"Belittling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reply can have consulted neither the good Brother Pasquerel nor the good Friar Richard nor indeed any of the churchmen of her company. They would have told her that the true pope was the Pope of Rome, Martin V. They might also have represented to her that she was belittling the authority of the Church by appealing to a revelation from God concerning popes and anti-popes. Sometimes, they would have told her, God confides the secrets of his Church to holy persons. But it would be rash to count upon so ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... shrugged his shoulders in belittling fashion. "As our houses are to that house, so that house was to the houses I ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... the belittling "that." "Of course I couldn't promise—anyway I don't believe you could ever do it, so what's the use of ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... followed Katrine's great success, Frank heard of her constantly, always with a curious self-belittling and a reviewing of his own conduct, fine in its self-depreciation. He had betrayed the great unspoken trust of the finest human being he had ever known, and afterward dallied, for fear of rebuff to his vanity, from squaring the account as well as he could by giving her a chance to refuse ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... further revealed. "They used to take dignified walks on Sundays. I used to tease her, and she'd get so mad she'd ask Dad to ask me to be more refined. She said that Mr. Little was a most unusual man, and it was belittling to his dignity to have me suppose that a man and a woman couldn't have an intellectual friendship. This in May, my dear, and after the thing was settled and Anne had cried, and written notes, and Justin had gone to Dad and asked where he could ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... gaze Turns in on thine own soul, be most severe. But when it falls upon a fellow-man Let kindliness control it; and refrain From that belittling censure that springs forth From common lips like ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... business vortices of the United States, in their present devouring relations, controlling and belittling everything else, are, in my opinion, but a vast and indispensable stage in the new world's development, and are certainly to be follow'd by something entirely different—at least by immense modifications. Character, literature, a society worthy the name, are ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Between 1850 and 1860 this question reached a crisis and free colored people from the South were to be seen taking up their homes in the Northern States and in Canada. (Many of the people, especially from Charleston, carried with them all their belittling prejudices, and after years of sojourn under the sway of enlightened and liberal ideas, proved themselves still incapable of learning the new way or forgetting ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... all hope, but there's not much chance of you realising your hope. Your book isn't a very good one!..." Eleanor glanced up at this. She had not felt very certain about John's book herself, but now that Hinde was belittling it, she ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... what she could, poor woman, but in what belittling, coarsening conditions! She had to interpret a character in a play, and a character in a play—not to say the whole piece: I speak more particularly of modern pieces—is such a wretchedly small peg to hang anything on! The dramatist shows us so little, is so hampered by his audience, is ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... better for not flying too high. Narrow, of course. He seems to think the Almighty has nothing grander to do than to finger every little cog of the tremendous machinery of the universe,—that he measures out the ocean of his purposes as we drop a liquid from a phial. To me it seems belittling the Infinite." ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... Dick; I question whether he is as good in sea narrative as Cooper in the famous passage of Paul Jones's ship through the shoals. Such comparisons are, of course, rather futile. They differentiate among excellences, where taste is a factor. Nevertheless, it is belittling to a man who, above almost all others in our language, has brooded upon the mysteries of the mind's action, to say that he is great because he ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... to be thinking about them," she said, instinctively belittling her fear. "And then I never saw Pat act the ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... the envies and jealousies which dog the footsteps of success still linger in the hearts of a few; where journals still exist that loaded his name for four years with daily calumny, and writers of memoirs vainly try to make themselves important by belittling him—his fame has become as universal as the air, as deeply rooted as the hills. The faint discords are not heard in the wide chorus that hails him second to none and equaled by Washington alone. The eulogies of him form a special literature. Preachers, poets, soldiers, and statesmen employ ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... hardly possible that these dream-like masses, with their sparkling lights, like reversed heavens, are the rude, restless, discordant gehennas which they sometimes seem to us by day. And yet I realize the awfulness and vastness of these great living creatures far more than in the belittling and disillusionizing daylight. The anchored or passing vessels only add to the sense of seclusion,—the former with a solitary lantern at the stern, the latter perhaps a galaxy of many-colored lights. On a dark night it has the effect of a discharge ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... of years disappear at the blast of a trumpet; but they are absolutely certain that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them; that the way for a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves; that, on the contrary, Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... in Him; and, when read in the light of its culmination in Christ, it approves itself to the Spirit of Christ within Christians as a correct record of their experiences of God, and the mighty inspiration to such experiences. Surely it is no belittling limitation to say of this unique book that it is an authority only on God. Every fundamental question of life is answered, every essential need of the soul is met, when God is found, and ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... would go to pieces. Now that he saw them, joyous, uproarious, bantering, wearing badges on their sleeves, he realized that what he had done was nothing at all. He heard Scoutmaster Ned humorously belittling the exploits of his own heroes. No, Peter Piper would not step rashly into that bantering throng with that one exploit of ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... not for a moment be understood as belittling the value of faithfulness in an employee. But, after all, faithfulness is nothing more nor less than a negative quality. By faithfulness a man may hold a position a lifetime. He will keep it just ...
— The Young Man in Business • Edward W. Bok
... by an interview with Dr. Bernstein, professor of psychology at one of the universities, who stated that he was by no means convinced of the prisoner's guilt, and hinted that the alleged confession might have been forced from him by the police, while in a hypnotic state. This theory, belittling as it did their pet sensation, did not suit the policy of the yellow press, so the learned professor at once became ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... heard such a belittling character of the profession," she went on. "Your mother would have given it a very different one, Mr. Landholm. She would have told you, 'Open thy mouth, judge' — what is it? — 'and plead the cause ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... as well as of its frequent associate, anger, have been dwelt upon by writers philosophical, religious, and medical. "Worry," says one author, "is the root of all cowardly passions,—jealousy, fear, the belittling of self, and all the introspective forms of depression are the children of worry." The symptoms and the evil results seem to receive more elaborate and detailed attention than the treatment. "Eliminate it," counsels this writer; "Don't worry," advises ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... little dinner proved an unqualified success. With sole and chicken saute, with trifle and savoury, he mutely pleaded his cause; feeling vaguely guilty, the while, of belittling his childhood's idol, whom he increasingly admired and loved. But this India business was tremendously important, and the dear old boy would ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... they are qualified to arrange, sort, fix, and command the lives of women. If a woman thinks the abdication justifies the gains, that's all right. If I had sold myself, honourably, to John Morrell I would have kept to the agreement; I hate and loathe women who don't! I'm not belittling the romance and sentiment, Uncle William, but when all's told the usual marriage is a bargain and half the women whine about holding to it—the others play up and, if there is love enough, it pans out pretty well—but I couldn't! You see ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock |
