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More "Contemptible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his lonely cell, he wept with a young man's boundless grief when reality contradicts his expectations, and he finds that all which he has learnt to prize is only contemptible ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... high valuation—the honest old man!—that he might be sure to err on the right side, he forced Theodore to go with him to the stand, and pay Matty for the stolen fruit. He endeavored, too, to make him apologize to Jim, both for the theft of his property, and also for his contemptible meanness in keeping silent on the occasion of Jim's attack on the playground. But here he was powerless: Theodore absolutely and doggedly refused to do it; and his grandfather was obliged to content himself with ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... It was only a little school, and the story of the new boy's "break" with old Jaegers had reached even the big louts who lingered on in Form VI. They made a rough half-circle round their intended victim, only partially malevolent in their intentions. The fact that he had bearded a contemptible old beast like Jaegers was rather in his favour than otherwise, but his assertion that he did not say his prayers and knew nothing about God smacked of superiority. He had to be taken down. And, anyhow, a new boy was an object of curiosity and his preliminary persecution a time-honoured ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... gospel remains! The little child, heedless of his trailing cloud of glory, and looking about him aghast in an unknown world, may yet see and run to the arms open to the children. How often has not some symbol employed in the New Testament been forced into the service of argument for one or another contemptible scheme of redemption, which were no redemption; while the truth for the sake of which the symbol was used, the thing meant to be conveyed by it, has lain unregarded beside the heap of rubbish! Had the wise and prudent been ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... were forced to remain in their anchored boat, with the captain guarding them while the scouts went for the magistrate and constable. There was a feeling of satisfaction that this had been so successfully accomplished, as it would no doubt put an end to such contemptible ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... committee, whose dictation should govern Congress in every measure brought before it for consideration. Is this wise, just, or reasonable? I hold that this resolution is too narrow to be of use and too weak to last. It will totter to an untimely grave, and hobble, a feeble and contemptible instrument, from this Congress to every State Legislature to which it may be submitted, to be rejected for its feebleness in a time like this, amid the overwhelming issues ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... race. At bottom, in all good faith, in foreign literature they only sought what their national instinct was willing to find in it; often they only took out of it what they themselves had unconsciously read into it. Mediocre as critics, and as psychologists contemptible, they were too single-minded, too full of themselves and their passions, even when they were the most enamored of truth. Italian idealism cannot forget itself: it is not interested in the impersonal ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... than ever to bear, for, presuming upon his patience, Sam Brandon was more tyrannical than ever. Words failing to sting sufficiently, he had often had recourse to blows, and these Tom had borne patiently, till, to his cousin's way of thinking, he was about as contemptible a ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... difficulties ten fold; and those who pursue these methods, get themselves so involved at length, that they can turn no way but their infamy becomes more exposed. It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till a length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... might also have alluded to the old apology for every thing inane or contemptible—"It is a tale of the man in the moon." When that arch flatterer, John Lylie, published (in 1591) his "Endymion, or the man in the moon"—a court comedy, as it was afterwards called; in other words, intended for the gratification of Queen Elizabeth, and in which her personal ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... was the reply. "You had better give me up to the soldiers at once. I suppose they will give me something to eat. My pride's all gone now, and I only want to get it over and bring it to an end. It's very contemptible, I know, but it is very horrible, ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... is profoundly affected by works of art. Art, therefore, has to do with the spiritual life, to which it gives and from which, I feel sure, it takes. Indirectly, art has something to do with practical life, too; for those emotional experiences must be very faint and contemptible that leave quite untouched our characters. Through its influence on character and point of view art may affect practical life. But practical life and human sentiment can affect art only in so far as they can affect the ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... days of old," said Fakrash, "all men pursued wealth; nor could any amass enough to satisfy his desires. Have riches, then, become so contemptible in mortal eyes that thou findest them but an ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... Thersites is most contemptible in body and most evil in disposition, from his raising a disturbance, and his slanderous speech and boastfulness. Odysseus attacks him on this account and gives occasion to all to ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Don't you know that at thousands of supper-tables to-night, working men who could afford to buy an evening paper read your name and cursed you before their wives and children? Nearly lost your life! Poor, miserable, contemptible scab." ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... holding myself ready to flee, "if poor Catherine had trusted you, and assumed the ridiculous, contemptible, degrading title of Mrs. Heathcliff, she would soon have presented a similar picture! She wouldn't have borne your abominable behaviour quietly: her detestation and disgust ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... men manage as they can! Woman, so feeble and crazy in body, fair enough sometimes, but full of infirmities; not strong, with nerves prone to every pain; ailing, full of little weaknesses, more contemptible than great ones!" ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pathology of hernia. He appears, however, to have formed a tolerably just idea of the mode of cutting into the urinary bladder; and even his obstetrical instructions show that his knowledge of the uterus, vagina and appendages was not contemptible. It is in osteology, however, that the information of Celsus is chiefly conspicuous. He enumerates the sutures and several of the holes of the cranium, and describes at great length the superior and inferior maxillary bones and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and characteristic notion of modern society to associate goodness with dullness, and consequently, I suppose, to connect badness with all that is gay, interesting, and diverting. There is nothing more perverted, absurd, and contemptible than that notion in the ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... be cured must be endured," is the very worst and most dangerous maxim for a nurse which ever was made. Patience and resignation in her are but other words for carelessness or indifference—contemptible, if in regard to herself; culpable, if in ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... soliloquizing, though all the time Felix stood before him, "who has learned that lesson of contentment which the generality never learn. Rich in his poverty here, an inheritor of the skies, I have only insulted him by so contemptible an offer." His head sunk upon his breast, his eyes fell upon the ground, his pocket-book dropped from his unconscious hand, and he resumed his walk. The negro stooped and picked it ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... liberties of the noblest, always most obnoxious to them, under their heel—the fact that this power resides after all, not in these persons themselves,—that they are utterly helpless, pitiful, contemptible, in themselves; but that it exists in the 'thewes and limbs' of those who are content to be absorbed in their personality, who are content to make muscles for them, in those who are content to he mere ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... "I know it is all my fault, Miss Harlowe, but truly I tried to make things come right for you. I told Miss Wharton all about myself and tried to make her understand that you weren't in the least to blame for my misdeeds. But I only made matters worse. She is contemptible." Jean's voice vibrated with ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... It was written to punish Count Alessandro Brusantini. The leading episode, which occupies about three cantos of the twelve, is an elaborate vilification of this personal enemy travestied as the contemptible ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... was doubted, and that if an illegitimate child he had no right whatever to the throne. He seemed to wish to prove that he was the son of Peter III. by imitating all the silly and cruel caprices of that most contemptible prince. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... irrevocable steps toward a collision, and were unconsciously playing into the hands of their arch-enemy, the leaders of the warlike faction in the Chamber and the Parisian press were clamouring with fury and vitriolic sarcasm against a faint-hearted and contemptible ministry that shrank from seizing the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... of good and of evil. Under this influence, they would enter, if not restrained by the laws of civil society, on a scene of violence or meanness, which would exhibit our species, by turns, under an aspect more terrible and odious, or more vile and contemptible, than that of any ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... is one of the very few rhetorical scientists who have the art of making science popular without making it or themselves contemptible. It will be hard to find anywhere else so much skill in effective expression, combined with so much genuine astronomical learning, as is to be seen ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... oddities, and eccentric developments of London life. His procedure was to bring together a number of these fantastic humorists, to play them off upon each other, involve them in all manner of comical misadventures, and render them utterly ridiculous and contemptible. There was thus a perishable element in his art, for manners change; and however effective this exposure of contemporary affectations may have been, before an audience of Jonson's day, it is as hard for a modern reader to detect his points as it will be for a reader two hundred years ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... of the third day the pass of Thermopyae was forced, thanks to the treachery of a Greek and the contemptible policy of the Spartan government which steadily refused the plea of Leonidas for reenforcements. With Thermopyae taken there was no further reason for the Greek fleet to try to hold the straits north of Euboea, and during the night it retired unobserved. The following day ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... than two months after his death married his brother Claudius, which was noted by all people at the tim for a strange act of indiscretion, or unfeelingness, or worse; for this Claudius did no way resemble her late husband in the qualities of his person or his mind, but was as contemptible in outward appearance as he was base and unworthy in disposition; and suspicions did not fail to arise in the minds of some that he had privately made away with his brother, the late king, with the view of marrying his widow and ascending ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... pains to say significantly that one of the members of the iron firm had told him that Mr. Jocelyn had nothing to fall back upon. Therefore Arnold knew that the girl he loved must be in sore trouble. And yet, how could he go to her? What could he say or do that would not make him appear contemptible in her eyes? But to remain away in her hour of misfortune seemed such a manifestation of heartless indifference, such a mean example of the world's tendency to pass by on the other side, that he grew haggard and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... white as your father I had to resort to a pretty poor weapon. Everything was with him. Measured up side by side we weren't in the same class. He was by far the better man and I knew it. I couldn't beat him as to character but I could do it with money, and I did. It was a contemptible game. I've always despised myself for playing it. I wish ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... shall henceforth be a picture, still look upon it with the quiet devotion of an old worshipper, who no longer offers incense on the shrine, but peaceably presents his inch of taper, taking special care in doing so not to burn his own fingers. Nothing in life can be more ludicrous or contemptible than an old man aping the passions ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... was due to Ali's chief engineer, Caretto, who next day sent a whole shower of balls and shells into the midst of a group of Frenchmen, whose curiosity had brought them to Tika, where Kursheed was forming a battery. "It is time," said Ali, "that these contemptible gossip-mongers should find listening at doors may become uncomfortable. I have furnished matter enough for them to talk about. Frangistan (Christendom) shall henceforth hear only of my triumph or my fall, which will leave it considerable ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... result of some mortgage transactions, a South Indian tea plantation fell into the hands of the firm, it was suggested that he should go out and take the management of it. The plan suited him admirably. He was a man in every way qualified to lead a rough life; to face a by no means contemptible amount of difficulty and danger, to govern a small army of native workers more amenable to fear than to affection. Such a life, demanding thought and action, would afford his strong nature greater interest and enjoyment than he ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... a thing is black one day and white another. I would rather remain as I am, the humble member for Plympton, than be guilty of such treachery, such contradiction, such unexplained conversion, such miserable and contemptible apostasy.... They might have turned me out of office, but I would not be made such a dirty tool as to draw that bill. I have therefore declined to have anything to do with it." Of course, Wetherell was ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... marvellous to me. He could "bark" a squirrel in the top of the tallest tree, or kill it by a bullet through its eye. He used to boast, in a quiet way, that he never spoilt a skin, though it was only that of a "contemptible squir'l." ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... thing that can make me forgive her for his wanting her. She was keeping him at arm's-length the whole time, and she was doing it so as not to make him contemptible ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... custom was no contemptible instructor how to bear pain. But the same hero complains with more decency, though in ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... he said heartily. "You have had so few chances of enjoying yourself with young people of your own age. It was, as you say, quite natural, but I hope you will have no more to do with the fellow. He is a pretty contemptible ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a vindication of their honour, and the dignity of the state, by requiring the dismissal of the plenipotentiaries of America? Such is the degradation to which they have reduced the glories of England! The people, whom they affect to call contemptible rebels, but whose growing power has at least obtained the name of enemies—the people with whom they have engaged this country in war, and against whom they now command our implicit support in every ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... only man I know, recorded in history, who is solely odious, contemptible, and bestial, without one redeeming trait, one feature of mind or body that can preserve him from utter and absolute detestation and damnation of all ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... well-to-do printer in any other light than that of a graciously condescending patron. That there could be danger to herself! you would have been sorry you had suggested the idea. The expression of lofty scorn would have made you feel yourself contemptible. ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... directed to make of them rings for the bridle of the chief of earthly kings. He who rides to war with such a bridle should be invincible; and a prophecy to that effect is quoted! Helena obeys, and sends the bridle over sea to Constantine,—"no contemptible gift!" Helena assembles the chief men of the Jews, bids them submit to Cyriacus, and keep up the anniversary of the Finding of the Cross. Finally, for those who keep the day is proclaimed a benediction so unmeasured ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... the native pronunciation and the "h" should be retained. The reason for its elision current in Alaska is too contemptible to be referred to further. Perhaps the same genius removed this "h" who removed the "'s" from the "Cook's Inlet" of the British admiralty. One is not surprised when a post-office at Cape Prince of Wales is named "Wales" because one is not surprised at any banalities of ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... a sting in it, and Del Ferice reflected upon the mean traffic in stolen information by which he got his livelihood, and was ashamed. Somehow, too, Donna Tullia felt that the part she fancied herself playing was contemptible enough when compared with the hard work, the earnest purpose, and the remarkable talent of the young artist. But though she felt her inferiority, she would have died rather than own it, even to Del Ferice. She knew that for months she had talked with Del Ferice, with Valdarno, ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... from his hands, but he held her only the more firmly. "Josephine," he said, in a hollow voice, "listen to me, do not drive me to despair, for it would kill me to lose you. No duty, no title would attach me any longer to earth. Men are so contemptible, life is so wretched—you alone extinguish the ignominy of mankind in my eyes. [Footnote: "Correspondance inedite avec Josephine," p. 875] Without you there is no hope, no happiness. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... insulting Pride?—let him who fills it remember that he is but the puppet of knaves, or fools; and at best but a mere servant of the public! Does wealth intoxicate the weakness of man?—let it never be forgotten that the possession is distinct from the possessor, and that the most contemptible of the human race have been the accumulators of wealth! Does the name of wisdom, puff up any of its professors?—of such it may truly be said, that their wisdom is foolishness—for none truly wise ever felt, in the researches of man, any ground of arrogance, while ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... meet that man, and tell him what I think of him!" said she. "Such men as he do more harm than a dozen agitators. So contemptible, too!" ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... de' Medici, who had lately succeeded his father as chief magistrate of Florence, and pretended to the same power. The death of his friend Lorenzo had been sincerely deplored by Lodovico, who, before many months had passed, began to discover how weak and contemptible a character his son possessed, and had already consulted his astrologer as to the influence which this young man would have upon his own fortunes. Now the vain and foolish youth refused to join in the proposed embassy to the Vatican, because he wished to appear alone before ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... source of the thing in our NATURE; but then comes the furious hankering after wealth—the desire to have it without WORKING for it—which is the wish of so many of us; and THIS is the source of that hideous gambling which has produced the contemptible characters and criminal acts which are the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... lived a hundred years ago,—dealt with men and women; that is why all are as impressive to-day as they were when originally composed. Men and women like reading about men and women, and it is becoming understood, nowadays, that the truth about men and women can never be contemptible." ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... liberties. This, Sir, is a principle of allegiance equally solid and rational, fit for Englishmen to adopt, and well worthy of your Majesty's encouragement. We cannot long be deluded by nominal distinctions. The name of Stuart, of itself, is only contemptible; armed with the sovereign authority, their principles are formidable. The prince who imitates their conduct should be warned by their example, and, while he plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown, ...
— English Satires • Various
... two acts of common justice required on the part of England to make Ireland prosperous and free. It is glorious to say, that Burke was the first to see this, and inaugurate the reign of concession; it is pitiful, it is utterly contemptible, to be obliged to add, that what was then inaugurated is not yet fully accomplished. Burke demanded for Ireland political and religious freedom. Slowly some small concessions of both have been made when England has feared to refuse ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... place not theirs, reflect the sadness of art's captivity; and the irretrievable destruction of an inimitable past excites the pity and resentment of thoughtful men. The attempt to outdo the works of the great has exhibited the contemptible imbecility of the little, and the coarse-grained vanity of Clement the Eleventh has parodied the poetry of art in the bombastic prose of a vulgar tongue. Pope Pelagius took for his church the pillars and marbles of Trajan's Forum, in the belief that his acts were acceptable to God; but Clement had ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Meg said, "but why am I so little when I am put to the test, and why do I feel so big, so far above such contemptible things, when I look at a distance ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... commencing the attack, and now his only chance is to be silent and let people forget the exposure. I do not believe that in the whole history of science there is a case of any man of reputation getting himself into such a contemptible position. He will be the laughing-stock of all ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... so true, as soon as you hint that it is prejudicial to the common interests of the said society, all the bystanders will find that your opponent's arguments, however excellent they be, are weak and contemptible; and that yours, on the other hand, though they were random conjecture, are correct and to the point; you will have a chorus of loud approval on your side, and your opponent will be driven out of the field ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... their safeguard, and they were too strong to be pillaged by any petty marauder, as any one who has seen a Banjari encampment will be convinced. They encamp in a square, and their grain-bags piled over each other breast-high, with interstices left for their matchlocks, make no contemptible fortification. Even the ruthless Turk, Jamshid Khan, set up a protecting tablet in favour of the Charans of Murlah, recording their exemption from dind contributions, and that there should be no increase in duties, with threats to all who should ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... he intended her to believe he loved her, and suspicious as gossips had made her with reference to his conduct, she could not suppose he was guilty of heartless and contemptible trifling. She trusted his honor; yet the discovery of his affection brought a sensation of regret—of vague self-reproach, and she felt that in future he would prove a source of endless disquiet. Hitherto she had enjoyed ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... manner, and lay up secret store, not caring to exhibit it until the time comes for fruitful display. But they must not, in after-life, imitate the spendthrift vegetable, and blossom only in the strength of what they learned long ago; else they soon come to contemptible end. Wise people live like laurels and cedars, and go on mining in the earth, while they ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... late of the Seaforth Highlanders, as he informed us, and he was relating his experiences during the world memorable retreat at Mons, when Britain's little regular army, denominated by His Majesty, Wilhelm II, "The contemptible little English army," was practically ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... to observe how the first thing men do, when engaged in controversy with others, is ever to assume some honourable name to themselves, such as, if possible, shall beg the whole subject in dispute, and at the same time to affix on their adversaries a name which shall place them in a ridiculous or contemptible or odious light. A deep instinct, deeper perhaps than men give any account of to themselves, tells them how far this will go; that multitudes, utterly unable to weigh the arguments on one side or the other, will yet be ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... "You are a contemptible lot over yonder. Some of you are commissioners, and some are lieutenant-governors, and some have the V. C., and a few are privileged to walk about the Mall arm in arm with the viceroy; but I have seen Mark Twain this golden morning, have shaken his hand, and smoked a cigar—no, two cigars—with ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... I have this to say to you here and now. You came here to bring shame and distress on an honest girl,—you, an old soldier and an Irishman,—the first soldier and the first Irishman I ever knew to be guilty of so low and contemptible a piece of persecution. When I write to Major Cranston of this, and ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... according to his lights, but deeply influenced by his military and aristocratic leanings. Statesmen thousands of miles away might plan to encourage English settlers and English political ways and to put down all that was French. To the man on the spot English settlers meant "the four hundred and fifty contemptible sutlers and traders" who had come in the wake of the army from New England and New York, with no proper respect for their betters, and vulgarly and annoyingly insistent upon what they claimed to be their rights. ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... variety used by the softer-hearted landlords—quite contemptible in their clemency. The jaws of these resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left nothing but gums. There were also the intermediate or half-toothed sorts, probably devised by the middle-natured squires, or those under the influence of their ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... time and later, many vehement letters about these "skippers." To Joseph Hewes: "There are characters among the thirteen on the list who are truly contemptible—with such, as a private gentleman, I would disdain to sit down—I would disdain to be acquainted.... Until they give proof of their superior ability, I never shall acknowledge them as my senior officers—I ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... wealth is bad enough; but the aristocracy of dress is perfectly contemptible. Could Raphael visit Canada in rags, he would be nothing in their eyes beyond ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... all his hopes of life and lost that which was in his hand and for which his flesh had prompted him to venture himself, and died a miserable death. "And I tell thee not this parable, O King," added Shimas, "but that thou mayest leave this contemptible conduct that diverteth thee from thy duties and look to that which is committed to thee of the rule of thy folk and the maintenance of the order of thy realm, so that none may see fault in thee." The King asked "What ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the smiling land into the pestilential morass, where she could play again her old antics. From the period of the Reformation in England up to the present time, she has kept her emissaries here, individuals contemptible in intellect, it is true, but cat-like and gliding, who, at her bidding, have endeavoured, as much as in their power has lain, to damp and stifle every genial, honest, loyal, and independent thought, and to reduce minds to such a state of dotage as would enable their ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the fascinating topic, while I, who had no part in the game, sat and listened. The Baron was very cunning, and, as it seemed to me, very contemptible. With all the vices that are mine, I thank heaven that I have never loved money; for that love, it seems, undermines much that is manly and honest in upright hearts. Money, it will be remembered, was at the root of the last quarrel I ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... in the heart. My only wish was to push on at any cost, and it was only on account of my good friend, the doctor, that I had reluctantly refrained from making my way onward by force. My blood was boiling. The cowardice of my men made them so contemptible in my eyes that I could not bear even ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... He worships success. She is going to have a marvellous career, and she can help Gerald on in his. He can write plays for her to star in. What have I to offer against that? Yes, I know it's grovelling and contemptible of me to say that, Ginger. I ought to be above it, oughtn't I—talking as if I were competing for some prize... But I haven't any pride ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... it was sustained by wealth, as in that country. A very rich man gained, ultimately, admission to the noble class, as Rothschild has in London. Without wealth to uphold distinctions, any aristocracy soon becomes contemptible. That organization of society is most aristocratic which confers great political and social privileges on a few men, and retains these privileges from generation to generation, as in France during the reign of Louis XV. The state of society at ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the contemptible perfidy and meanness of the man whom, for twenty years, I have trusted," she panted, but the tone was so hollow he never would have known who was speaking had ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the strong, because they are strong, against the weak, nothing that tells for the haughty against the humble, nothing that tells for wealth against poverty. The effect of Dickens is purely democratic, and however contemptible he found our pseudo-equality, he was more truly democratic than any American who had yet written fiction. I suppose it was our instinctive perception in the region of his instinctive expression, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a beautiful and noble-minded young woman falls in love with a contemptible scoundrel, forgives his rebuffs, compromises her own dignity to win his affection, and finally persuades him to let her throw herself away on him,—is the result a romance or a tragedy? This is a nice question; and by the answer to it we must determine whether All's ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... addressing Histrio, observes, "Commend me to Seven shares and a half," as if some individual at that period had engrossed as large a proportion. Shakspeare, in Hamlet, speaks of "a whole share" as a source of no contemptible emolument, and of the owner of it as a person filling no inferior station in "a cry of payers." In Northward Ho! also, a sharer is noticed with respect. Bellamont the poet enters, and tells his servant, "Sirrah, I'll speak with none:" on which the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... to it in all vicissitudes, is one of the rarest and highest attributes of genius. All the chief characters in the book follow this line of absolutely consistent development, from Uncle Tom and Legree down to the most aggravating and contemptible of all, Marie St. Clare. The selfish and hysterical woman has never been so faithfully depicted by any ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... here, just now, on whose secrecy I can rely. This shall be no obstacle to my revenge. Neither shall Emily Brown be exposed to the mercenary solicitations of a scoundrel, odious in her eyes, and contemptible in everybody else's: nor will I tamely submit to the clandestine ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Randall such an obvious rotter? He is well bred; he has been at a public school and a university; he has been in the Foreign Office; he knows the best people and has lived all his life among them. Why is he so unsatisfactory, so contemptible? Why can't he get a valet to stay with him longer than a few months? Just because he is too lazy and pleasure-loving to hunt and shoot. He strums the piano, and sketches, and runs after married women, and reads literary books and ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... silent scorn on his contemptible foe, Woodburn, having been anxiously casting about him in thought for some means of rescuing the ill-fated girl from her impending doom, now, with the air of one acting only on his own responsibility, hastily called on his companions to follow him, and led the way, with ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... he's wrapped up in us, and all his "getting on" is for us. Would you like to be treated as your mother treated Chloe? Your mother's set the stroke for the other big-wigs about here; nobody calls on Chloe. And why not? Why not? I think it's contemptible to bar people just because they're new, as you call it, and have to make their position instead ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... man had risen from his chair. Jessie surveyed him with cool measuring eyes. His podgy figure was almost ludicrous in her eyes. His round, fleshy face became almost contemptible. But not quite. He was part of her life, and then those eyes, so strange, so baffling. So alive with an intelligence which at ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... hung and poised this motionless globe of the earth? Who laid its foundation? Nothing seems more vile and contemptible, for the meanest wretches tread it under foot; but yet it is in order to possess it that we part with the greatest treasures. If it were harder than it is, men could not open its bosom to cultivate ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... and let down their beards, under a specious appearance hiding the most abandoned profligacy; like one of the players on the stage, if you strip him of his fine habits wrought with gold, all that remains behind is a ridiculous spectacle of a little contemptible fellow, hired to appear there for seven drachmas. And yet these men despise everybody, talk absurdly of the gods, and drawing in a number of credulous boys, roar to them in a tragical style about virtue, and enter into disputations ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... that I have any personal feeling against Dr. Windship or other heavy-lifters, I will say that I regard all personal motives in a work of such magnitude and beneficence as simply contemptible. On the contrary, I am exceedingly grateful to this class of gymnasts for their noble illustration of the possibilities in one department ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... appear to glory in justifying the idea, and astonishing the natives by the eccentricity of their behaviour. But these originals should recollect that what may be tolerated in a man of superior talent, is ridiculous, if not contemptible, in one undistinguished by such a pretension; and that, by thus posting their absurdities to the eyes of a foreign nation, they leave behind them an impression which operates as a real injury in regard to their more rational countrymen. Another ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the set, for it seemed they had no regular places of their own. "Of course not," said Mrs Fairchild, contemptuously. "They can't afford it," which expressive phrase summed up, with both husband and wife, the very essence of all that was mean and contemptible, and she was only indignant at their being able to come there at all. The Bankheads were bad enough; but to have the Hamiltons there too, and then to hear them all talking French with some foreigners who occasionally joined them, really ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... this great philosopher, "poor Richard," or "the old lightning rod." Franklin, whose researches in philosophy have placed him preeminent among the first characters in this country, or in Europe: is it possible then that such a contemptible wretch as Peter Porcupine, (who never gave any specimen of his philosophy, but in bearing with Christian patience a severe whipping at the public post) can injure the exalted reputation of this great philosopher? The ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... tragical fate, alas, Us, poor mortals, constrains to bear Anguish of vision, unspeakable, Which the contemptible, ever-detestable, Doth in lovers ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... oftener from behind than from before. He had always taken every advantage of size and weight and numbers that he could call to his assistance. He was an insulter of girls and women. He was a bar-room brawler, and a saloon-corner loafer. He was all that was dirty, and mean, and contemptible, and cowardly in the eyes of a brave man, and yet, notwithstanding all this, Billy Byrne was no coward. He was what he was because of training and environment. He knew no other methods; no other code. Whatever the meager ethics of his kind he would have lived up to them to the death. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... your generous indignation be directed against any among us who may advise so absurd and madd'ning a measure. Their number is but few and daily decreased; and the spirit which can render them patient of slavery, will render them contemptible enemies. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... difficult things might be demanded of a very young boy,—to go alone at midnight to the execution-ground, for example, and bring back a head in proof of courage. For the fear of the dead was held not less contemptible in a samurai than the fear of man. The samurai child was pledged to fear nothing. In all such tests, the demeanor exacted was perfect impassiveness; any swaggering would have been judged quite as harshly as any sign ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... prudence was not his strong point. Moreover, the Secret Service man had aroused his curiosity. He wanted to see more of this fellow. So, with an indifference to danger, foolhardy, though too genuine to be contemptible, he strolled across an unprotected space of ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... evidences of the justness of our observations! We cannot pass from the East without noticing the sound statesmanship which is regulating all Lord Ellenborough's leading movements in India—a matter now universally admitted. How unspeakably contemptible and ridiculous has the lapse of a few months rendered the petty clamours against him, with which the ex-ministerial party commenced their last year's campaign! Without, however, travelling round the entire circle of our foreign connexions and operations—there are one or two points to which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... is more likely than that you would justly value your self upon that mans Censure as being the highest Applause. Those who were fond of continuing Mr Otis on the Seat, were I dare say to a Man among your warmest friends: Will you then add to their Disappointment by a Resignation, merely because one contemptible person, who perhaps was hired for the purpose, has blessd you with his reviling—Need I add more than to intreat it as a favor that you would ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men when their own lives and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... Maine appeared then as contemptible in the broad open daylight as he had appeared redoubtable in the obscurity of the cabinets. He had the look of one condemned, and his face, generally so fresh-coloured, was now as pale as death. He replied in a very low and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... comes from obscurity, as pearls from homely oyster shells. Working among the poor of London, an English author searched out the life-career of an apple woman. Her history makes the story of kings and queens contemptible. Events had appointed her to poverty, hunger, cold and two rooms in a tenement. But there were three orphan boys sleeping in an ash-box whose lot was harder. She dedicated her heart and life to the little waifs. During two ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... his frock. Most of us have some wolf to gnaw us somewhere; but we are generally gnawed beneath our clothes, so that the world doesn't see; and it behoves us so to bear it that the world shall not suspect. The man who goes about declaring himself to be miserable will be not only miserable, but contemptible ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... They never sight the returning Texans, nor these them. The Rangers go down the river; the savages up stream. Of all Apaches, of all Indians, the Jicarillas are the most contemptible cowards. Dastards to the last degree, the young "braves" who mutilated the slain lancers will return to their tribe to tell of ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... So lowe from what we were, that we dare heare This from our Servants and not punish it? Where is the terrour of our names, our powre That Spaine with feare hath felt in both his Indies? We are lost for ever, and from freemen growne Slaves so contemptible as no worthie Prince, That would have men, not sluggish Beasts, his Servants, Would ere vouchsafe the owning. Now, my frends, I call not on your furtherance to preserve The lustre of my actions; let me with them Be nere remembred, so this government Your wives, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... a great knowledge in modern histories, especially in those of the countries in which he had travelled, and he seems, by his letters, to have been no contemptible politician: As to his poetry, it is smoother, and more harmonious, than was very common with the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... from heaven. They look upon it as a convenience, and accept the privilege of love without the responsibility of it. They even use their friends for their own selfish purposes, and so never have true friends. Some men shed friends at every step they rise in the social scale. It is mean and contemptible to merely use men, so long as they further one's personal interests. But there is a nemesis on such heartlessness. To such can never come the ecstasy and comfort of mutual trust. This worldly policy can never truly succeed. It stands to reason ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... pressure of petty, vexatious, and provoking, but useless annoyances. Caesar's demands may have been unjust, but they were bold, manly, and undisguised. The eunuch may have been right in resisting them; but the mode was so mean and contemptible, that mankind have always taken part with Caesar in the sentiments which they have formed ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... Inza, contemptuously. "You had better go away at once. I wouldn't believe such a contemptible creature as you ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... office of Sir Lemuel Levison, the young man used some very intemperate language, accusing the great banker of appropriating his own contemptible little fortune for private ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... men standing there, all three so elegant, so distinguished! A wicked sentiment of female vanity crossed my mind; and I said to myself with miserable pride and triumph: "All three love me ... All three are thinking of me!" ... Oh! I have been cruelly punished for this contemptible vanity. Alas! one of the three did not love me—and he was the one I loved—one of them did not think of me, and he was the one that filled my every thought. Another sentiment more noble than the first, saddened my heart. I said: "Here are three devoted friends ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... to stand thus, tricked out in the dress of a remote civilization from which he had thrust himself forever, before the woman he perhaps had wronged, and with so easy and disdainful a bearing, seemed to Ringfield the summit of senseless folly and contemptible weakness. Subjected during the rest of the evening to the cynical, amused and imperturbable gaze of this man, whom, in spite of his Christianity, he hated, Ringfield made but a sorry chairman. His French stuck in his throat; ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... boar whose heart's 25 High temper flashes in his eyes, with these The spear accomplish'd youths of Panthus' house. Yet Hyperenor of equestrian fame Lived not his lusty manhood to enjoy, Who scoffingly defied my force in arms, 30 And call'd me most contemptible in fight Of all the Danai. But him, I ween, His feet bore never hence to cheer at home His wife and parents with his glad return. So also shall thy courage fierce be tamed, 35 If thou oppose me. I command thee, go— Mix with the multitude; withstand not me, Lest evil overtake thee! To be taught By ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... want you to keep saying within yourself as I proceed: "That is the way to treat a perfect husband;" for you are to remember that no wife was ever worse swindled than this Abigail of my text. At the other end of her table sat a mean, selfish, snarling, contemptible sot, and if she could do so well for a dastard, how ought you to do with that princely and splendid man with whom you are to walk the ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... it was, how contemptible it was, this playing with the glorious thing that had been their love! For the first time in her life Rachael could have played the virago, could have raged and stamped, could have made him absolutely afraid to misuse her so. He did not deserve ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... to some minds a dreadfully low and contemptible state of things. "What!" a romantic reader may exclaim, "they had arrived in that celebrated city, from which in days of old the stalwart Vikings used to issue on their daring voyages, in which the descendants of these grand fellows still ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... garnished, had faded from his face, had died upon his lips. Once more he was a soul in torments of despair and degradation; and yet once more did the absence of the abject in man and manner redeem him from the depths of either. In these moments of reaction he was pitiful, but not contemptible, much less unlovable. Indeed, I could see the qualities that had won the heart of Raffles as I had never seen them before. There is a native nobility not to be destroyed by a single descent into the ignoble, an essential honesty too bright ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... petticoats for a much smaller sum than $10,000. It should be remembered, furthermore, that Miss Anthony has labored indefatigably in the cause of woman suffrage, paying her own expenses most of the time; has undergone a contemptible and outrageous persecution at the hands of the United States court for violating the election laws; has bent for months over the bed of a brother wounded almost to death by an assassin's bullet; has watched tenderly over the steps of an aged mother; and has always, everywhere, been the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... something to me, Katrine!" he cried, at length. "Tell me even that I am the contemptible cad you think me to be; only say something. I cannot endure this. With every fibre of me I am longing to take you in my arms, to kiss your eyes that have the ache in them. God knows how I want you ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... employer to hitch up his team every Saturday night and carry you home?" This seemed a poser, but it wasn't. "No," said the man promptly, "I wouldn't expect that; but if the farmer had his team hitched up and was going my way, I should call him a contemptible fellow if he would not let me ride." Mr. Employe came out three minutes afterwards with a pass ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... us, we should in a few ages be unavoidably reduced to the wants and ignorance of the ancient savage Americans, whose natural endowments and provisions come no way short of those of the most flourishing and polite nations. So that he who first made known the use of that contemptible mineral, may be truly styled the father of arts, and ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... sitting down with some white man or some native who can be a little understood, and collecting the history of those islands, of Tamaahmaah's wars, the curiosities of the islands, &c., preparatory to the histories of their voyages; and the collection is indeed ridiculously contemptible. To enumerate the thousand instances of ignorance, filth, &c.,—or to particularize all the frantic gambols that are ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... the history of Greece—could not but make the Cretan's rule both odious and despicable. What made it more hateful still in the eyes of the people was the fact {214} that it had been imposed upon them by foreign arms, and what made it more contemptible still was the fact that it functioned under false pretences. As free men, the Greeks resented the violence done to their liberty; but as intelligent men they would have resented open violence less than a profanation of the name of liberty that added mockery to ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... Britain who every month read and prayed about the then little known world of heathenism, and spared not their best to bring that world to the Christ whom they had found, seem a small thing? How much smaller, even to contemptible insignificance, must those who think so consider the arrival of William Carey in Calcutta to be three years before! Yet the thirty thousand sprang from the one, and to-day the thirty thousand have a vast body of Christians really obedient to the Master, in so ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... adores With the same spirit that he drinks and whores; Enough, if all around him but admire, And now the punk applaud, and now the friar. Thus with each gift of nature and of art, And wanting nothing but an honest heart; Grown all to all; from no one vice exempt, And most contemptible, to shun contempt: His passion still, to covet general praise, His life, to forfeit it a thousand ways; A constant bounty which no friend has made; An angel tongue, which no man can persuade; A fool, with more of wit than half mankind; Too rash for ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... at the height of his autocracy, he was visited by a composer named Gluck, whom we think of to-day as a revolutionist in music, and a man of the utmost historical importance. To the lordly Haendel, however, he was more or less contemptible, and people who know nothing else of either genius, know that Haendel said, "Gluck understood about as much counterpoint as ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... Gospel, may be allowed to feel, and talk of these grand truths with little emotion. But in those who profess a sincere belief in them, this coldness is insupportable. The greatest possible services of man to man must appear contemptible, when compared with "the unspeakable mercies of Christ:" mercies so dearly bought, so freely bestowed—A deliverance from eternal misery—The gift of "a crown of glory, that fadeth not away." Yet, what judgment should we form of such conduct, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... is, it will be big for the American forces that are to have part in it. There has been a conference among the Allied commanders, and it has been decided that it's time to teach the Germans a lesson. They've been despising the American troops, as they despised General French's 'contemptible little army,' and General Pershing is going to show Fritz that we have a soldier or two ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... had to pass, and a cloth of gold borne over his head, the fountains poured forth wine, and the city made him a present of a silver buffet weighing a thousand marcs. At this period schools existed in Paris sanctioned by the government, when the pay for each scholar was so contemptible that they must have been for the use of the middle classes, whose means were very confined; they were called Petites Ecoles (Little Schools), and paid a certain sum for having the privilege to teach; the number in the reign of John was sixty-three, of which forty-one were under ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... sat with Gloria and found little to say, he was conscious of her eyes probing at him when she thought that he did not see. He looked away, a shadow in his eyes, and chanced to see Gratton. Gratton, who had struck him as contemptible in the woods, a misfit and a poor sort of man at best, was here on his own heath. He carried himself well, he talked well; he bore himself with a certain distinction. Clearly he was much in favour among the girls and women, much envied by the younger men. Yes; Gloria was ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... genius—a philosopher like the doctus Laurentius, not be contented with his fame as discoverer of the art of printing; but to leave his manuscripts, and pica, and pie, to strive for a contemptible triumph, to look with an eye of envy on a competitor for the applauses of a music room! Alas! too true. Who is the man, let me ask you, who can put bounds to his pretensions? Who is the man that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... stoats, weasels, and minivers in the warren of Church and State." They were "Antichrist's little toes." To judge from these expressions merely one might be disposed to agree with Heylin, who says of the Letany that it was "so silly and contemptible that nothing but the sin and malice which appeared in every line of it could have possibly preserved it from being ridiculous." But the Letany is really a most important contribution to the history of the period. Nothing is ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... shape in the effort to secure justice for others or justice for ourselves, save as conditioned upon the attitude we are willing to take toward our Army, and especially toward our Navy. It is not merely unwise, it is contemptible, for a nation, as for an individual, to use high-sounding language to proclaim its purposes, or to take positions which are ridiculous if unsupported by potential force, and then to refuse to provide this force. If there is no ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... admire in others is admiration of ourselves? And is it not a wise selection? If you would have me admirable, my friend, admire me, and speak your commendation without stint that in the sunshine of your praises I may wax. For indifference maketh an indifferent man, and contempt a contemptible man. Come, is it not true? Does not all that is worthy in ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... these degenerate mediums yield themselves more readily to fraud, with the result that several who had deservedly won honoured names and met all hostile criticism have, in their later years, been detected in the most contemptible tricks. It is a thousand pities that it should be so, but if the Court of Arches were to give up its secrets, it would be found that tippling and moral degeneration were by no means confined to psychics. At the same time, a psychic is so peculiarly sensitive ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... A gallant Contemptible has been complaining to me that the Press shows no sense of proportion in the space that it allots to air-raids. Our casualties from that source, he said, are never one tenth as heavy as those in France on days when G.H.Q. reports "Everything ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... dances, dresses, and spends his time in drawing rooms, instead of being a good lawyer, divine, or physician; Cleanthes is a down-right coxcomb, and will remain to all that knew him a contemptible example of talents misapplied. It is to this affectation the world owes its whole race of coxcombs; Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... eloquent, instructive language, though his enemies may despise or deny it ever so much. What is more, one could, perhaps, meet the stoutest historian on his own ground, and argue with him; showing that sham histories were much truer than real histories; which are, in fact, mere contemptible catalogues of names and places, that can have no moral effect upon ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it contains for its sustentation and propagation, testifies a care, on the part of the Creator, expressly directed to these purposes. We are on all sides surrounded by bodies wonderfully curious, and no less wonderfully diversified." Trifling, therefore, and, perhaps, contemptible, as to the unthinking may seem the study of a butterfly, yet, when we consider the art and mechanism displayed in so minute a structure, the fluids circulating in vessels so small as almost to escape the sight, the beauty of the wings and covering, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... would richly repay their exertions; and by hopes of indefinite advantage, if they could by any means prevent its happening. That these gentlemen really did keenly scrutinize, and carefully weigh every expression in that letter, ridiculous as it was, and contemptible as, I fear, it showed its writer to be, is certain; but it did not occur to them to compare with it the spirit, at least, and intention of their own answer to it. Did the latter document contain less cunning and insincerity, because it was couched in somewhat superior ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... machine Spain in the sixteenth century was a marvel of power; as an aggregation of thinking men, it was even then contemptible. Ferdinand, Charles V and Philip II were able and illustrious rulers, and they appeared at a time when their several characters could tell on the immediate fortunes of Spain. They were warriors, and the ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... flung the words out like an execration that throbbed with his scorn and loathing of the sex. Other women! By an act of his will he had put his wife on a high pedestal for the moment—made her shine, for the moment, white and fair above the contemptible herd, her obscure multitudinous sisterhood. Other women! The phrase had an undertone of dull passionate self-reproach that was distinctly audible to Stanistreet's finer ear. Stanistreet knew many things about Tyson—knew, for instance, the ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... have no right to object. Considering the position which we have so long occupied, and still occupy, in China, this snarling and blustering at the first appearance of a stranger on the scene is more offensive and contemptible than the conduct of the dog ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 11, March 17, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... a cavalier of rank, and you assured him that a hundred thousand thalers was not sufficient. I grant you a pension of two thousand thalers, and I tell you it must suffice to support you creditably. Woe to you, when you commence again your former most contemptible and miserable life! woe to you, when you again forget to distinguish between your own money and the money of others! I assure you that I will never again pay one of your debts. And in order that credulous men may not be so ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... our more sensitive moments, when one considers what he has done in dragging this great issue into the light and making it clear. He shows that what we have against us is not so much a system of society or a set of laws, as a definite and contemptible type ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... "Contemptible creature!" I exclaimed; "you may think you've a fine voice, but, like a simpering schoolgirl, you can't sing till you're pressed!" I ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... misanthropy is absurdly overcharged. In the first place, bis play of "Virginia," which was first produced at Drury Lane on the 25th of February, 1754, actually achieved something like a suc'es d'estime. It ran eleven nights, no contemptible run for those days ; was revived both at Drury Lane and at Covent Garden; was printed and reprinted; and all this all in his own lifetime. It had, in fact, at least as much success as it deserved, though, doubtless, too little to satisfy the ambition of its author. In the second place, there ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... you further, that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel hath its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers with all their pomp of diction; how mean, how contemptible, are they, compared with the Scripture! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the Sacred Personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man? Do we find that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast or ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... trade, was an inconvenience, which would have sufficiently balanced the repeal of all the acts complained of, had such repeals been obtained; but if the whole continent must take up arms, if every man must be a soldier, it is scarcely worth our while to fight against a contemptible ministry only. Dearly, dearly, do we pay for the repeal of the acts, if that is all we fight for; for in a just estimation, it is as great a folly to pay a Bunker-hill price for law, as for land. As I have always considered the independancy of this continent, as an event, which sooner or later must ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... exceptions, heartily sympathise with the fire and faggot sentiments of Robert Hall, is well known; but happily, their absurd ravings are attended to by none save eminently pious people, whose brains are unclogged by any conceivable quantity of useful knowledge. In point of intellect they are utterly contemptible. Their ignorance, however, is fully matched by their impudence, which never forsakes them. They claim to be considered God's right-hand men, and of course duly qualified preachers of his 'word,' though unable to speak five minutes without taking the same number ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... how good can accrue to themselves, if they do what is right to others: and I regret to say I have met with not a few, who have been engaged in the art of teaching, who have been guilty of the mean and contemptible conduct I have hinted at above, and it is to deter others from falling into the same errors that I have ventured to allude to this subject at all. It would be invidious to mention names, which I could very easily do, and should this be persisted in, if I am spared, I shall most ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... I will go. Prepare her somewhat, Franziska, beforehand, that I may not become contemptible in her eyes, and in my own. Come, Werner, you shall dine ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... or not, these gunboats were found worse than useless as a substitute for 'the ruinous folly of a navy.' They failed egregiously to stop Jefferson's own countrymen from breaking his Embargo Act of 1808; and their weatherly qualities were so contemptible that they did not dare to lose sight of land without putting their guns in the hold. No wonder the practical men of the Navy ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... may tell you candidly that of all contemptible hounds I've ever had the misfortune to meet, ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... too much about what I say in the pulpit, mother," Gavin said, with a sigh, "though of course a man who fell in love merely with a face would be a contemptible creature. Yet I see that women do not understand how ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... fellowship of yours? Do you suppose I'm so much in love with you, Herbert Walters, that I can't let you go without wanting to fawn upon you and run after you ever afterwards! Pah! you miserable, pitiable, contemptible cur and coward, are you afraid even of a woman! Go away, and don't be frightened. I never want to see you or speak to you again as long as I live, you wretched, lying, shuffling hypocrite. I'd rather go ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... said, Mr. Bulstrode; I am no wrangler, to quarrel with a shadow; and, I trust, not in the least, that most contemptible of all human beings, a social bully, to be on all occasions menacing the sword or the pistol. Such men usually do nothing, when matters come to a crisis. Even when they fight, they fight bunglingly, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... hedging. There are two kinds of hedging in conversation: one which comes from failing to follow the trend of the discussion; another which is the result of talking at random merely to make bulk. The first is tolerable; the last is contemptible. The moment one begins to talk for effect, or to hedge flippantly, he is talking insincerely. And when a good converser runs against this sort of talker, his heart calls out, with Carlyle, for an empty room, his tobacco, and his pipe. It is maintained by some ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... when he talked of the inestimable value of a man's soul, which he said endured for ever, whilst his body, as every one knew, lasted at most for a very contemptible period of time; and how forcibly he reasoned on the folly of a man, who, for the sake of gaining the whole world—a thing, he said, which provided he gained he could only possess for a part of the time, during which his perishable body existed—should lose ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... it was the high crime of the code to slug him with brass or steel knuckles, commonly called knucks. The man who carried this reenforcement for the natural fist in his pocket and used it in a fight was held the lowest of all contemptible and namelessly vile things. So, these Texas cowboys turned on Morgan at their comrade's accusation, deaf to any denial, flaming with ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... Many people and writers are satirical without first of all demonstrating upon what grounds they have the right to be so. Satire is a wholly laudable thing if it is directed in a fair minded manner, but if it is only an excuse for bitter cynicism it is altogether contemptible. Thus he says of the Thackerean treatment of 'Vanity Fair,' 'he was attacking "Vanity Fair" from the inside.' It comes to this: if you want to make an extract from Thackeray you must dive about all over the place to make apparent ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... that in some cases society expects a man to overlook the law, to kill as unclean curs those who thus defame a female member of their family. It is possible that there are other shyster lawyers as mean, other bipedal coyotes as contemptible as those under consideration; but if so they have not yet been called to the attention of the ICONOCLAST. True it is, however, that the average attorney cares more for victory than for virtue. Howsoever honest and upright he may be in private ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... her glorious news came at an opportune moment, to cheer the spirits of the American people. The war had begun to assume a serious aspect. Continued reverses on the ocean had roused the British ministry to the fact that they were dealing with no contemptible enemy, and the word had gone forth that the Americans must be crushed into submission. Troops were hurriedly sent to Canada, and all the vessels that could be spared were ordered to the coast of the United States. The ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... circular letter of 1783, Washington had spoken of the times as a period of "political probation." The moment had come for the United States to determine, said he, "whether they will be respectable and prosperous, or contemptible and miserable, as a nation." Three years had now passed and the period of probation seemed to have ended in the ruin of national hopes. The events of the years 1786 made a profound impression upon the minds of all responsible ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... street—was born in the Hielands o' Bonnie Scotland; but, be it said, he appears not to have become inoculated with the same spirit of honesty and perseverance that characterizes the greater portion of his countrymen. He arrived here nearly twenty years ago, and since that time he has been a lazy, contemptible thief, a shocking contrast ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... that on Atticus or that on Sporus, the old grumbler would have been crushed. But Pope writing dialogue resembled—to borrow Horace's imagery and his own—a wolf which, instead of biting, should take to kicking, or a monkey which should try to sting. The Narrative is utterly contemptible. Of argument there is not even the show; and the jests are such as, if they were introduced into a farce, would call forth the hisses of the shilling gallery. Dennis raves about the drama; and the nurse thinks that he is calling for a dram. "There is," he cries, "no peripetia in the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not already done so, Helen would pass him by sooner or later, like so many of the others. But Will Fairmont had stuck to him. Maybe he had got his sister to pity him. Al winced at the thought. "I am getting contemptible. Will Fairmont would not do that. O, well, I might as well be done with them all right now!" His eyes flashed defiantly. Then he caught sight ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... contemplation of heaven, became in popular opinion the highest ideal of humanity, displacing the old ideal of the patriot and hero who, forgetful of self, lives and is ready to die for the good of his country. The earthly city seemed poor and contemptible to men whose eyes beheld the City of God coming in the clouds of heaven. Thus the centre of gravity, so to say, was shifted from the present to a future life, and however much the other world may have gained, there can be little doubt that this one lost heavily by the change. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... situation hopeless was the circumstance that the civilians accepted it with contemptible humility. It was almost pathetic to observe how people, just on the border-line, received with humble thankfulness such crumbs of recognition as were occasionally thrown to them. Snobbery increases in offensiveness ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... contributed to hasten the approach of that cloudy reverse at which I have already hinted. For some time the ruin of my father's affairs had been prevented by the sums which his eloquence had wrung from the well-meaning Mr. Elford. Hugh was no contemptible orator on these occasions. Hope seldom forsook him, and he built so securely on what he hoped might come to pass as sometimes to assert the thing had already happened. Such convenient mistakes are ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... spring-time, when its flowers were loveliest, and hope was strongest for its summer, her life was changed into the dreary wind-swept, rain-sodden moor. The man who can ACCEPT such a sacrifice from a woman,—I say nothing of WILING it from her—is, in his meanness, selfishness, and dishonour, contemptible as the Pharisee who, with his long prayers, devours the widow's house. He leaves her desolate, while he walks off free. Would to God a man like the great-hearted, pure-bodied Milton, a man whom young men are compelled to respect, would in this our age, utter such a word ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... a "gossip"; but such are the changes which words undergo in their meaning as well as in their form, that a title of honour formerly implying a spiritual relationship in God, is now applied only to those whose conversation resembles the contemptible tittle-tattle of a Christening. ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... mentioned lately, had to shoot a good few of his first levy against the Protestant Champion, before they would march at all!—I am sorry for these poor men; and wish the Reich had been what it once was, a Veracity and Practical Reality, not an Imaginary Entity and hideously contemptible Wiggery, as it now is! Contemptible, and hideous as well;—setting itself up on that, fundamental mendacity; which is eternally tragical, though little regarded in these days, and which entails mendacities without ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... face the most contemptible enemy, but they spare not the weak and inoffensive of any class, age, or sex. A respectable landholder, in presenting a petition, complaining of the outrages committed upon his village and peasantry, said a few days ago—"The oppression ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... wrong way, also, hard to travel; yea, impassable, except for those whose sin against light made them exceeding sinful. What more vile, degraded, contemptible, and criminal, than a minister of Christ, that is leased to an earthly power, purchased with things that perish, and controlled by designing men? In this manner would God separate the precious from the vile ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... home-evenings—which were not many—chatted together familiarly, the well-pleased Masons thought confidentially, by the fireside in the family parlor. It must not be inferred from their constant intercourse that he had the field entirely to himself. Gallants of divers pretensions—first-class, mediocre, and contemptible—considered with a practical eye to "settlement," hovered about the fascinating witch as moths about a gas-burner, and had no citable cause of complaint of non-appreciation, inasmuch as she shed equal light upon all, save one. "My very old friend, Mr. Chilton," she was wont to ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... had hitherto doubted and disputed, the discovery of the paintings of these celestial little mechanics and merchants helped to solve many a difficulty, for the secret of half the arts and crafts of Pompeii is revealed to us in this playful guise. Nor are the designs themselves contemptible from an artistic point of view; look how intent, for example, is the pose of the tiny jeweller working with a graver's tool upon the gold vessel before him; how steadily he bears himself at a task which requires at once ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... of the time; he would have, at the worst, to contend with loose confederacies of tribes, distrustful of each other, unaccustomed to act together, and, though brave, possessing no discipline or settled military organization. At the same time, his adversaries must not be regarded as altogether contemptible. The Philistines and Canaanites in Palestine, the Arabs of the Sinaitic and Syrian deserts, the Rutennu of the Lebanon and of Upper Syria, the Nairi of the western Mesopotamian region, were individually brave men, were inured to warfare, had a strong ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... impos'd, But to sit idle on the houshold hearth, A burdenous drone; to visitants a gaze, Or pitied object, these redundant locks Robustious to no purpose clustring down, Vain monument of strength; till length of years 570 And sedentary numness craze my limbs To a contemptible old age obscure. Here rather let me drudge and earn my bread, Till vermin or the draff of servil food Consume me, and oft-invocated death Hast'n the welcom end of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... this contemptible comedy is plain enough to my mind. She is simply holding off (Julian, as you know, is a poor man) until the influence of Lady Janet's persuasion is backed by the opening of Lady Janet's purse. In one word—Settlements! But for the profanity of the woman's language, and ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... aroused in me a healthy sense of shame. Perhaps his righteous maledictions on the nobles had given me glimpses of the idea of justice. Perhaps, in short, what I had hitherto despised in myself as impulses of weakness and compassion, henceforth began dimly to take a more solemn and less contemptible shape. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... resumed Photogen, rubbing his eyes. But with that his memory came clear, and he shuddered, and cried, "Oh, horrible! horrible! to be turned all at once into a coward!—a shameful, contemptible, disgraceful coward! I am ashamed—ashamed—and so frightened! It ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Period which this Age styles AUGUSTAN, his Lordship speaks with sovereign scorn. In his Characteristics he, without making any exception, labors to prove, that the compositions of Dryden are uniformly contemptible. See his advice to an Author in the second Volume of the Characteristics, and also his miscellaneous reflections in the third Volume; "If," says he to the authors, "your Poets are still to be Mr. Bayses, and your prose writers Sir Rogers, without offering ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... said he, 'you don't know what you are doing. You are serving the devil, boy. Don't you know that I am an Indian? I tell you that I am; and if I should taste your beer, I could never stop until I got to rum, and become again the drunken, contemptible wretch your father once knew me. John, while you live, never again tempt any man to ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... likely as anyone to be frightened by shadows. I told myself that the whole thing was sheer absurdity, and that I should be thoroughly ashamed of my own conduct when the morning came. 'If you don't want to be self-branded as a contemptible idiot, Marjorie Lindon, you will call up your courage, and these foolish fears will fly.' But it would not do. Instead of flying, they grew worse. I became convinced,—and the process of conviction was terrible beyond ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... he went on soliloquizing, though all the time Felix stood before him, "who has learned that lesson of contentment which the generality never learn. Rich in his poverty here, an inheritor of the skies, I have only insulted him by so contemptible an offer." His head sunk upon his breast, his eyes fell upon the ground, his pocket-book dropped from his unconscious hand, and he resumed his walk. The negro stooped and picked it up, saying, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... iron rod, and she is so wily that Auntie thinks her every action something perfect. Now, Mr. Lawson," said Jennie, with greater earnestness, "Mrs. Arnold is determined that Marguerite shall marry that unprincipled Mr. Tracy, and the thought makes me sick. I loathe him—he is almost as contemptible ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... he said, hesitating, not to say stammering, notwithstanding a prodigious effort to seem philosophical and calm—"To own the truth, these minute-fellows are not quite as contemptible as we soldiers would be apt to think. It was a stone-wall affair, and dodging work; and, so, you know, sir, drilled troops wouldn't have the usual chance. They pressed us ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... abject suppliant with the most unmitigated scorn. There is always something contemptible in the sight of one man pleading to another for assistance in his love affairs—that is a business which he should do for himself. How much greater, then, is the humiliation involved when the amorous person asks the aid of one whom he believes ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... that he should have been quicker. He begged my pardon. His cold voice really maddened me, and I burst out into some foolish, contemptible diatribe, called him a machine, taunted him, then—as I felt that loathsome thing nestling once more to me,—begged him to assist me, to stay with me, not to leave me alone—I meant in the company ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... off than our own in point of stable, quiet government and of national welfare? The theorist scoffs at forms which have survived their meaning, at privilege which will bear no examination, at compromises which sound ludicrous, at submissions which seem contemptible; but let him put forward his practical scheme for making all men rational, consistent, just. Englishmen, I imagine, are not endowed with these qualities in any extraordinary degree. Their strength, politically speaking, ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... Editor. These lines are inscribed in one of Coleridge's Malta Notebooks. The following note or comment is attached:—'These lines I wrote as nonsense verses merely to try a metre; but they are by no means contemptible; at least in reading them I am surprised at finding them so good. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... implies.... I didn't care—I didn't care even to understand, because I thought you generous and nice to me—and I was so confident of you that I came with you and told you I had had some champagne which made my head swim.... And you—did this! It—it was contemptible." ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... formerly; but was pulled up by some of the envious inhabitants thereabouts, who are not so far convinced as to promise not to injure them for the future. The ground will probably in a short time yield them some fruit of their labour, how contemptible soever they ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... Nature's womb—there have been evolved intelligence and love, sacrifice, ideals; splendours which no splendour to come can utterly dim. These things are in the power of Nature. This is what "dead matter" can mother. So much the worse for our contemptible conceptions of matter, and That of which matter is the manifestation. But if it be that from the slime, by natural processes, there can grow a St. Francis, surely our dim notions of the potencies of Nature must be exalted. The forces that have erected us from the ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... to terrify them: but they found to their astonishment that the Christians would not change their minds for any terror. Then their hatred became rage and fury. They could not understand how such poor ignorant contemptible people as the Christians seemed to be, dared to have an opinion of their own, and to stand to it; how they dared to think themselves right, and all the world wrong; and in their fury they inflicted on them ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... sit down, and then abused him roundly. 'What did he mean,' I asked, 'by disturbing me in this rude way? How did he dare to cause a person of my quality and evident importance to be awakened in order to interview his entirely contemptible self?' ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... emotion. To depict a being facing an impossible task with no noble, but with only an ignoble, motive requires such an exaggerated mode of expression. Mime's grief is real enough, but the cause of it contemptible. After a considerable deal in this mournful key comes the sudden entry of the bright young savage Siegfried, driving the bear. His first theme is simply a bugle hunting call: Siegfried was then nothing but a hunter, a wild child of the forest. But as he gets on with what he has ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... infinitude into love are angelic exceptions; they are among women what noble geniuses are among men. Their great passions are rare as masterpieces. Below the level of such love come compromises, conventions, passing and contemptible irritations, as in all things petty ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... misjudge you, Peggy. I can only explain that fact by saying that never before had I met any one of like truthfulness and so straightforward. Then, not knowing that your friends had the same attributes, I am guilty of injustice toward Sally. Now she misconstrues what was meant for a jest into a contemptible trick. Oh, it was! I see it now. I' faith! the sooner that execution comes off ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... and legal rule in the Transvaal; and there are European lawyers of the opinion that the Uitlanders must be the most contemptible and lowest set of adventurers for not being satisfied with it! Dr. Kuyper declares that "the factitious discontent existed only among the English"; and adds with contempt, "Let us look into the Edgar, Lombaard, ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... he had done right, but his generous heart could not feel the black, shameless treason of his brother because his own smaller treason stood in the way. He could not see the full guilt of that wretched brother because he felt mean and contemptible himself. Truly, the soldier had hit the nail on the head when he said, "You're ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... his auditors, and rob the poor slave of the benefits of his labors, his character was defamed, his life was sought, and he at last driven from our Republic, as a fugitive. But was Thompson disgraced by all this mean and contemptible and wicked chicanery and malice? No more than was Paul, when in consequence of a vision he had seen at Troas, he went over to Macedonia to help the Christians there, and was beaten and imprisoned, because he cast out a spirit of divination from a young damsel ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... greed—shall we be encouraged in this savage selfishness by what dares to call itself science, to play one another false, instead of standing, with united front, to the powers of darkness, and scorning to betray our fellows, human or animal, in the contemptible hope of gaining by the treachery? Ah! you may quote authorities, wise and good, till you are hoarse!" cried the Professor, with a burst of energy; "but they will not convince me that black is white. I care not who may uphold the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice; it is monstrous, it is dastardly, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Oracles, as the product indeed of inspiration, but of inspiration emanating from an evil spirit. This hypothesis of a diabolic inspiration is rejected by the school of Van Dale. Both the power of at all looking into the future, and the fancied source of that power, are dismissed as contemptible chimeras. Upon the first of these dark pretensions we shall have occasion to speak at another point. Upon the other we agree with Van Dale. Yet, even here, the spirit of triumphant ridicule, applied to questions not wholly within ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... minister"—that is, to Walpole. In the next scene the effrontery of the piece culminates in a ballet where the Prime Minister appears, leading a chorus of false patriots, who, to use Fielding's own words, are set in the 'odious and contemptible light' of a set of "cunning self-interested fellows who for a little paltry bribe would give up the liberties and properties of their country." These worthy patriots are of four types, the noisy, the cautious, the ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... Cowardice is always contemptible, and wickedness is always odious; but when the two come together, and a man has no other reason for his sin than 'I was afraid,' each makes the other blacker. Israel had cast off the fear of the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was supposed to possess. "Why should such a rich man stoop to cheat?" asked his defenders. "To put money into one's pocket in this way is even worse than to cheat at cards! Besides, it's impossible! Valorsay is above such contemptible charges. ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... justified to the Prophet Jonah the pardon that he had granted to the inhabitants of Nineveh, he even touched upon the interest of the beasts who would have been involved in the ruin of this great city. No substance is absolutely contemptible or absolutely precious before God. And the abuse or the exaggerated extension of the present maxim appears to be in part the source of the difficulties that M. Bayle puts forward. It is certain that God sets greater store by a man than a lion; ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... said that you would disown Vincent if he were not true to the South. Think of Vincent in my place—dawdling in Acredale or Washington while battles were going on. You would not hold him less contemptible that he was in love; that he let his love, or his life, for you are both to me, stand as a barrier to his duty. You can't love where you can't honor, and you can't hate where you know conscience ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... last fifty years and marshalled, on that fatal August day of 1914, the formidable army that swept over Belgium, France and Russia? Public Opinion created by the military caste in Germany! What secret and growing force made of the Allies' contemptible army of yesterday the crushing victorious army of to-day?—The invincible power of Public Opinion!—It leaped from the very depths of the wounded heart and outraged conscience of nations, and created in ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... the whims, oddities, and eccentric developments of London life. His procedure was to bring together a number of these fantastic humorists, to play them off upon each other, involve them in all manner of comical misadventures, and render them utterly ridiculous and contemptible. There was thus a perishable element in his art, for manners change; and however effective this exposure of contemporary affectations may have been, before an audience of Jonson's day, it is as hard for a modern reader to detect ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... demonstrate the truth of Haig's predictions, and then the blow fell. The Kaiser viewed his strong hosts and boasted that he would soon wipe out England's "contemptible little army." He very nearly did so, and would certainly have succeeded, had it not been for the fighting spirit of ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... army in the eyes of neutral Powers. Any of these was good enough, but what now appears is better. Exact measurements have since demonstrated beyond all question of cavil that Rheims Cathedral had been built with mathematical accuracy to shield our contemptible enemy's trenches around Chalons from our best gun positions outside Laon. This act of treachery proves that, instead of Germany being the aggressor, France has been cunningly preparing ever since 1212 A.D. for the war which at last even our chivalrous diplomacy ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... England's fleet was mobilised. France had contributed millions of francs to fortify the Russian border in Poland, although Germany had made most of the guns. Belgium had what the Kaiser called, "a contemptible little army" but the soldiers knew how to fight when the invaders came. Germany had new 42 cm. guns and a network of railroads which operated like shuttles between the Russian and French and Belgian frontiers. Ever since ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
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