"Narrow-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arm, thrusting his hand deep into the long grass. "That sort—narrow-minded people—aren't all found in the country, though—not by a long shot. I've sometimes thought I'd take an office in town, but, when it comes to making the move, I can't bring myself to it. You see, I happen ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... chose their men chiefly from among the ranks of well-known agents, who have matriculated in the business, and are, as it were, as soldiers of the secret army, so indispensable to a government, in spite of the public orations of philanthropists or narrow-minded moralists. But the absolute confidence placed in two men of the temper of Peyrade and Corentin conveyed to them the right of employing perfect strangers, under the risk, moreover, of being responsible to the Minister in all serious cases. Peyrade's experience ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Chicago or Indianapolis whenever SHE took it into her head to go. Besides, it wasn't natural that they should deliberately put off having children. It wasn't what God and the country expected. After a year had passed and there were no symptoms of approaching motherhood, certain narrow-minded relatives began to blame Great Britain for the outrage and talked a great deal about a ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... depends. The fire that is not quenched is kindled by the boundless love of God no less than by his justice; and the very fierceness of its burning is, that it is the "wrath of the Lamb." Let us not be deceived by the vain fancies and the idle dreams which our fond wishes and narrow-minded infirmities are so apt to beget in us. Let us remember that the mercy of God is united with omniscience; and that it is to be found only in the bosom of Him whose empire extends to the utmost bounds of the universe, as well as throughout the ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... variety, for instance, which we saw in the Boer war—exultant over a small nation of farmers defending their homes, and whipped up deliberately by a commercial gang for their own purposes; or the narrow-minded, lying, canting variety which blinds a people to its own faults, and credits itself with all the moral virtues, while at the same time it gloats over every defamation of the enemy. There is a good deal of that variety in the present war. And it is easy to understand ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... And if I am wrong in this, that I believe the souls of men to be immortal, I willingly delude myself; nor do I desire that this mistake, in which I take pleasure, should be wrested from me as long as I live; but if I, when dead, shall have no consciousness, as some narrow-minded philosophers imagine, I do not fear lest dead philosophers should ridicule this my delusion. But if we are not destined to be immortal, yet it is a desirable thing for a man to expire at his fit time. For, as nature prescribes a boundary to all other things, so does she ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... true they finally became narrow-minded, intolerant, and almost misanthropic, as always happens when a small minority are fatally enclosed within an unfriendly community; but they were not so in the beginning. Their methods were mild ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... Don't talk nonsense! They all say it is only imagination, you know. Well, let it go at that! Let them have their own way about it! Haven't the ignorant, narrow-minded curs reviled me as an enemy of the people?—and haven't they been ready to tear the clothes off my ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination, or of any ideas but those of custom and interest on the narrowest scale." {24} But nothing could be more one-sided, and in effect untrue, than such a definition. Of course, there are narrow-minded men of business, as there are narrow-minded scientific men, literary men, and legislators; but there are also business men of large and comprehensive minds, capable of action on the very largest scale. As Burke said in his speech on the India Bill, he knew ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... trunk, so the best I was able to produce in the way of a crusher for Miss Higglesby-Browne and her fellow-passengers was a cool little white gown, which would shine at least by contrast with Miss Browne's severely utilitarian costume. White is becoming to my hair, which narrow-minded persons term red, but which has been known to cause the more discriminating to draw heavily on the dictionary for adjectives. My face is small and heart-shaped, with features strictly for use and not for ornament, but fortunately inconspicuous. As for my eyes, I think tawny quite the nicest word, ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... simple-minded, (p. 153) thoughtful, and upright Mr. Effingham can speedily be dismissed as merely a mild type of bore. Not so with his daughter Eve, and his cousin John Effingham. The latter plays the part of critic of his country and countrymen. It seems hardly possible that in this narrow-minded, disagreeable, and essentially vulgar character, Cooper could have fancied he was creating anything but a contemptible boor. The contrast between what is said of him, and what is said by him, almost reaches the comic. We ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... was even more notably the case in 1820. The Faubourg Saint-Germain might very easily have led and amused the middle classes in days when people's heads were turned with distinctions, and art and science were all the rage. But the narrow-minded leaders of a time of great intellectual progress all of them detested art and science. They had not even the wit to present religion in attractive colours, though they needed its support. While Lamartine, Lamennais, Montalembert, and other writers were putting new life and elevation ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... of any trollop in all Paris how Francois Villon loves. You thought me faithful! You thought that I especially preferred you to any other bed-fellow! Eh, I perceive that the credo of the Rue Saint Jacques is somewhat narrow-minded. For my part I find one woman much the same as another." And his voice shook, for he saw how pretty she was, saw how she suffered. But ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... deemed best for them; still it serves greatly to allay this feeling, to observe that the resistance which he experienced did not proceed from the people, but almost exclusively from the obstinate pride of a spoiled nobility, and the narrow-minded policy of an ignorant and jealous priesthood. The Russian nation itself is indeed, more than any other people, susceptible of deep impressions. Hence they are in general not averse to innovations; and were in Peter's ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... that I could make no possible objection to it. Much as I sympathised with Lady Glyde in other respects, I could not sympathise with her in her unjust prejudices against Count Fosco. I never before met with any lady of her rank and station who was so lamentably narrow-minded on the subject of foreigners. Neither her uncle's note nor Sir Percival's increasing impatience seemed to have the least effect on her. She still objected to staying a night in London, she still implored her husband not to write ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... with his mission. His viceroy was possessed by his loyalty as by a demon. In this way alone, that conduct which can never be palliated may at least be comprehended. It was Philip's enthusiasm to embody the wrath of God against heretics. It was Alva's enthusiasm to embody the wrath of Philip. Narrow-minded, isolated, seeing only that section of the world which was visible through the loop-hole of the fortress in which Nature had imprisoned him for life, placing his glory in unconditional obedience to his superior, questioning nothing, doubting nothing, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and Mrs. Esterbrook, who was herself a pattern in that way, found her harsh judgment insensibly relaxing, as she stepped to the counter where Pease stood, and asked quite amiably to see some of the best calicoes, just in from New-York. Pease, the narrow-minded idiot, thought this a good time to play off a smart trick on one of Smith's regular customers. So he paraded a large variety of goods before her, and took occasion to recommend a very pretty article, for which he charged a monstrous price, because he said it was a very ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... was able to understand, read, and speak a little, in a very short time—in fact, in a few days. Not only is he talented, but also endowed with a wonderful courage and independence, which superiority over the narrow-minded officials and intriguers who, for the most part, surround the King, has often led him into scrapes with His Majesty of Cho-sen. As he jocosely said to me, it was a marvel to him that his head was still on his shoulders. It was too good, and some one else might ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... thriven very fairly well. There are a great many of them, and as regards beauty, if not wit—of a limited kind indeed, but still wit—it is hard to say that the animal kingdom has the advantage. The views of plants are sadly narrow; all dissenters are narrow-minded; but within their own bounds they know the details of their business sufficiently well—as well as though they kept the most nicely- balanced system of accounts to show them their position. They are eaten, it is true; to eat them is our intolerant and bigoted way of trying to ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... it you came to inaugurate your system of insurance against railway accidents?" I asked Mr. Newnes, after a brief discussion on the ridiculous and narrow-minded behaviour of these worthy clerics. "It was in this way," he replied, as he brought himself to an anchor against the billiard-table, where he rested for a brief moment. "It was in this way: A woman wrote to me saying that her husband had been killed ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... another text, O man morose and narrow-minded! Come turn the page—I read the next, And then the next, and still I ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... destroys human life for wicked passion and wantonness is less criminal than the proudly learned, yet egotistical, and therefore densely ignorant scientist, who, seeking to crush the soul by his feeble, narrow-minded arguments, and deny its imperishable nature, dares to spread his poisonous and corroding doctrines of despair through the world, draining existence of all its brightness, and striving to erect barriers of ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... only natural that such a society should act as a powerful stimulus upon the vivid temperament of Voltaire, who had come to it with the bitter knowledge fresh in his mind of the medieval futility, the narrow-minded cynicism of his own country. Yet the book which was the result is in many ways a surprising one. It is almost as remarkable for what it does not say as for what it does. In the first place, Voltaire makes no attempt to give his readers an account of the outward ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... respectability. He was a success because he had conceived an object, and by sheer persistence attained it. In the eyes of Bursley people he was a very decent fellow, a steady fellow, a confirmed bachelor, a close un, a knowing customer, a curmudgeon, an excellent clerk, a narrow-minded ass, a good Wesleyan, a thrifty individual, and an intelligent burgess—according to the point of view. The lifelong operation of rigorous habit had sunk him into a groove as deep as the canon of some American river. His ideas on every ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... terribly jealous, the best of them. There isn't a girl living that really likes to have another girl praised by a man, or anything about her, I don't care who the man is. It's a fact, whether you believe it or not, or whether you respect it. I don't respect it myself. It's narrow-minded. I don't deny it: they are narrow-minded. All the same, we can't help ourselves. ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... Heideck, seriously, "but allow me to explain. Our German fatherland, in past centuries, was always the theatre of the battles of all the peoples of Europe. At that time few of the German princes were conscious of any German national feeling; they were the representatives of narrow-minded dynastic interests. Thus our German people grew up without the consciousness of a great and common fatherland. Our German self-consciousness is no older than Bismarck. But we have become large-hearted, ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... with great hardships, and is often executed by those worthy neither of confidence nor respect. I am sure that we shall all have to go through many humiliations before this matter is settled. I know, darling, that you will say I am making a rather narrow-minded fuss. But I do hate publicity, and if it doesn't kill Robert outright, it will have some shattering effect upon his character and his health. Really, I am not thinking so much of myself. Your own reckless bravery, however, would quail a little, I fancy, at the idea of having your most ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... Jarsie - New Jersey, in America, famous inter alia for its sandy beaches and high surf. Nig - Nigger. Nirwana - The Brahminical absorption into God. Nix,(Ger. Nichts) - Nothing. Nix cum raus - That I had not come out. No sardine - Not a narrow-minded, small-hearted fellow. Norate - To speak in an oration. Noth,(Ger.) - Need, dire extremity. Das war des Breitmann's Noth, -That was Breitmann's sore trial. Imitated from the last line of the Nibelungen Lied. Nun - Now. Nun endlich,(Ger.) - Now ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... wretched creatures confidently did so in accordance with the Roman Catholic form, and their lives were unceremoniously forfeited to the bigotry and ferocity of their unrelenting judges. Nor are either tolerance or humanity in any way advocated by the priests, who are generally as illiterate and narrow-minded as their flocks, and whose influence, which is very great, is generally employed for evil. The priesthood are divided into Archimandrite, Igumens (chiefs of monasteries), Monks, and Priests, all of whom are natives of the province, where their whole ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... bores them and won't get them through. This place rather gets on my nerves now. The Dons don't confide in me, and I don't see things from their angle, as my father says. I think you somehow managed to keep them reasonable; they are narrow-minded ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... from the Union, and the bad state of our people before it. I am entertained with his copious exaggeration upon that subject; but I am uneasy when people are by, who do not know him as well as I do, and may be apt to think him narrow-minded. [Footnote: It is remarkable that Dr Johnson read this gentle remonstrance, and took no notice of it to me.] I ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... a blockhead, worked for twenty-four years and produced nothing good, gave the world only scholars as untalented and as narrow-minded as himself. At night he secretly bound books—that was his true vocation: in that he was an artist and felt the joy of it. There came to him a bookbinder, who loved learning ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... analysis, formed on a particular aspect, such a Professor as I have imagined was betraying a want of philosophical depth, and an ignorance of what an University Teaching ought to be. He was no longer a teacher of liberal knowledge, but a narrow-minded bigot. While his doctrines professed to be conclusions formed upon an hypothesis or partial truth, they were undeniable; not so if they professed to give results in facts which he could grasp and take possession of. Granting, indeed, that a man's arm is moved by a simple ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... his manners are dearly bought. He said something about his cousin Mrs. Fordyce calling on me. Well, if she does, I shall perhaps have a glimpse at the beau monde. I wonder if all the men in society look as high-bred as he does? He is probably narrow-minded naturally, but he is one result of our scheme of civilization, which has its good as well as its bad points. Dear me! I certainly did not mean to make an analysis of Mr. Lawrence's character. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... the convicts. Judging from appearance as they sat in the assembly, a few were evidently hard cases, narrow-minded, sordid, ugly. To a number, dame Nature had dealt bountifully on the score of mind, they having noble foreheads, and bright, sparkling eyes, indicative of no small natural ability. One would think that some of these would have shone conspicuously ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... subjects, and few ladies would go through the bother of studying them. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions, as we may see by the comparatively large number of lady doctors, and by the fact that only the narrow-minded policy of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons prevented Miss Custance, who had studied at the Edinburgh New Veterinary College, from obtaining her diploma, to which she was fully entitled by her scientific attainments and practical ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... Hauptmann's typical themes and methods well. The whole of the first act is exposition. It is not, however, the exposition of antecedent actions or events, but wholly of character. The conditions of the play are entirely static. Kramer's greatness of soul broods over the whole act. Mrs. Kramer, the narrow-minded, nagging wife, and Arnold, the homely, wretched boy with a spark of genius, quail under it. Michaline, the brave, whole-hearted girl, stands among these, pitying and comprehending all. In the second act one of Arnold's sordid and piteous mistakes comes to light. An inn-keeper's daughter ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... that this man was a gentlemen and a man of honour. There was something about him, something dignified, reserved, a little sad, which won Anstice's usually jealously-withheld sympathy at once; and although he had hitherto pictured Major Carstairs as harsh, unforgiving, narrow-minded, inasmuch as he could not bring himself to believe his wife innocent of a degrading charge, now that he saw the man himself, traced the lines in his face which spoke of tragedy, noted the sadness in his eyes, and heard the gentle note in his voice as he spoke of Chloe, Anstice was ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... The simple, narrow-minded fellow did not know that the sense of justice and absolute necessity can move a human soul as deeply, urge it as strongly to resolves, as love itself, so from his standpoint he really ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... senses to reason. You of Osnome accuse me of being an ingrate and a traitor; you of Urvania consider me a soft-headed, sentimental weakling, who may safely be disregarded—all because I think the welfare of the numberless peoples of the Universe more important than your narrow-minded, stubborn, selfish vanity. Think what you please. If brute force is your only logic, know now that I can, and will, use brute force. Here are the seven disks," and he placed the bracelet ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... brief year of marriage came surging over her in a torrent—Catherine's narrow-minded opposition and disapproval, Hugh's own moodiness and irritability and, latterly, his not infrequent censure. There had been times when Diane—rebuked incessantly—had fancied she must be the Scarlet Woman herself, or ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... breathless interest was aroused as they went calmly over the side and remained down for more than an hour, sending up immense quantities of oysters. Of course liberal-minded men were made converts on the spot, and, equally of course, the narrow-minded remained "of the same opinion still." Nevertheless, that day's trial of Western ingenuity has borne much fruit, for we are now told, by the best authorities, that at the present time the diving-dress is very extensively used in sponge, pearl, ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... represent to-day in its books, and that the profits which they have yielded for the last twenty years with steadily increasing abundance to the State show the money to have been well invested. But how if these results have been achieved only by a short-sighted and narrow-minded policy which sacrificed the future ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... the more impatient, more aspiring, less sensuous art which belongs to Western civilisation may bear many a change and not die utterly; nay, may feed on its intellect alone for a season, and enduring the martyrdom of a grim time of ugliness, may live on, rebuking at once the narrow-minded pedant of science, and the luxurious tyrant of plutocracy, till change bring back the spring again, and it blossoms once more into pleasure. May ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... just impeached Aurelius Cotta, a senator, and the judices, from spite against him, had refused to convict. So he turned to the Italian land-owners, and became the mouthpiece of their selfishness, for a selfish or at best a narrow-minded end. The nobles must have, at heart, disliked his allies; but they cheered him in the Senate, and he succeeded in practically strangling the commission by procuring the transfer of its jurisdiction to the consuls. The consul for the time being immediately found a pretext for leaving Rome, and ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... stood by, intent upon the scene, a thought struck me, and I exclaimed, 'Allah, oh Allah, how inscrutable are thy designs! and how little ought man, narrow-minded, short-sighted man, ever to repine at thy decrees! Thou throwest into my path a lesson, which teaches me the way that I should go, and that assistance is ever at hand to those who will seek it; and, though given by ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... to be done, but instantly began to prepare his people for it. At the proper time, he gave notice that he was about to bring the question before them; and he accordingly did so. He had no idea of allowing a few narrow-minded, obstinate individuals to keep the blot any longer upon the records of his church. His conduct is honorable to his name, and to the name of the village. By wise, prudent, but persistent efforts, he gradually repaired every ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... States? To legislate from generous and enlarged principles, or to be a narrow, selfish seeker of his own glory? Do we want the generous philanthropist there—the man who loves justice for its own sake—the man of strong natural powers, rendered stronger and clearer by honest principles?—or the narrow-minded timeserver—the man who would sacrifice any thing, even the liberties of his country, for a selfish end—the legal oppressor of the widow and the fatherless? Need these questions be answered from honest, high-souled voters? No! let every man answer ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... thing. You say my point of view is narrow-minded, so I must be so, too. Narrow-minded! Very well—I must put an end to this. (Goes to the hall ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... was no more, but the memory of his ambition outlived him. His son Philip, equally emulous and unscrupulous, was too narrow-minded and subtly cautious to initiate an expensive enterprise encompassed by so many hazards—as materially unproductive as it was devoid of immediate political importance. Indeed the basis of the first expedition ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... is willing to serve me I will never part with him again." This incident shows that, if Sunderland had lived, he would have plotted against Walpole to the end, and would have stood in Walpole's way to the best of his power, and with all the unforgiving hostility of the narrow-minded and selfish man who has had services rendered him for which he ought to feel ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Returning home on a small pension, he fixed his abode in his native village, and sought to indulge his old enmity against the family that had injured him by every kind of annoyance in his power. The present baronet, a narrow-minded tyrannical man, afforded by his unpopularity good opportunity to old Ralph Somers to induce others to join him in his schemes of mischief and revenge. "The game," which was plentiful on the estate, and the preservation ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... round his neck and a fork in his hand, with which he stood some moments, until the uproar had subsided, picking his teeth. At length, when silence was obtained, he told them that he was surprised that the most polished and liberal nation in the world should behave themselves in such a brutal and narrow-minded manner. He threatened them that he would throw up his engagement immediately, and announce to all foreign parts that they were a horde of barbarians; then, abusing them for a few seconds in round terms, be retired, amidst the cheerings of the whole ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... things very neat inside; I often feel as if it was a cupboard, and I like to know exactly which shelf to go to for anything I want. Mums says, 'That's all very well so far as it goes, Jack, but don't stop short at that, or you will be in danger of growing narrow-minded ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... of a deceased and only son of Mrs Charlton; they were single, and lived with their grand-mother, whose fortune, which was considerable, they expected to share between them, and they waited with eagerness for the moment of appropriation; narrow-minded and rapacious, they wished to monopolize whatever she possessed, and thought themselves aggrieved by her smallest donations. Their chief employment was to keep from her all objects of distress, and in this ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... years after, but his immediate successor was of course the Vice-President, Tyler, chosen as an influential opponent of the last Democrat Presidents, but not because he agreed with the Whigs. Cultivated but narrow-minded, highly independent and wholly perverse, he satisfied no aspiration of the Whigs and paved the way effectually for the Democrat ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... doubt appearing in the aspect of supplanters of native talent to many hostile lookers-on. Men of their pursuits and modes of thought, aliens in an unknown country, perhaps sufficiently free of speech to alarm the narrow-minded, no great observers of ritual or ceremony, were too likely under any circumstances to attract the notice of the Inquisition in a place so wholly given over ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... An ignorant, a narrow-minded, or a stupid woman, cannot feel nor understand the rationality, the propriety, or the beauty of this relation; and she it is, that will be most likely to carry her measures by tormenting, when she cannot please, or by petulant complaints ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... the unnatural had been taught and worshipped; to those priests and monks who themselves most shamefully violated their teachings. To profess morality was to be a hypocrite; to reprobate others was to be narrow-minded. There was so much error mixed up with truth that truth had to share the discredit of error; so many innocent things had been denounced as sins that sinful ones at length ceased to be reprobated; people ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... like Lord John Russell before the passage of the Reform Bill, whom the people adored. He was a liberal, but not a radical. Of course he was not a favorite with the senators, who wished to perpetuate abuses. He was intensely disliked by Cato, a most excellent and honest man, but narrow-minded and conservative,—a sort of Duke of Wellington without his military abilities. The Senate would make no concessions, would part with no privileges, and submit to no changes. Like Lord Eldon, it "adhered to what was established, because ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... daughter of the preceding, was the wife of a magistrate, M. de Lachesnaye. She was a narrow-minded and avaricious woman, who affected ignorance of her father's real character, and the influence of her husband tended to increase her meanness. After the murder of President Grandmorin, when vague suspicions fell ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... is timid, narrow-minded, and opposed to reform, its method of opposition being corruption, and these characteristics are intensified in hereditary wealth. Wealth everywhere gives power to monopolize the face of the earth, and thus establish ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... on the farm, that would be enough of itself to make him stop where he is, and brave it out. Whereas you, sir, are known to be cautious and careful, and farseeing and discreet." He might have added: And cowardly and obstinate, and narrow-minded and inflated by stupid self-esteem. But respect for his employer had blindfolded the clerk's observation for many a long year past. If one man may be born with the heart of a lion, another man may be born with the mind of a mule. Dennis's ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... everyday virtue; and the most ordinary man is aware what a virtue becomes, when it is ordinary virtue no longer. Moral beauty, indeed, though it be of the rarest kind, never passes the comprehension of the most narrow-minded of men; and no act is so readily understood as the act that is truly sublime. We may admire a deed profoundly, perhaps, and yet not rise to its height; but it is imperative that we should not abide in the ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... your declining years you will not succeed in removing a hair's-breadth of the mountains, much less the whole vast mass of rock and soil." With a sigh the Simpleton of the North Mountain answered:—"Surely it is you who are narrow-minded and unreasonable. You are not to be compared with the widow's son, despite his puny strength. Though I myself must die, I shall leave my son behind me, and he his son. My grandson will beget sons in his turn, and those sons also will have ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... all very fine!" continued Miss Day, "but if five pounds are lost out of your purse, some one has taken them! Some one, therefore, whether servant or student, is a thief. I am not narrow-minded or prudish, but I confess I draw the ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... of devout and consequently narrow-minded and ignorant mothers, of sceptical and libertine fathers, they spend five or six years at school, where they consummate the loss of what may have escaped the baneful example ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... in search of the truth, while he was on the journey, he excited no little suspicion and distrust. The very thing that lends him charm to those who love to see intellectual movement and development allowed apostles of prejudice and good, but narrow-minded, men to think of him as insidious, leading his disciples on to conclusions to which he designed to bring them, while his purpose was veiled. But, says Froude, who tells us this, and was himself at Oxford in those early days, he was on the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... risk, perhaps. But I wished her to have a friend for life,—who would cherish her, who would do her more justice than a coarse and narrow-minded brother, that she has ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... eternally at war with the practical, with the narrow-minded, with the commonplace. Where there is no vision, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... elevated by the free suffrages of his countrymen, after having voluntarily laid down his military authority. This print cannot fail to be acceptable to every reader of the Albion, unless he shall be too narrow-minded to honor true nobleness and dignity of character in one who by force of circumstances once stood in a warlike relation to his country. Apropos of the 'Albion:' is our friend the Editor aware that 'The Evening before the Wedding,' published as original in a late issue, was translated ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... was not popular. In the cabinet the lord-chancellor was not an accession of strength. Although a very high Tory, he was not liked by the aristocracy; and although a very good lawyer, he was believed by the country to be narrow-minded and prejudiced. Lord John Manners was extremely unpopular, in consequence of his well-known couplet, expressive of the desire that learning and commerce should perish rather than that the power of the aristocracy should be diminished. The Duke of Northumberland was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... damnable parti pris! When did she ever see Kitty except with a jaundiced eye? "I wonder Kitty condescends to go to the woman's house! She must know that everything she does is seen there en noir. Pharisaical, narrow-minded Philistines!" ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... threat doesn't frighten me at all, deacon. After what you have said, I should refuse to remain in this church"—the deacon stepped forward eagerly—"were it not that I realise more than ever before how much you need me, how much you ignorant, narrow-minded creatures need to be taught the meaning of true Christianity." The ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... George III, obstinate, narrow-minded, and determined to make his own will felt in the choice of Ministers and the direction of affairs, had succeeded his grandfather in 1760. Too {35} astute to violate the fast-bound tradition of the British constitution that he must govern only through Ministers, ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... him." Mrs. Cliffe retired quite taciturnly, nothing in her face responding to this rallying, and he bent quickly over Marion. "I hope she hasn't been worrying you?" he asked. Concern for her?—it sounded just like concern for her—made his voice tremble. "That's why I hurried back. Women are so narrow-minded to their poor sisters who haven't been so fortunate. I thought she might have been making ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... from Cibber], Dogget, who had no objection to her merit, insisted that our affairs could never be upon a secure foundation if there was more than one sex admitted to the management of them." Beastly, unchivalrous, narrow-minded Dogget. Were you alive to-day, how the New Woman would champ with rage. "He therefore hop'd that if we offer'd Mrs. Oldfield a Carte Blanche instead of a share, she would not think herself slighted." And ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... quit all mental acquisition except what she may gather from her desultory reading, and, henceforth, her family and her immediate neighborhood absorb her whole soul under ordinary circumstances. The great majority of our countrywomen thus grow careworn, narrow-minded, self-absorbed. Now this is not right—it is not necessary. A woman's first, most important duty is in her home; but this need not clip the wings of her spirit, so that thought and affection cannot go out into the great world, and feel themselves ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... spent together before communion, and the directness and reverence with which both served God were combined with an utter abhorrence of all intolerance. Such qualities are generally misunderstood by the narrow-minded, who have only their own "shibboleths" to test all faith, and the one Church—whatever it may be—that they regard as "true." The queen and the prince rose above such distinctions; they shared the Catholicism of St. Paul, "Grace be with all who love ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... any way possible. Not only to help weak girls to grow strong, and timid girls to grow brave, and helpless girls to become useful, and lonely girls to find friends and social opportunities—it is for all these things, but for more—much more besides. It is to show selfish, narrow-minded girls—like that poor little Sadie—the beauty of unselfishness and generosity and thoughtful kindness to others. Don't you see that we have no right to refuse to give Sadie her chance just because she doesn't know any better ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... land, he had never so much as held a plow or plied a spade. His manner was that of the cow-boss, the lord of great herds, the claimant of empires of government grass-land. Poor as his house looked, he was in reality rich. Narrow-minded in respect to his own interests, he was well in advance of his neighbors on matters relating to the general welfare, a curious mixture of greed and generosity, as most men are, and though he had been made Supervisor ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... this figure is the most revolting mistake of the spirit and meaning of Bacchus. It looks drunken, brutal, and narrow-minded, and has an expression of dissoluteness the most revolting. The lower part of the figure is stiff, and the manner in which the shoulders are united to the breast, and the neck to the head, abundantly inharmonious. It is altogether without ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... to see Mr. Cumberland, who, it seems, has given evident marks of displeasure at his name whenever Mrs. Thrale has mentioned it. That poor man is so wonderfully narrow-minded in his authorship capacity, though otherwise good, humane and generous, that he changes countenance at either seeing or hearing of any writer whatsoever. Mrs. Thrale, with whom, this foible excepted, he is a great favourite, is so enraged with ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... of distant settlements bend in silence. "If you don't keep your colonies in a state of dependence," are the memorable words of Lord Stanley, in May, 1846, "of what use are they?" Such has ever been the narrow-minded and unstatesman-like policy of the British Government. And yet even the infant colonies of the empire, though fettered, cramped, and swathed like the young progeny of the Esquimaux, are useful still to the Mother Country. They afford ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... close touch with Jansenists. One Roman doctrine was adopted by Montagu, another by Thomdike, a third by Isaac Barrow. Bull received the thanks of the French clergy for his vindication of the early fathers against the most learned of the Jesuits. To an ignorant and narrow-minded man all these things pointed to one conclusion, the instability and want of solidity in the Anglican system. Then there was the astounding collapse of the French Huguenots. Lewis boasted that, in a few months, without real violence, he had effected 800,000 conversions. And James was ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... an honest, stupid existence. They are contented with their lot—because ignorant of any other. They are resentful of all innovations—because they are narrow-minded and full of deep ruts; they are guiltless of one clever thought; they sometimes stumble into somewhat of a clever action, but humbly deprecate the move, unconscious of having done a clever thing. Such men ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... the like again. Her doubtful character, her capacious mind, her unmethodical manners, were still badly suited to the nice precision of a country housewife; and as the prudent mistress of a family sneered at her pretensions, she, in her turn, scorned the narrow-minded mistress of ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... excitable dreamy minds in all ages; the same ideas that your father's old antagonist, Marsilio Ficino, pores over in the New Platonists; only your brother's passionate nature drove him to act out what other men write and talk about. And for Fra Girolamo, he is simply a narrow-minded monk, with a gift of preaching and infusing terror into the multitude. Any words or any voice would have shaken you at that moment. When your mind has had a little repose, you will judge of such things as you have ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... in the almost mechanically repeated formulas of propositions; and, when they have been there rediscovered, promulgating them, not as discoveries, but with authority as what men still profess to believe. The danger is, lest the formula itself be dismissed by clear-headed narrow-minded logicians, and the connotation fixed by them (in order that the denotation may be extended) in accordance with the present use of the term. Then, if the truths be at any time rediscovered, the prejudice is against them as novelties. The selfish ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... Duryodhana had (for some time) recourse to honourable behaviour. Formerly that wicked-minded king had placed himself under their protection. Why, therefore, O Sanjaya, hath Sweta who was devoted to Yudhishthira, been slain. Indeed, this narrow-minded prince, with all his prospects, hath been hurled to the nether regions by a number of wretches. Bhishma liked not the war, nor even did the preceptor.[349] Nor Kripa, nor Gandhari liked it, O Sanjaya, nor do I like it, nor Vasudeva of Vrishni's race, nor ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Moorfields Schools, who had just passed near where we stood, as they entered the church. One of us remarked in reference to the Tower close by, that it was the dower of the Lady Blanche, the daughter of John O'Gaunt, who, although occupying so eminently marked a place in history, was a man so narrow-minded that he would not allow any of his vassals to receive the least education as he held that it unfitted them for the duties of their station, and gave them ideas far above their lot in life. A curious speculation was hazarded by one of my friend's ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... vastly more land than there were people to work it. The first lease, therefore, was granted on highly advantageous terms to that Jason Newcome, whom I can just remember. He had two characters; the one, and the true, which set him down as a covetous, envious, narrow-minded provincial, who was full of cant and roguery. Some traditions exist among us of his having been detected in stealing timber, and in various other frauds. In public he is one of those virtuous and hard-working pioneers who have transmitted to ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... national temper of the Jews was intolerant, narrow-minded, and excluding. In Jesus, on the contrary, whether we regard his lessons or his example, we see not only benevolence, but benevolence the most enlarged and comprehensive. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the very point of the story is, that the person ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... congruous incongruity about her which set many people puzzling to find out her real character. Pompous persons and snobs detested her. Stupid or vapid people saw nothing in her, or saw merely that she dyed her hair and was dressed by Paquin. Narrow-minded people disapproved of her, and clever people considered her one of the most striking, if not one of the most agreeable personalities of the day. Women hardly ever understood her; but they respected any one who dressed as well as she did, and they had an undeclared admiration for a woman ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... politics were; of course, some shade of Whig or Liberal, if he was to be a bishop of Lord Melbourne's. The Ellesmeres were Tories: she a natural Conservative, and somewhat narrow-minded, though excellently conscientious; but if she prevented Arnold being named to the Queen, she certainly exercised an influence for which I do not think she was quite qualified. I think it not improbable that Arnold's orthodoxy may not have satisfied her, and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... narrow-minded as she was, could scarcely pronounce Primrose fit to do much in the educational world; Jasmine's, of course, was only a little giddy pate, and she required a vast amount of teaching herself; and pretty Daisy was still but a ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... in writing this work to show that the American Government has always construed people of African parentage to be aliens, not only when the Constitution was tortured by narrow-minded men to shield the cruel, murderous slave-holder in the possession of his human property, but even now, when the panoply of citizenship is, presumably, all-sufficient to insure to the late slave the enjoyment of full manhood rights as a ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Congress, but for the head of Seward his proposed subscription was multiplied twenty fold. It is noticeable that in this long list of "traitors" the name of Abraham Lincoln does not appear. It was Seward whom the South expected the Republican party would nominate for President, and in him it saw the narrow-minded, selfish, obstinate Abolitionist who hated them as intensely as they despised him. To dispossess the Southern mind of this feeling the Auburn statesman now endeavoured to show that if elected President he would not treat the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... with the customary gorgeous ritual the accession of a new Doge, seemed to Odo like the richly-inlaid frame of some Renaissance "triumph." But the splendid houses with their marble peristyles, and the painted villas in their orange-groves along the shore, housed a dull and narrow-minded society, content to amass wealth and play biribi under the eyes of their ancestral Vandykes, without any concern as to the questions agitating the world. A kind of fat commercial dulness, a lack of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... large, dark, hairy man, heavy-jawed, slant-browed, fierce-eyed. How I got off my horse I do not know. But it seemed that the next I knew I was clasping his hand with both of mine and crying. I would have embraced him, but he was ever a narrow-minded, suspicious man, and he drew away from me. Yet did I cling ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... of speech, convert him by force to his own state of error—as was the well-known custom of those intellectual gladiators, the Priests of the Catholic Faith. North, on his side, left Flaherty with regret. He had spent many a pleasant hour with him, and knew him for a narrow-minded, conscientious, yet laughter-loving creature, whose God was neither his belly nor his breviary, but sometimes in one place and sometimes in the other, according to the hour of the day, and the fasts appointed for due mortification of the flesh. "A man who would do Christian ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... he said, with his cold smile. "It would appear that you do not quite realize the situation. Women rarely realize situations in time. Our friend—your husband—has many of the English idiosyncrasies. He has all the narrow-minded notions of honor which obtain in that country. Added to this, I suspect him of possessing a truly Slavonic fire which he keeps under. 'A smouldering fire—' You know, madame, our French proverb. He is not the man to take a rational and broad-minded view of your little transaction with ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... substantiate a bluff or settle a dispute with some other outfit riding the high country. And because Gary imagined that Bailey of the Concho had deliberately sent such youngsters as Andy White and Young Pete to the Blue Mesa to settle the matter of a boundary line, Gary felt insulted. He was too narrow-minded to reason that Bailey could hardly know whom Houck of the T-Bar-T would send. Gary's ill-humor was not improved by the presence of Young Pete nor by Pete's pugnacious attitude. Strangely enough, Gary was nervous because he knew that Young Pete ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... dullest sovereign in Europe. Perhaps you know there was not much of him to begin with, as he was only a little pinch of a baby when he was born, so puny and weak the nurses said he wouldn't stay here long. He sat in their laps, and was coddled till six years old, when he was put under that scheming, narrow-minded bigot, Reverend Doctor Ayscough. And what do you suppose the reverend donkey set him to doing? Why, learning hymns, written by another reverend gentleman, Doctor Philip Doddridge. Very good religious hymns, no doubt, but not quite so attractive ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... No one imagines that business or politics diminishes or destroys the conjugal and paternal instinct in men. We do not look for dull or idle or indolent men as husbands for our daughters. Ignorant, narrow-minded men do not make the best husbands and fathers. Ignorant, narrow-minded women do not make the best wives and mothers. Mental discipline and intelligent responsibility add strength to the conjugal and parental sentiment alike in men ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... pitiful to hear narrow-minded bigots, pretending to be teachers and leaders of men, so cruelly remanding their own mothers, with the rest of womankind, to absolute subjection to the ordinary masculine type of humanity. I always regretted that the women themselves ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... densely ignorant man. He had not got into the way of learning his lessons when he was a child; he had not been made to learn his lessons when he was a child; and the dislike and contempt he had for his books as a boy accompanied him through an ignorant and a narrow-minded life. It was reason enough to this so unreasonable man not to buy and read a book that you had asked him to buy and read it. And so many of the books about him were either written, or printed, or published, or sold, or read, or praised ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... as I owed the debt. After all, we belong to that old-fashioned, rather narrow-minded class of New England people to whom debt of any kind is the source of something like anguish. At least," she corrected herself, "I belong to ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... have suppressed bonae literae.' 'Here we are still fighting with the protectors of the old ignorance'; cannot Wolsey persuade the Pope to stop it here? All that appertains to ancient and cultured literature is called 'poetry' by those narrow-minded fellows. By that word they indicate everything that savours of a more elegant doctrine, that is to say all that they have not learned themselves. All the tumult, the whole tragedy—under these terms he usually refers to ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... of life, daily thrift, and a rank above the lowest. I longed to be acquainted with them, in order to investigate what manner of folks they were, what sort of households they kept, their politics, their religion, their tastes, and whether they were as narrow-minded as their betters. There can be very little doubt of it: an Englishman is English, in whatever rank of life, though no more intensely so, I should imagine, as an artisan or petty shopkeeper, than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... You have even debased the noblest and most beneficial art that ever engaged the study of mankind, which cannot be too much cultivated, and too little restrained, in seeking to limit the practice of it to a set of narrow-minded, illiberal wretches, who, like the lowest handicraftsmen, claim the exclusive privileges of a corporation. Had you doubted my ability, you ought to have satisfied yourself in a manner consistent with decency and candour; but your behaviour on this occasion is such a malicious outrage upon good ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... friend, you are too narrow-minded there,—you make a mistake: taste must come of itself, from much playing and with years. Your Cecilia played the two new waltzes, and the Nocturne of Chopin, and Beethoven's trio very nicely. But then that was all drilled into her: we could ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... I shall not attend your meeting; I have an engagement out of town and I shall keep it. I do not recognize you as capable of judging me. You evidently regard me as a weak sentimentalist, misled by a maudlin philosophy. I arraign you as narrow-minded blockheads, who would like to be useful to a great and good cause but don't know how. Your attempt to base a great and enduring party on the hate and wrath engendered by a bloody civil war is as though you should plant a colony on an iceberg which had somehow ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... to be inevitable, and when he himself had so far bent as to study the literature he despised, the long and active public life of Cato is in complete harmony. He is the perfect type of an old Roman. Hard, shrewd, niggardly, and narrow-minded, he was honest to the core, unsparing of himself as of others, scorning every kind of luxury, and of inflexible moral rectitude. He had no respect for birth, rank, fortune, or talent; his praise was bestowed solely on personal merit. He himself ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... that "God permitted the act, to show the morality of kings;" and it is twenty-four years since down-trodden Poland made the greatest—not the last—manifestation of her imperishable vitality, which the cabinets of Europe were either too narrow-minded to understand, or too corrupt to appreciate. Eighty-one years of still unretributed crime, and twenty-four years of misery and exile! It is a long time to suffer, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... There is a good deal of prejudice against the "chuck-and-chance-it" style among the advocates of the dry-fly method of fishing. That a man who fishes with a floating fly should be set down as a better sportsman than one who allows his fly to sink is, to my thinking, a narrow-minded argument, and one, moreover, that is not borne out by facts. True, in some clear chalk streams the fish can only be killed with the dry fly; and in such cases it is unsportsmanlike to thrash the water—in the first place, ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... by the kind old man as we sat waiting in one of the offices to see the principal, to whom he was well known. One so often reads in stories of roguish, or hard-hearted, or narrow-minded head-clerks, that it is pleasant to be able to record from my own experience an example of a very different character. I believe that clerks are often made hard-hearted or selfish, if not rogues, by the unsympathising or supercilious way in which they ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... One, named "Liddy," "a narrow-minded soul, a simple maiden from innocent Eutopia; she cannot grasp an idea." And yet she was very beautiful, and if she were "petrified," every critic would pronounce her perfection. The boy sighs with that ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... ago he had written it and foolishly attempted to teach its philosophy to a class of undergraduates. The newspapers, he remembered, had made a great deal of it at the time. Tongues had been set to wagging. Narrow-minded townsfolk, failing to understand either his philosophy or his aim, but seeing in him another exponent of some anti-rational cult, had forced ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... British Government had offered for Franklin's rescue; we, I am sorry to say, had acted differently. America had plucked a rose from our brows; but in such generous enterprise, we for the most part felt that no narrow-minded national prejudices could enter, and I gloried in the thought that the men who had so nobly borne themselves, as well as he, the princely merchant who had done his best to assist the widow and orphan to recover those for whom they had so long hoped and wept, were men who ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... resemblance for resemblance, in this Liszt-Wagner Verhaeltniss. Wagner owed everything to Liszt—from money to his wife, success, and art. A wonderful white soul was Franz Liszt. And he is only coming into his kingdom as a composer. Poor, petty, narrow-minded humanity could not realize that because a man was a pianist among pianists, he might be a composer among composers. I made the error myself. I, too, thought that the velvet touch of Thalberg was more admirable ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... is narrow-minded, or, perhaps it would be more correct to say, being narrow-minded he is Low Church. He is an indifferent scholar, and occupies himself with his religious fancies and those of his flock. He can reign supreme there. He is not troubled ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... translation of my novels into the Italian language—has long since informed you, that there are certain important social topics which are held to be forbidden to the English novelist (no matter how seriously and how delicately he may treat them), by a narrow-minded minority of readers, and by the critics who flatter their prejudices. You also know, having done me the honor to read my books, that I respect my art far too sincerely to permit limits to be wantonly assigned to it, which are imposed in no other civilized country ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... you all do. It does seem a little hard." Here Landis' manner grew important. Her head was raised, and her lips curled. "But those of us who have a high sense of honor would not care to room with Miss O'Day. I hope I am not narrow-minded, but I feel that all my finer instincts ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... Rixton. He had won his first step in the parish as a wrestler, but to contend against firmly rooted opinions was a far more difficult undertaking. It would be all the harder if he should find Strong a stubborn, narrow-minded person, unreasonable, and firmly-settled ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... stout, unsympathetic-looking young woman, with the knit of obstinacy in her forehead; she had that stamp of "hardness" on her face which is the rule amongst English and the exception amongst Australian women. We of Solong thought her hard, selfish and narrow-minded, and paltry; later on we thought she was a "bit touched;" but local people ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... Morrison, by more disinterested admiration of Judith's good points, she was quite rewarded by the quickness with which he championed her against her own depreciation. "I've always noticed," he said meditatively, slowly taking a sip from his wine-glass, "that nobody can be single-minded who isn't narrow-minded; and I think it likely that people who aren't so cocksure what they want to do with themselves, hesitate because they have a great deal more to do with. A nature rich in fine and complex possibilities takes more time to dispose of itself, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... related to the thought and the action of the time. So insistent was Page on this programme that his pages were not "closed" until a week before the day of issue. Though the Forum dealt constantly in controversial subjects it never did so in a narrow-minded spirit; it was always ready to hear both sides of a question and the magazine "debate," in which opposing writers handled vigorously the same theme, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Such infidels as these are claimed to have blessed the world. All liberal minds ought to catch their spirit and administer every possible blessing to struggling humanity. But there is a species of narrow-minded infidelity which must be shunned; and it is the only kind of which we need to forebode any evil. "The only infidelity to be feared," says Mr. Frothingham, "the only real infidelity which is a sin in the sight of God, is a disbelief in the primary faculties ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... things lightly too, which have serious meanings of a very beautiful kind. He is a moral casuist, the opposite of the Christian, stoical, ready-made, and worldly system of morals. Do you remember one little remark, or rather maxim of his, which might do some good to the common, narrow-minded conceptions of love,—'Bocca baciata non perde ventura; anzi rinnouva, come fa la luna'?" Dante and Petrarch remained the objects of his lasting admiration, though the cruel Christianity of the "Inferno" seemed to him an ineradicable ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... came under the influence of a priest and a religious enthusiast called Master Conrad, previously known to her, who was an ardent, though a narrow-minded believer in the Catholic faith; and Conrad encouraged her in the severe rites of self-denial that she practised. At times he punished her with the lash and at last he brought her completely under the domination of his will. But she yielded so readily to all penances and voluntary inflictions of sufferings ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... interesting as showing that, strict Conservative though he was, he was not in religious matters narrow-minded; he held his own opinions strongly, but he would never condemn those of other people. He saw "good in everything," and there was but little exaggeration, be it said in all reverence, in the phrase which an old friend of his used in ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... she had almost flown into a passion. "How can you say such things? Do you think I am narrow-minded? Whether it is my own child or a child I have adopted is quite immaterial, as it becomes mine through its training. I will train it in my own way. That it is of your own flesh and blood has nothing to do with it. Am I only to love a ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... and discipline in the shop; a quiet, diffident, secretive, tedious, and obstinate youngish man, absolutely faithful, absolutely efficient in his sphere; without brilliance, without distinction; perhaps rather little-minded, certainly narrow-minded; but what a force in the shop! The shop was inconceivable without Mr. Povey. He was under twenty and not out of his apprenticeship when Mr. Baines had been struck down, and he had at once proved his worth. Of the assistants, he alone slept in the house. His bedroom was next to that ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... for it?" said Schmielke, in a tone of excuse. "She must be twenty years younger than he, and Mr. Tiralla has never been an Adonis. Between ourselves I can quite understand that a woman like the fair Sophia favours somebody else. You are still very narrow-minded in this part of the world, gentlemen. I'm only sorry that I'm not ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... grandmother's interest regularly, but were not pleasant people to speak to. They had been part owners with her father in the Dolphin, the ship in which he had been wrecked. Having neglected to insure her they had lost a good deal of money by the circumstance, and being especially narrow-minded entertained an ill feeling even for poor Jessie herself, which they exhibited whenever she went to their office. She had been to a good school in Exeter, but the lady who kept it, and who would have been of great assistance, was dead, and ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston
... was sixteen, and, as he told himself, someone who was sixteen knew more about love than someone who was, say, forty-two. Like his father, for instance. A whole lot more probably. When you were forty-two, you got narrow-minded and nervous and angry. You said this is this, and that is that, and there is nothing else. When someone thought and felt and talked that way, George thought bitterly, there was not enough room inside that person to know what it was ...
— George Loves Gistla • James McKimmey
... Whitney's cotton-gin. He was possessed of a handsome person and pleasing manners, and was a general favourite in the factory. Nevertheless, as this young man was in the eye of the law not a man, but a thing, all these superior qualifications were subject to the control of a vulgar, narrow-minded, tyrannical master. This same gentleman, having heard of the fame of George's invention, took a ride over to the factory, to see what this intelligent chattel had been about. He was received with great enthusiasm by the employer, who congratulated him on possessing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... save in advance,' agreed Eva; but on the way home she observed to her friend Amy, 'Those two Wharton girls are as narrow-minded as possible, and I am going to have a proper suite in my room, whatever they say; I should never feel comfortable unless I had looked at myself in a long glass ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... others. Columbus would have excluded every other human being from participating in his thoughts, and arrogated to himself alone the right to navigate westerly. This was the difference between the broad-minded philosopher and the narrow-minded sailor who by accident had stumbled upon a theory. The philosopher said, "It belongs to the world!" The ignorant ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... New York and being influenced by Mr. Southard, I think. You see the Southards knew all about me and my affairs. Long ago Mr. Southard began educating David to his point of view in regard to the stage. David is neither narrow-minded nor obstinate, so it has all come right for me," she ended happily. Then she added, as her hand found Grace's. "I wish ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... foundations of public order, and from causing or suffering the principles of property to be subverted, they will, in the ruin of their country, leave a melancholy and lasting monument of the effect of preposterous politics, and presumptuous, short-sighted, narrow-minded wisdom. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... expect when a Christian preacher could use such language about a petition breathing the very soul of humanity? Happily, the true human spirit is encroaching on that arrogant and narrow-minded form of ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... legislation! My feeling of disgust for the arbitrary, narrow-minded, parochial parasite of the law-jobber was tempered by the generosity of the native, and this is only one instance out of hundreds I have experienced of the extreme kindness and courtesy of strangers ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... its own reward," Tom Bently was saying lightly, "for, don't you see, the people who practice it are too narrow-minded ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... friendships among men of his own intellectual caliber. In the future he might decide otherwise. For the present, at least, he meant to find whatever peace and comfort he could among the simple people immediately around him—meagrely educated, often strangely narrow-minded, but possessing qualities which every day aroused ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... field of human knowledge of nature by these results is patent to everyone. They are destined every year increasingly to manifest their transforming influence in all departments of knowledge, the more the conviction of their irrefragable truth forces its way. And it is only the ignorant or narrow-minded who can now doubt their truth. If, indeed, here and there, one of the older naturalists still disputes, the foundation on which they rest, or demands proofs which are wanting (as happened a few weeks ago on the part of a famous German ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... God, sir, we can't sit quietly under the assault of these narrow-minded bigots. You must give the lie to ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... fifty-three!' Susan positively turned pea-green. 'Mrs. Dr. dear,' she said, 'when I was young, if decent people were so unfortunate as to get—those insects—they kept it a secret if possible. I do not want to be narrow-minded, Mrs. Dr. dear, but I still think it is better not ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... towards this celebrated statesman, this eminent orator, this mediocre writer, this narrow-minded man, an indefinable sentiment of admiration, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... purpose only—to be consumed by those who believed in the body and blood of Christ. To pour it back again into the bottle of unconsecrated wine—that would be sacrilege! Why had Mr. Windle been so narrow-minded about his foolish pledge of total abstinence? How foolish some good people were! How bigoted! He felt assured that Mr. Windle was a good man; but again, there was no doubt about his being narrow-minded. Ah, why did he not ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... wise for humanity to do so. There is a prosperity other than material. Some solitary artist or poet, drawing inspiration from scenes like this, might have contributed more to the happiness of mankind than a legion of narrow-minded, grimy ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... penetration, my captain, but our opinions do not clash. The Frate, wanting to be master, and to carry out his projects against the Pope, requires the lever of a foreign power, and requires Florence as a fulcrum. I used to think him a narrow-minded bigot, but now, I think him a shrewd ambitious man who knows what he is aiming at, and directs his aim as skilfully as you direct a ball when you are ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... than previous conditions to raise men in the scale of civilization—to bring them into closer relations—to enlarge and multiply their ideas—to quicken their moral and social impulses—to rub off the harsh angles of a selfish, narrow-minded individualism, and, in a word, to advance them yet more toward that degree of virtue and intelligence which is absolutely indispensable to the union of large masses of men into a nation, whose political system shall at once unite the utmost freedom for each individual with the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... her head for a minute. "It is true I did not love her," she said, "in the past, but I have changed my views. I have been narrow-minded, and small, and silly. She herself has opened my eyes. I cannot tell you more now. Maggie will come down, and will be able to go on with her lessons just as usual this afternoon; but I want a day off, and I ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... remembered that some time ago, three or four years back at least, some disagreeable person had expressed indignation that an ex-German, one only just naturalised, should be elected to such a body. She had thought the speaker narrow-minded and ill-natured. An infusion of German thoroughness and thrift would do the City Council good, and perhaps keep down ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes |
