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Despicable   Listen
adjective
Despicable  adj.  Fit or deserving to be despised; contemptible; mean; vile; worthless; as, a despicable man; despicable company; a despicable gift.
Synonyms: Contemptible; mean; vile; worthless; pitiful; paltry; sordid; low; base. See Contemptible.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Despicable" Quotes from Famous Books



... the rest of the morning in the drawing-room of the villa, at the piano, composing a by no means despicable setting of Shelley's two marvellous stanzas, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... and are carried away from thence into Persia, Arabia Felix, Babylonia of Nilus or Alcair, and Meccah. In this city justice and good laws are observed. [12] ... It hath an innumerable multitude of merchants; the walls are greatly decayed, and the haven rude and despicable. The King or Sultan of the city is a Mahomedan, and entertaineth in wages a great multitude of footmen and horsemen. They are greatly given to war, and wear only one loose single vesture: they are of dark ash colour, inclining ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, believe, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... all had the full assurance of life. It is precisely because we are despicable and worthless that we are accepted. Till we throw over that idea that we are better than others, we ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... mind; he had some reverence for a corpse, but none whatever for a ghost. His mind had undergone a change concerning the dead the moment he had heard him move, and he looked upon his charge now as equally despicable ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... love and virtue was his speech, And *in despite he had all wretchedness* *he held in scorn all And doubtless no need was him to beseech despicable actions* To honour them that hadde worthiness, And ease them that weren in distress; And glad was he, if any wight well far'd, That lover was, when he it ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... adulation. He died in 1826, having probably endured more pain and rungreater peril in his desire to avoid danger and suffering than the bravest and truest man in a time when courage and truth seldom went in company. It is not probable that he thought himself despicable or ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... taken, and of the reward that would be obtained for his apprehension; but the old fisherman smiled at their ignorance. He knew better. It was none other than his dumb retainer at the farm; and he set his wits to work—no despicable auxiliaries at a pinch—in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... probably doing it better. Envy them not. Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the same line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction. How little Christian work even is a protection against unchristian feeling! That most despicable of all the unworthy moods which cloud a Christian's soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we are fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly needs the Christian envy, the large, rich, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... dispositions; and, wanting a buffoon, he went into the senate-house for that which the senate-house would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to show an usurper and a murderer, not only odious, but despicable; he, therefore, added drunkenness to his other qualities, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that wine exerts its natural power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of petty minds; a poet ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... sprang up, and his brother, smiling even more affectionately, took his chair. At the same moment the widow stopped playing, and the scales seemed suddenly to fall from the young soldier's eyes. He saw himself as the most despicable villain in Europe, and Ellen as lost for ever, whether as sister or friend. So distraught was he that he had nearly tried to open a mid-Victorian cabinet before he discovered it was not the door. Downstairs he hurried wildly, threw on an ulster and cap, and ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... associating with those who make their fortunes by trading in the bodies and souls of men, women, and children? whose daily work it is to break human hearts, by tearing wives from their husbands, and children from their parents? But why hold slavedealers as despicable, if their trade is lawful and virtuous? and why despise them more than the gentlemen of fortune and standing who employ them as their agents? Why more than the professors of religion who barter ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke

... Farmer, that I ought not to do openly; but there are two sides to a blanket. A popish priest must not marry in England. Norman Will was not a whit the worse because his mother never stood outside the canonical rail. Pass your wine, Farmer; I despise a man, a scoundrel, who deals in innuendos;—O it's despicable, damned despicable. I don't like, however, to be trusted by halves—shall keep a sharp look-out on the joker—with me, a secret is ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... left the most abiding impression upon him. On his way back to Woodnesborough he paid his first visit to the House of Lords, and heard a debate on the Copenhagen expedition, an affair in which, he considered, 'Ministers cut a most despicable figure.' On quitting school life at Woodnesborough, an experience was in store for him which enlarged his mental horizon, and drew out his sympathies for the weak and oppressed. Lord and Lady Holland had taken ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... girl, a vast deal, to look for love, and a dying lover, and all that sort of stuff; I am persuaded—indeed I have it from good, from the best authority—that the young lady—you know one must be delicate in these cases, where a young lady of such fortune, and no despicable family too is concerned; therefore I cannot speak quite plainly—but I say I have it from the best authority, that you would be preferred to any other ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... than poor—is to be despicable!" replied Hinkley with a half-sfnile, as he interrupted a speech which might have been construed into a very contemptuous commentary on his own pretensions. It would seem that the young man had so ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... all prepared and set for the mean and sordid and ever recurring tragedy of which he was to be the puppet. For close about him seethed and boiled, as in no other place in the world, all the darker and more despicable passions of humanity. He inwardly recalled the types with which his stage was embellished; the fellow puppets of that gilded and arrogant and idle world, the curled and perfumed princes, the waxed and watching boulevardiers ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... we sadly suspect that in fighting fire with fire, that is in fighting propaganda with propaganda, we descended by degrees to use the same despicable methods of distorting truth for the sake of influencing people to a certain desired end. England and France and all other countries had the same sad experience. Doubtless we could not very well avoid it. It is part of the hell of war to think about it now. Propaganda, fair one, you often ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... one should mention that Beeching was afoot (hammering Jan's protruding haunches) when they staggered into the township on the evening of the thirty-fifth day. Harry lay groaning on the sled, and had been there, too lame to walk, he said, too despicable, perhaps, for Death's consideration, for three days and more. The ten-dog team of prime-conditioned animals of five weeks before consisted now of seven gaunt, staggering creatures, each a bony framework, masked in dried blood ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... land. The barbarian despotism of Persia, which has so long oppressed Aderbidjan, has instilled the basest principles into the Tartars of the Caucasus, and has polluted their sense of honour by the most despicable subterfuge. And how could it be otherwise in a government based upon the tyranny of the great over the less—where justice herself can punish only in secret—where robbery is the privilege of power? "Do with me what you like, provided you let me do with my inferior ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... Mrs. Bev. Mean, despicable villain! I scorn thee, and thy threats. Was it for this that Beverley was false? That his too credulous wife should in despair and vengeance give up her honour to a wretch? But he shall know it, and ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... horses in front of Helen Radcliff's home. It had been a fair fight between them, and he had won as a man should. But Brad had not taken his defeat as a man should. He had nourished bitterness and played his successful rival many a mean despicable trick. Out of these had grown the feud between them. Crawford did not know how it had come about, but he had no doubt Steelman had somehow fallen a victim in the trap he ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... listlessness and utter lack of animation in all their movements and conversation, which contrasted painfully with the boisterous hilarity and rugged healthiness of our late Californian fellow-travellers. Their appearance was most forlorn and despicable in a military view,—no soldier's uniform or spirit amongst them, only the poor man's uniform of rags and dirt, and the spirit of careless, disease-worn, doomed men. Nevertheless, all bore about them some emblem of their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... parity of reason suppose that it still proceeds gradually through those beings which are of a superior nature to him; since there is an infinitely greater space and room for different degrees of perfection between the Supreme Being and man, than between man and the most despicable insect. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... sacrificing ease to aspiration and aspiration to ease to the end of the chapter. He vacillates abominably and forever between two irreconcilable desires. Even when, at the close, he sinks into a whining sort of resignation, the proud courage of Cowperwood is not in him; he is always a bit despicable in ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... that would not influence me, Rokoff. I would not care who knew that I had killed you; the pleasure of killing you would more than compensate for any punishment they might inflict upon me. You are the most despicable cur of a coward, Rokoff, I have ever heard of. You should be killed. I should love to kill you," and Tarzan approached closer to ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... this defect may be considered as a slight evil in relation to the person, just as we are wont to think little of the defects of children and imbeciles: and then to make game or fun of a person, is to scorn him altogether, and to think him so despicable that his misfortune troubles us not one whit, but is held as an object of derision. In this way derision is a mortal sin, and more grievous than reviling, which is also done openly: because the reviler would seem to take another's ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... was one of those people who never believed in virtue, unless it had the special hall-mark that conventionality stamps upon it, and Richard's simple charities, his small self-denials, would have appeared despicable in her eyes. She herself gave largely to the poor at Christmas; blankets and clothing by the bale found their way to the East End. The vicar of Melton called her "The benevolent Mrs. Sefton," but she and Edna never entered a cottage, never sat beside a sick bed, nor smoothed a dying ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... The other three cases were taken first, and, even taken concurrently, they occupied an immense period of time. All the bodies were, of course, "viewed" together, and the absence of the jury seemed to the Marquis interminable; he thought the despicable tradesmen were gloating unduly over the damaged face of his daughter. The Coroner had been marvellously courteous to the procession of humble witnesses. He could not have been more courteous to the exalted; and he was not. In the sight of the ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... Directory which included one traitor and two babies. His indignation was just. An abdication forced on by idealogues was hateful; to be succeeded by Fouche seemed an unforgivable insult; but he touched the lowest depth of humiliation on the 25th, when he received from that despicable schemer an order to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... dues levied on every Persian Shiyaee while traversing Central Arabia, and under Wahabee guidance and protection, amounted, I found, to about one hundred and fifty gold tomans, equalling nearly sixty pounds sterling, English, no light expenditure for a Persian, and no despicable gain to an Arab."—Palgrave's Central and Eastern ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... accept a means by which the injured man risked his life to avenge his honor, and then afterwards to shirk the fate which a perfectly even chance had thrown upon him instead of on his antagonist! It was too mean, too despicable. Hugh's pale cheek burned. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... as blood-curdling. I had simply asked the clipping bureau to send me one hundred horrors and I had got them. They did not indicate anything at all so far as the ratio of homicide to population was concerned or as to the bloodthirstiness of Americans in general. They merely showed what despicable things ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... seldom indulgent. He saw an ugly, undistinguished, and somewhat vulgar man (far less dignified, for instance, than Big James); a man who had his way by force and scarcely ever by argument; a man whose arguments for or against a given course were simply pitiable, if not despicable. He sometimes indeed thought that there must be a peculiar twist in his father's brain which prevented him from appreciating an adverse point in a debate; he had ceased to expect that his father would listen to reason. Latterly he was always surprised when, as to-night, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... it would come to that; unhappy, miserable Alice! how could you bestow the affections of a warm, true heart on a despicable wretch like Theophilus Moncton. The old fiend's ambition and this fatal passion ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... hereditary kingdom, the monarchs of France and England made it an object of eager contention which of them should succeed in encircling with a second diadem the baby brows of Mary; while the hand of Elizabeth was tossed as a trivial boon to a Scottish earl of equivocal birth, despicable abilities, and feeble character. So little too was even this person flattered by the honor, or aware of the advantages, of such a connection, that he soon after renounced it by quitting the English ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... court, some very near me if I remember rightly. In what are their characters superior, or their claims to respect greater, that you should thus single me out as the fool or knave who could not only commit so wild and despicable an act, but go so far in folly—let alone knavery—as to ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... could not answer. To think that "that boy," as I had contemptuously called him, should have behaved in such a manly, generous fashion! I felt utterly ashamed and despicable. It was he who is a thousand times too ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... and since the accession of his brother Henry to the French throne—Duke of Anjou was, upon the whole, the most despicable personage who had ever entered the Netherlands. His previous career at home had, been so flagrantly false that he had forfeited the esteem of every honest man in Europe, Catholic or Lutheran, Huguenot or Malcontent. The world has long known his character. History will always retain him as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... touchstones with the sex, and the woman who would condescend to either was assumed, perhaps not quite without reason, to have lost something more than the mere perception of technical taste. This feeling ran through the whole of society, and pinchbeck was considered as at once despicable and disreputable. The successful speculator, sprung from nothing, who had made his fortune during the war, might buy land, build himself a mansion, and set up a magnificent establishment, but he was never looked on as more than a lucky adventurer by the aboriginal gentry of the place; and the blue ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... money as well as anybody, I guess," she stuttered; 'but I'd never sell a secret to get it. I ain't low down and despicable if I am poor." "Then you admit it is mere curiosity? I would rather ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... was an Irishwoman on the mother's side. Her father was a blackmailer, a despicable ruffian, in the pay of a notorious New York Inspector of Police. She suspected him of killing her mother and she hated him as a murderer. It was mainly because her father, Dirk Kerrnon, was employed at the Valentine Steel ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould

... of view. She still believed that the strong right arm of an English lover could play ducks and drakes with Destiny. One-half of the world, at least, still swears that she was wrong, and her mistress and the other woman thought her despicable, ridiculous, unenlightened. It was a hardship to them, to be endured with dignity and patience, but none the less a hardship, that they should be left and should have to die with this woman of the Ranks Below to keep them company. She was an honest woman, ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... rescue at the fitting time. As it was, he made a personal enemy of one who naturally might have ripened into a devoted follower, and who from his social influence, as well as from his political talents, was no despicable foe. ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... failed to become a popular idol. Fresh taxes, fresh import duties and, more than all, his tolerance of the outrageous oppression of citizens by the military had rendered him the most obnoxious president since the despicable Alforan. The majority of his own cabinet were out of sympathy with him. The army, which he had courted by giving it license to tyrannize, had been his main, and thus far ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... the world are fixed on the workers of Hampton! They must be true to the trust their fellows have placed in them! To-day the mill-owners, the masters, are at the end of their tether. Always unscrupulous, they have descended to the most despicable of tactics in order to deceive the public. But truth will prevail!..." Rolfe lit another cigarette, began a new sentence and broke it off. Suddenly he stood over her. "It's you!" he said. "You don't feel it, you don't help me, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... anger at herself possessed her. On what enterprise was she now embarked? Where was her conscience? For what was she doing all this? What was the true meaning of her actions? Had it been to circumvent the Khedive? To prevent him from doing an unjust, a despicable, and a dreadful thing? Was it only to help the Soudan? Was it but to serve a high ideal, through an ideal ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the man, drawing himself up and raising one hand and his voice in an oratorical way; "the blacks I mane are white-skinned, but black in the heart through and through; the blacks who are the dispisers of progress, the foes of freedom, the inimies of the counthry, sor—the despicable, ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... paltry and pitiable: nevertheless, St. Genis, as he warmed to his tale, lost the shame of it; only wrath remained with him: anger that he should be forced into this despicable role through the intrigues of ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... Jago is by no means either formidable in numbers or discipline, and exhibits a most complete picture of despicable wretchedness. ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... promise them a fairer hearing than was accorded me here to-day. Mr. Commissioner, I have always prided myself on being a good citizen, have borne arms in defense of my country, and in taking exception to your decision I brand you as the most despicable member of The Western Supply Company. Any man who will prostitute a trust for ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... the past assailed him with intolerable bitterness; he was seized with a disgust of himself, his former ambitions seemed to him ridiculous or despicable. He went home overwhelmed with the weight of a ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... his head, but well down over it, he wears an antique high hat, which has assumed that patient, resigned expression occasionally to be observed in the face of some venerable mule, which, having long and hopelessly struggled to free herself of a despicable bondage, at last bows submissively to the inevitable and trudges bravely on till she dies in ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... altogether his support, when the slightest support from him would have been invaluable to her. Could she forgive this? Never! never! She was not a woman to wish to forgive such an offence. It was an offence which it would be despicable in her to forgive. Many had offended her, some had injured her, one or two had insulted her; but, to her thinking, no one had so offended her, had so injured her, had so grossly insulted her as he had done. In what way, then, would it become her ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... according to his mind, he would not in any thing keep his faith with the Romans inviolate." He requested that he would exhort and stimulate Scipio not to delay. Though driven from his kingdom, he said he would join him with no despicable force of foot and horse. Nor was it right, said he that Laelius should continue in Africa, for he believed that a fleet had set sail from Carthage, with which, in the absence of Scipio, it would not be ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... an odd thing, asking, "Oh, can it be you are a less despicable person than you are striving ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... returned, and then they would know her value. As Mr. Dundas elected to remain at home, not being afraid of infection and being tired of travel, Mrs. Birkett insisted on taking little Fina with her. This was her contribution to the sum of philanthropy and self-sacrifice in the world, and it was not despicable; for Fina was restless and only six years of age, and Mrs. Birkett was indolent and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... franchise, his liberty, and life itself. Many of the officials of Southern States, including numerous judges and not a few Christian ministers, helped or sanctioned these Negro-hating editors and reporters in their despicable onslaught upon the Negro, while tens of thousands of white business men of the South fattened upon Negro convict labor and the proceeds ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... Nick, smiling softly. "Well, sir, if I were to tell you the history of these rascals, you would be more than amazed—you would be astounded. No crime is too desperate, no knavery too hazardous, no villainy too despicable, for them to attempt, and too often successfully execute. They have perpetrated their crimes over two continents, and are known to the police the ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... Rome, by Livius Andronicus, the earliest of the Roman dramatic poets. He turned the personal Satires and Fescenine verses so long the admiration of the Romans, into regular form and dialogue, and though the character of a player, so long valued and applauded in Greece, was reckoned vile and despicable among the Romans, Andronicus himself acted a part in his dramatic compositions. At the time of Cicero the works of this poet were obsolete; yet some passages of them are preserved ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various

... like a fowl, to make the most of them, but in a small party it is only necessary to fix the knife in the back, and separate the bird at once into back and breast, dividing it then according to the number of guests, always remembering that the back of a well-fed partridge is by no means a despicable morsel. ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... him, but of which she was painfully aware. His nails were not flat, but were noticeably curved. For a moment the thought in her mind was simply, "Could I live with those nails?" She hated herself for that thought; she despised herself for it; she considered herself almost inhuman and certainly despicable, and she recalled swiftly what Seymour was, the essential beauty and fineness of his character, his truth, his touching faithfulness. And almost simultaneously she thought, "Why do old men get those terribly ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... these lines have been cited as a specimen of despicable puerility. So much the worse for the citer; not willingly in his presence would I behold the sun setting behind our mountains.... But let the dead bury their dead! The poet sang for the living.... I was always pleased with the motto placed ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... by appointment to positions within the gift of the party; and disloyalty should be looked upon as political treason. One who votes for anybody except the organization candidate feels himself superior to his party, is faithless to the great ideal and is only a little less despicable than he who, having been elected to an office through the energy and devotion of the party workers, is then so ungrateful as to refuse to appoint the workers to positions within his gift. Positions constitute the cohesive force that ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... convent-bred girl was in the ways of this particular world, she could nevertheless perceive that in the conversation between these two, M. de Malfort was amusing himself at the expense of his fair companion. His own English was by no means despicable, as he had spent more than a year, at the Embassy immediately after the Restoration, to say nothing of his constant intercourse with the Farehams and other English exiles in France; but he was encouraging the young lady to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... Dorothy, quite white with anger. "I think you're the meanest boy I ever saw, Frank Marshall, and you're not one bit better, Bert. Between you, you always spoil all my good times. I think it's the most despicable thing to ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick

... who had formerly pretended to spit on orders for work, like a great artist surrounded by amateurs, was basely cringing to the officials, now that his pictures no longer sold. Could anything more despicable be imagined than a painter soliciting a functionary, bowing and scraping, showing all kinds of cowardice and making all kinds of concessions? It was shameful that art should be dependent upon a Minister's idiotic good pleasure! Fagerolles, at that official dinner he had gone to, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... dressmaker's, since there was no other, no service stair in the building, one saw in the evening outside every door an empty, unwashed milk-can set out, in readiness for the morning round, upon the door-mat; on the despicable, enormous staircase which Swann was at that moment climbing, on either side of him, at different levels, before each anfractuosity made in its walls by the window of the porter's lodge or the entrance ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... British elementary teachers bow unbelieving heads to receive the episcopal pat, and just as the British sceptic in orders will achieve triumphs of ambiguity to secure the episcopal see. And their reason for submission will not be absolutely despicable; they will know there is no employment worth speaking of without it. After all, one has only one life, and it is not pleasant to pass through it in a state of futile abstinence from the general scheme. Life, unfortunately, does not end with ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... be a chief. It may be so—I suspect it is—yet we should not forget that, besides being intelligent and capable of drawing more or less plausible inferences from premises of his own choosing, Lhote can point to a practice by no means despicable. For the rest, he is the apostle of logic and discipline, and so finds plenty to approve in the Cubist doctrine and the French tradition from Poussin to David. I do not know whether Bissiere is to be ranked amongst his disciples—I should think not—but Bissiere, a most attractive artist, is ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell

... before it broke out, Major Waldron treacherously seized a band of Indians at Dover in New Hampshire and sent them to Boston, where several of them were hanged for alleged complicity in Philip's war[5] and others sold into slavery. This despicable act the Indians never ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... clipper is she—the good ship Hankow Lin; one of the best of the old-fashioned tea-traders that as yet spurned the modern innovation of the Suez Canal, and despised, in the majesty of their spreading canvas, the despicable agency of steam! A sound, teak-built, staunch, ship-rigged vessel of 1200 tons register, and classed A1 at Lloyd's for an ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... on the two women between whom his path had lain: how highly he had aimed, and how low he had fallen! How enviable would have been his fate had he consistently kept to either! for each had been peerless in her way. How despicable was his position having greedily grasped at both! And now the one was dying, and the other degraded like himself. A worthy ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... merit hereafter by killing (this creature), even as a man acquires great merit, and confers it on his victim sacrificed as well, by sacrifice upon the altar. Merit is acquired by killing an enemy: by killing this despicable creature, thou shalt acquire great ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... to suggest a narrow definition of Pope's Dunces. Some were critics of worth, such as Dennis and Gildon; some were not despicable minor poets, such as Welsted and Cooke. But if we leave these aside, as well as his aristocratic enemies, Lady Mary and Lord Hervey, some valid generalizations emerge. The very persistency of the Dunces' attacks on Pope (I have located over one hundred and fifty published during Pope's lifetime) ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted

... flourishing community numbered 110,000 souls in Utah alone, while there were probably 30,000 or 40,000 scattered abroad elsewhere. In the whole history of religions there is no more remarkable example of the power of faith; and, in this case, the founder of that faith was indubitably a most despicable creature. It is interesting to observe that the course taken by the great Republic and its citizens runs exactly parallel with that taken by the Roman Empire and its citizens towards the early Christians, except that the Romans had ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... in her hand, with a quick, angry gesture, as if crushing some hateful, despicable thing, and her ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... formed of the skin of the thigh and leg, strongly tied at the lower end. The grease of an ostrich in good condition fills both its legs; and as it brings three times the price of common butter, it is considered no despicable part of the game. It is not only eaten with bread, and used in the preparation of kooskoos, and other articles of food, but the Arabs reckon it a valuable remedy in various maladies. In rheumatic attacks, for instance, they rub it on the part affected till it penetrates thoroughly; then ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various

... can be made, it seems, upon a heart by a middle-aged gentleman with the manners of a bear and the composure of a prig. Furthermore, it is through women's novels that we have had brought home to us most adequately what women who have tasted it, or seen it, can best relate, the despicable egotism of a weak man. Anzoleto ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... upper branches of a tall peepul tree at noon, feeling too hot to sleep, and all fanning themselves in unison with one wing—a comic spectacle. And at each flap of the elephant's ears I would observe that a cloud of flies (for the elephant is not too great to be pestered by the despicable hordes of beggars for blood) were dislodged from their feeding grounds about his head and neck, and, trying to settle about his rear parts, were driven back again by the swinging of his tail. Then I should ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... Rowland's Kalydor, all the placard-bearers of Dr. Eady, all the wall- chalkers of Day and Martin, seem to have taken service with the poets and novelists of this generation. Devices which in the lowest trades are considered as disreputable are adopted without scruple, and improved upon with a despicable ingenuity, by people engaged in a pursuit which never was and never will be considered as a mere trade by any man of honour and virtue. A butcher of the higher class disdains to ticket his meat. A mercer of the higher class would be ashamed to hang up papers in his window ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... "It is very despicable of me even to listen to you. I don't think I would have listened, if you had not been frank. But you have had the honesty not to pretend. I must ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... allusion is thus explained in a private letter from Colonel Hamilton—"This man (Arnold) is in every sense despicable. In addition to the scene of knavery and prostitution during his command in Philadelphia, which the late seizure of his papers has unfolded, the history of his command at West Point is a history of little as well as great villanies. He practised every dirty ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall

... country by title, by birth, by rank in profession, and by age; very little, if any, being to be allowed to fortune, though so much is generally exacted by it and commonly paid to it. Mankind never appear to me in a more despicable light than when I see them, by a simple as well as mean servility, voluntarily concurring in the adoration of riches, without the least benefit or prospect from them. Respect and deference are perhaps justly demandable of the obliged, and may be, with ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... been a senator, and was politically obnoxious, was looked on as an all-sufficient indictment. Even members of the Academy could not suppress their detestation of him. Their language seemed not to have words that would fully express their sense of his despicable ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... the mouths of all the merchants, who seemed disposed to raise her, at least to the same price your deceased father gave for her. Saouy will give no more than four thousand pieces; and it is much against my inclination that I am come to tell you his despicable offer. The slave indeed is your own; but I will never advise you to part with her upon those terms, since you and every one else are sensible of her being worth infinitely more; besides, he is base enough to contrive a way to trick you out ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... illnesses, etc., met with later. Kepler however goes on to say, "If I am to speak of the results of my studies, what, I pray, can I find in the sky, even remotely alluding to it? The learned confess that several not despicable branches of philosophy have been newly extricated or amended or brought to perfection by me: but here my constellations were, not Mercury from the East in the angle of the seventh, and in quadratures with Mars, but Copernicus, but Tycho Brahe, without whose books of observations ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... earth, men are often, without their own agency, fated to be dangerous to others. If I were to predict your fortune by the vain calculations of the astrologer, I should tell you, in their despicable jargon, that my planet sat darkly in your house of life. Cross me not, if you can avoid it. I warn you now for ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... lost it now. Indeed, the far greater number of instances which history has transmitted us, show that self-murder, even then, proceeded from the same causes as at present, viz., rage, despair, and disappointment. Wise men in all ages despised it as a mean and despicable flight from evils the soul wanted courage and strength to bear. This has not only been said by philosophers, but even by poets, too; which shows that it appeared a notion, not only rational, but heroic. There are none so timorous, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... Kanaka to desert his church or a fellow-American to desert his party. The man who deserts to them is all that is high and pure and beautiful—apparently; the man who deserts from them is all that is foul and despicable. This is Consistency—with ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... make honesty impossible for him. No citizen of whatever integrity and standing, if so pursued, maligned and undermined, would have any choice left him but either to perish or to break the laws. The spies of the government, with the prestige and power of the government behind them (however despicable and vicious they may be in themselves), can ruin any man; but ex-convicts ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... must know. He calls to her—she won't come to him. What is he to do? Suicide? No, to a proud man like Semyonov that's a miserable confession of weakness. How they'd laugh at him, these other despicable human beings, if he did that! He'd prove himself as weak as they. No, that's not for him. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... vessels proved of considerable value, being laden with copper, hides, and cochineal. The galliot was laden with sweet oil, and was also no despicable prize. At daylight they were all ready, and, to the mortification of the good people of Malaga, sailed away to the eastward ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... created by the ninth parts of men? It is not your purses that suffer, your farm rents, your commerces, your mill revenues—loud as ye lament over these things. No, it is not these alone, but a far deeper than these. It is your souls that lie dead, crushed down under despicable nightmares, atheisms, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... confess him not without merit. To do the man justice, he might have made a tolerable figure as a Tailor. 'Twere too presumptuous to affirm he could have been a master in any profession; but, dull as I allow him, he would not have been despicable for a third or a fourth hand journeyman. Then had his wants have been avoided; for, he would at least have learnt to cut his coat according ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... keys to a courtlier and nobler world. These tales made living seem a braver business, for all that they were written by a poltroon. Was it pure posturing? Patricia, at least, thought it was not. At worst, such dexterous maintenance of a pose was hardly despicable, she considered. And, anyhow, she preferred to believe that Charteris had by some miracle put the best of himself into these books, had somehow clarified the abhorrent mixture of ability and evil which was John Charteris; and the best in him she found, on this hypothesis, to be a deal more ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... 150 Alarm'd with many a horrid fright, And claw'd by goblins in the night; Insulted on, revil'd, and jeer'd, With rude invasion of his beard; And when your sex was foully scandal'd, 155 As foully by the rabble handled; Attack'd by despicable foes, And drub'd with mean and vulgar blows; And, after all, to be debarr'd So much as standing on his guard; 160 When horses, being spurr'd and prick'd, Have leave ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... called from a plain on the left bank of the Namroop. The village, which is a mean and despicable one, is on the ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... Warner was a man of much finer mould than the chief of the Green Mountain Boys, was well educated and had a personal following of his own in the Grants, second only to Allen's. But there was never any jealousy between them. Allen's was a nature too frank and generous to harbor such a despicable feeling, while Warner was too deeply interested in the ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster

... favouritism of adherents; such encouragement of oppression and connivance at corruption; such a prostitution of justice; such a cynical indifference to all moral principle—unparalleled even in 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; ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... a despicable thing," he protested, as one who yields reluctantly. "And if, after all, Hallock ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... corps of the rebels that had acted in open hostility to the existing government. With his usual promptitude and decision, he attacked Panos Kolokotroni, the son of the old Klepht, and Staikos, a Moreote captain of some reputation, in the plain of Tripolitza, where they were posted for the despicable purpose of intercepting the trains of mules laden with merchandise for the supply of the shops of Tripolitza, then the great market of all the central parts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... in their prefaces how little time their works have cost them, and what other business of more importance interfered; but the reader will be as apt to ask the question, why they allowed not a longer time to make their works more perfect? and why they had so despicable an opinion of their judges, as to thrust their indigested stuff upon them, as if ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... like an imp of the burning pit. She saw it ingenious and of natural aspect. I must be a born intriguer! she said in her breast. That was hateful; but it seemed worse when she thought of a woman commanding the faculty and consenting to be duped and foiled. That might be termed despicable; but what if she had not any longer the wish to gain her way with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... despicable bulletin of health arrived only yesterday, the mail being a day behind. It contained also the excellent TIMES article, which was a sight for sore eyes. I am still TABOO; the blessed Germans will have none of me; and I only hope they may enjoy the TIMES article. 'Tis my revenge! ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the ludicrous account which he gave Mr. Langton, of the despicable state of a young Gentleman of good family. 'Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats.' And then in a sort of kindly reverie, he bethought himself of his own favourite cat, and ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... fault of nothing in heaven or earth except the attitude and the phrases quoted at the beginning of this article. We have no doubt in the world that, if the other forms of art had been equally despised, they would have been equally despicable. If people had spoken of 'sonnets' with the same accent with which they speak of 'music-hall songs,' a sonnet would have been a thing so fearful and wonderful that we almost regret we cannot have a specimen; a rowdy sonnet is a thing to dream about. If people had said that ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... Negroe Slavery is almost too despicable a composition to merit a reply. I have only therefore to observe, (as is frequently the case in a bad cause, or where writers do not confine themselves to truth) that the work refutes itself. This writer, speaking of the slave-trade, asserts, that people are never kidnapped on the coast of Africa. ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson

... instigated the attack upon the Embassy, he most certainly made not the slightest effort to stop it or to save the lives of those entrusted to his care, and throughout that terrible day showed himself to be, if not a deliberate traitor, a despicable coward. Again, his endeavours to delay the march of my force for the sole purpose of gaining sufficient time to organize the destruction of the army to whose protection he had appealed deprived him, to my mind, of the smallest claim to be ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... the most dangerous description, especially to the youthful. Let a young man become expert in this game, and fond of engaging in it, and who does not see he is liable to become that most mean and despicable of all living creatures—a GAMBLER. Confident of his own skill as a card-player, how long would he hesitate to engage in a game for a small sum? He has seen older ones playing—perhaps his own parents—and he can ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... charge of unrighteousness made by the unfaithful servant, the Lord deigns no refutation; the spirit of the reply was the same as that expressed in the earlier parable: "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant."[1173] The unworthy man sought to excuse himself by the despicable but all too common subterfuge of presumptuously charging culpability in another, and in this instance, that other was his Lord. Talents are not given to be buried, and then to be dug up and offered back unimproved, reeking with the smell of earth and dulled by the corrosion of disuse. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... Zenobia imperiously. "You know neither man nor woman! The utmost that can be said in your behalf—and because I would not be wholly despicable in my own eyes, but would fain excuse my wasted feelings, nor own it wholly a delusion, therefore I say it—is, that a great and rich heart has been ruined in your breast. Leave me, now. You have done with me, and I ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Such a despicable being does us an infinity of harm: he encourages us to display all the worst points of the female character; he cheats us of our due amount of homage from many a noble heart, and perhaps robs us of our own dignity ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... replied Dame Hilda, with one of those superior smiles which used to make me feel so very naughty. It seemed to say, "My poor, little, despicable insect, how could you dream of supposing that your intellect was even with Mine?" (There, I have writ that a capital M in red ink. To have answered to Dame Hilda's tone when she put that smile on, it should have ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... honour which the world calls by that name; now it sees it to be the greatest lie, and that we are all walking therein. It understands that true honour is not delusive, but real, esteeming that which is worthy of esteem, and despising that which is despicable; for everything is nothing, and less than nothing, whatever passeth away, and is not pleasing unto God. The soul laughs at itself when it thinks of the time in which it regarded money, and desired to possess it,—though, as to ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... cried the indignant countess. "She dies through the covetousness and greed of her neighbors. It is they who have sown dissension in Poland, while forcing upon her unhappy people a king who is nothing but the despicable tool of their ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... surest and the most lasting. Why, the brave things she did, the splendid things! she was just a soldier; and so modest about it—well, you couldn't help admiring her, and you couldn't help imitating her; not even a King Charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her society. So, as you see, there was more to her than ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... was announced, and announced with great precision, by La Bruyere, was inaugurated by his enemy Fontenelle. Fontenelle, nephew of Corneille, began with despicable trifles, eclogues, operas, stilted tragedies, letters of a dandy, so he might be justly regarded as an inferior Voiture. Very soon, because he possessed the passion of the eighteenth century for science and free-thought, he showed himself to be a serious man, and ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet

... instantly engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle with her crew, who greatly out-numbered ourselves, weakened as we were by the casualties that had already seriously reduced our force. Moreover, we soon discovered that our antagonists were by no means the despicable poltroons that we are perhaps too prone at all times to believe them to be; on the contrary, they fought manfully, and held their own with a sturdy determination worthy of a better cause. The casualties were rapidly multiplying ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... conceal one of my numerous faults which I acknowledge and deplore; and, if I imagine that I possess one solitary merit, I shall not be backward in making that merit known. Those who know me personally, will never accuse me of entertaining one single atom of that despicable quality, self-conceit; those who do not know me, are at liberty to think what they please.—Heaven knows that had I possessed a higher estimation of myself, a more complete reliance upon my own powers, and some of that universal ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson

... impatience.] O! contemptible!—a trifling, quaint, haughty, voluptuous, servile tool,—the mere lackey of party and corruption; who, for the prostitution of near thirty years and the ruin of a noble fortune, has had the despicable satisfaction, and the infamous honour—of being kicked up and kicked down—kicked in and kicked out,— just as the insolence, compassion, or convenience of leaders predominated:—and now—being forsaken by all parties, his whole political consequence amounts to the power of franking a ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin

... pictures the monk Panurge in a storm at sea. The oily ecclesiastic is terrified as only a combination of hypocrite and coward can be; and, in the extremity of his craven distress, he fancies that any situation on shore, no matter how despicable, would be paradise. So at length he whines, "Oh that I were on dry land, and somebody kicking me!" In a similar manner—similar, save that farce deepens to tragedy—many a man in America of opulent mental outfit, but with only a poor wreck of a body to bear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... depression as to his own state, he thus writes of this place:—"I began to pray as on the verge of eternity; and the Lord was pleased to break my hard heart. I lay in tears, interceding for the unfortunate natives of this country; thinking within myself that the most despicable soodra of India was of as much value in the sight of God as the King of Great Britain." It was from such supplication that he was once roused by the blaze of a Suttee's funeral pyre, on which he found that the living widow had been consumed with the dead ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... mistake to let the story of the Confessions carry us into exaggerations. The brutality of his master and the harshness of his life led him to nothing very criminal, but only to wrong acts which are despicable by their meanness, rather than in any sense atrocious. He told lies as readily as the truth. He pilfered things to eat. He cunningly found a means of opening his master's private cabinet, and of using his master's best instruments ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... the man's weapon. Her eyes shone with a strange light. She felt her arms tingle. A wonderful power seemed to flow through her body, like a gush of strong wine. She was assured that she, unaided, could beat down all the puny, despicable creatures who barred the path to her lover. She vaulted over the writhing form of the Alaculof, and made to climb the stairs, but Christobal, admirably cool, fired again and brought another Indian to his knees. The second Indian's fall caused Frascuelo to trip; and the Chilean, locked ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... You despicable coward and traitor! You—" But speech forsook him, and he would have fallen from the horse but for those who held ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... consummation of those projects he had so long cherished: but, although bold and impatient, he was compelled to proceed with caution to the extinction of a race of kings to whom obedience had become a habit, and who were at that moment represented by a prince who, though weak and despicable, was endeared to many of his subjects by his misfortunes. His first step was to issue a proclamation, in which he inveighed with bitterness against a treaty which bounded the great empire of Persia by the river Araxes, and left many of the inhabitants of that kingdom prisoners in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... thing. Every country has its slackers, and Belgium is no exception. But to attempt to belittle the glorious heroism of the Belgian nation because of a few young slackers or the ingratitude and ill-manners of some ignorant peasants, is an unworthy and despicable thing. The assertion that the Belgians are lacking in courage is as untruthful as it is cruel. Ask the Germans who charged up the fire-swept slopes of Liege—those of them left alive—if the Belgians are cowards. Ask those who saw the fields of Aerschot and Vilvorde ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... or enmity fulfil. For those the race of Israel oft forsook Their Living Strength, and unfrequented left His righteous altar, bowing lowly down To bestial gods; for which their heads as low Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear Of despicable foes. With these in troop Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns; To whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs; In Sion ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... a delivery up to slave catchers and kidnappers, are their only fate, let Canadian annexation take place when it will. The odious infamous fugitive slave law, will then be in full force with all of its terrors; and we have no doubt that fully in anticipation of this event, was the despicable law created. ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany

... despicable and miserable creatures I have ever known it is the poor starving devil, with latent genius, who attempts to pay court to a cad, snob, or drunken lord around the refuse of literary or ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... German people, who seemed to furnish an object-lesson in the world's history, whose destiny had been fuller than any other of changes and contradictions—the German people, at once so large-minded and so petty, so admirable and so despicable, so strong and so weak; who had done so much for the advancement of culture, and yet were so unconscious of their great work; hated by the rest of the world, yet divided amongst themselves—the German people had least call of all to make a beginning. They must, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... growing strangely sick and faint. Could it be his father whom they were thus calmly accusing of graft and trickery and blackmailing methods too despicable to be imagined? His first impulse was to confront the two; to demand proofs; to do and say what a loyal son should. But the crushing conviction that they were discussing only well-known and well-assured facts unnerved him; and after that he was anxious for only ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... immortal Becky (who was so plainly liked by her maker) awakens sympathy in the reader when routed in her fortunes, black-leg though she be. She cared for her husband, after her fashion, and she plays the game of Bad Luck in a way far from despicable. Nor is that easy-going, commonplace scoundrel, Rawdon, with his dog-like devotion to the same Becky, denied his touch of higher humanity. Behind all these is a large tolerance, an intellectual breadth, a spiritual comprehension that ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... states is, in one aspect, a wretched story of folly and selfishness wrecking a nation, and, in another, a solemn instance of divine retribution working its designs by men's sins. The greater part of this account deals with it in the former aspect, and shows the despicable motives of the men in whose hands was the nation's fate; but one sentence (verse 15) draws back the curtain for a moment, and shows us the true cause. There is something very striking in that one flash, which reveals the enthroned God, working through the ignoble strife which makes up the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... had warned Eliot about the signals, and, seeking retaliation, would betray the fact that he had likewise wagered money that Wyndham would win. To everybody it must seem that Phil had at last shown himself thoroughly despicable and untrustworthy by betraying his own team on the field. This thought actually made him sick and giddy for ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott

... however, that I had even here, so utterly fallen from the gentlemanly estate as to seek acquaintance with the vilest arts of the gambler by profession, and, having become an adept in his despicable science, to practise it habitually as a means of increasing my already enormous income at the expense of the weak-minded among my fellow-collegians. Such, nevertheless, was the fact. And the very enormity of this offence against all ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill



Words linked to "Despicable" :   ugly, wretched, despicableness, unworthy, evil, despicability, slimy, worthless



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