peace, they covet war, detesting quietness, [236] deposing kings, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... the patient? There is no satisfaction in scolding him. Not a word will he say, but march off dignified as any Lord Admiral. A grand way that is of heaping coals on my head. I wish I could learn to bite my tongue, as I know he does his. I am really afraid he will come to disrespect and despise me. Why can not I mend my ways? But it was aggravating, wasn't it, Johnnie," turning to his babyship, "to give mamma's darling a very, very horrible name, and have water poured on his sweet little head by a naughty, wicked, Irish Romish priest. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... the correct reticences of a "good egg," the correct notions of chivalry and noblesse oblige—and, of course but unfortunately, the correct biases and the correct lack of ideas—all those traits which Anthony had taught her to despise, but which, nevertheless, she rather admired. Unlike the majority of his type, she found that he was not a bore. He was handsome, witty in a light way, and when she was with him she felt that because of some ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... telling of a very dull story with one not so dull episode. But the conclusion of the preface exemplifies the whimsicality even of the writer, and points to the existence of a commodity in the fashion of wig-wearing which few who glory in "their own hair," and despise their periwigged forefathers, are likely to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... to a prince, and procures him more respect than if he sought to give himself the appearance of knowing and understanding everything. Come, Lorenzo, let us go into the garden; you see that these fowls care nothing for us now; as they are satiated, they despise our provender. Come, let ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... shall never dare to walk up Grange Lane again," said Ursula, with tears. "Fancy changing to her, after being so glad to see her! fancy never saying another word about the skating, or the walk to the old mill! How she will despise me for being such a miserable creature! and she will think it is ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... dissatisfaction along the border. Reprisals might be made by the Armstrongs and their friends, and in any case, there would be such widespread reprobation excited, as William Baird, reckless as he was, could hardly afford to despise. ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty

... to despise the satire levelled at him in the Rehearsal, as appears from his dedication of the translation of Juvenal and Persius where speaking of the many lampoons, and libels that had, been written against him, he says, 'I answered not to the Rehearsal, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... of cares, a shame that haunts the mind, Another form of warfare with mankind; The abhorrence of his friends, a source of hate From strangers, and from each once-loving mate; But if his wife despise him, then 't were meet In some lone wood to seek a safe retreat. The flame of sorrow, torturing his soul, Burns fiercely, yet contrives ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... humanity! Interpreters of God, indeed! We reduce the Deity to vulgar fractions. We place our own little ambitions and inclinations before a shrine, and label them "divine messages." We set up our Delphian tripod, and we are the priest and oracles. We despise the plans of Nature's Ruler and substitute our own. With our short sight we affect to take a comprehensive view of eternity. Our horizon is the universe. We spy on the Divine and try to surprise His secrets, or to sneak into His confidence by stealth. We make God the eternal ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... thy will is my power to believe. All's one gift: thou canst grant it moreover, as prompt to my prayer As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air. From thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread Sabaoth: I will?—the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair? This;—'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do! See the King—I would help him but ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... Whoe'er despise thee, let them know The time may come when they may go To some fish wife, and beg to know If they can buy The friendship o' their vanquished foe, ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... 6 A.M. all agog to be at my easel; blood ran through my veins in those days. And now I'm middle-aged and done for. Funny! Don't know how it has come about, nor what has made the music mute. (Mildly curious.) When did you begin to despise me, Alice? ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie

... wasting his time in dissipation, will see the day, if his useless life is not earlier blasted by vicious indulgences, when he will be glad to accept a situation from his fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects to despise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefits and ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... bello-agricultural settlers. Of course no one expects an old soldier to be of much use to a new country. He is usually a lazy settler. His habits of life are formed in another mould from that of the farm. He is apt to despise the hoe and the harrow and many even of the half-pay officers who came to hew out a home in the Canadian forest, never learned to cut down a tree or to hold a plough, though it may be admitted that they lived a useful life in their sons and ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... circumstances is natural, and how much is merely the interpolation of the perverted mind and heart of man. Art has become a second and stronger nature; she is a step-mother, whose crafty tenderness has taught us to despise the bountiful and wholesome ministrations of our true parent. It is only through the medium of the imagination that we can lessen those iron fetters, which we call truth and reality, and make ourselves even partially sensible ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... have a poor opinion of it. Ministers of the gospel have been known to despair of it. Socially ambitious matrons move out of it, or, if that is not possible, despise it. Real estate men can not get rich in it. And humorless folk sometimes have a hard, sad time ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... have none to love me. My Emir, whom I love truly, casts me off. The Brutestants, who brought me up, despise me. The ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... you are worse and worse. What do you mean by saying you despise Mr Welles? A man of excellent manners and faultless taste, of good family, with an estate of three thousand a year, and admirable prospects when his old uncle dies, who is nearly seventy now—why, Phoebe, you must be a perfect fool! ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... until Bob was certain to be gone. But no sooner did he reach the mill and begin wandering about the rooms full of machinery than it struck him it had been rather cowardly even to run away for a time. Bob would know he had not felt equal to facing him, and perhaps he would despise that as much as he was bound to be amused at the other. The lad had a sharp tussle with himself, and at last started back up the hill with the feelings of a most unwilling martyr going to ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield

... with the belief that if I could set myself straight this time, I would put my shoulder to the wheel and repay you somehow. I think I see myself as I am—now, and I know I shall not again try to retrieve my fortunes that way. You can't despise me more ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... let me tell you, sir, for the last time, that I don't like what you're going to do. To my mind, it's not a nice thing marrying a woman that you evidently despise, ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... home, but the great hall of the Carters had always stood for all that the word did mean to me, and now my heart turned toward it from the cold and unfriendly peoples I had been thrown amongst. For did not even Dejah Thoris despise me! I was a low creature, so low in fact that I was not even fit to polish the teeth of her grandmother's cat; and then my saving sense of humor came to my rescue, and laughing I turned into my silks and furs and slept upon the moon-haunted ground the ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... deal more," she went on urgently. "How could you present your wife, an ignorant Gaulish girl, to your relatives, the haughty dames of Carthage? They would look down upon me and despise me." ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... obliging, and friendly; but to represent them as timorous sycophants is absurd. They are ordinary tradesmen; they have a good opinion of themselves, and they hold their own with all classes of men. The women are sometimes insolent, overdressed creatures, who heartily despise their customers; but very often a landlord marries a lady who is as far as possible from being like the hostess ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... the account, is so utterly besotted as to give away a thing like her to the first man who asks for her, or Tarawali herself, telling the whole story of her own depreciation with such contemptuous and yet delicious candour to such a one as me? Aye! well indeed she might despise a husband so unutterably despicable; and yet his oblivion of his own honour is easier by far to understand than his blindness to the value of the thing he gave away. And would she tell me anything at all, unless she had come to the conclusion that I ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain

... the farther end there is a gate. At that gate yesterday I heard a dozen words—twenty or thirty, perhaps—that were of more value to me than Pactolus in full flood or all the money heaped up in Aladdin's cave. And now I am so puffed up with joy and pride that I am going still further to despise my wealth—my hoards and vast accumulations; and on Monday, if I can, I am going to get you that eleven hundred pounds, just as sure ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... thousands and am nothing if I don't have thousands, and pine away in anguish and distress if I cannot imagine that the whole world is keeping step with my pace and keeping in time with the swing of my baton. I can despise Mushroom Mike who lies down by his wife at night drunk as a fool, and to whom the name of Beethoven is an empty sound; Jason Philip Schimmelweis makes me laugh when he looks me in the face and says, I don't give ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... despise and repudiate the figures, phantasies, harmonies, and roulades of the fair muse of drollery, will you not pare your claws, so that you may never again scratch her white skin, all azure with veins, her amorous reins, her flanks of surpassing elegance, her feet that stay modestly in bed, her satin ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... changed him into a statue. For an instant he stood motionless and pale as death, then instinctively he laid his hand on his sword, but becoming conscious that he was lost if he remained an instant longer among these people, whom not one of his motions escaped, although they pretended to despise him too much to be aware of his presence, he dashed down the staircase and through the hall, upsetting two or three footmen who were in his way, hurried into the garden, ran across it at full speed, and regaining his room at the hotel, threw himself on the floor, where he rolled ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... faith! That will suffice. (Addressing himself to the cadets): I can despise your taunts 'Tis well known how I bear me in the war; At Bapaume, yesterday, they saw the rage With which I beat back the Count of Bucquoi; Assembling my own men, I fell on his, And charged three ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... residence, displaying a tawdry magnificence in his dress, sparkling with gold and silver, and with the inscription, "For the Men of Chili," set in his bonnet. It was a foolish taunt; but the poor cavaliers who were the object of it, made morbidly sensitive by their sufferings, had not the philosophy to despise it.7 ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... is that when men like Bryan and Billy Sunday accept good money we have a tendency secretly to despise them. ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... followed with a friendly eye because it is composed of my brothers in hope or grief, I have let pass by with as much indifference as if it were a flock of sheep. I am indignant with him who rolls in riches and despises the man poor in worldly wealth; and yet, vain of my trifling knowledge, I despise him who is poor in mind—I scorn the poverty of intellect as others do that of dress; I take credit for a gift which I did not bestow on myself, and turn the favor of fortune into a weapon with which ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... remarkable Actions he had performed in the service of his Country, it acquaints us only with the Manner of his Death, in which it was impossible for him to reap any Honour. The Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for want of Genius, shew an infinitely greater Taste of Antiquity and Politeness in their Buildings and Works of this Nature, than what we meet with in those of our own Country. The Monuments of their Admirals, which ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... below the dullest writers of ours, or any preceding age. Never did any author precipitate himself from such height of thought to so low expressions, as he often does. He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost every where two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one ere you despise the other." That the wit "of this age" is much more courtly, may, Dryden thinks, be easily proved by viewing the characters of gentlemen which were written in the last. For example—who do you think? Why, MERCUTIO. "Shakspeare showed the best of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... beauty, or have the skill and leisure to carry them out. I for my part should think it much the reverse of a hardship if I had to read my books and meet my friends in such a place; nor do I think I am better off to live in a vulgar stuccoed house crowded with upholstery that I despise, in all respects degrading to the mind and enervating to the body to live in, simply because I call it my ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... French capital I need not defend to any of my American readers. To all of you this consummation is simply a matter of ability. I heartily despise, as I always did, all mere pamperings of physical convenience. Still, for some who retain some sympathy with the Paul Flemming of aforetime, it may be worth while to mention the particular physical conveniencies my soul contemns. I inhabit, and have done so for eight years at least, a neat little ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... thing as genuine home life, with mutual love and sympathy existing among the different members of the family, was unknown in their pagan state. The men, and even boys, considered it a sign of courage and manliness to despise and shamefully treat their mothers, wives, or sisters. Christianity changed all this; and we were constant witnesses of the genuineness of the change wrought in the hearts and lives of this people by the preaching of the Gospel, by seeing how woman was uplifted from her degraded position ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... which you wou'd have me fear, Ills in possession still the greatest are: And my desires to such a height do rise, T' attain their ends, I shou'd all else despise. ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne

... England. That is another man who should have been arrested at dark, tried at midnight, and shot at daybreak. No man can serve God and Mammon. No man can be faithful to the United States who hates England and loves Germany. He must love the one and hate the other; he must hold to the one and despise the crimes of the other. No man can serve God and the Allies, Germany and the devil, at one and ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... whom I had been taught to hate and despise, behaved in exemplary style. When I dismissed their tyrants, the gendarmes, they immediately took me under their protection. I am sure anyone daring to insult me, or raise a hand against me, would have fared badly at the ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... the King of Sweden as a prince of no consideration, one that they might let go on and tire himself in Mecklenburg and thereabout, till they could find leisure to deal with him, and then might be crushed as they pleased; but 'tis never safe to despise an enemy, so this was not an enemy to be despised, as ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe

... there was little cordiality, for they differed alike in disposition and manner of thought. Ptylus was narrow and bigoted in his religion, precise in every observance of ceremonial; austere and haughty in manner, professing to despise all learning beyond that relating to religion, but secretly devoured with jealousy at the esteem in which Ameres was held by the court, and his reputation as one of the first engineers, astronomers and statesmen of Egypt. He had been one of the fiercest in ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... of Arabian learning," said Boabdil to himself, "what do they teach? to despise wealth and power, to hold the heart to be the true empire. This, then, is wisdom. Yet, if I follow these maxims, am I wise? alas! the whole world would call me a driveller and a madman. Thus is it ever; the wisdom of the Intellect fills us with precepts which it is the wisdom of Action to despise. ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... king can well despise it," replied the queen-mother. "Well, what are the flirtations which are alluded to? Do you mean ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... not courage enough to profess it: whose vanity made him always writing; yet Ills writings ought to have cured his vanity, as they were the most abject things in the world. Good Erasmus's honest mean was alternate time-serving. I never had thought much about him, and now heartily despise him. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... ask me if I despise, as great gossip, Emily's telling you that I am writing another tragedy! Why, my dear, I shouldn't consider it despicable gossip if Emily were to tell you what colored gloves I had on the last time she saw me. Do we not all three love each ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... its direction or its honors,—and you at once deprive them of one of the main incentives to manly character and patriotic devotion to the interests of the government; in a word, you stamp them as a degraded caste,—you teach them to despise themselves, and all others to despise them. Men are so constituted that they largely derive their ideas of their abilities and their possibilities from the settled judgments of their fellow-men, and especially from such as they read in the institutions ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... Who live by "A Profession," Need not despise the farmer, when He makes some slight digression Upon what they call etiquette; For in his heart he's civil; Though rough his hand, his brow asweat, His heart ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... he'll not respect her. Take her peculiar views. We know where she gets them. But he—he'll despise her for them, at the very time he's profiting by 'em,' some ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... your sealer hasn't half as much need of your academy-sort of navigation, as another man. More than half of our calling is luck; and all the best sealing stations I ever heard of, have been blundered on by some chap who has lost his way. I despise lunars, if the truth must be said; yet I like to go straight to my port of destination. Take a little sugar with your rum-and-water—we Vineyard ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... to look contemptuous. He did, in fact, despise handkerchiefs. The nice little girls in the Terrace had handkerchiefs, ostentatiously clean. He had seen them, and they filled his soul with loathing. Now he was ashamed. It seemed that even Frances expected him ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... understand when I say that this battle of mine has brought me closer to men and women, with no bitterness in my heart; has left me free, not to despise them, but to ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... loitering in the way to the kingdom of glory, be thou so wise as not to take example by them. Learn of no man farther than he followeth Christ. But look unto Jesus, who is not only the author and finisher of faith, but who did, for the joy that was set before him, endure the cross, despise the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of God. I say, look to no man to learn of him, any farther than he followeth Christ. "Be ye followers of me," saith Paul, "even as I am of Christ." Though he was an eminent man, yet his exhortation ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan

... beauty of one form is truly related to the beauty of another, and then if beauty in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and the same! And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; this will lead him on to consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form. So that ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... was a fight, when he need have no temptation towards anger or bitterness. Who could be angry with poor Brandon? Nor could he despise him. In his simple blind confidence and self-esteem there was an element of truth, of strength, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... Aquinas values earthly goods according to the end they are made to serve; when used for a good purpose, they have a mediately true value. Hence it was an error of the stoics to despise them under all circumstances. (Summa Theol. II, 2. Qu., 50, 3. 58, 2. 59, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... revolved around the great central orb of regal splendor, proud to belong to another world than that in which the plebeian millions toiled and suffered. At Versailles they attempted to ignore their own humanity, to forget their most pressing duties, and to despise the only pursuits which could have elevated their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... he cannot help it. His heart is on the side of God and truth. He loves righteousness, and, therefore, cannot desist from seeking to bring all beings to love it, too, although they hate and despise him for so doing. Jesus held out in this glorious love, even in the agonies of crucifixion. "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." His heart was set on bringing man back to God, and He went through with it. His soul did not ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth

... bit of it. I should despise myself forever if I once found myself letting my pulse beat half a second faster for one man ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... Lord returned, Death trodden 'neath His feet: this is my creed. Banish, my limbs, all terror; and believe That ye with Christ our God shall yet return; He beareth you and with Himself recalls. Laugh at the threats of sickness; scorn the blows Of fate; despise the horrors of the tomb; And fare ye where the ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

... experienced this night. I am not veiled, because the veil of corruption is taken from me, and I am not ashamed, because the deed of shame has been removed far from me, and I am cheerful and gay, and despise this deed of corruption and the joys of this wedding-feast, because I am invited to the true wedding-feast. I have not had intercourse with a husband, the end whereof is bitter repentance, because I am ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... been a musical people, and this may have been a germ of refinement in them. They are still much more simple and natural than the Liverpool people, who love the aristocracy, and whom they heartily despise. It is singular that the great Art-Exhibition should have come to pass in the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Firuzah and Firuzakh (De Sacy, Chrest. ii. 84) the Arab. forms. The stone is a favourite in the East where, as amongst the Russians (who affect to despise the Eastern origin of their blood to which they owe so much of its peculiar merit), it is supposed to act talisman against wounds and death in battle; and the Persians, who hold it to be a guard against the Evil Eye, are fond of inscribing ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... shudder," replied the lady, "but that must be overlooked. I am a devotee, and I should lose my reputation and all the world would despise me if I did not burn myself." Zadig having made her acknowledge that she burned herself to gain the good opinion of others and to gratify her own vanity, entertained her with a long discourse, calculated to make her a little in love with life, and even went so far as to inspire her ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... to God. It is good for many souls that she lived upon earth a little. There was nothing sentimental, visionary, or hysterical in her character. Nor, in giving her great heart with her pure soul to her Saviour, did she ever quite learn to despise the sweetness of earthly love. Not all a Saint. Yet the children of those women who most were swayed by her influence in youth are taught to hold her Saint as well as Martyr. And there ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... and therefore whilst you aim to vanquish those, both sides will suffer in the fray. Then there are many chances, too, of battle: 'tis hard to measure strength by appearances; the strong, indeed, may overcome the weak, the weak may also overcome the strong; the powerful champion may despise the snake, but how will he escape a wounded body? there are men whose natures bland and soft, seem suited for the company of women or of children, but when enlisted in the ranks, make perfect soldiers. ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... held her jewel—the man who had held out that vista of a home, and called her his good little Boer-wife to be. We know it was a mere bait designed to allure and dazzle—the Boer spy had caught many women with it before. Do you despise her and those others for the predominance of the primal instinct, the sacred passion for the inviolate hearth? Not so much they yearned for the man as for the roof-tree, whose roots are twined about the heart-strings of the natural woman, the spreading rafter-branches ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... be a great chance for you of course. But why should you despise us chaps for not doing ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... might find opportunity for the development of their better qualities, and the natural resources to which, in the long interval that must precede the achievement of true industrial independence by a people taught through centuries of barbarous traditions to despise labor, the Indian might look for subsistence, Congress in 1871 struck the severest blow that remained to be given to the Indian policy, in its fourth great feature,—that of the self-government of tribes according to their own laws and customs,—by declaring that "Hereafter no Indian ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker

... I'm not such a muff. I'm too much your son to love any woman long when I have learned to despise her. I came home to apologize, and to place myself under your orders, if you will forgive me, and find something ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade



Words linked to "Despise" :   despisal, hate, detest, disdain, scorn, despising, look down on



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