"Low-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... destroyed. He asked himself, and his heart became heavy at the thought, whether, in course of time, he also would undergo this stultification, this moral depression, which ends by lowering us to the level of the low-minded people ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... cherish, respect and even adore his wife, and yet her presence and touch may not appeal to his senses, nor excite his appetite or erection; while some low-minded woman will produce in him an irresistible sensual attraction, even when he experiences neither esteem nor love for her. In such cases sexual appetite is in more or less radical opposition to love. Such extreme phenomena are not rare, but hardly ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... him in. The appearance of the low-minded cove was hailed with disapprobation from all sides, on account of his having brought his corkscrew with him. He ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... etenim, si haec non est, nulla potest homini esse ad hominem naturae adjunctio: qua sublata vitae societas tollitur. Valete Patron (Rousseau) et tui condiscipuli (l'Assemblee National).—Cic. Ep. ad Atticum.), they erect statues to a wild, ferocious, low-minded, hard-hearted father, of fine general feelings; a lover of his kind, but a hater of his kindred. Your masters reject the duties of his vulgar relation, as contrary to liberty; as not founded in the social compact; and not ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... curse of the cleanly homes in that country. There was much to shock the ears and eyes of children in the life of the farm. It was a fashion among the help to decorate their speech with profanity for the mere sound of it' and the foul mouthings of low-minded men spread like ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... great many much better. But, as I was saying, I do not think I would take any steps at present. The man Dockwrath is a vulgar, low-minded, revengeful fellow; and I would endeavour ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... aright-he "truly" acts. There is th' "impassioned" doer. He that works From impulse, seeking profit, rude and bold To overcome, unchastened; slave by turns Of sorrow and of joy: of Rajas he! And there be evil doers; loose of heart, Low-minded, stubborn, fraudulent, remiss, Dull, slow, ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... a wretched mask of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the social glass, and, in short, all the valuable and time-honoured institutions justly dear to our common humanity and especially to republicans, are made the butt of coarse and senseless ribaldry by this low-minded scribbler. It is time that the respectable and religious portion of our community should be aroused to the alarming inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansculottism, and infidelity. It is a fearful proof of the wide-spread nature of this contagion, that these secret stabs at religion and ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... still astonished at the passion with which my brave and pure cousin loved this cowardly and low-minded man, though it is but in accordance with that strange law which draws the extremes of nature together. As she heard the Emperor's stern reply the last sign of colour faded from her pale face, and her eyes were dimmed with despairing tears, which gleamed upon her white cheeks like ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the subject in debate from the discussion of principles to the miserable subterfuge of imputing bad motives as a sufficient answer to good arguments; but still many of these dignified gentlemen smiled approval on the efforts of the low-minded, small-minded caucus-speakers of their party, when they declared that Webster's logic was unworthy of consideration, because he was bought by the Bank, or bought by the manufacturers of Massachusetts, or bought by some other combination ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... contractors who "scamp," manufacturers who give us shoddy instead of wool, "dressing" instead of cotton, cast-iron tools instead of steel, needles without eyes, razors made only "to sell," and swindled fabrics in many shapes. But these we must hold to be the exceptional cases, of low-minded and grasping men, who, though they may gain wealth which they probably cannot enjoy, will never gain an honest character, nor secure that without which wealth is nothing—a heart at peace. "The rogue cozened not me, but his own conscience," said Bishop Latimer of a cutler who made him pay twopence ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... us the idea of God. Much earnest, patient, laborious thought is required to see this Infinite Being as He is, to rise above the low, gross notions of the Divinity, which rush in upon us from our passions, from our selfish partialities, and from the low-minded world around us. There is one view of God particularly suited to elevate us. I mean the view of Him as the "Father of our spirits;" as having created us with great powers to grow up to perfection; as having ordained all outward things to minister to the progress of the soul; as always ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... that great queens owed their power to the association and advice of the noble and high-minded men who surrounded them; and, further, that the poor showing made by many kings, was due to the association and vice of the base and low-minded ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... debated) nothing cou'd withstand or endanger them. But we break our Strength, by crumbling into mean Divisions, petty Interests and private Views; and while every one's Charity begins at home, the Publick is beggar'd and no one relieves it. The general Welfare is quite over-look'd, while low-minded Wretches are taking Care of their particular Advantages; and I have ever observ'd that when Places and Pensions and Preferments were settled, the real Business of the Nation and its Parties, was thought ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... detect selfishness in all its various forms and foldings; to put pride and vanity to shame; to prove that vulgarity belongs more to character than condition, and that all who make the world their standard are essentially vulgar and low-minded, however noble their exterior or refined their manners may be, and that true dignity and elevation belong only to those to whom Milton's lines ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... indescribable airs, to make others feel the pain of mortification. They meet as if to fight the boundaries of their rank and fashion, and the less definite and perceptible is the line which divides them, the more punctilious is their pride. It is a great mistake to suppose that this low-minded folly is peculiar to people of rank; it ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... the bean-stalk when it climbs the pole. Yet a bean-stalk will sometimes show a kind of perversity or depravity that looks like the result of deliberate choice. Each season, among my dozen or more hills of pole-beans, there are usually two or three low-minded plants that will not climb the poles, but go groveling upon the ground, wandering off among the potato-vines or cucumbers, departing utterly from the traditions of their race, becoming shiftless and vagrant. When I lift ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... own resources which should distinguish genius, and the dangerous ambition to get sponsors and vouchers for it in persons of rank and fashion. The affectation of the society of lords is as mean and low-minded as the love of that of cobblers and tapsters. It is that cobblers and tapsters may admire, that we wish to be seen in the company ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... more if I had had the lady just mentioned by my side. The nearest approach to her was a Unitarian minister from Boston, who very soon demanded a separation, for incompatibility of temper. He told me I was low-minded, immoral, a devotee of 'art for art'—whatever that is: all of which greatly afflicted me, for he was really a sweet little fellow. But shortly afterwards I met an Englishman, with whom I struck up an acquaintance which at first seemed to promise well—a ...
— The American • Henry James
... Heaven, it shall be tied, and she shall die a Lovelace!'—Tell her so, if thou wilt: but, at the same time, tell her that I have no view to her fortune; and that I will solemnly resign that, and all pretensions to it, in whose favour she pleases, if she resign life issueless.—I am not so low-minded a wretch, as to be guilty of any sordid views to her fortune.—Let her judge for herself, then, whether it be not for her honour rather to leave this world a Lovelace than ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... admirer of the Revolution—excluded, by my sex, from participating in public affairs, yet taking delight in conversing of them—I despised the first calumnies circulated respecting me, attributing them to the envy felt by the ignorant and low-minded at what they were pleased to style my elevated position, but to which I infinitely preferred the peaceful obscurity in which I had passed so ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... were these powers directed? Had she any clear view of the demands and opportunities of life, any definite plan, any high, pure purpose? This is, after all, the test question, which detects the low-born and low-minded wearer of ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... you the wretched specimens of style, etc." Incautious and very low-minded! [Lays them on the table. Aloud.] At any rate these unimportant notes are better off in my paper-basket than in any one else's. And what, sir, induces you ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... (Being possess'd with a religious feare) To slip occasion, when they might erect Hornes on a tradesman's noddle, or neglect The violation of a virgin's bed With promise to requite her maiden-head. Basely low-minded we esteeme that man Who cannot swagger well, or (if he can) Who doth not with implacable desire, Follow revenge with a consuming fire. Extortious rascals, when they are alone, Bethinke how closely they have pick'd each bone, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... most hollow cheat which Sir Walter Scott and other book-men have played off on some weak-headed young men of our low-minded generation. There is no doubt but a man seated amongst ten thousand cavalry, who shake the earth as they charge, ought to feel himself swell, as part of an avalanche or mighty Niagara,—as part of the mightiest visible force which feeble ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... Admiral—a man without a heart. I should shock you if I were to tell you what I have endured from my brother. My father's wealth was divided equally between us. His own share he ran through in five years, and he has tried since then by every trick of a cunning, low-minded man, by base cajolery, by legal quibbles, by brutal intimidation, to juggle me out of my share as well. There is no villainy of which the man is not capable. Oh, I know my brother Jeremiah. I know him and I am prepared ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... unconscious that the pouring-out was over. He started, which he had not done before, at the voice of Master Silas; but soon recovered his complacency, and smiled with much serenity at being called low-minded varlet. ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... the haughtiest of princesses, though the most austere of matrons, she forgot in her thirst for revenge both the dignity of her race and the purity of her character, and condescended to flatter the lowborn and low-minded concubine, who, having acquired influence by prostituting herself, retained it by prostituting others. Maria Theresa actually wrote with her own hand a note, full of expressions of esteem and friendship to her dear cousin, the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... idea that we were an ambitious, encroaching people, Mr. Adams replied: "I doubt if we should give ourselves any concern about it. Great Britain, who had been vilifying us for twenty years as a low-minded nation, with no generous ambition, no God but gold, had now changed her tune, and was endeavoring to alarm the world at the gigantic grasp of our ambition. Spain and all Europe were endeavoring to do the same; being startled at first by our acquisition ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... personates the Mexican chief, paces up and down, and with what an eye of calm dignity the principal tragedian gazes on the crowd below, or converses confidentially with the harlequin! The four clowns, who are engaged in a mock broadsword combat, may be all very well for the low-minded holiday-makers; but these are the people for the reflective portion of the community. They look so noble in those Roman dresses, with their yellow legs and arms, long black curly heads, bushy eyebrows, and scowl expressive of assassination, and vengeance, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... turn out instead to be not worth two-pence-halfpenny in the world. Nor were words wanting to add dire Insult to this astounding Injury; for Madam Taffetas, now Dangerous, as I groaningly remembered, must needs call me Mercenary Rascal, Shuffling Pickthank, Low-minded Fortune-hunter, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... letters to Lord Dorchester, he went into Canada, and through a series of vicissitudes, finally settled at these falls about thirty years ago. In 1814, his property was plundered by the Americans, through the false representations of some low-minded persons, his neighbors and opponents in trade, with no more patriotism than he; in consequence of which he returned to Europe, and sold his patrimonial estate at "Craige," in the north of Ireland, within a short distance of the Giant's ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... China"? Or this about his Concord neighbors, as he looks down upon them from a near-by hill: "On whatever side I look off, I am reminded of the mean and narrow-minded men whom I have lately met there. What can be uglier than a country occupied by grovelling, coarse, and low-minded men?—no scenery can redeem it. Hornets, hyenas, and baboons are not so great a curse to a country as men of a similar character." Tried by his ideal standards, his neighbors and his countrymen generally were, of course, found wanting, yet ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... from the standpoint of our daily life, but also from that of the most transcendental conception of the Universal Principle—is evidenced by the mere fact that anything exists at all. If the highest ideal is that of utter apathy, then the Creative Power of the universe must be extremely low-minded; and all that we have hitherto been accustomed to look upon as the marvellous order and beauty of creation, is nothing but a display of vulgarity and ignorance ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Fairfeather smiled kindly on him, and in the course of the summer they were married, with a grand wedding feast, at which the whole village danced, except Spare, who was not invited, because the bride said he was low-minded, and his brother thought he was ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... who think of the farm as a sweetly ideal place in which to bring up a boy, all this may be disturbing—but the truth is, low-minded men are low-minded everywhere, and farm hands are often creatures with enormous appetites and small remorse, men on whom the beauty of nature ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... advantage of his position, whenever the captain's eye was not upon him, to bully those with whom he had previously associated on an equality. He was "very much above them now," he thought, and showed it as it was in the nature only of a low-minded ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Famusoffs, and Tchatsky returns to the room to meet with an amazing reception. Eventually, he discovers that he is supposed to be mad, and that he is indebted to Sophia for the origin of the lie; also, that she is making rendezvous with the low-minded, flippant Moltchalin. At last Sophia discovers that Moltchalin is making love to her maid through inclination, and to her only through calculation. She casts him off, and orders him out of the house. Tchatsky, ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... meaning of the word. He dislikes to be called a "greeny" or anything that suggests that he is young and inexperienced. Often he pretends to know things he does not. Nearly every boy, at an early age, is thrown in contact with low-minded persons who think it amusing to persuade the youth to prove he knows indecent things. He thinks it a test of manhood to be acquainted with various vices and so in order to prove his knowledge is led into various indiscretions, which result in the contraction of vile ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... to do it if he were that low-minded; but if I know Squire Percival, he will go to the poor-house first. Fred, you would surely scorn such a dirty thing as selling the old man out ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... exchange of remarks between the porter and the cab driver. But the young man was conscious, at the same moment, that it had ceased to be a matter of serious regret to him that the little American flirt should be "talked about" by low-minded menials. These people, a day or two later, had serious information to give: the little American flirt was alarmingly ill. Winterbourne, when the rumor came to him, immediately went to the hotel for more news. He found that two or three charitable friends had preceded ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James |
