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More "Belittle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... critic, "is nothing but the place for the development of the human will, attacking the obstacles opposed to it by destiny, fortune, or circumstances." And again: "Drama is a representation of the will of man in conflict with the mysterious powers or natural forces which limit and belittle us; it is one of us thrown living upon the stage, there to struggle against fatality, against social law, against one of his fellow-mortals, against himself, if need be, against the ambitions, the interests, the prejudices, the folly, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... prophet; he cannot tell what may happen agriculturally in Alaska or the rest of the arctic regions when the world outside is filled up and all unfrozen lands are under cultivation. Still less is he one who would belittle a country he has learned to love or detract in any way from its due claims to the attention of mankind. There is in the territory a false newspaper sentiment that every one who lives in the land should be continually singing extravagant praises of it and continually making extravagant ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... jealousies, of overmuch fashionable society, with its shallow and bitter emulations, do far more to contract and sour the spirit of woman, to falsify and deprave her heart, to belittle and spoil her mind, to degrade and veneer her character, than any professional career can well be supposed to do. It cannot be doubted, that many a woman, who displays herself, as good as naked, in brilliant drawing-room assemblies, spends half her existence in the ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... blame for the whole matter where it belonged. He wanted to track the man who had conferred with known conspirators back to his home. He wanted to be able to point out the treacherous government which had so sought to belittle the United States in the eyes of ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... time, it is necessary to point out, such reflex influence may act not in one direction only, but also in the reverse direction. From the standpoint of ascetic contemplation eager to belittle humanity, the excretory centers may cast dishonor upon the genital center which they adjoin. From the more ecstatic standpoint of the impassioned lover, eager to magnify the charm of the woman he worships, it is not ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... you may find still another mode of defence, entirely personal, seldom employed by husbands, but the men of superiority will not fear to attempt it. It is to belittle the lover without letting your wife suspect your intention. You ought to be able to bring it about so that she will say to herself some evening while she is putting her hair in curl-papers, "My husband ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... he takes Horatio apart to recount his adventures and unfold the plot of the king; but before he utters a word of this his settled mood is revealed to us in the graveyard scene. Hamlet, ever prone to belittle the world, is not loth to watch the making of a grave. There is the limit and boundary of what can be done or suffered; there the triumph is ended, and there the enmity is stayed. He advances step by step to look closely at the ruins of mortality; ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... toleration, enterprise, industriousness, and progress—which is England—plus the element of equality and opportunity caused by pioneer settlement. It is the expression of the world's highest race under the most favourable social, political, and geographical conditions. Those who endeavour to belittle the importance of our British ancestry, are invited to consider the other nations of this continent. All these are equally "American" in every particular, differing only in race-stock and heritage; yet of them all, none save British Canada will even bear comparison ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... to belittle the achievements of modern scientists, we have the greatest admiration for them and we entertain high expectations of what ambitions they may yet realize, but we perceive a limitation in the fact, that all discoveries of the ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... hair, which had gone grey in the last year, and on his figure, with its square shoulders and its look of obvious distinction, as of a man who had achieved results so emphatically that it was impossible either to overlook or to belittle them. How splendid he looked! And what a pity that, after all his triumphs, he should still be so nervous on the first ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... lady admitted. "It is very important work, of course; and I'd dearly love to have a share in it. I am a great believer in the colored races, you know. But you are making me begin to think I am all wrong about the church at home. I don't mean to belittle it. Perhaps I appreciate it more than I realized. Anyway, tell me something else that you ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... expenses, though you protested against an election in a moral land involving the expenditure of a dime, and though you pass for the closest man west of the mountains. And here we are, going upon errands of duty, as little worldly as we can be, yet not anxious to belittle ourselves ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... better Mrs. Malaprop than Mrs. Drew, and better Sir Anthony than John Gilbert? No one denies that the English actors and actresses are great. No one will deny that the plays of Shakespeare are the greatest that have been produced, and no one wishes in any way to belittle the genius ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... um go out av his way to belittle himsilf an' phwat he knows, an' Oi w'udn't trust him wid a bent penny as far as Oi cud t'row a bull be th' tail fer 'tis done wid a purpose. 'Tis ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... frank embarrassment and limped toward the door. "Why, ma'am," he said regretfully as he reached the door, "I cert'nly don't want to do anything which you think ain't right, after what you've done for me. I don't want to belittle you, an' I think that when I said that I might have been gassin' a little. But I thought mebbe I'd been enough ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... not in this brief note propose to dwell, though it seems to me insane either to ignore them or to belittle them. The point on which I desire to insist is that they arise not from the establishment of a subordinate Parliament alone, nor from the existence of a "nationalist" sentiment alone, but from the action and reaction of ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... make sure that you'll get it," sneered Gresham, and laughed. He was anxious to belittle Gamble in the ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... country, but I'm a little disappointed in the Moritos. As for San Diego, Colonel Booth of your old regiment is in command, and I half think he didn't back up the Morito garrison out of jealousy toward you. He wanted to have the Morito country go back, so as to belittle our exploit. But we'll get even with him. I've seen the cable-censor, and not a word about it will go home. I have just sent a despatch saying that the whole island is entirely in our hands and that the natives are swearing ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... is easy to do so, we must not belittle this cry of "Race-Suicide!" It is not usually accompanied by definite argument, but it assumes that birth-control is the method of such suicide, and that the first and most immediately dangerous result is that one's own nation, ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... vast extension of commerce, to the marvelously increased facilities for travel, transportation and intercommunication; to the innumerable and wonderful inventions that in their application have brightened our civilization. They exalt present conditions and they belittle the long ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... and particularly upon the economic causes need not belittle the strictly religious factor in the movement. The success of the revolt was due to the fact that many kings, nobles, and commoners, for financial and political advantages to themselves, became the valuable allies of real religious reformers. It required dogmatic differences as well ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Upon the struggle implicit in this question the modern drama necessarily is based, since the dramatist, in any period when the theatre is really alive, is obliged to tell the people in the audience what they have themselves been thinking. Those critics, therefore, have no ground to stand on who belittle the importance of the modern social drama and regard it as an arbitrary phase of art devised, for business reasons merely, by ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... your duty, tell the truth, and be industrious—this was the New England ideal; and until we can replace it by a better, we can hardly afford to belittle it.—Preface. ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... have such control of, his personality, that he can lay it down, so to speak, and let humanity cross over upon it. History may get no news of him at all; although he is then the Chief of Men, and the greatest living;—or it may get news, only to belittle him. His own and the after ages may think very little of him; he may possess no single quality to dazzle the imagination:—he may seem cold and uninteresting, a crafty tyrant;—or an uncouth old ex-rail-splitter to have in the White House;—or an illiterate peasant-girl ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... place in a Government examination; he can get into the diplomatic service. Just believe that I love him too much to stand in his way. Why, I can even help him. If he does this I know that he'll want influence. You haven't influence to help him. I don't want to belittle you, but I know you've nothing but your money, while I can help him. My cousin is Lord Halberton. He's been a Cabinet minister. There's no knowing what he mightn't do with his help. If you love anyone as ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... efforts of idealists to belittle it, there is scarcely a fact of human experience capable of more universal substantiation than that in order to live it is necessary to eat. The corollary is equally true: in order to eat ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... inspiration of every great religious awakening since the world began. In this country and in other parts of the English-speaking world that spirit is becoming associated with the name the New Theology. To associate it with any one personality is to belittle the subject and to obscure its real significance. There are many brave and good men in the churches and outside the churches to-day, men of true prophetic spirit, who would reject utterly the name New Theology, but who ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... "You belittle your own kindness, I am sure," said Hazel. "And that dear boy who got me out of the ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... publicists again and again tell us that Germany does not want to copy English institutions. The old German monarchic institutions are good enough for Germany. Read the treatise of Treitschke, the great historian and political philosopher of modern Prussia. He systematically attempts to belittle every achievement of the Parliamentary system; and every prominent writer follows in his footsteps. Prussia has not produced a Guizot, a Tocqueville, a Stuart Mill, or a Bryce. Her thinkers are ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... and no man of all the Fianna was keener and hardier in fight. There was also another Conan, namely, mac Morna, who was big and bald, and unwieldy in manly exercises, but whose tongue was bitter and scurrilous; no high brave thing was done that Conan the Bald did not mock and belittle. It is said that when he was stripped he showed down his back and buttocks a black sheep's fleece instead of a man's skin, and this is the way it came about. One day when Conan and certain others of the Fianna were ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... especially those from the seaboard. Many of the worst tory bandits did not rally to him, preferring to plunder on their own account. The American army itself was by no means free from scoundrels. Most American writers belittle the character of Ferguson's force, and sneer at the courage of the tories, although entirely unable to adduce any proof of their statements, the evidence being the other way. Apparently they are unconscious of the fact that they thus ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... is freely admitted that many of the thoughts attributed to the son of Mary are superlatively fine. They will live forever whether the personality of Jesus be rejected as a divinity or not. That these beautiful preachments are ignored here is not due to any desire to belittle admirable sentiments or to disparage right living. The loving side of Jesus has been emphasized again and again and will be borne in mind by the reader when other less admirable traits are criticized. The intent of this ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... of the events that he had witnessed with his own eyes and had special opportunities of studying accurately. "The writings of my predecessors contain sometimes slanders, sometimes eulogies, but nowhere the accurate truth of the facts." He goes on to complain of the way in which they belittle the action of the Jews in order to aggrandize the Romans, which defeats its own purpose; and he contrasts the merit of one who composes by his own industry a history of events not hitherto faithfully recorded, ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... sense of proportion far enough, lo! he is back at the point from which he started. He knows that eternity, as conceived by him, is but an instant in eternity, and infinity but a speck in infinity. How should they belittle the things near to him?... Oxford was venerable and magical, after all, and enduring. Aye, and not because she would endure was it the less lamentable that the young lives within her walls were like to be taken. My equanimity was gone; and ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... know more of us," Hinde interrupted, "you'll know that all journalists belittle journalism. It's the one consolation that's left to them. Unless you're prepared to associate only with journalists, Mac, you'd much better keep out of Fleet Street. Newspaper men always feel like fish out of water when they're in the company of other men. They must be near the newspaper ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... she really looked like an angel of light compared with the dark child of Nature. Agnes was tall and slender, and moved with a great air of dignity and calm self-possession, and this to the uncontrolled Chaldea was also a matter of offence. She inwardly tried to belittle her rival by thinking what a milk-and-water useless person she was, but the steady and resolute look in the lady's brown eyes gave the lie to this mental assertion. Lady Agnes had an air of breeding and command, which, with all her beauty, Chaldea ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... the public crier, "it will be all the better for my tongue and your ears if I do not answer that question. I simply do what I have been told to do. I unveil this odalisk, I proclaim what she can do, to what use she can be put. I neither belittle her nor do I exalt her. I advise nobody to buy her and I advise nobody not to buy her. Allah is free to do what He will with us all, and that which has been decreed concerning each of us ages ago must needs befall." And with these words ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... Standards.—It cannot be too emphatically stated that any tendency in the community to belittle or ridicule the estate of matrimony has a definite cumulative effect on desertion. The "when a man's married" series in the comic supplements, certain comic films in the moving picture shows, the form of drama popularly called "bedroom farce" are examples ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... impossible happenings—simply because Mr. Anthony Hope, a few years ago, achieved success by similar means, which at that time had a semblance of novelty. I may be "prejudiced," but then I have at least the courage of my own prejudices. In "Nancy Stair" Mr. Potter even seemed to belittle opportunities that might have raised his play from ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... all in court—that convinced you? Let me have something wherewith to meet my mother. She won't look at this altogether from the worldly point of view. She will have a standard of her own. Merely to belittle the thing, as long past and forgotten, won't help me. But if I could awaken her pity!—if you could give me ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... modest, my dear fellow!" smiled the dwarf. "I am the last one to belittle your achievement. Indeed, it is because of it that I have invited you here to-day. Permit me to introduce myself, and to make clear one or two possibly perplexing matters. Then I am sure we shall ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... which had far-reaching consequences: the first interview between Cavour and Garibaldi. Cavour was one of Garibaldi's earliest admirers; he applauded his exploits at Montevideo and at Rome, when the old Piedmontese party tried to belittle him and obliged Charles Albert to decline his services. In one way the hero was a man after the minister's own heart: he was absolutely practical; he might be obstinate or rash, but he was no doctrinaire. ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... belittle my own sense of Osgood's real worth if I confined myself to expatiating on his brilliant physical achievements. His moral worth and gentle bravery were to me the chief points in him that arouse true admiration. When I, as coach of Penn's ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... published Alton Locke, describing the life of a young tailor whose mind and whose fortunes are profoundly influenced by the Chartist movement. From a literary point of view it is far from being his best work; and the critics agreed to belittle it at the time and to pass it over with apology at his death. But it received a warm welcome from others. While it roused the imagination of many young men and set them thinking, the veteran Carlyle could speak of 'the snatches of excellent poetical description, occasional sunbursts of ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... the new movement cannot yet be regarded as organised. There is, however, a temptation for those among us who have all their lives been working in the cause of Feminism to belittle the future possibilities of Masculinism. There can be no doubt that all civilisation is now, and always has been to some extent, on the side of Feminism. Wherever a great development of civilisation has occurred—whether in ancient Egypt, or in later Rome, or in eighteenth-century ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... and have no more reverence for the Scriptures than any other work. So long as tens of thousands of Bibles are printed every year, and circulated over the whole habitable globe, and the masses in all English-speaking nations revere it as the word of God, it is vain to belittle its influence. The sentimental feelings we all have for those things we were educated to believe sacred, do not readily yield to pure reason. I distinctly remember the shudder that passed over me on seeing a mother take our family Bible to make a high seat for ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... can you thus ruthlessly belittle my tenderest hope, my fondest ambitions? What do you know about my future career as a brakeman? I intend to be touchingly faithful to my duty, kind and considerate to the public. In time the world will hear of me and I shall be honored ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... every unmarried woman, spinster, or widow, or every childless wife, of the power of exercising her warm sympathies for the good of others, is to deprive her of the greatest happiness of which she is capable; to rob her highest faculties of their legitimate operation and reward; to belittle and narrow her mind; to dwarf her affections; to turn the harmonies of her nature to discord; and, as the human mind must be active, to compel her to employ hers with low and grovelling thoughts, which lead ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... described it, is not, however, incompatible with a certain kind of pride; not that form of it which boasts of physical excellence, nor that arrogance which leads a man to look down upon others and belittle their achievements. These forms of pride are bad and diametrically opposed to true humility. Legitimate mental pride is that which leads a person blessed with intellectual gifts to feel grateful to God for his favor, and to strive ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... say grace." As this was an official function in John's eyes, that worthy man allowed himself to take a general view, and he was pleased to express his high approval of the company, enlarging especially on Carmichael, whom, as a Free Kirkman, he had been accustomed rather to belittle. ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... indicate a weakness of character which augurs ill for the future: and if you insist upon the sacrifice, you will establish a selfish precedent which can only make you a tyrant in your own domain, and at the same time belittle your husband in the ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a convincing physical element in the feelings and desires of man, evidenced in language and phrase. Superiority equals aboveness, inferiority equals beneathness; sympathy equals the same feeling. To criticize is to "belittle" and to cause the feeling of littleness; to praise is "to make a man expand," to enlarge him. Blame hurts ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... modern fashion somewhat to belittle Puritanism. It is easy to emphasize its absurdities, to ridicule the almost fanatical fervor which goaded men to harshness and inconsistency. The fact remains that a tremendous selective force was ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... as long as I please," blustered the showy youth. "It's a fine piece of business you've been in—trying to belittle me and my chums in the eyes of ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... of a demagogue. He did not attempt to belittle the public service. He championed the provision for higher pay for the United States Judges, and for increasing the stipend of army officers, although he denounced the system of double rations as vicious. ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... he is always ready to impart in a somewhat strident voice (another family characteristic) the political wisdom that he has garnered from the New World and the Old. But somehow the House fails to take him at his own valuation, and when he tried to belittle the Imperial Conference, on the ground that the Dominion Premier and his colleagues would be much better employed at home, I think there was a general feeling that the physician would be none the worse for a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... miles from New York. After several months of futile effort, spaced by periods of laziness that Margaret put an end to, a gentleman's job was secured for Larry, through the kindness of one of his father's friends. At first Larry was inclined to think that the work would belittle him, spoil his chances of "better things." But Margaret, seeing that as assistant secretary to the Malachite Company he could do no harm, could neither gamble nor loaf, replied to these doubts in ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... worse, every time, whether he is trying to get your reputation or your life. You never want to take chances. Watch him. Sleep with one eye open. Listen to every breath of wind. Watch, and watch eternally. You are only safe when he is dead, or disarmed and in prison. And never belittle your enemy. Better think of him as bigger than he is, cleverer, and more cunning. When you belittle his strength you give him the advantage because you will not fight so hard. And don't ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... prefer to live with their inferiors. 'The only remedy against a superiority,'—says some French writer—'is to love it.' But Bridget was so made that she could not love it; she could only pull it down and belittle it. ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as much for the butcher. Don't belittle the circle of your benevolence. (She walks across the room.) Three o'clock already— and Marian asked me to give orders about the carriages. Let me see—Mr. Oberville is the first arrival; if you'll ring I will send word to the stable. ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... feeling perhaps reaches its maximum with those who have made a specialty of the investigation and application of physical laws. Young men who have learned how to harness the powers of nature and guide them to do their will are apt to belittle the difficulties they have yet to overcome, and have a false impression of the problems of life. This feeling is shown to a minimum extent by graduates of the Stevens Institute, on account of their careful practical training, in connection with the thorough ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... Marne (surely fated to be the most fought-again engagement in history) are here very clearly described, with illustrative plans; while one other chapter, called suggestively "Kultur," may be commended to those super-philosophers amongst us who are already beginning an attempt to belittle the foul record of calculated crime that must for at least a generation place Germany outside the pale of civilization. For this grim chapter alone I should like to see Major CORBETT-SMITH'S otherwise cheery volume ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... misanthropy, and quarrels with him and in turn becomes the object of Chapman's invectives. After Shakespeare's death Jonson made amends for his past ill-usage by defending his memory against Chapman, who, even then, continued to belittle his reputation. ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... Francesco Moretti would not feel the smallest desire to belittle the works of any contemporary artist of the still rival cities around him. Doubtless he would fraternize with any such with all courtesy and a genuine sentiment of the universal brotherhood of art. But ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... you should try to belittle this family whom you do not know. Francois Darbois, the philosopher, is a fine character, of unparalleled honour and integrity: his wife has never frequented the world where people are 'taken in,' as you say, and as for Mlle. Esperance ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... the Confederacy, John C. Breckenridge and Judah P. Benjamin attained the dignity of national events, and his heroic death early in the war on field of battle renders it forever impossible for any just man to belittle the deeds or influence of Edward D. Baker. What he might have effected had he remained in California, or had his life been longer spared, we may not say. The fact remains that after his mission ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... of these women. Sometimes, indeed, the talents and usefulness of these women, and of the earnest women of our own day, are admitted after a fashion; but it is done in such a way as, in reality, to belittle the sex as much as possible. They are considered as occupying the same relation to men that the moon does to the sun, and all that is desired of them is to reflect a borrowed light. If she be unable to reflect a light when there is none to borrow, what ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... could to belittle Nancy's triumph. She stood on the landing and sneered at the work of the crew, and especially at "Number 6" until one evening Jennie Bruce came up behind her, caught her by both elbows, and thrust her suddenly toward the ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Hannibal, it must never be forgotten, that for all we know of him, we are indebted to his implacable enemies. No Carthaginian record of that astounding career has come down to us. The Romans did all that unscrupulous malignity can, to blacken the fame and belittle the deeds of the most terrible of their foes. Yet, though calumny has done its bitterest against him, Hannibal not only dazzles the imagination, but takes captive the heart. He stands out as the incarnation of magnanimity and patriotism and self-sacrificing ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... at the gate as we marched out to the moor, to take "Eyes right" and a salute, for no useful purpose that we could see except to belittle a British soldier's pride. As corporal I was supposed to give that command to my squad but rather than do so I took my stripes down, although that ended my immunity as a "non-com" from the labour of cutting peat. Others, I am sorry to say, were glad ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... Henry," said John, "our history is enough for us. Even since the war, the English have tried to belittle the Irish. They've done the most inept, small things to annoy us. They'd have got far more men from Ireland than they have done, if they 'd behaved decently; but they couldn't. They simply couldn't do the decent ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected."(811) Here is the test of every man's profession. We cannot accord holiness to any man without bringing him to the measurement of God's only standard of holiness in heaven and in earth. If men feel no weight of the moral law, if they belittle and make light of God's precepts, if they break one of the least of these commandments, and teach men so, they shall be of no esteem in the sight of Heaven, and we may know that their claims are ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... once I came and a rude man in a carriage spoke to me. Mother told me never to come alone again. It seems strange to me that men who are so proud of their strength, and who should be the natural protectors of woman, can belittle themselves by annoying or frightening her when alone. I am sure that same man would never think of speaking to me now that I am with you. How cowardly he seems when you think of it! Yet I am told there are many like him, though that was my ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... likewise. Reforms which were steps in capitalism thus become to them steps in Socialism. It is not the fashion of "reformists" to try to claim that they are very great steps—on the contrary, they usually belittle them, but it is believed that agitation for such reforms as capitalist governments allow, is the best way to gain the public ear, the best kind of political practice, the most fruitful mode ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... "Well, you can belittle it as much as you like, but you certainly saved me from an awfully nasty situation. And you didn't know ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... any moment, and then the correspondence that eager devotees have found between them and the Bible is a slur that falls altogether on the religion and not on the science. This is a great error, and those who are drawn into it belittle the cause that is dear to them. While our author is catholic in his reading, he does not seem to assign to all writers in his field their just value. His quotations, the fresh, the obsolete, the trustworthy, and the doubtful, are mingled in a ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Neither should they be constantly coaxed to right-doing by promised rewards,—a new toy, a book, an excursion, nor even the pleasures of Heaven. All of these incentives are selfish, and invariably narrow the character and belittle life when made the chief motives of action. But rather begin at the earliest possible moment to instill into the mind a love for right, and truth, and purity, and virtue, and an abhorrence for their contraries; ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... of wholesome mischief among the upper classmen, seemed to be the chief instigator of the tendency to belittle Bill, aided by one Luigi Malatesta, a Sicilian. Siebold never had forgiven Bill and Gus for the electrical trap sprung on his hazing party. He had a certain following that shared most of ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... different. 'Our sin is a voluble boastfulness; theirs is an irritating, unrestrainable, all-but-constantly manifested, satisfied self-consciousness. The same results are reached by different avenues. We praise ourselves; they belittle others.' Then he added with a smile: 'Thus even in these latter days are the Scriptures exemplified; the same spirit with ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... know one another as 'I,' and 'the other.' They converse together in their language, not by necessity according to our thoughts, but what they will. And note, too, that there may be anger between them, and one may belittle or injure the other; this injury is in the Soul, the Soul in the body. Then the body suffers and is ill— not materially or from a material Ens, but from the Soul. For this we need spiritual remedy. Ye are two who are dear unto one another; ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... effective details and personal episodes. His facts are gleaned from a variety of sources as well as from personal knowledge; and though proud of his own cause and of his companions, he does not belittle their renown by decrying the valor or the intelligence of his opponents. The conflicts themselves will never be forgotten. It is desirable that they shall be kept vivid and clear in the minds of the rising generation, to cultivate a correct idea of the necessity of personal ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... body—something keener of mood. 'And the men new-freed from the levies return to the fields again, 'Matching a hundred battles, cottar and lord and thane. 'And they talk aloud in the temples where the ancient wargods are. 'They thumb and mock and belittle the holy harness of war. 'They jest at the sacred chariots, the robes and the gilded staff. 'These things fill them with laughter, they lean on their spears and laugh. 'The men grown old in the war-game, hither and thither they range— 'And scorn and laughter together ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... of them. You, poor thing, belittle yourself by seeking to imitate them. You stand on your hind legs, wear a coat when it rains, eat plums—for shame!—and those big green balls, the malicious trees let fall ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... "I don't belittle it," was the quick response. "In some of its phases it is grand—magnificent. We can't always be prying into the cause; the effect is what counts. And there is no denying that the fairy tale which we call Christianity has built some of the ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... the Spaniard said. "You are one of those who belittle your own good deeds. I feel indeed more grateful than I can express to you as ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... of business. Henry permitted himself to indulge his pedagogical and ministerial instincts for the benefit and improvement of his kinsman. They seem to have carried on a mutual recrimination in their letters: Neville was inclined to belittle the divine calling of poets in their teens; while Henry deplored his brother's unwillingness to write at length and upon serious and "instructive" topics. Alas, the ill-starred young man had a mania for self-improvement. If our ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... heard evil reports about myself, most blessed Father, by which I know that certain friends have put my name in very bad odor with you and yours, saying that I have attempted to belittle the power of the keys and of the Supreme Pontiff. Therefore I am accused of heresy, apostasy, and perfidy, and am called by six hundred other names of ignominy. My ears shudder and my eyes are astounded. But the one thing in which I ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... was little romance in the undertaking; there was far less in the work to be performed. I simply desire to protest against the correctness of the distorted pictures drawn ostensibly to magnify the sacrifices, which were many, and to belittle the rewards, which were great, in the performance of an ordinary piece of work, by a class of persons now rapidly disappearing from the scenes that once knew them. Their work is fast being transferred to the hands of colored men ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... explanation of what is taking place." "There are many men," he says, "who could do the same thing." On this point we cannot argue with Mr. Belloc. He may know them: we do not. What we do know is that there are many men who are trying to do the same thing. In saying this we have no wish to belittle either individuals or as a class those courageous gentlemen, among whom the best-known, perhaps, are Colonel Repington and Colonel Maude, who are striving, and striving honestly, we believe, to provide the readers of various papers with an intelligent explanation of the ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... am not entirely responsible for this little book. Not long ago, I met a man—fit, single, and young—who began to grumble to me of the hardships of his "funkhole" in England, and, incidentally, to belittle the hardships of the man at the front. After I had told him exactly what I thought of him, I was still so indignant that I came home and began to write a book about the trenches. Hence Mud and Khaki. To him, then, the blame for this minor horror of ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... faux bon"? It is something exceedingly difficult to produce. We do not wish to belittle it; we wish to make plain its nature. If we succeed, we shall show also how choice and rare a thing this OEdipus is. At any rate, it keeps good company. The plays of Mr. Stephen Phillips are classical ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... American tinned-food habit, nor, on reading the chap's screed, did they impress me as being fraught with vital interest to thinking people; in truth, I was more concerned with the comparison of myself to a restaurateur of the crude new city of New York, which might belittle rather than distinguish me, I suspected. But what was my astonishment to perceive in the course of a few days that I had created rather a sensation, with attending newspaper publicity which, although bizarre enough, I am bound to say contributed not a little to the consideration in which I afterward ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... to boast of gold Or belittle it with sneers, Didn't change from hot to cold, Kept his friends throughout the years, Sort of man you like to meet Any time or any place. There was always something sweet And refreshing ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... "she deserves it. You talk as if he wan't lucky too. But I jest want to tell you he is and you needn't say he ain't. You ought to be ashamed of yo'se'f to belittle yo' own daughter thatter way. Well, I never. Never did I expect to see the day when you'd say yo' child wan't worthy of a young man, even if ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... that," said Mr. Slick. "I won't stay here and hear you belittle Uncle Sam that way for nothin'. He ain't wuss than John Bull, arter all. Ain't there no swindle-banks here? Jist tell me that. Don't our liners fetch over, every trip, fellers that cut and run from England, with their fobs filled with ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... to this evening's speeches, and that would fill the first paragraph—say, three sides of my copy, or something over. In the second paragraph I'd show the immense issues involved in the present contest, and expose the fallacies of our opponents who attempt to belittle the matter as temporary and unlikely to recur—say, three sides of my copy again, but not a word more. And, then, in the third paragraph, I'd adjure the Government, in the name of all their party hold sacred, to stand firm, and I'd appeal to the people of this great ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... than salt-pot cleanlier, Nor ten times cack'st in total year, 20 And harder 'tis than pebble or bean Which rubbed in hand or crumbled, e'en On finger ne'er shall make unclean. Such blessings (Furius!) such a prize Never belittle nor despise; 25 Hundred sesterces seek no more With wonted prayer—enow's ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... has said to a child, who has done something wrong or annoying: "I don't love you any more. I don't like you now at all." And I have known countless cases where mothers, themselves, have said and acted the same thing. And the effect of that is to belittle and corrupt in the child's heart a bigger and deeper conception of love, as a loyal and steadfast thing, with no string attached to it. If a nurse, or a mother, can withdraw her love, for a slight cause, then a child when it grows up can expect to do the same; a wife can withdraw her ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... and sympathizers with the Labour movement over the world belittle Patriotism, and seem to think that by decrying and discouraging the love of one's country one will bring ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... been jealous of your dignity—of the respect that is due you. I have resented keenly any attempt to belittle you. That is why Disston was not welcome when he came to see you. It is the reason why I have not shown a pleasure I did not feel in his ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... his published letters, written while in Canada, and he was ever looking forward to the time when he could rejoin them in his beloved chateau of Candiac, and resume the studies he liked so well. Some Canadian writers have endeavoured to belittle Montcalm, that they may more easily explain away the failings of Vaudreuil, a native Canadian, who thwarted constantly the plans of a greater man; but an impartial historian can never place these two men on ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... stung him as a lash. It seemed to belittle his powers of attraction. Consequently ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... underreckon^; depreciate; disparage &c (detract) 934; not do justice to; misprize, disprize; ridicule &c 856; slight &c (despise) 930; neglect &c 460; slur over. make light of, make little of, make nothing of, make no account of; belittle; minimize, think nothing of; set no store by, set at naught; shake off as dewdrops from the lion's mane. Adj. depreciating, depreciated ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... don't belittle me ner mek light of me ternight. I kain't endure hit. Heven't ye got no idee how master much I loves ye? Don't ye see thet ther two of us war made fer each other? I don't aim ter brag none—but ye knows I'm ther only man hyar-abouts ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... any one the right to demand this sacrifice of him? Was it not a devilish temptation to take him from his calling, from that work in which God had evidently intended him to work for the world? Had he a right to spoil his life, to belittle his soul, for any consideration? If Hepsy Ann Nickerson had claims, had not he also, and his Art? If he were willing, in this dire extremity, to sacrifice his love, his prospects of married bliss, might he not justly require the same of her? Was not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... contrary to custom, set aside, in deciding to leave London that day, all logical methods of reasoning and acted on what was nothing more than an irresistible impulse, he did not attempt to belittle to himself the possible consequences that might accrue from his action. He was not following the course intelligence had directed; he was not embarking on a journey his best interests would have prompted; on the contrary, he knew himself mad, foolish. But not for one moment did he ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... he published Alton Locke, describing the life of a young tailor whose mind and whose fortunes are profoundly influenced by the Chartist movement. From a literary point of view it is far from being his best work; and the critics agreed to belittle it at the time and to pass it over with apology at his death. But it received a warm welcome from others. While it roused the imagination of many young men and set them thinking, the veteran Carlyle ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... he was really walking on the shore. Where it says "one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side," we were informed that the Greek word here means primarily to prick as with a pin, to pave the way to belittle the wound of Jesus, despite the fact that the narrative adds, "straightway there came out blood and water." The purpose of this was to make way for the theory that Christ did not die on the cross, but was simply in a lethargy, and when he came to in the tomb he pushed the stone ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... is the well-known review by Owen, to which references occur in the "Life and Letters," II., page 300. The amende to the "Vestiges" is not so full as the author felt it to be; but it was clearly in place in a paper intended to belittle the "Origin"; it also gave the reviewer (page 511) an opportunity for a hit at Sedgwick and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... not belittle the prospect you open before me. I see the practical difficulties, but I see well the ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... new-freed from the levies return to the fields again, 'Matching a hundred battles, cottar and lord and thane. 'And they talk aloud in the temples where the ancient wargods are. 'They thumb and mock and belittle the holy harness of war. 'They jest at the sacred chariots, the robes and the gilded staff. 'These things fill them with laughter, they lean on their spears and laugh. 'The men grown old in the war-game, hither and thither ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... irregularity. On his rare visits to Westminster he is always ready to impart in a somewhat strident voice (another family characteristic) the political wisdom that he has garnered from the New World and the Old. But somehow the House fails to take him at his own valuation, and when he tried to belittle the Imperial Conference, on the ground that the Dominion Premier and his colleagues would be much better employed at home, I think there was a general feeling that the physician would be none the worse for a dose ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... wife-seeking hero recognises his mark upon the shoulder of the leading lady—and so to reconciliation, slow fade-out, and the announcement of Next Week's Pictures. But though it is impossible not to suspect Miss BURT of having an eye to what poetic journalism calls the Shadow Stage, this is by no means to belittle her mastery of the colder medium of print; and I hasten to acknowledge that, upon me at least, The Branding Iron has left a distinct though possibly fleeting impression of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... said much to her. If the heiress had wished for a train-bearer, one would instantly have been found. She was a queen, obsequiously flattered. Flattery never emanates from noble souls; it is the gift of little minds, who thus still further belittle themselves to worm their way into the vital being of the persons around whom they crawl. Flattery means self-interest. So the people who, night after night, assembled in Mademoiselle Grandet's house (they called her Mademoiselle de ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... God. If there be a god, he is so great, so far from as, so utterly beyond our comprehension, that for us it is as though he did not exist. To believe that one of our actions, to believe that a prayer could act upon the will of God, is to belittle him, to deny him. He is himself incapable of a miracle; it would be to belie himself. Could he improve his work, he would not then have created it perfect from the first. He could ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... United States. In 1843 Ole Bull found his way to these shores, and in the following year both Vieuxtemps and Artot were giving concerts in New York. A kind of triangular duel took place, for the admirers of Artot and Vieuxtemps, who were chiefly the French residents of the city, endeavoured to belittle the capabilities of Ole Bull, who nevertheless appears to have been very successful, and if anything, to have benefited by the competition. Musical culture was, at that time, in a very low state in America, and one may judge somewhat of its progress by the press ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... but he wanted to place the blame for the whole matter where it belonged. He wanted to track the man who had conferred with known conspirators back to his home. He wanted to be able to point out the treacherous government which had so sought to belittle the United States in the eyes of ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... laughter is a gift of God, there is no other gift of His which is more frequently abused and converted from a blessing into a curse. When laughter is directed against sacred things and holy persons; when it is used to belittle and degrade what is great and reverend; when it is employed as a weapon with which to torture weakness and cover innocence with ridicule—then, instead of being the foam on the cup at the banquet of life, it becomes a deadly ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... of his hair, which had gone grey in the last year, and on his figure, with its square shoulders and its look of obvious distinction, as of a man who had achieved results so emphatically that it was impossible either to overlook or to belittle them. How splendid he looked! And what a pity that, after all his triumphs, he should still be so nervous on the first ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Philosophy is indeed, as Gibbon called it, "a golden volume, not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or of Tully." To belittle its originality and sincerity, as is sometimes done, with a view to saving the Christianity of the writer, is to misunderstand his mind and his method. The Consolatio is not, as has been maintained, a mere patchwork of translations ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... pearls, gold, etc., in order to impress the sovereigns with the great value of his most recent discovery. The Admiral had good and sufficient reasons for making the most of this discovery, as his enemies in Spain and in the West Indies were seeking to belittle his great deeds, hence his indiscretion in placing the proofs of his achievement in the hands of his implacable foe, Bishop Fonseca. He could not return at that time, owing to the terrible condition of affairs in Hispaniola, which ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... Shakspere was both wider and deeper than M. Stapfer has suggested; and it is perhaps more fitting, after all, that the proof should be undertaken by some of us who, speaking Shakspere's tongue, cannot well be suspected of seeking to belittle him when we trace the sources for his thought, whether in his life or in his culture. There is still, indeed, a tendency among the more primitively patriotic to look jealously at such inquiries, as tending to diminish ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... human? Yet, see, this earthly love has come to me—Johnny Whitelamb—as to a king. It has taken no account of my worth, my weakness: in its bounty I am swallowed up and do not weigh. To dream of it as holding tally with me is to belittle and drag it down in thought to something scarcely larger than myself. I share it with kings, as I share this star. Can I think ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of Caesar, with statements made about him, tend to belittle him in our eyes? What do Brutus and Antony say of Caesar when they are alone, speaking freely and without disguise? What words or acts of Caesar mentioned in the play ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... of her summer library; she said that they gained tang and vigor from their winter hibernation at the cottage. Her references to nature were a little self-conscious, as seems inevitable with such devotees, but we cannot belittle the accuracy of her knowledge or the cleverness of her detective skill in apprehending the native flora. She found red and yellow columbines tucked away in odd corners, and the blue-eyed-Mary with its ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... to render his conduct intelligible in the catastrophe of this story, it is needful to explain how his soul had broadened at an age when young men generally belittle themselves in their relations with women, or in too much occupation with them. Its growth was due to a concurrence of secret circumstances, which invested him with a vast ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Tarr and Prof. Fether (November, 1845, Graham's Magazine) may be rated higher, but it is not essentially a humorous story. Rather it is incisive satire, with too biting an undercurrent to pass muster in the company of the genial in literature. Poe's humorous stories as a whole have tended to belittle rather than increase his fame, many of them verging on the inane. There are some, however, which are at least excellent fooling; ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... him stung him as a lash. It seemed to belittle his powers of attraction. Consequently he ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... 'Our sin is a voluble boastfulness; theirs is an irritating, unrestrainable, all-but-constantly manifested, satisfied self-consciousness. The same results are reached by different avenues. We praise ourselves; they belittle others.' Then he added with a smile: 'Thus even in these latter days are the Scriptures exemplified; the same spirit ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... gazed reproachfully at the grinning Blake. "He tries to belittle it, Mr. Griffith, but it's quite true. Haven't you seen about ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... physical element in the feelings and desires of man, evidenced in language and phrase. Superiority equals aboveness, inferiority equals beneathness; sympathy equals the same feeling. To criticize is to "belittle" and to cause the feeling of littleness; to praise is "to make a man expand," to enlarge him. Blame hurts ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... term at the school Dave was anxiously awaiting to hear from his father and his sister. Then came word, through Jasniff, who tried to belittle Dave, that Mr. Porter and Laura were in Europe, and the youth determined to go in search of them. Roger accompanied him, and what befell the pair was related in detail in "Dave Porter in the Far North." In England Dave ran across Nick Jasniff, and ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... Let us remember, then, that in the Silurian period the world, so far as it was raised above the ocean, was a beach; and let us seek there for such creatures as God has made to live on seashores, and not belittle the Creative work, or say that He first scattered the seeds of life in meagre or stinted measure, because we do not find air-breathing animals when there was no fitting atmosphere to feed their lungs, insects with no terrestrial plants to live upon, reptiles without marshes, birds without trees, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... day would come when the hideous idol would be laid low, and these darkened souls brought to the Light of the World. But to-night he felt strangely fearful, almost cowardly, for the whole tribe had gathered to pay tribute to their god, and it is a dangerous thing to belittle the god or the faith of any nation that is in ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... eloquence, he seems to have joined more than his frankness to a blustering manner.] William Coventry's was one of those "unconversable" natures which moved Clarendon's aversion. A sullen temper, a censorious habit, and a pride that led him to belittle all in which he was not chief agent, were precisely the traits of character which Clarendon distrusted and disliked. He admits Coventry's abilities, and gives him credit for being exempt from the degrading coarseness which was typical of the Court. His portrait is painted for us in a few sentences ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... far-reaching consequences: the first interview between Cavour and Garibaldi. Cavour was one of Garibaldi's earliest admirers; he applauded his exploits at Montevideo and at Rome, when the old Piedmontese party tried to belittle him and obliged Charles Albert to decline his services. In one way the hero was a man after the minister's own heart: he was absolutely practical; he might be obstinate or rash, but he was no doctrinaire. Cavour never changed his opinion of people, and even after the General became ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... got over that now. The courts, where I have been a frequent spectator, seem to me full of talented men who fine down and belittle their talents in the practice of law. Nothing uses up the nobler virtues more quickly than a practice at the bar. Generosity, enthusiasm, sensibility, true and ready sympathy—all are taken, leaving the man, in many instances nothing but a skilful ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... attention to the vast extension of commerce, to the marvelously increased facilities for travel, transportation and intercommunication; to the innumerable and wonderful inventions that in their application have brightened our civilization. They exalt present conditions and they belittle the ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... among his women and I go to him of my own accord designing to acquaint him with the means of deliverance, he will assuredly give orders to slay me, even as he slew those his Wazirs, and my courtesy to him will be the cause of my destruction. Wherefore the folk will think slightly of me and belittle my wit and I shall be of those of whom it is said, 'He whose science excelleth his sense perisheth by his ignorance.'" When the King heard the boy's words, he was assured of his sagacity, and the excellence of his merit was manifest and he was certified that deliverance would betide ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... between man and man it leaves something to be desired on the score of accuracy. Annoyance at the very exalted position marked out for the Duke, whose capacity Pitt rated decidedly low, may have led him to belittle the whole affair; for signs of constraint and annoyance are obvious in his other answers to his late colleague. There, then, we must leave this question, involved in something of mystery.[54] We shall not be far wrong in concluding ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... calibre, are the incidental ones,—the valuable friendships and the charming associations which it brings about. For the sake of these I would willingly endure again many passages of a life that has not been all roses; not that I would appear to belittle my own work: it does not need it. But the present generation (in America at least) does not strike me as containing much literary genius. The number of undersized persons is large and active, and we hardly believe in the possibility of heroic ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... originate, start, found. Belief, faith, persuasion, conviction, tenet, creed. Belittle, decry, depreciate, disparage. Bind, secure, fetter, shackle, gyve. Bit, jot, mite, particle, grain, atom, speck, mote, whit, iota, tittle, scintilla. Bluff, blunt, outspoken, downright, brusk, curt, crusty. Boast, brag, vaunt, vapor, gasconade. Body, corpse, remains, relics, carcass, cadaver, corpus. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... anticipated that I would, Thoreau-like, set down in details and in figures the exact character and cost of every designed alteration to this scene; but the idea, as soon as it occurred, was sternly suppressed, for however cheerful a disciple I am of that philosopher, far be it from me to belittle him by parody. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... escape "the lake of fire and brimstone." Neither should they be constantly coaxed to right-doing by promised rewards,—a new toy, a book, an excursion, nor even the pleasures of Heaven. All of these incentives are selfish, and invariably narrow the character and belittle life when made the chief motives of action. But rather begin at the earliest possible moment to instill into the mind a love for right, and truth, and purity, and virtue, and an abhorrence for their contraries; then will he have a worthy principle by which to ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... fall of 1915 the changes began. The Lusitania had been destroyed in May and almost immediately the hate campaign against America was started. I saw the tendency to attack and belittle the United States grow not only in the army, in the navy and in the press, but among the people. I saw that Germany was growing to deeply resent anything the United States Government said against what the German Government did. When this anti-American campaign was launched I observed a tendency ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... unmarried woman, spinster, or widow, or every childless wife, of the power of exercising her warm sympathies for the good of others, is to deprive her of the greatest happiness of which she is capable; to rob her highest faculties of their legitimate operation and reward; to belittle and narrow her mind; to dwarf her affections; to turn the harmonies of her nature to discord; and, as the human mind must be active, to compel her to employ hers with low and grovelling thoughts, which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to take these people to the Liberian coast and leave them there, nearly dead though they might be from exposure or cramping. It is well for one to remember such facts as these before he is quick to belittle or criticize. To the credit of the "Congo men" be it said that from the first they labored to make themselves a quiet and industrious element in ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... received very well. The Senator spoke with a clear, sonorous voice, no doubt with a twang, but so audibly as to satisfy the room in general. "I shall not," he said, "dwell much on your form of government. Were I to praise a republic I might seem to belittle your throne and the lady who sits on it,—an offence which would not be endured for a moment by English ears. I will take the monarchy as it is, simply remarking that its recondite forms are very hard to be understood by foreigners, and that they seem to me to be for the most part ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... eyes alight with mischief. That day on the edge of the butte overlooking the river, when Duncan had talked about Dakota, she had detected in his manner an inclination to belittle the latter; several times since then she had heard him speak venomously of him, and she had suspected that all was not smooth between them. And now since Duncan had related the story of the calf incident she was certain that the relations between the two men were strained to the ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Butler also said, on the same occasion: "Upon this so great trial, I pray let us not belittle ourselves with the analyses of the common law courts, or the criminal courts, because nothing is ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... dear friend," exclaimed Robinette in a maternal tone she sometimes affected,—a tone fairly agonizing to Mark Lavendar; "we should never belittle the stuff that's been put into us! My equipment isn't particularly large, but I am going to squeeze every ounce of power from ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of one of the most serious obstacles to the furtherance of his enterprise: the stubborn hostility of the Sandstone County mountaineers. To the gentlest of them it meant changes that would make game scarcer and circumscribe and belittle their consciously small and circumscribed lives; to the wilder sort it meant an invasion of aliens who had never come before for other purpose than to break up their stills and drag them to jail. As he ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... to believe anything they like about me," Mead went on, "and I don't intend to belittle myself askin' 'em not to. It's all right, boys. I didn't blame you for believin' I'd done it But I did think you'd notice he'd been shot in the back. I'm goin' out now. I'll see you later." And he hurried off down Main ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... style is rather graphic and vigorous than ornate. He introduces effective details and personal episodes. His facts are gleaned from a variety of sources as well as from personal knowledge; and though proud of his own cause and of his companions, he does not belittle their renown by decrying the valor or the intelligence of his opponents. The conflicts themselves will never be forgotten. It is desirable that they shall be kept vivid and clear in the minds of the rising generation, to cultivate a correct ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... history) are here very clearly described, with illustrative plans; while one other chapter, called suggestively "Kultur," may be commended to those super-philosophers amongst us who are already beginning an attempt to belittle the foul record of calculated crime that must for at least a generation place Germany outside the pale of civilization. For this grim chapter alone I should like to see Major CORBETT-SMITH'S otherwise cheery volume scattered broadcast over ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... no desire to belittle such efforts nor to discourage their promoters; but (though they may afford some local and temporary alleviation to the miseries of far the greater part of the world—miseries growing out of its division into two classes, a small ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... not propose, O valiant grave-diggers, to belittle your merits; such is far from being my intention. I have that in my notes, on the other hand, which will do you more honour than the case of the gibbet and the Frog; I have gleaned, for your benefit, examples of prowess which will shed a ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... am not wishing to disparage the literature of love, whether it be poetry, fiction, or of any other kind. English people least of all can afford to belittle it, for if we eliminated it half of our best lyrical poetry would go. For we count it a distinction in English poetry that upon this theme the changes have been rung so finely and to such exquisite effect. ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... "Wood-notes," his "Humble-Bee," his "Titmouse," his "May-Day," his "Sea-Shore," his "Snow-Storm," and many other poems. But we must "quarrel" with him a little, to use one of his favorite words, for seeming to undervalue the facts of natural science, as such, and to belittle the works of the natural historian because he does not give us poetry and lessons in morals instead of botany and geology and ornithology, pure and simple. "Everything," he says, "should be treated poetically—law, politics, housekeeping, money. A judge and a banker must drive their craft poetically, ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... might have the power to say a word in his favour. He had shown himself a craven in every possible way, so it was said. This silent crowd, however, had no certain knowledge of the truth of these rumours; they might be, probably were, false reports to belittle him in the minds of the populace. What this waiting multitude remembered was that James, Duke of Monmouth, was a soldier of distinction and was doomed to die a martyr for the ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... cadence that catches you by the throat, as a terrier catches a rat, and wrings from you the last drop of pity and awe. His skill in avoiding 'the inevitable word' is simply miraculous. He is the despair of the translator. Far be it from me to belittle the devoted labours of Mr. and Mrs. Pegaway, whose monumental translation of the Master's complete works is now drawing to its splendid close. Their promised biography of the murdered grandmother is awaited eagerly by all who take—and which of us does not take?—a breathless interest ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... the tribune and of the press combined, these two great forces of civilization,—it is not I who seek to deny or belittle them; but see how many efforts of all kinds it would have required, in every direction, and under every form, by the tribune and by the newspaper, by the book and by the spoken word, to succeed even in shaking the universal ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... just now it is my business to belittle Godwin. Therefore I declare—which you, who know more about it, can believe or not as it pleases you—that Godwin's heart is like that of the old saint in the reliquary at Stangate—a thing which may have beaten once, and ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... indirectly, and without doubt the man's pride was piqued as his incompetence was thus made plain. Thereafter, when he passed through the ward, he and I had frequent tilts. Not only did I lose no opportunity to belittle him in the presence of attendants and patients, but I even created such opportunities; so that before long he tried to avoid me whenever possible. But it seldom was possible. One of my chief amusements consisted in what were really one-sided interviews with him. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... to find Him in the Scriptures, seeks life and finds death; seeks light and finds darkness, whether it be in the Old or in the New Testament."[41] "He who thinks that he can be made truly righteous by means of a Book is ascribing to the dead letter what belongs to the Spirit."[42] He does not belittle or undervalue the Scriptures—he knew them almost by heart and took the precious time out of his brief life to help to translate the Prophets into German—but he wants to make the fact forever plain that men are saved or lost as they say yes ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... quarrels with him and in turn becomes the object of Chapman's invectives. After Shakespeare's death Jonson made amends for his past ill-usage by defending his memory against Chapman, who, even then, continued to belittle his reputation. ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... as Wonderland knew nothing of it. Supreme above all other desires of her life, this desire to save her father, to share his sorrows, to stand by him to the end, prevailed. The riches of the world could not purchase a devotion as precious, or any fine philosophy belittle it. He knew that she would go to Petersburg because Paul Boriskoff, her father, had need of her. This was her answer to his selfish complaints during ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... men's conceptions of the possibilities of their mental forces are so limited and below their real worth that they are far more likely to belittle their possibilities than they are to exaggerate them. You don't want to think that an aim is impossible because it has never been realized in the past. Every day someone is doing something that was ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... successful man of business. Henry permitted himself to indulge his pedagogical and ministerial instincts for the benefit and improvement of his kinsman. They seem to have carried on a mutual recrimination in their letters: Neville was inclined to belittle the divine calling of poets in their teens; while Henry deplored his brother's unwillingness to write at length and upon serious and "instructive" topics. Alas, the ill-starred young man had a mania ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... government. Prussian publicists again and again tell us that Germany does not want to copy English institutions. The old German monarchic institutions are good enough for Germany. Read the treatise of Treitschke, the great historian and political philosopher of modern Prussia. He systematically attempts to belittle every achievement of the Parliamentary system; and every prominent writer follows in his footsteps. Prussia has not produced a Guizot, a Tocqueville, a Stuart Mill, or a Bryce. Her thinkers are all imbued ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... successfully resisted constant pressure that was put upon him by his flock to continue the reception of "revelations." While he was prudent enough to avoid the pitfalls that would have surrounded him as a revealer, he was crafty enough not to belittle his own authority in so doing. In his discourse on the occasion of the open announcement of polygamy, he said, "If an apostle magnifies his calling, his words are the words of eternal life and salvation to those who hearken to them, just as much so as any ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... tinned-food habit, nor, on reading the chap's screed, did they impress me as being fraught with vital interest to thinking people; in truth, I was more concerned with the comparison of myself to a restaurateur of the crude new city of New York, which might belittle rather than distinguish me, I suspected. But what was my astonishment to perceive in the course of a few days that I had created rather a sensation, with attending newspaper publicity which, although bizarre enough, ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the grace of thy king under question," Kenkenes said calmly. "Therefore thou art denied the plea that submission to the same thing will belittle thee. Thy best defense ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... stuff in the heavens above him, nor in the depths below him, than sticks to his own ribs. The celestial and the terrestrial forces unite and work together in him, as in all other creatures. We cannot magnify man without magnifying the universe of which he is a part; and we cannot belittle it without belittling him. ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... of Nebraska, and Stubbs of Kansas—issued an appeal to him which seemed to give an official stamp to the popular entreaties. Roosevelt's enemies insinuated that the seven Governors had been moved to act at his own instigation, and they tried to belittle the entire movement as a "frame-up," in the common phrase of the day. No doubt he was consulted in the general direction of the campaign; no doubt, being a very alert student of political effects, he suggested ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... regarded as being of much less importance than the "patronus" or advocate, who stood before the whole city and pleaded the cause. In this trial of Murena, who was by trade a soldier, it suited Cicero to belittle lawyers and to extol the army. When he is telling Sulpicius that it was not by being a lawyer that a man could become Consul, he goes on to praise the high dignity of his client's profession. "The greatest glory is achieved by those who excel in battle. All our empire, all our republic, is ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... to Germany's special contribution to the world. Social and industrial organization, systematic instead of loose ways of doing things, prudence, thrift, obedience and subordination of the individual to the state, discipline—in a word, an efficient society. It is a great lesson! No one to-day can belittle its meaning. Possibly the remote, hidden reason for all this seemingly useless bloody sacrifice in our prosperous modern world is to teach the primary principles of the lesson. God knows that we all need it—we in America most after the Russian, and ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... for his mother, wife, and children is shown in his published letters, written while in Canada, and he was ever looking forward to the time when he could rejoin them in his beloved chateau of Candiac, and resume the studies he liked so well. Some Canadian writers have endeavoured to belittle Montcalm, that they may more easily explain away the failings of Vaudreuil, a native Canadian, who thwarted constantly the plans of a greater man; but an impartial historian can never place these two men on the same high level. Wolfe's family was of respectable origin, and he inherited ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... young men, and having a sincere liking for Bill, they hid certain exchanges of grins and glances under their hat-brims (Bill being above them and the brims being wide) and did not by a single word belittle the escape he had had from man-eating cows. Instead, Dade coaxed him down from the tree and onto Surry, swearing solemnly that the horse was quite as safe as the limb to which Bill showed a disposition to cling. Bill was hard to persuade, but since Dade was a man who inspired ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... Temple—well, that Uncle George—won't have enough money to live on?" There was an anxious, vibrant tone in Harry's voice that aroused St. George to a sense of the boy's share in the calamity and the privations he must suffer because of it. Pawson hesitated and was about to belittle the gravity of the situation when St. George ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the possibility of never returning to Miss Barfoot's house—knowing the nature of the proposal that would be offered to her. But the practical resolve needed a greater effort than she had imagined. Above all, she feared an ignominious failure of purpose after her word was given; that would belittle her in Everard's eyes, and so shame her in her own that all hope of happiness in marriage must ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... moneylender. They shoot partridge and they are forced to ride foxes because there are no wild pig here. They know nothing of hawking or quail-fighting, but they gamble up to the hilt on all occasions and bear losses laughing. Their card-play is called Baraich [Bridge?]. They belittle their own and the achievements of their friends, so long as that friend faces them. In his absence they extol his deeds. They are of cheerful countenance. When they jest, they respect honour. It is so also with their women. The Nurses in the Hospital of my Baharanee where I resort for society ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... that I saw Captain Whidden in a new light. We of the younger generation had inclined to belittle him because he continued to follow the sea at an age when more successful men had established their counting-houses or had retired from active business altogether. But twice his mercantile adventures had ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... proportion as Loring turned out to be right, old Pecksniff turned out to be wrong, for he had refused a guard for the depot, and therefore was it now Pecksniff's bounden duty to himself to pooh-pooh the precautions of the Engineer and belittle the danger. Not for a moment would he admit that armed desperadoes had come at Nevins' back. As for the key in his possession, with all respect to the statements of Mr. Loring, the story of the unfortunate ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... to new ideas, had been keenly stimulated as she listened to Siddons, who began patiently to dwell once more on the ill effect of the conditions he had discovered on the welfare of the entire community. She had never thought of this. She was surprised that Ditmar should seem to belittle it. Siddons was a new type in her experience. She could understand and to a certain extent maliciously enjoy Ditmar's growing exasperation with him; he had a formal, precise manner of talking, as though he spent most of his time presenting cases in committees: and in warding off Ditmar's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the modern drama necessarily is based, since the dramatist, in any period when the theatre is really alive, is obliged to tell the people in the audience what they have themselves been thinking. Those critics, therefore, have no ground to stand on who belittle the importance of the modern social drama and regard it as an arbitrary phase of art devised, for business reasons merely, by a ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... as she replied: "Why shouldn't I think of him to some extent? He has crossed my path in no ordinary way. His attentions at first were humiliating, and he awakened an antipathy such as I never felt towards any one before. He tried to belittle you, my friends, and the cause to which you are devoted. Then, when I told him the truth about himself, he appeared to have manhood enough to comprehend it. His words made me think of a man desperately wounded, and my sympathies were touched, and I felt that I had been unduly severe and ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... the fact of uncivilization as shown in externals and irrelevances, and are moreover, greatly given to lying. From the savages we hear very little. Judging them in all things by our own standards, in default of a knowledge of theirs, we necessarily condemn, disparage and belittle. One thing that civilization certainly has not done is to make us intelligent enough to understand that the opposite of a virtue is not necessarily a vice. Because we do not like the taste of one another it ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... remember that the latest prejudice from which our historical school has suffered, and one which still clings to its more orthodox section, was to belittle as far as possible the general influence of European civilisation upon England; to exalt, for example, the Celtic missionaries and their work at the expense of St Augustine, to grope for shadowy political origins among the pirates of the North Sea, to trace every possible ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... course, I have read stuff such as Rousseau and Zola and George Moore and various memoirs that were supposed to be window panes in their respective breasts; but, mostly, all of them were either liars, actors, or posers. (Of course, I'm not trying to belittle the greatness ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... unless the debate was conducted with an artificial tone, be involved in acute controversy in regard to domestic differences whose importance to ourselves no one here in any quarter of the House is disposed to disparage or to belittle. I need not say more than that such a use of our time at such a moment might have injurious, and lastingly injurious, effects on the international situation. I have had the advantage of consultation with the leader of the Opposition, who, I know, shares to the full the view which I have ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... merchandise ensured a certain uniformity. And so it was that the Americans, having accepted a ready-made system of grammar, were forced to express their fancy in an energetic and a multi-coloured vocabulary. Nor do they attempt to belittle their debt, Rather they claim in English an exclusive privilege. Those whose pleasure it is to call America "God's own country" tell us with a bluff heartiness that they are the sole inheritors of the speech which Chaucer and Shakespeare adorned. ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... years, looking to the emancipation of the negro and the protection of his rights, that the Senator from Pennsylvania has not sturdily opposed. He has hardly ever uttered a word upon this floor the tendency of which was not to degrade and to belittle a weak and struggling race. He comes here to-day and thanks God that they are free, when his vote and his voice for five years, with hardly an exception, have been against making them free. He thanks God, sir, that your work ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... painting of the future is to be, it is certain not to be the painting of Monet. For the present, no doubt, Monet is the last word in painting. To belittle him is not only whimsical, but ridiculous. He has plainly worked a revolution in his art. He has taken it out of the vicious circle of conformity to, departure from, and return to abstractions and the ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... angel of light compared with the dark child of Nature. Agnes was tall and slender, and moved with a great air of dignity and calm self-possession, and this to the uncontrolled Chaldea was also a matter of offence. She inwardly tried to belittle her rival by thinking what a milk-and-water useless person she was, but the steady and resolute look in the lady's brown eyes gave the lie to this mental assertion. Lady Agnes had an air of breeding and command, which, with all her beauty, Chaldea lacked, and as she ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... Indies, the road whereby a vast empire might be won for Portugal and millions of wandering heathen souls might be gathered into the fold of Christ. To doubt the sincerity of the latter motive, or to belittle its influence, would be to do injustice to Prince Henry,—such cynical injustice as our hard-headed age is only too apt to mete out to that romantic time and the fresh enthusiasm which inspired its heroic performances. Prince Henry was earnest, conscientious, large-minded, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... human. Let them fling The first stone who are tempted even as he, And have not swerved. When did that rare soul sing The victim's shame, the tyrant's eulogy, The great belittle, or exalt the small, Or grudge his gift, his blood, to disenthrall The slaves of tyranny or ignorance? Stung by fierce tongues himself, whose rightful fame Hath he reviled? Upon what noble name Did the winged arrows of the barbed ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... AM. SOC. C. E. (by letter).—As was to be expected, this paper has brought out discussion, some of which is favorable and flattering; some is in the nature of dust-throwing to obscure the force of the points made; some would attempt to belittle the importance of these points; and some simply brings out the old and over-worked argument which can be paraphrased about as follows: "The structures stand up and perform their duty, ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... us that the word duty means a great deal to you, Egbert," said Mrs. Arnot, and then the matter dropped. But the animus of each man had been quite clearly revealed, and the question would rise in Laura's mind, "Does not the one belittle the occasion because little himself?" Although she dreaded the coming war inexpressibly, she took Haldane's view of it. His tribute to her cousin Amy also touched a very ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... of the decorations, I am convinced, will prove possessions for ever to the American people. As for the Rotunda Reading Room, it is, I think, almost above criticism in its combination of dignity with splendour. Far be it from me to belittle that great and liberal institution, the British Museum Reading Room. It is considerably larger than this one; it is no less imposing in its severe simplicity; and it offers the serious student a vaster quarry of books to draw upon, together with wider elbow-room and completer ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... opportunity, honorable and lucrative, which should present itself. There was little romance in the undertaking; there was far less in the work to be performed. I simply desire to protest against the correctness of the distorted pictures drawn ostensibly to magnify the sacrifices, which were many, and to belittle the rewards, which were great, in the performance of an ordinary piece of work, by a class of persons now rapidly disappearing from the scenes that once knew them. Their work is fast being transferred to the hands of colored men and women—the pupil is taking the place of ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Italy, he described Lake Como and compared it with Tahoe in Innocents Abroad, and while his prejudices against the Indians led him to belittle the Indian name—Tahoe—and in so doing to make several errors of statement, the descriptions are excellent and the interested reader is referred to them as ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... good destroys the sense of evil. To illustrate: It seems a great evil to belie and belittle Christian Science, and persecute a Cause which is healing its thousands and rapidly diminishing the percentage of sin. But reduce this evil to its lowest terms, nothing, and slander loses its power to harm; for even the wrath of man shall praise ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... whom she had never seen till a few minutes ago, should be in the inner circle of knowledge of the life of her husband and herself, without her self-esteem being hurt like this. She was very woman, and the look of the thing was not nice to her eyes, while it must belittle her in theirs. Had this girl done it on purpose? Yet why should she—she who had so appealed to her to come to him—have sought to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to a certain place, or his feats of strength, etc.), and when witnesses are asked if these are conceivable. One gets the impression in these cases that the witnesses under consideration suppose that they belittle themselves and their point of view if they think anything to be impossible. They are easily recognized. They belong to the worst class of promoters and inventors or their relations. If a man is studying how to pay the national debt or ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... his uncle, much amused after all by the boy's nonchalance and assumption of maturity. "Say nothing or do nothing to belittle a Mexican's dignity. They have a saying in their own tongue that means, 'If thou lose thy dignity thou hast lost that which thou ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... husband struggling like a mouse in the bitter cold water, could not add a pang to her torture. All that I have described happened, of course, in a few seconds; the man had barely gone under before one of the ship's butchers, in his white clothes, was in after him. Let no one belittle the race of butchers. The life-taker knew how to save life, and Master Butcher had his man in a moment, turned him on his back, and began to swim ashore; indeed, there was no fear of the man's drowning, for there ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... only, was the object I had in view in selecting the materials for the present work: once more, as completely and convincingly as I could, to set forth the part borne by the Netherlanders in the discovery of the fifth part of the world. I have not been actuated by any desire to belittle the achievements of other nations in this field of human activity. The memorial volume here presented to the reader aims at nothing beyond once more laying before fellow-countrymen and foreigners the documentary evidence of Dutch achievement ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... without reference to agriculture, I am firmly of the belief that it diverts one from economic work, but where pursued for a definite economic purpose it cannot be too careful or too thorough and I know of no instances better calculated to appeal to and modify the views of those inclined to belittle such structural study than Phylloxera and Icerya. On the careful comparison of the European and American specimens of Phylloxera vastatrix, involving the most minute structures and details, depended originally those important economic questions which have resulted in legislation by many ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... said Mr. Slick. "I won't stay here and hear you belittle Uncle Sam that way for nothin'. He ain't wuss than John Bull, arter all. Ain't there no swindle-banks here? Jist tell me that. Don't our liners fetch over, every trip, fellers that cut and run from England, with their fobs filled with other ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... and belittle his courage, and you say you're his dearest friend." She paused for a moment, then went closer to the young man and said ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... "Leo," a novel by La Touche. He became, George Sand says, completely indifferent to his old master, while the latter —a pathetic, yet thorny and uncomfortable figure, as portrayed by his contemporaries—continued to belittle and revile his former pupil, while all the time he loved him, and longed for a reconciliation which never took place. La Touche had a quick instinct for discovering genius: he introduced Andre Chenier's posthumous poems to ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... you are willing to pay and he will do his best to find it. If a place interests you, look it over well but don't insist on so many showings that you wear out the patience of its occupants. Never, never belittle any property in the hearing of its owner. There are all too many people, cocksure but ignorant of human nature, who believe this helps to get a bargain. It works just the opposite. One would not expect to please a man by telling him that ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... political and particularly upon the economic causes need not belittle the strictly religious factor in the movement. The success of the revolt was due to the fact that many kings, nobles, and commoners, for financial and political advantages to themselves, became the valuable allies of real religious ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... he had worked for several years during hours that should have been devoted to rest. He would get out the play and try to breathe life into it, now that he himself was living. Lynda had said, when last they had discussed his work, "It's beautiful, Con; you shall not belittle it. It is beautiful like a cold, stone thing with rough edges. Sometime you must smooth it and polish it, and then you must pray over it and believe in it, and I really think it will repay you. It may not ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... Thy water- skin is worth if dear three dirhams, and the gugglets I emptied on the ground held a pint or so of water." Replied the water-carrier "'Tis well," and Ali rejoined, "I gave thee a golden ducat: why, then dost thou belittle me? Say me, hast thou ever seen any more valiant than I or more generous than I?" Answered the water-carrier; "I have indeed, seen one more valiant than thou and eke more generous than thou; for, never, since women bare ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... willing to hear more concerning Fielding's merits. She promptly set herself to belittle the importance of his position and work for the sake of hearing them upheld, and ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... of half a century, and they were even more interested in the story of our voyage from Elephant Island than the younger generation was. They congratulated us on having accomplished a remarkable boat journey. I do not wish to belittle our success with the pride that apes humility. Under Providence we had overcome great difficulties and dangers, and it was pleasant to tell the tale to men who knew those sullen and ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... let um go out av his way to belittle himsilf an' phwat he knows, an' Oi w'udn't trust him wid a bent penny as far as Oi cud t'row a bull be th' tail fer 'tis done wid a ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... their stores of knowledge, and this feeling perhaps reaches its maximum with those who have made a specialty of the investigation and application of physical laws. Young men who have learned how to harness the powers of nature and guide them to do their will are apt to belittle the difficulties they have yet to overcome, and have a false impression of the problems of life. This feeling is shown to a minimum extent by graduates of the Stevens Institute, on account of their careful practical training, in connection with the thorough ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... "bug-hunter" displayed angered Smith. He always had despised the little man in a general way. He uncinched his saddle on the wrong side; he clucked at his horse; he removed his hat when he talked to women; he was a weak and innocent fool to Smith, who lost no occasion to belittle him. Now, when the prisoner saw him moving about, free to go and come as he pleased, while he, Smith, was tied like an unruly pup, it, of a sudden, made his gorge rise; and, with one of his swift, characteristic transitions of mood, Smith turned ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... to do so, I should in no degree belittle the achievements of the physical sciences and their technologies, for I believe whole-heartedly in their value, and long for the steady increase of our power to control our environment. But when these ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... at Toledo the ivory seat he had won at Valencia, and Alfonso himself openly declared the Cid quite worthy to occupy a throne by his side, seeing no one had ever served him as well as the man whom the courtiers were always trying to belittle. The day for the solemn session having dawned, the Cid entered the hall, followed by a hundred knights, while the Infantes of Carrion appeared there with equal numbers, being afraid of an attack. When summoned to state his wrongs, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... perception, constant appeals to concrete fact and physical sanctions, have always led the mass of reasonable men to magnify concretions in existence and belittle concretions in discourse. They are too clever, as they feel, to mistake words for things. The most authoritative thinker on this subject, because the most mature, Aristotle himself, taught that things had reality, individuality, independence, and were ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... which we give to our discourse in order to see whether one is made for the other, and whether we can assure ourselves that the hearer will be, as it were, forced to surrender. We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple and natural, and not to magnify that which is little, or belittle that which is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject, and there must be in it nothing of excess ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... wholesome mischief among the upper classmen, seemed to be the chief instigator of the tendency to belittle Bill, aided by one Luigi Malatesta, a Sicilian. Siebold never had forgiven Bill and Gus for the electrical trap sprung on his hazing party. He had a certain following that shared most of ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... "There are many men," he says, "who could do the same thing." On this point we cannot argue with Mr. Belloc. He may know them: we do not. What we do know is that there are many men who are trying to do the same thing. In saying this we have no wish to belittle either individuals or as a class those courageous gentlemen, among whom the best-known, perhaps, are Colonel Repington and Colonel Maude, who are striving, and striving honestly, we believe, to provide the readers of various papers with ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... principle, and men of good standing, especially those from the seaboard. Many of the worst tory bandits did not rally to him, preferring to plunder on their own account. The American army itself was by no means free from scoundrels. Most American writers belittle the character of Ferguson's force, and sneer at the courage of the tories, although entirely unable to adduce any proof of their statements, the evidence being the other way. Apparently they are unconscious of the fact that ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... of character which augurs ill for the future: and if you insist upon the sacrifice, you will establish a selfish precedent which can only make you a tyrant in your own domain, and at the same time belittle your husband ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... cried his mother. She had risen and stood facing him, her face deathly white. "Not one word against your father. Because you never could appreciate him, you needn't belittle him now. Not one word," as Jason would have spoken. "He was my husband and I loved him, God knows. O Ethan, Ethan, how shall I finish my span of years alone!" she broke ...
— Benefits Forgot - A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love • Honore Willsie
... know to the contrary, than all) of the peoples of Europe. What I am denying is that Americans have any greater reverence for women, any higher chivalrousness, than Englishmen. And this denial I make not with any desire to belittle the chivalry of American men but only in the endeavour to correct the popular American impression about Englishmen, which does not contribute to the promotion of that good-will which ought to exist between the peoples. I am not suggesting that Americans ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... sound of the surging floods below; the witchery of feathery elms reflected in its clear surfaces, and the enchantment of the full moon on its golden torrents, never twice alike and always beautiful! How is one to forget, evade, scorn, belittle it, by leaving its charms untold; and who could keep such a river out of a book? It has flowed through many of mine and the last sound I expect to hear in life will be the faint, ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not advocate the business of prospecting as a way of making a living—I had rather pitch hay or dig potatoes myself—I am far from wishing to disparage the prospector himself or to belittle the results of his work. He is the pioneer of civilization; and personally he is generally a fine fellow. At the same time, as in every other profession, the ranks of the prospectors include their share of the riff-raff. It was so in our district, and we were destined shortly ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... from my thought or wish to ignore or belittle the labors of earnest students and writers ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... to call in the attendants waiting outside. During the moment's pause that ensued the madman bent over his worktable, seized a knife that lay there and dropped on one knee beside the prostrate form. His hand was raised to strike when a calm voice said: "Fie! Cardillac, for shame! Do not belittle yourself. This man here is not worthy of your knife, the ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... may try to analyse man's love for woman, to explain it, or explain it away, belittle it, nay, even resent and befoul it, it remains an unaccountable phenomenon, a "mystery we make darker with a name." Biology, cynically pointing at certain of its processes, makes the miracle rather more ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... another as 'I,' and 'the other.' They converse together in their language, not by necessity according to our thoughts, but what they will. And note, too, that there may be anger between them, and one may belittle or injure the other; this injury is in the Soul, the Soul in the body. Then the body suffers and is ill— not materially or from a material Ens, but from the Soul. For this we need spiritual remedy. Ye are two who are dear unto one another; great in affinity. The cause ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... I do not in this brief note propose to dwell, though it seems to me insane either to ignore them or to belittle them. The point on which I desire to insist is that they arise not from the establishment of a subordinate Parliament alone, nor from the existence of a "nationalist" sentiment alone, but from the action and reaction of the sentiment upon the ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... in the Moritos. As for San Diego, Colonel Booth of your old regiment is in command, and I half think he didn't back up the Morito garrison out of jealousy toward you. He wanted to have the Morito country go back, so as to belittle our exploit. But we'll get even with him. I've seen the cable-censor, and not a word about it will go home. I have just sent a despatch saying that the whole island is entirely in our hands and that the natives are swearing ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... She didn't want to enter into a secret with him—with any man, this meant, of course—against Rodney. She couldn't think of any way of stating her reason for wanting her husband kept in the dark that didn't seem to slight him, belittle him, make him faintly ridiculous—like the pussy-cat John Galbraith ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... patriotic chagrin Meredith produced in me was an attempt to belittle his merit. "It isn't a good novel, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... underreckon[obs3]; depreciate; disparage &c. (detract) 934; not do justice to; misprize, disprize; ridicule &c. 856; slight &c. (despise) 930; neglect &c. 460; slur over. make light of, make little of, make nothing of, make no account of; belittle; minimize, think nothing of; set no store by, set at naught; shake off as dewdrops from the lion's mane. Adj. depreciating, depreciated &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... admitted. "It is very important work, of course; and I'd dearly love to have a share in it. I am a great believer in the colored races, you know. But you are making me begin to think I am all wrong about the church at home. I don't mean to belittle it. Perhaps I appreciate it more than I realized. Anyway, tell me something else that you have ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... have never yielded," it said, "to the temptation to deride or to belittle the resistance of Ulster to Home Rule.... The subjugation of Protestant Ulster by force is one of those things that do not happen in our politics.... It is, we know, a popular delusion that Ulster is a braggart whose words are empty bluff. We are convinced ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
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