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More "Meanness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Erostratus has made numerous disciples. How many men of to-day have become notorious for having destroyed something of mark; pulled down—or tried to pull down—some man's high reputation; signalled their passage, in short, by a scandal, a meanness, or an atrocity! ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... occupants to think of him as they would; even as, ten years ago, he had fled from the shame impending over him at Kingsmill. A cowardly instinct, this; having once acted upon it gave to his whole life a taint of craven meanness. Mere bluster, all his talk of mental dignity and uncompromising scorn of superstitions. A weak and idle man, whose ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... threatened rising of the Alexandrians, to make her elder son king. Before, however, she would do this she made a treaty with him, which would strongly prove, if anything were still wanting, the vice and meanness of the Egyptian court. It was, that, although married to his sister Cleopatra, of whom he was very fond, he should put her away, and marry his younger sister Selene; because the mother hoped that Selene would be false to her husband's ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... too. And the success of the nations which possess these martial virtues has been the great means by which their continuance has been secured in the world, and the destruction of the opposite vices insured also. Conquest is the missionary of valour, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... Virginia, "but it was all my fault and I don't want Mr. Blount blamed for it. I did it out of meanness, but I was sorry for it afterwards and—oh, I wonder if I've got any mail." She broke away and dashed into the house and the ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... ears of Jove himself, seated aloft on his remote Olympian throne. He may be, and for the most part really is—if he belongs to the old stock of aristocratic divinities—generous and gracious, incapable of meanness, baseness, or cruelty. But the tenant has to do, not with the absentee divinity, but with his priest—not with the good spirit, but his medium; and this go-between is not always noble, or disinterested, or unexacting. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... expression in the doubling up of his body and the shaking of his hand. His hands were small, with sensitive, tapering fingers, and when playing the fingers acted as if endowed with separate life and intelligence. There was no effeminacy connected with his lovable nature; he was quick to resent meanness or deceit, or wrong-doing of any kind. His anger was exceedingly sharp, and his manner of expressing contempt an astonishing revelation to those who had failed to grasp ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... peppermints, and Father cut his smoking down to one cigarette after each meal—though occasionally, being but a mortal man, he would fall into sinful ways and smoke up three or four cigarettes while engaged in an enthralling conversation regarding Mr. Pilkings's meanness with fellow-clerks at lunch at the Automat. Afterward he would be very repentant; he would have a severe case of conviction of sin, and Mother would have to comfort him ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... ever thought or spoke of her as a prig, but all her influence was brought to bear in the right direction. The girl who could do or think meanly avoided the expression of Annabel's beautiful eyes. It was impossible for her to think badly of her fellow-creatures, but meanness and sin made her sorrowful. There was not a girl in Heath Hall who would ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... her faults, upright, honest, truthtelling, and fearless; and she was long before she could suspect the treachery and meanness of a dependent; and still longer in believing that the woman who had for so many years been her pupil, and had been accustomed to her frankness, could condescend to a low cabal, and, displacing her from her ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... had become caressingly persuasive, and Florent was penetrated by all the surrounding plenteousness, all the aroma filling the kitchen, where he fed, as it were, on the nourishment floating in the atmosphere. He sank into blissful meanness, born of all the copious feeding that went on in the sphere of plenty in which he had been living during the last fortnight. He felt, as it were, the titillation of forming fat which spread slowly all over ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... table lie letters from two old friends of mine who have had a quarrel over a small piece of business, involving a few pounds. One complains that the other claims the money unjustly; the other resents being accused of meanness; the result, a rupture of familiar relations. One cannot, it seems, prevent sorrows and pains and tragedies; but what is the ironical power which gives us such rich materials for happiness, and then infects us with the devilish power of misusing them, and worrying over ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not be maintained. They were followed by a meanness and a descent of the mind into lower levels; the loss of wings; no high speculation. Locke, to whom the meaning of ideas was unknown, became the type of philosophy, and his "understanding" the measure, in all nations, of the English intellect. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... heart could not throw open its portals to it, the generous man could not adopt it—it could not mix with his blood. It looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing fathers and brothers overboard to lighten the boat for our security, that the noble-minded shrank from the manifest meanness of the thing. And besides this, the benefits of a reformation to be effected by such a system were too remote in point of time to warmly engage many in its behalf. Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity, and none will do it enthusiastically. —Posterity has done ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... a place for humour in the pulpit, if it be natural to the preacher and flow spontaneously, but a humorous illustration requires to be very carefully chosen, lest, instead of the healthy and holy laughter often so fatal to anger and meanness and pride, you have the guffaw in which blessing is lost in excess. Other reflections as to illustrations are the following:—First, the illustration, if a story, ought at least to contain the element of probability. No preacher can always satisfy himself as to the literal truth of a story ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were dining in the mess-room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored. He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the manager's boy put his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... convinced of it, sire. From the little that I have seen of my cousin I am sure that no one could have a greater contempt for cowardice or for meanness.' ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to declare itself as the expansive flow of confidence is slow in gathering way. The creditor who has once turned into the narrow path of commercial fears and precautions speedily takes a course of malignant meanness which puts him below the level of his debtor. He passes from specious civility to impatient rage, to the surly clamor of importunity, to bursts of disappointment, to the livid coldness of a mind made up to vengeance, and the scowling insolence of a summons before the courts. Braschon, the rich ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... government approve of, and no others. It is now just twenty-six years since I first well understood how this matter was managed; and, from that moment to this, I have never been in an English play-house. Besides this, the meanness, the abject servility, of the players, and the slavish conduct of the audience, are sufficient to corrupt and debase the heart of any young man who is a frequent beholder of them. Homage is here paid to every one clothed with power, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... one unfitted to match with her, either in rank or age. Besides, Fanny thought that Lord Kilcullen had behaved generously to her when she so violently repudiated his love: she believed that it had been sincere; she had not even to herself accused him of meanness or treachery; and she spoke of him as one to be pitied, liked, and regarded; not as one to ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... very dull fools and men of strange manners and usances, hold themselves to be in everything both better worth and wiser than others, whereas they are of far less account than the rest of mankind, being men who, lacking, of the meanness of their spirit, the ability to provide themselves, take refuge, like swine, whereas they may have what to eat. And this story, charming ladies, I shall tell you, not only for the ensuing of the order imposed, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the less that which submitteth to a greater than itself." Q "What are the four things wherein concur all creatures?"—"Men concur in meat and drink, the sweet of sleep, the lust of women and the agonies of death." Q "What are the three things whose foulness none can do away?"—"Folly, meanness of nature, and lying." Q "What is the best kind of lie,[FN138] though all kinds are foul?"—"That which averteth harm from its utterer and bringeth gain." Q "What kind of truthfulness is foul, though all kinds are fair?"—"That of a man glorying in that which he hath and vaunting himself thereof." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... of the responsibility of my task disheartened me, the novel facilities of my new way of life contributed to relax the tension of my will. During my school days, the sufferings I underwent from jealousy of my stepfather, the disappointment of my repressed affections, the meanness and penury of my surroundings, many grievous influences, had maintained the restless ardor of my feelings; but this also had undergone a change. No doubt I still continued to love my mother deeply and painfully, but I now no longer asked her for what I ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... rank is unquestionably due to moral greatness, or magnanimity; to that sublime energy by which the soul, smitten with the love of virtue, binds itself indissolubly, for life and for death, to truth and duty; espouses as its own the interests of human nature; scorns all meanness and defies all peril; hears in its own conscience a voice louder than threatenings and thunders; withstands all the powers of the universe which would sever it from the cause of freedom and religion; reposes an unfaltering trust in God in the darkest hour, and is ever "ready to be offered up" ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... to Mackenzie's imagination to fix his identity, not bending to reveal his name. Hector Hall, Mackenzie knew him to be, on account of his pistols, on account of the cold meanness of his eyes which Dad Frazer had described as holding such a throat-cutting look. But armed as he was, severe and flash-tempered as he seemed, Mackenzie was not in any sort of a flurry to give ground before him. He looked up at him coolly, felt in his pocket ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... elevation comes upon us as we view the mountain. We are uplifted. The entire scale of being is raised. Our outlook on life seems all at once to have been heightened. And not only is there this sense of elevation: we seem purified also. Meanness, pettiness, paltriness seem to shrink away abashed at the sight of that ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... essays on friendship, love, generosity, jealousy, integrity, laziness, hope, charity, punctuality, scholarship, meanness. On youth, old age, marriage, courtship, engagement, housekeeping, housework, the happiness of childhood, the sorrows of childhood, truth, falsehood, religion, missionary work, the poor, the duties of the rich, ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... of prudence is unimpeachable, there is a hiatus between this level of morality and those above. To drink one's self to death is a species of folly that the poorest intelligence can understand; but the folly in meanness, injustice, or impiety is a harder matter. Believing as I do that the folly is equally demonstrable in all of these cases, I propose not to accept your ready assent in the simpler case until its grounds have been made as clear and definite ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... for your guests in as good style as your means and the circumstances of the case will permit, and make no fuss about it. To be unnecessarily sparing shows meanness, and to be extravagantly profuse is absurd as well an ruinous. Probably your visitors know whether your income is large or small and if they do not they will soon learn, on that point, all that it is necessary for them to know. ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... flows from him, and though she is a responsible, she is not a discretional, agent. The table is to correspond with the moderation of the master, and the matron will be scolded or reproved as it varies from the proper medium between meanness and profusion. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... forsooth, is that miserly old wretch, who stoops from manhood to indulge the dirty promptings of a petty avarice. But is he happy? NO; how can such a thing be happy, even tho' he possess thousands accumulated by his detestable meanness—when men spit on him with contempt; decency kicks him, dishonorable care will kill him, infamy will rear his monument, and the devil will roast him on the hottest gridiron ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Lady Martin paused, inherent meanness struggling with a snobbish desire to emulate the Duchess; and finally she gave in with a ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... in appearance that he suggested comparison rather with some fact of nature—a rock, a vigorous forest tree —than with another man. He was one of those rare men who, like mountains in a landscape, suffice in themselves to relieve their environments, whatever these may be, from all taint of meanness. He stood out from among his guests the centre of conversation, of feeling, and of interest. He was almost invariably engaged in eager conversation, pitched in a loud tone of voice, broken at intervals when ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... Honor maintaining, Meanness disdaining, Still entertaining, Engaging and new. Neat, but not finical; Sage, but not cynical; ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Marquis, she supposed his preferring another girl could not be quite pleasant! I could have screamed with laughter, if I had not been so angry; I felt dreadfully tempted to tell her of the Marquis's proposal to me, and why he was marrying her—only that would have been playing down to her level of meanness. So I said that the English idea of flirting and the French were different; that the Marquis seemed to me to be quite an agreeable Frenchman, and no doubt she would be very happy; and far from it grieving me, I was delighted to think she would be settled at last, as ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... handled, and by the numerous epic or merely mythical poets. The tragedians had only, therefore, to engraft one species of poetry on another. Certain postulates, and those invariably serviceable to the air of dignity and grandeur, and the removing of all meanness of idea, were conceded to them at the very outset. Everything, down to the very errors and weaknesses of that departed race of heroes who claimed their descent from the gods, was ennobled by the sanctity of legend. Those heroes were painted ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... impetuous in all his feelings, whether of approval or dislike. I never knew one more uncompromising in what he believed either to be right, or wrong; thereby marking the integrity of his mind, which ever shrunk from the most distant approximation to duplicity or meanness. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... to hold fast this single clue to the crooked and amazing entanglements of the policy of James. The insolence, the meanness, and the prevarications of this royal toad-eater are ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... did find, as he talked on, a sense of shame from another side creep towards him and begin to enclose him. Shame at the smallness, meanness, emptiness of the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... so grateful to you, Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters, for what you have done for me. After reading your book, "Diet and Health, with Key to the Calories" my chronic case of meanness—I mean leanness—was absolutely cured. My weight, which was ... now is ... and I am on my way to normal. I ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... ordinary respect which a servant has for his master,—had heard it all, but showed no particular anxiety to hear more. He accompanied the men down to the Causeway, hardly opening his mouth to them, while they were loud in denouncing the meanness of the man who had deserted a wife in Australia, and had then betrayed a young lady here ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... in the march the boys bought something to eat or drink. There had been a barrel of cider brought from Mr. Chase's for their especial use, and Fred sold it out to the boys for four cents a glass. This was a piece of extraordinary meanness in him, for his father had intended the cider as a present to the company. The boys did not know this, however, and paid their money in ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... there? You might have been playing and brought me some more money," said the padrone, who, with characteristic meanness, grudged the young fiddler time to eat the ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the original meaning of low, and low as the earth; and this is also the sense which humilis always bears in classical Latin, though Christianity (which first recognised humility as a virtue, instead of stigmatising it as a meanness) attached to it the sense which its derivatives in all modern Romance languages, with the exception of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... relatively seldom. But among psychic characters one finds that practically all are inheritable. For example, stupidity, credulity, avarice, pecksniffery, lack of imagination, hatred of beauty, meanness, poltroonry, petty brutality, smallness of soul.... I here present, of course, the Puritan complex; there flashes up the image of the "good man," that libel on God and the devil. Consider him well. If you had to choose a sire for a first-rate ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... Arabs, had inspired the martial peasant with a hatred of images; and it was held to be the duty of a prince to impose on his subjects the dictates of his own conscience. But in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years of toil and danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed before the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman pontiff with the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the reformation of religion, his first steps were moderate and cautious: he assembled a great council of senators and bishops, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... not often good subjects; there is a peculiar meanness about most of them and awkwardness of line. Old manor-houses are often pretty. Ruins are usually, with us, too prim, and cathedrals too orderly. I do not think there is a single cathedral in England from which it is possible to obtain one ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... satirical efforts, which has no forerunner in Ibn Khallikan's recollection, is this, levelled at another mean acquaintance; meanness, indeed, being one of the unpardonable offences—especially in the eyes of poets who lived on patronage: Be careful not to lose the friendship of Abu 'l-Mukatil when you approach to partake of his meal. Breaking his crumpet is for him as bad as breaking ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... runs, in the same manner, through all the minor matters of morals, so that we cannot imagine courage existing except in conjunction with fear, or magnanimity existing except in conjunction with some temptation to meanness. If Pope and his followers caught this echo of natural irrationality, they were not any the more artificial. Their antitheses were fully in harmony with existence, which is ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... not as a man born under Sol, that loveth honour; nor under Jupiter, that loveth business (for the contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly); but as a man born under an excellent sovereign, that deserveth the dedication of all men's abilities.... Again the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me; for though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get. Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... improve, as I should, that his good dispensation to me. But when I lived in full and fat pasture, I did there lift up the heel (Deut 32:15). Therefore he will now turn me into hard commons, that with leanness, and hunger, and meanness, and want, I may spend the rest of my days. But let him do this without murmuring and repining; let him do it in a godly manner, submitting himself to the judgment of God. 'Let the rich rejoice in that he is made low' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... typical joke about Scots' meanness appeals to Englishmen because Englishmen are mean themselves. No joke appeals to a man unless it releases some repressed wish of his own. No one expects a devout Roman Catholic to see the point of ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... conduct had led us to put in their way. Some we have come across in this journey seemed born essentially mean and base—a great misfortune to them and all who have to deal with them, but they cannot be so blamable as those who have no natural tendency to meanness, and whose education has taught them to abhor it. True; yet this loss of the medicine-box gnaws at the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... summed up thus: "If you can find any method to improve the state of affairs which will not subject us to the smallest cost, risk, or responsibility, you can employ it; if not, let them fight it out." Perhaps Lord Kimberley may live (officially) long enough to find out that meanness and selfishness do not always pay, and that it is not always desirable, thus to sacrifice the respect, and crush the legitimate aspirations of ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... no counterfeit. Do not pass for current coin what is base alloy. Let transparent honor and sincerity regulate all your dealings; despise all meanness; avoid the sinister motive, the underhand dealing; aim at that unswerving love of truth that would scorn to stoop to base compliances and unworthy equivocations; live more under the power of the purifying and ennobling influences ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... a Fishmonger who had attained to Cabinet rank was married to the daughter of a Levantine and London was in consequence illuminated. Paul said to Peter in his jovial way, "It is imperative that we should show no meanness upon this occasion. We are known for the most flourishing and well-to-do pair of bachelors in the neighbourhood, and I have not hesitated (for I know I had your consent beforehand) to go to Messrs. Brock and order an immense quantity of fireworks for the balcony on this auspicious occasion. ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... changes of fortune and varieties of humor, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?—five years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death avail to ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... In the close-curtained court Those causes are deferred Which most import; These wait man's leisure. These daily matters elbow; Merely because His panic meanness Jibs blindly ere it hear What wisdom has prepared, Bolts headlong ere it see Her face unfold its smile. Man after man, race after race Drops jaded by the iterancy Of petty fear. Even as horses on the green steppes grazing, Hundreds scattered through lonely peacefulness, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... such as might indeed bring him to beggary, but could never allow him to gather riches like those of Mr. Pennycuik. Like his father he had a holy weakness for the purity that gives arms of the things within us. If there is one thing a Christian soul recoils from, it is meanness—of action, of thought, of judgment. What a heaven some must think to be saved into! At the same time Cosmo would not have left his father to make a fortune the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... into that extreme by his abhorrence of the present licentious factions; and such intrepidity, as well as disinterestedness of behavior, proves that, whatever his speculative principles were his heart was elevated far above the meanness and abject submission of a slave. He represented to the parliament, that all the abuses of government which could justly be imputed to Richard, instead of amounting to tyranny, were merely the result of error, youth, or misguided ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... faculties narrower still, for all their keenness and intensity. The largeness of brain with which Shakespeare endows his human devil, and the largeness of heart of which he does not seem to wish us to imagine him as in certain circumstances incapable, contrast sharply enough with the peasant meanness of Lisbeth. Indeed, Balzac, whose seldom erring instinct in fixing on the viler parts of human nature may have been somewhat too much dwelt on, but is undeniable, has here and elsewhere hit the fault of the lower class generally ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... an almost boundless toleration and placability, because if he is capricious enough to refuse to forgive a single individual for the meanness or evil that lies at his door, it is doing the rest of the world a ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... amiss to speak somewhat of the two former. The derogations therefore which grow to learning from the fortune or condition of learned men, are either in respect of scarcity of means, or in respect of privateness of life and meanness ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... will permit us to accept. "Francis," says Robertson, "notwithstanding the many errors conspicuous in his foreign policy and domestic administration, was nevertheless humane, beneficent, generous. He possessed dignity without pride, affability free from meanness, and courtesy exempt from deceit. All who had access to him, and no man of merit was ever denied that privilege, respected and loved him. Captivated with his personal qualities, his subjects forgot his defects as a monarch, and, admiring ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... this that my own acquaintance with Falconer commenced. I had just come out of one of the theatres in the neighbourhood of the Strand, unable to endure any longer the dreary combination of false magnanimity and real meanness, imported from Paris in the shape of a melodrama, for the delectation of the London public. I had turned northwards, and was walking up one of the streets near Covent Garden, when my attention was attracted to a woman who came out of a gin-shop, carrying a baby. She went to the kennel, and bent ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... meanness of our politics but congratulates Washington that he is long already wrapped in his shroud and forever safe." The following is his description of the social world of his day: "If any man consider the present aspects ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... dissimulation; a heterogeneous mass of contradictory qualities; with nothing great but his crimes; and even those contrasted by the littleness of his motives, which at once denoted both his baseness and his meanness, and marked him for a traitor and a trickster. Nay, in his style and writing there was the same mixture of vicious contrarieties;— the most grovelling ideas were conveyed in the most inflated language, giving mock consequence ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... I'se seed him whip 'em heaps of times, and it was 'most allus in the mornin's 'fore they went to wuk. Thar warn't no jailhouse nigh whar us lived and Marse Robert never had no place to lock slaves up when they got too bad, so he just beat the meanness out of 'em. Thar was one slave he never tetched; that was his foreman and his name was Robert too, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... was essential that Paris should become the unique capital, not to be compared with other capitals. The masterpieces of science and of art, the museums, all that had illustrated past centuries, were to be collected there. Napoleon regretted that he could not transport St. Peter's to Paris; the meanness ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... it to the proprietor. Sometimes they cart off the furniture. Pianos they are very fond of. When they see one, they first sit down and play a few sentimental ditties, then they go away, requisition a cart, and minstrel and instrument disappear together. They are a singular mixture of bravery and meanness. No one can deny that they possess the former quality, but they are courageous without one spark of heroism. After fighting all day, they will rifle the corpses of their fallen foes of every article they can lay their hands on, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... with anger, was a look, too, of porcine hate and fury. The cynical and patronizing manner he usually affected had dropped off, leaving revealed his actual coarse, spiteful, greedy, craven spirit—a creature of infinite meanness. At length, however, Gretzinger's torrent of abuse diminished until it ended in a last muddy dripping of threats and curses. With an effort he strove to pull himself together and assume a composure his eyes belied, while he lighted another of ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... as to everything else it is the difference between shabbiness and greatness. Skimpole's sunny talk might be expected to please as much as Micawber's gorgeous speech, the design of both being to take the edge off poverty. But in the one we have no relief from attendant meanness or distress, and we drop down from the airiest fancies into sordidness and pain; whereas in the other nothing pitiful or merely selfish ever touches us. At its lowest depth of what is worst, we never doubt that something better must turn up; and of a man who sells ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... woman was reminded of her holiday in town. She brightened, and the little that it was, and the meanness of the satisfaction, darkened her. Envy of the lucky adventurer Mr. Woodseer, on her husband's behalf, grew horridly conscious for being reproved. So she plucked resolution to enjoy her holiday and forget the contrasts ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sonnets is good in its way. The egotism, which was a constant reproach urged by The Edinburgh critics and by the "Cockney Poets" against the poets of the Lake School, is splendidly hit off in the first sonnet; the low and creeping meanness, or say, simpleness, as contrasted with simplicity, of thought and expression, which was stealing into Wordsworth's work at that period, is equally cleverly ridiculed in the second sonnet. In reproducing the sonnets, Coleridge claims only to have satirised ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... by the electric current to join in the enthusiasm. I remember once being thus carried away, and mingled my voice with the rude throats that cheered the passing cortege of royalty. The moment it was past, however, my heart fell, abashed at its own meanness and wickedness. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... no desire to look at my goods and didn't crave a thrashing, and guessed he would rather apologize, which he did, and I went on my way rejoicing, and I dare say in much better shape than I might have been in, had he shown as much fight as he did meanness the day before. ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... we can appreciate the sincerity of conviction which no doubt controlled most of them. But they were dangerous then, and Washington, with his honest hatred of all that seemed to him to partake of meanness or treason, proposed to put them down and render them harmless, being well convinced, after his clear-sighted fashion, that war was not peace, and that mildness to domestic ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... affection or some great self-sacrifice, and I respect and admire them, and think they are like that all through. And the day comes when they are not quite straightforward, or are guilty of some petty meanness, which a man who is not fit to black their ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... also the one consolation which we have when our sense of 'all the ills that flesh is heir to' becomes deep nearly to despair. When one thinks of the real facts of human life, and tries to conceive of the frightful meanness and passion and hate and wretchedness that have been howling and shrieking and gibbering and groaning through dreary millenniums, one's brain reels, and hope seems to be absurdity, and joy a sin against our fellows, as a feast would be in a house next door to where was a funeral. I do not wonder ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Dramatick Poetry the Dignity and meanness of the Persons represented make two different Species of imitation the one Tragick, which agrees to none but great and Illustrious persons, the other Comick, which suits with common and gentile humors: so in Epick too, there may be reckoned two sorts of ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... do," said Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders. "My former marshal, who acquired in my service a name and some fame, whom I permitted to accept the dignity of crown prince of Sweden that was offered him, a Frenchman, had the meanness to turn his arms against his country, and ally himself with the enemies of France. But still it seems that his courage is failing him. A month ago he disembarked in Germany, and is idle with his troops in Mecklenburg. He allowed Hamburg to fall; ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... servitude. It is a hateful and accursed institution, which God can not look upon but with abhorrence, and which no one of his children should for a moment tolerate. It is opposed to every thing Christian and humane, and full of all meanness and cruelty. It treats a fellow-being, only because his skin is not so fair as our own, as though he were a dumb animal or a piece of furniture. It allows him no expression of choice about any thing, and no liberty of action. It recognizes and employs all the ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... which it is necessary to point out to feeble-minded folk is this: that, in asserting the breadth and depth of that significance which gives to fashion and fortune their tremendous power, we do not indorse the extravagances which often disgrace the one, nor the meanness which often degrades ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... possible to put any sense of moral beauty into lives bounded forever by the low horizon of the factory. There is a fortuitous ugliness that has life and hope in it: the ugliness of overcrowded city streets, of the rush and drive of packed activities; but this out-spread meanness of the suburban working colony, uncircumscribed by any pressure of surrounding life, and sunk into blank acceptance of its isolation, its banishment from beauty and variety and surprise, seemed to Amherst the very negation of ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... years afterwards, he was registered again by himself as of Middlesex. The last record ought to be preferred, because it was made upon oath. It is observable, that, as a native of Winborne, he is styled filius Georgii Prior, generosi; not consistently with the common account of the meanness ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... my nature underwent a final change. I was still at an age when tears are shed. During those last days, while the precious life yet lingered, my tears, my words, and everything I did bore witness to my heartstricken repentance. The meanness and pettiness of the society in which I had moved, the emptiness and selfishness of women of fashion, had taught me to wish for and to seek an elect soul, and now I had found it—too late. I was weary of ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... was so fired by the prospect of those splendid additions to his toilet, that Reuben was compelled to promise them from his own stores. Joseph became at once amenable to reason, and promised to overlook his lordship's meanness. ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... relating to illustrious persons, and antient and noble families; several occurrences in which the Public is interested, and other matters of a more private nature, can only be found in works of this kind. History cannot stoop to the meanness of examining the materials of which Memoirs are ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... well known that the Good People cannot abide meanness. They like to be liberally dealt with when they beg or borrow of the human race; and, on the other hand, to those who come to them in need, they are ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... you this, Elsie; pretty gin'rally a mean dog 'll bite if he sees you're afraid of him. The only way to handle that kind is to run straight at him and kick the meanness out of him. The more he barks the harder you ought to kick. If you run away once it 'll be mighty uncomf'table every time you go past that house. But never mind; I cal'late this p'tic'lar pup won't bite; I've pulled his teeth, I guess. What's your plans, now? Goin' ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... class of men whose corruption will be the least injury to the state; and in the third place, they must devise some way whereby the followers of these occupations themselves will not readily fall into habits of unbridled shamelessness and meanness. ...
— Laws • Plato
... our system," said Rafael, marking the evident bewilderment of his friend. "Confess you would call it meanness—my huckstering with yonder young fool. I call it simplicity. Why throw away a shilling without need? Our race never did. A shilling is four men's bread: shall I disdain to defile my fingers by holding them out relief in their necessity? It is you who are mean—you Normans—not ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and where he saw his brother last. The recollection gave him fresh cause of regret. He remembered they had parted on his refusing to suffer Lady Clementina to admit the acquaintance of Henry's wife. Both Henry and his wife he now contemplated beyond the reach of his pride; and he felt the meanness of his former and the imbecility of his future haughtiness ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... whispered to him by the fiend that ever whispers to the heart of man, 'Dread men's opinions more than God's law!' Oh, my dear brother! what minds like yours should guard against the most is not the meanness of evil,—it is the evil that takes false nobility, by garbing itself in the royal magnificence of good." My uncle walked to the window, opened it, looked out a moment, as if to draw in fresh air, closed it ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... group, with the two subdivisions of urolagnia and Coprolagnia.[24] Inter faeces et urinam nascimur is an ancient text which has served the ascetic preachers of old for many discourses on the littleness of man and the meanness of that reproductive power which plays so large a part in man's life. "The stupid bungle of Nature," a correspondent writes, "whereby the generative organs serve as a means of relieving the bladder, is doubtless responsible for much ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... his house beset with spies, his conversation with his family listened to, and the most trifling actions of his life recorded, it would be deemed unfair and illiberal, and he who should practice such meanness would be thought worthy of no punishment more respectful than what might be inflicted by an oaken censor, or an admonitory heel.—But it will be said, a King is not an individual, and that such a habit, or such an amusement, is beneath the dignity of his character. Yet would it ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... her commerce by Holland and by England, united against her will to a decaying power, she was unable to finish her last great work, while such buildings as she did herself finish—for it must not be forgotten that Mafra was designed by a foreigner—show a meanness of invention and design scarcely to be equalled in any other land, a strange contrast to the exuberance of fancy lavished on the ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... will be best to send ten dollars," said Mr. Stanton. "People are unreasonable, you know, and they might charge me with meanness, if I sent less." ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... meaning of low, and low as the earth; and this is also the sense which humilis always bears in classical Latin, though Christianity (which first recognised humility as a virtue, instead of stigmatising it as a meanness) attached to it the sense which its derivatives in all modern Romance languages, with the exception ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... at this proposition. He knew very well the meanness of the board which the squire provided, how inferior it was even to the scanty, but well-cooked meals which he got at home; he knew, also that the squire had the knack of getting more work out of his men than ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... "establishing," but was so cold that it took him a good while to warm up to the general temperature of the meeting. But he did at length; and talked with the Widow Wheeler, and saw all her well-managed children, and felt ashamed of his meanness only ten days before. Deacon Willberate saw his son Ned dancing with Squire Allen's rosy daughter, Matilda,—for the young people cared more for each other than for all the allusions to slavery in all the prayers and sermons too, of the whole world,—and it so reminded him of the time when he ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... himself how it was possible to put any sense of moral beauty into lives bounded forever by the low horizon of the factory. There is a fortuitous ugliness that has life and hope in it: the ugliness of overcrowded city streets, of the rush and drive of packed activities; but this out-spread meanness of the suburban working colony, uncircumscribed by any pressure of surrounding life, and sunk into blank acceptance of its isolation, its banishment from beauty and variety and surprise, seemed to Amherst the very negation of ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... upon the power of the police who form the chief instrument of the autocratic government and who spy upon and terrorise the population; upon the German bureaucrats who do not consider themselves the servants of the public, but look upon the public as their servant, and whose spirit of meanness and corruption is so characteristic of the Austrian body politic; finally, the dynasty relies upon the Catholic hierarchy who hold vast landed property in Austria and regard it as the bulwark of Catholicism, and who through Clericalism strive for political ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... and least artificial of his poems. Colin Clout's Come Home Again, printed in 1595, was inscribed to his friend in 1591. The dedication was expressed to be in part payment of an infinite debt. The poet declared it unworthy of Sir Walter's higher conceit for the meanness of the style, but agreeable to the truth in circumstance and matter. Lines in the poem corroborate the hypothesis that Elizabeth had for a time, perhaps in the summer of ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... all calamity and disappointment, all shame and guilt. In Christ there come forward to meet her, love, hope, truth, light, salvation. In Simon are acted out doting conservatism, mean expediency, purblind calculation, carnal insensibility. Generosity in this scene is confronted with meanness, in the attempt to shelter misfortune. The woman is a tragedy herself, such as Aeschylus never dreamed of. The scourging Furies, dread Fate, and burning Hell unite in her, and, borne on by the new impulse of the new dispensation, they come towards the light, they ask for peace, they throng ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... was the proper mixture of the sanguine and the phlegmatic. Science is not able to teach us concerning men as it teaches us of horses, though I am very far from saying that there are not traits of nobleness and of meanness that run through families and can be calculated to appear in individuals with absolute certainty; one family will be trusty and another tricky through all its members for generations; noble strains and ignoble strains are perpetuated. When we hear that she has eloped ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... terms of equality by an emperor of Germany: and, when this unworthy plea was overruled by the honest indignation of the Duke of Lorraine, the meeting of the two monarchs was formal and embarrassed: and Sobieski, disgusted at the meanness and arrogance of the prince who owed to him the preservation of his capital and throne, hastily cut short the conference, by deputing to his chancellor Zaluski the task of showing to Leopold the troops who had saved his empire; and departed on the 17th with his noble colleague ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... month's journey to the Theton River to something like twenty days. He had foundered six teams of horses and worn his two men and his scouts well-nigh threadbare with night and day travel. But the doctor had proved invincible, as had the Yellow-Knife scout on his skewbald pony, which, for all its meanness of shape and size, had stood up to ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... court-martial. An inmate of the White House has recorded the eagerness with which the President caught at any fact that would justify him in saving the life of a condemned soldier. He was only merciless when meanness or cruelty were clearly proved. Cases of cowardice he disliked especially to punish with death. "It would frighten the poor devils too terribly to shoot them," he said. On the papers in the case of one soldier who had ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... how someone had the cunning and meanness to put a man's suit beside her to tempt her to wear this suit again, and with what absurd barbarism this transgression was claimed as a pretext for condemning her to the flames, as if in a warrior girl it was a crime worthy of the fire, to put on breeches instead of a skirt. ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... give praise and fame in their songs to those who are liberal to them, while they visit those who neglect or injure them with satires in which the victims are usually reproached with illegitimate birth and meanness of character. Sometimes the Bhat, if very seriously offended, fixes an effigy of the person he desires to degrade on a long pole and appends to it a slipper as a mark of disgrace. In such cases the song of the Bhat records ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... She had the instinctive sense that during the next few weeks she should want all her dignity with Aldous, that she could not afford to put herself at a disadvantage with him. To be troubled about her own sins at such a moment would be like the meanness of the lazy and canting Christian, who whines about saving his soul while he ought to be rather occupied with feeding the bodies ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... silence of the soul they commit every vice. But they who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind; the revealing day will come when the films of life shall be withdrawn, and the character shall appear faithful as a portrait, and then all the meanness and sliminess shall be seen to have given something to the soul's picture. Oh, be warned against these dreams, all ye young hearts! The indulgence of the imagination is like the sultriness of a summer's day; what began so fair ends with sharp lightnings and thunder. How terrible is ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... weakened him that he was unable to rise up. Then out came the crabs in a crowd, and brandishing on high their pinchers they pinched the Monkey so sorely that he begged them for forgiveness and promised never to repeat his meanness and treachery. ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... can discover any difference before I go to market. This is my gold mine, and that point is mighty important to me, so I'll go this very day. I used to find it in the woods northeast of town and on the land Jameson bought, west. Wonder if he lives there yet. He should have died of pure meanness long ago. I'll drive to the river and hunt along ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... carefully avoided whatever could give offence to Lewis, and indemnified themselves by offering a gross indignity to William. The truth is that their pride had, as extravagant pride often has, a close affinity with meanness. They knew that it was unsafe to insult Lewis; and they believed that they might with perfect safety insult William. Lewis was absolute master of his large kingdom. He had at no great distance armies and fleets which one word from him would put in motion. If he were provoked, the white flag ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that his son's disgrace was a matter of common knowledge had now become a certainty. Brodie's taunt showed that everybody knew it. He walked out of the building very quietly, pale but resolute; no meanness in his carriage, no cowering. He was an arresting figure of a man as he stood for a moment in the door and looked round for the man whom he was seeking. "Weel, weel," he was thinking, "I maun thole, I suppose. They were under my feet for many ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... been in pain all day and soon she knew what was the matter. They were alone and it was a day's travel back to the last house. The team had given out and the wind and sleet were seeing which could do the most meanness. At last the poor man got a fire started and a wagon sheet stretched in such a manner that it kept off the sleet. He fixed a bed under the poor shelter and did all he could to keep the fire from ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... could be austere. Meanness, thanklessness, loquaciousness, jealousy, an unbecoming attire, evil thoughts, whatever is sensual, whatever is coarse, any promenade in mud actual or metaphorical, severely it condemned. Particularly was avarice censured. "There are many who do not like to ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... Haven't I marched and starved and shared my plans with you? If there had been any meanness in you, wouldn't I have found it out? What's more, Benson knows what really happened, and so does Colonel Challoner. How else could Clarke have put ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... this way he attacks Nasidienus on the excessive luxury of the table, and his advice was applicable not only to the rich and great, but to more ordinary men. Thus, he shows the bad tendencies of avarice and love-intrigues, and the meanness of sycophantism and legacy-hunting. Many of the faults he condemns are rather errors in taste than serious moral delinquencies. Sometimes he criticises merely trivial matters, such as a costume or a scent. "Rufillus smells all perfumes, Gorgonius ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... of meanness and injustice, commits them without reflection, or with a very partial one; for on what other ground than this, can we account for the declaration of war against the Dutch? To gain an idea of the politics which actuated the British Ministry to this ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... Lawton (see page 64) and Edward Hogg (see page 109). In reply Lamb says (Good Friday, 1830):—"I do assure you that your verses gratified me very much, and my sister is quite proud of them. For the first time in my life I congratulated myself upon the shortness and meanness of my name. Had it been Schwartzenberg or Esterhazy it would have ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... lifting a finger, she would stand there and see it—she would push me in—and never feel a pang. That's my young lady!" Her lucidity chilled me to the soul—it seemed to shine so flawless. "To climb up to the top and be splendid and envied there," she went on—"to do that at any cost or by any meanness and cruelty is the only thing she has a heart for. She'd lie for it, she'd steal for it, she'd kill for it!" My companion brought out these words with a cold confidence that had evidently behind it some occult past process of growth. I watched her pale face and glowing eyes; she held me breathless ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... cold, and a button is off, and the breakfast is tough, and the stove smokes, and the pipes burst, and you start down the street nettled from head to foot. All day long things are adverse. Insinuations, petty losses, meanness on the part of customers. The ink bottle upsets and spoils the carpet. Some one gives a wrong turn to the damper, and the gas escapes. An agent comes in determined to insure your life, when it is already insured for more than it is worth, and you are afraid some one will knock ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... is a case that can never happen, unless that friend has some mean and selfish motive, such as I know T. Burr has not. I can never believe that too great deference to the judgment of another, in these matters, can arise from any greatness of soul. It appears to me the genuine offspring of meanness. I suppose you are impatient for my reply to these importunities. I found my tongue and fancy too cramped to say much. However, I rallied my thoughts and set forth, as well as I was able, the inconveniences and uncertainty attending such an affair. I am determined to be very blunt ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... into the shade. The Doctor from the boxes, and the son from the stage, have actually endeavoured, it seems, to recite addresses, which they call MONOLOGUES and UNALOGUES; and which, for extravagant folly, tumid meanness, and vulgar affectation, set all the powers of parody ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... But Gorki's new conception of life is less clearly and broadly formulated in these than in Nil, and other subsequent characters. These people rather collapse from the superabundance of their vigour and the meanness of their surroundings. ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... much, because the early, very early part of my life was passed among what are reproachfully termed "low people." If I describe them faithfully, they must still appear low to those who arrogate to themselves the epithet of "high." For myself; I hold that there is nothing low under the sun, except meanness. Where there is utility there ought to be honour. The utility of the humble artisan has never been denied, though too often despised, and too rarely honoured; but I have found among the "vulgar" a horror ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... dress, nor did his mode of living undergo any improvement consequent upon the changed condition of his circumstances. This vast accumulation of money only seemed to intensify his avarice, to increase his meanness, and the desire for gain became the ruling passion of his heart and mind. He removed to the large and imposing mansion lately occupied by the Baron, but this was done simply because he could find no other occupant for ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... father's came floating to Livingstone across the years: "If you have made an enemy of a child, make him your friend if it takes a year! A child's enmity is never incurred except by injustice or meanness." ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... Mary reach the stable where the Nativity is to take place, there is a charming dialogue. Joseph laments over the meanness of the stable, Mary ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... out into the listening night, the poor child's face grew slowly pale as she heard it. It humbled her. It made her meanness, her low, weak life so real to her! There was no pain nor hunger she had known that did not find a voice in its inarticulate cry. She! what was she? All the pain and wants of the world must be going ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... could speak fluently French, Italian, and modern Greek, did not know the Apostles' Creed, and what was even more unusual in a prospective clergyman, had never heard of the Thirty-nine Articles. He was struck with the architecture of the colleges, and much surprised at the meanness of the houses that surrounded them. He heretically calls the Isis 'a mere moat,' the Cherwell 'a ditch.' The brilliant dare-devil from Italy despised alike the raw, limitary, reputable, priggish undergraduates and ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... it surprises me that such proud people as you Americans should condescend to the meanness of borrowing from those whom you affect to despise. Besides, as you never repay us for what you pretend to borrow, I look upon it as a system of robbery. If strangers unfortunately settle among you, their ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... was, whatever her faults, upright, honest, truthtelling, and fearless; and she was long before she could suspect the treachery and meanness of a dependent; and still longer in believing that the woman who had for so many years been her pupil, and had been accustomed to her frankness, could condescend to a low cabal, and, displacing her from her councils, solace herself with the society ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... twenty shillings and costs!" Iris spoke with mock indignation. "How's that for meanness to ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... I, "even among these Stygians this envy and quarrelsomeness (if you will permit me the word) survive? What a pitiful meanness! To be sure, I can understand this feeling to a certain extent; a sense of justice will prompt it. In my own case, I often feel myself forced to protest against the absurd praises lavished on contemporaries. Yesterday, for instance, Lady Jones was good enough to praise ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... though he was soon to learn it by hard experience, how strong, even at the imperial court, was the influence of the Portuguese party, and by what meanness and trickery it sought to maintain and augment that influence. "Where the Portuguese party was really to blame," he afterwards said, "was in this,—that, seeing disorder everywhere more or less ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... asked whether she recognized the tablets as her property; Paula, after convincing herself, replied with a flaming glance of scorn and aversion at Horapollo: "Yes, my lord. It is mine. That base old man has taken it with atrocious meanness from among my things." For an instant her voice failed her; then, turning to the judges, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... did Rajah spoil this exhibition, which was continued throughout an entire summer, nor commit any overt act of impatience, indifference or meanness. The flighty, nervous temper of the chimpanzee was delightfully absent. The most remarkable feature of it all was his very evident enjoyment of his part of the performance, and his sense of responsibility to us and to ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... generous than grateful; less moved by injuries than by contempt; he was framed to take the ascendant in every intercourse with others, but exerted this superiority of nature with such ostentation as exposed him to envy, and made every one willing to recall the original inferiority, or rather meanness, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... be wholly ill spoken of. Being what they are, Fielding has taken them, and, with a relentlessness which Swift could hardly have exceeded, and a good-nature which Swift rarely or never attained, has held them up to us as dissected preparations of half-innocent meanness, scoundrelism, and vanity, such as are hardly anywhere else to be found. I have used the word "preparations," and it in part indicates Fielding's virtue, a virtue shown, I think, in this book as much ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... his duties when the news arrived—taking preparation. Boys are marvellous creatures. Perhaps they will sink below the brutes; perhaps they will attain to a woman's tenderness. Though they despised Rickie, and had suffered under Agnes's meanness, their one thought this term was to be gentle and to give ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... forget the evil reports which then prevailed, and which indeed have survived them, of the procurators of the period—meanness, stinginess, fasts; but as, after all, excepting some few acts of economy which Porthos had always found very unseasonable, the procurator's wife had been tolerably liberal—that is, be it understood, for a procurator's ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... defect in his character—a defect which, as his friend in former days, I had guessed nothing of. I saw that very little encouragement would make him a toady—a fawning servitor on the wealthy—and in our old time of friendship I had believed him to be far above all such meanness, but rather of a manly, independent nature that scorned hypocrisy. Thus we are deluded even by our nearest and dearest—and is it well or ill for us, I wonder, when we are at last undeceived? Is not the destruction of illusion worse than illusion itself? I thought so, as my quondam friend ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... sometimes deprives men of the strength necessary for action, but He never robs them of the faculty of progress, of spiritual elevation. Head and heart throb with the same pulsation; the brain thinks not aright without the healthful heart. Meanness and grovelling are always voluntary, and their essence is to resist superiority, to struggle against it, to try to degrade it: thus, all the bitter reactions of the Past against the changes truly needed for the development ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... shown up. Tod and Tad and her own brother, too, ought to know what a mean thing she did. It's only justice, Dolly, that they should. You're so easy-going you'd forgive anything and forget it, too! But I can't. I've got to tell that Clifton girl what I think of her. Oh, I never heard of such meanness! Why Dollyrinda Fayre,—you or I would scorn to do such ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... and reserved and cold. As she sat there now, motionless, her hands on her lap, her whole being seemed to me to radiate goodness and gentleness and a loving heart. I knew that she could be impatient with stupid people, and irritated by sentimentality, and infuriated by meanness and cruelty, but the whole size and grandeur of her nobility seemed to me to shine all about her and set her apart from the rest of human beings. She was not a woman whom I ever could have loved—she ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?—five years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward lies your way; nor can anything but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gone he went into the kitchen and acquainted the family with what had passed. Great were the grief and indignation of the children, and Walter expressed a desire that Squire Hudson might lose all his property as a fitting reward for his meanness. ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... "I never meant it that way. You will find we are very frank here. Everybody knows Paula's age. She tells it herself. I'm eighteen—so, there. And now, just for your meanness, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... manufacture and transportational activities. These new facts modify in the minds of students the point of view so often given in elementary courses, that the War for Independence was caused by sheer British meanness and injustice, by her policy ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Zealanders have done, and to claim their ancient rights with tears now unheeded. I can see along the vista of the future, truth and righteousness in Britain's hands, and the inhabitants of New Guinea yet unborn blessing her for her rule; if otherwise, God help the British meanness, for they will rise to pronounce a ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... saw the "Standard" office across the street—and the temptation passed as swiftly as it had come. The instinct of generations was stronger than the appeal of the moment—he might sin a great sin, but he could never commit a meanness. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... attacking him. Conscia virtus, and you may add what belongs to the genus irritabile vatum, make him well armed against his assailants. For the rest, piety, honesty, temperance, freedom from all avarice or meanness, are found in him in a degree suitable ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... these models of mankind, these our superiors, strive to thrust upon each other what they do not want themselves? It is a meanness, a baseness, an unworthiness from which I should shrink. It would be equally astonishing that men ever submit to it, were it not that they are plebes, and therefore thus easily imposed upon. The plebe in this case at ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... sense of his dishonourable intentions, mingled with shame and disgust at his unutterable meanness, came over Madge, and rising with a flush on her cheek, she struck him with all her might. It was a feeble blow, but he was unprepared: it over-balanced him; he staggered backwards, and fell heavily down the stairs. Madge, her heart beating ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... persons whom Lady Hester had known in her youth. In return she regaled him with stories of her own glory, of Mr. Pitt's virtues, of the objectionable habits of the Princess of Wales, and of the meanness of the Regent in inviting himself to dinner with gentlemen who could not afford to entertain him, the whole pleasantly flavoured by animadversions on the social presumption of medical men, and descriptions ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... what you have read, you may perceive that God has visited a poor people among you, with this saving knowledge and testimony, whom he has upheld and increased to this day, notwithstanding the fierce opposition they have met withal. Despise not the meanness of this appearance: it was, and yet is, we know, a day of small things and of small account with too many; and many hard and ill names are given to it; but it is of God, it came from him, because it leads to him. This we know, but we cannot make another to know it, ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... piety and love, A mistress or a saint in every grove. By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd, The sports of children satisfy the child; Each nobler aim, repress'd by long control, 155 Now sinks at last, or feebly mans the soul; While low delights, succeeding fast behind, In happier meanness occupy the mind: As in those domes, where Caesars once bore sway, Defac'd by time and tottering in decay, 160 There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed, And, wond'ring man could want the larger pile, Exults, and owns his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... a vast horizon of enjoyment, that he had come to look upon things as pitiful, which would formerly have satisfied his highest wishes. Should he, after having dreamed of those glorious achievements by which millions are won in a day, sink back again into the meanness of petty thefts? His heart turned from that prospect with unspeakable loathing; and yet what was ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... awakens and strengthens within him! what will not one day be his respect and desire for Greece and its symmetria prisca, when the scales drop from his eyes as he walks the London streets, and he sees such a lesson in meanness, as the Strand, for instance, in its true deformity! But here we are coming to our friend Mr. Ruskin's province, and I will not intrude upon it, for he is its ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... remains a monument of his artistic taste. He was a patron and friend of men of letters, and himself skilled in the "gay science" of the troubadour. But of the political capacity which was the characteristic of his house he had little or none. Profuse, changeable, false from sheer meanness of spirit, impulsive alike in good and ill, unbridled in temper and tongue, reckless in insult and wit, Henry's delight was in the display of an empty and prodigal magnificence, his one notion of government was a dream of arbitrary power. But frivolous as the king's mood was, he clung ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... of our grief, which is our atonement, measures the degree by which this is separated from an actual unworthiness. For in dreams we but act a part which must have been learned and rehearsed in our waking hours, and no doubt could discover some waking consent thereto. If this meanness had not its foundation in us, why are we grieved at it? In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake. But an unwavering and commanding virtue would compel even its most fantastic and faintest dreams ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... gentleness and accommodation in his temper, he would, I think, have been still more interesting; but he had been accustomed to give law in the circle of his ordinary acquaintance, and his dread of anything approaching to meanness or servility rendered his manner somewhat decided and hard. Nothing perhaps was more remarkable among his various attainments than the fluency, and precision, and originality of his language, when he spoke ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... share of power; but she was forced, by a threatened rising of the Alexandrians, to make her elder son king. Before, however, she would do this she made a treaty with him, which would strongly prove, if anything were still wanting, the vice and meanness of the Egyptian court. It was, that, although married to his sister Cleopatra, of whom he was very fond, he should put her away, and marry his younger sister Selene; because the mother hoped that Selene would be false to her ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... and lonely old Mrs. Cox, a shrivelled little shell of a woman at sixty-five, always had a warm welcome for her oldest daughter and her beautiful grandchild. She would limp about her bare, uninviting little rooms, complaining of her husband's increasing meanness and of her own physical ills, while with gnarled, twisted old hands she filled a "Rebecca" teapot of cheap brown glaze, or cut into a fresh loaf of ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... judged it advisable to give an account of Franco-Swiss relations on a scale proportionate to their interest and importance; they exhibit, not only the meanness and folly of the French Directory, but the genius of the great Corsican in skilfully blending the new and the old, and in his rejection of the fussy pedantry of French theorists and the worst prejudices of the Swiss oligarchs. Had not ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... and the less that which submitteth to a greater than itself." Q "What are the four things wherein concur all creatures?"—"Men concur in meat and drink, the sweet of sleep, the lust of women and the agonies of death." Q "What are the three things whose foulness none can do away?"—"Folly, meanness of nature, and lying." Q "What is the best kind of lie,[FN138] though all kinds are foul?"—"That which averteth harm from its utterer and bringeth gain." Q "What kind of truthfulness is foul, though all kinds are fair?"—"That of a man glorying in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... not by delicacy of temperance and wisdom of regimen. Our debt was to be paid, not in a pure form, but mixed with the costs of unbelief, cowardice, avarice. Yet primarily it is the cost, not of meanness, but of magnanimity, that we are now paying,—not of a base skepticism, but of a noble faith. For, in truth, normal qualities and actions involve costs no less than vicious and abnormal. Such is the law of the world; and it is this law of the costs of worthiness, of knowledge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... for a woman. Ill health and the care of many children; meanness and poverty of supporters ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... easy to be nice and agreeable when everything is easy, and everything goes right, but when you have to work hard all the time, if you're a little bit inclined to be mean, the grind of doing the same thing day after day, year after year, seems to bring the meanness right out. I've seen lots of instances of that, and I'm perfectly sure that if I were a farmer's wife, and had to work like a slave I'd be a perfect shrew and there'd be no living with me ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... man as was ever loved and deluded by woman. It may be said that his blindness in love proved the point, for shrewdness in love usually goes with meanness in general. Once the passion had mastered him, the intellect had gone for naught. Knight, as a lover, was more single-minded and far simpler than his friend Stephen, who in other ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... when he had answered the young man's friendly greeting, "it is an awful thing to lay open a mean man's meanness, and tell him the ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... the meanness of all these deceits and subterfuges suddenly came over Mrs. Bunker. Without replying she went to her bedroom and returned with Colonel Marion's last letter, which she tossed ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... good of you," she said and her cheeks flushed. "But I'd rather you didn't. I'm going by the people's chariot—the subway." She was not yet quite able to conquer the old pride that remained from the old life. She shrunk from showing him the meanness of her quarters; she who had reigned and been toasted and lived in the exclusive aloofness of the favored few, and who now faced starvation. So he parted from her at the nearest ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... time, everybody became a little smarter than before. You know an empty stomach sharpens wit, and fear puts a fine edge on it. Now Mr. Osprey, who was one of the biggest of the cousins of old King Eagle, couldn't get over a feeling of meanness whenever he hunted those smaller than himself. One day he caught little Mr. Sparrow when little Mr. Sparrow was so busy that he forgot to ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... as full detail as he gave us his men; but it is not difficult for us to appreciate Mrs. Granahan and her daughter; Mrs. McKie, a "woman with a dead soul"; Mary Murray with her daftness over the boys; and even Sarah McMinn, so true in her managing and meanness, qualities necessary to the prosperity of her folk. Puritan America can understand these women and men because they are Puritan, too, with the ignoble that is in the Puritan as well as with the noble that is just ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Allstairs, that was not meanness on my part. It was politics. There is a great deal of difference between meanness and politics. One is lowdown and contemptible and nasty, and the other is expedient. See? Why, some of the most generous men in the world are politicians. Time ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... they in every other respect appeared like persons of high birth, and deported themselves like noblemen with much dignity and propriety, yet their entire ignorance of letters was an evident demonstration of the meanness of their birth. The marquis placed implicit confidence in his servants and friends, insomuch that in all his dispatches and orders relative to the government, and in the assignments of lands and Indians, he only made two lines with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... his mother crept up the bank of the river, stopping occasionally to let the old negress rest, his impression of the meanness and shabbiness of the whole village grew. From the top of the bank the single business street ran straight back from the river. It was stony in places, muddy in places, strewn with goods-boxes, ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... to Jinks now. He scented danger, and the treacherous meanness of his nature came suddenly to the fore. He forgot the care and kindness of his master; forgot everything but the fact that those eyes were still looking at him, and that they made him feel restless, irritable and wild. He had had this wild feeling for some time now, but he ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... commentary to their doings in practical life, and vice versa. The experience thus gained will be very useful in avoiding wrong ideas, whether about yourself or about others. But if you come across any special trait of meanness or stupidity—in life or in literature,—you must be careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to your knowledge—a new fact to be considered in studying the character ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... suffers sacrifice without pretense of martyrdom, bears calumny without reply, imposes superior will and understanding on all around it, capitulates to no unworthy triumph, but must carry all things at the point of clear and blameless conscience. Scorning all manner of meanness and cowardice, his bursts of wrath at their exhibition heighten our admiration for the noble passions which were kindled by the aspirations ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... nor understand. For a ruin or a painting or a legend that does not seem to him to deserve the appreciation in which it is held he refuses to affect an admiration he does not feel; he cannot help being honest—he was born so. For meanness of all kinds he has a burning contempt; and on Abelard he pours out the vials of his wrath. He has a quick eye for all humbugs and a scorching scorn for them; but there is no attempt at being funny in the manner of the cockney comedians when he ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... conquer those who had conquered empires, Mary retained the innate grace and dignity of her character, never forgetting that she had been born a queen, or making her calamities an excuse for the commission of any petty meanness, which she would have scorned in the days of her prosperity. Full of incident as her previous life had been, brilliant in many of its achievements, it may be doubted whether the forbearance, fortitude, and magnanimity displayed in her latter years, do not redound ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... says: "Whoever wore a black dress was invested with tyrannical power; philosophy and piety to the gods were compelled to retire into secret places, and to dwell in contented poverty and dignified meanness of appearance. The temples were turned into tombs for the adoration of the bones of the basest and most depraved of men, who had suffered the penalty of the law, and whom they ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... marble is found to be stucco and plaster. Behind Chowringhee are a number of wide streets with similar, but generally smaller houses, each apart, with offices and servants' houses in the enclosure. When entering the city one sees that strange combination of meanness and dirt with grandeur with which travellers in Eastern lands are so familiar. In the neighbourhood of Government House there are a number of shops in the European fashion, but a very large proportion of the business of Calcutta, we suppose the most of it, is ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... sacrifice of the rights of mankind, he was naturally pushed into that extreme by his abhorrence of the present licentious factions; and such intrepidity, as well as disinterestedness of behavior, proves that, whatever his speculative principles were his heart was elevated far above the meanness and abject submission of a slave. He represented to the parliament, that all the abuses of government which could justly be imputed to Richard, instead of amounting to tyranny, were merely the result of error, youth, or misguided counsel, and admitted of a remedy more easy and salutary than ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... intellectual faculties narrower still, for all their keenness and intensity. The largeness of brain with which Shakespeare endows his human devil, and the largeness of heart of which he does not seem to wish us to imagine him as in certain circumstances incapable, contrast sharply enough with the peasant meanness of Lisbeth. Indeed, Balzac, whose seldom erring instinct in fixing on the viler parts of human nature may have been somewhat too much dwelt on, but is undeniable, has here and elsewhere hit the fault of the lower class generally very well. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... mingled irony and insight, the wit and satire, the genial but perfectly remorseless revelation of human springs of action, which distinguish scene after scene of the book. Nothing, for example, can be more admirable than the different manifestations of meanness which take place among the travellers of the stage-coach, in the oft-quoted chapter where Joseph, having been robbed of everything, lies naked and bleeding in the ditch. There is Miss Grave-airs, who protests against the indecency of his entering the vehicle, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... dastardly act of meanness could he perpetrate, than stealing away the heart of that young girl, or are you so blind you ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... perfection our natures are capable of; possibly perfection may consist in a certain medium which we have already stepped beyond; but certainly all this refinement is utterly incomprehensible to an uncivilized mind which cannot discriminate the ideas of humility and meanness. We appear to the Sumatrans to have degenerated from the more splendid virtues of our predecessors. Even the richness of their laced suits and the gravity of their perukes attracted a degree of admiration; ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... to thee; I put myself in peril of falling into the gorge and cavern of this river. I, Lord, have come to take with my hands, blindness to mine eyes, rottenness and shriveling to my members, poverty and affliction to my body; for my meanness and rudeness this it is that I merit to receive. Live and rule for ever in all quietness and tranquillity, O thou that art our lord, our shelter, our protector, most compassionate, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... contemplating the treasure which the triumphant Alberoni had snatched from contending suitors, it was concealed, and the most cheerful hilarity prevailed. Yet, amid the general expression of happiness, there were two persons who, attracting notice by the meanness of their attire, and the melancholy gloom upon their countenances, seemed to be out of place in so stately and so joyous an assembly. They were brother and sister, the descendants of Ghibellines who had died in exile, and distant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... perhaps, and swallowing some passing insect) on the points of turrets, as a seagull perches, with an angler's immobility, on the crest of a wave. Without quite knowing why, my grandmother found in the steeple of Saint-Hilaire that absence of vulgarity, pretension, and meanness which made her love—and deem rich in beneficent influences—nature itself, when the hand of man had not, as did my great-aunt's gardener, trimmed it, and the works of genius. And certainly every part one saw of the church served to distinguish the whole from any other building ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... but slide around the wall of the house, get down on his hands and knees, and creep right under that open window, where he could hear every word that was said. What do you think of that for meanness, the skunk; now, it never occurred to me to ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... and love of learning, the house of Este, among its other contradictory qualities, was distinguished for capriciousness and meanness. Even Muratori, their ardent panegyrist, does not attempt to conceal this blemish. We must deduct a good deal from the high-sounding praise which the courtly writers of Italy bestowed upon this house for its splendid patronage of literature, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... governor by whom Jesus was tried as a man who had been raised from the ranks of slavery. The worst condemnation of slavery is, that it degrades the characters of its victims, developing the servile vices of cowardice, meanness, and cruelty—all of which vices are manifest in Pilate's character. But such a promotion as this theory implies would be most improbable. A more likely explanation connects the name with pilum, a javelin. The earlier name Pontius suggests the family of the Pontii, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... Dixon, summing up judicially. "We had intended to call, but I really think it would be impossible after what Mrs. Gervase has told us. The idea of Mr. Vaughan trying to sponge on poor Mr. Gervase in that shabby way! I think meanness of that kind is ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... help your honour down. Remember me again, Sir. Thank your honour. Now you may go and break your neck, your honour, as soon as you please; for I've got all out of you I can squeeze, that's a fact. That's English, Squire—that's English servility, which they call civility, and English meanness and beggin', which they call parquisite. Who was that you wanted to see the Minister, that I heerd you a talkin' of ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... art, which must now, forsooth, be spelt with a capital letter—why, I know no more than the artists. John Turner had his Art, and now exercised it. I always noticed that during the earlier and more piquant courses of a meal he was cynical and apt to give speech on matters of human meanness and vanity not unknown to many who are silent about them. Later on, when the dishes became more succulent, so would his views of life sweeten and acquire a mellower flavour. His round face now began to beam more pleasantly at me across the well-served table, like a rich autumn ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... anxious as they found some difficulty in making out Ivinghoe Terrace, and found it at last to be a row of rather dilapidated little houses, apparently built of lath and stucco, and of that peculiar meanness only attained by the modern suburb. Aunt Ada evidently did not like it at all, and owned herself almost ready to turn back, being sure that Valetta must have made some mistake. Gillian repeated that she had always said ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his self-abjection, had been the mere qualms of a craving, the flush of eager courtship. Do as she would to overcome these realizations, forces within her stronger than herself, primordial forces with the welfare of all life in their keeping, cried out upon the meanness of his face, the ugly pointed nose and the thin compressed lips, the weak neck, the clammy hands, the ungainly nervous gestures, the tuneless whistling between the clenched teeth. He would not let her forget a single detail. Whenever she ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... in tones of grey, he is fairish and grey-eyed, and you would suspect him of dyspepsia. It is a justifiable suspicion. Men of this type, the chairman remarks with a sudden intrusion of exposition, are romantic with a shadow of meanness, they seek at once to conceal and shape their sensuous cravings beneath egregious sentimentalities, they get into mighty tangles and troubles with women, and he has had his troubles. You will hear of them, for that is the quality of his type. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... which cause responses of approval and cause as a result of "relief from hunger, rescue from fear, gorgeous display, instinctive acts of strength, daring and victory," and responses of scorn "to the observation of empty-handedness, deformity, physical meanness, pusillanimity, and defect." The desire for approval is never outgrown—it is one of the governing forces in society. If it is to be shown or desired on any but this crude level of instinctive response, it can only come ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... opposed the motion; and seemed inclined to use in that house the same arrogance to which on the bench he had so long been accustomed: but he was soon taught to know his place; and he proved, by his behavior, that insolence, when checked, naturally sinks into meanness and cowardice. The bishop ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... apprenticed to Mr. Gordon, a surgeon. Gordon, again, was an excellent man, appreciated by Smollett himself in after days, and the odious Potion of "Roderick Random" must, like his rival, Crab, have been merely a fancy sketch of meanness, hypocrisy, and profligacy. Perhaps the good surgeon became the victim of that "one continued string of epigrammatic sarcasms," such as Mr. Colquhoun told Ramsay of Ochtertyre, Smollett used to play off on his companions, "for which ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... against material foes, and largely for material ends. It is the glory of the Church militant that its conquests are spiritual and its victories are eternal. Its fight is chiefly against the inner, not the outer foe—against sin and wrong-doing, impatience, strife, anger, clamor, meanness, evil-speaking, wrath. It is the foe of tyranny and its heel is upon the head of the oppressor and the avenger. Its banner flies over every country and has been carried through tribulation, through sorrow, through danger, and through death to the remotest ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... then at the boy, whose small, delicate face was bright with intelligence, whose dark eyes blazed with life and fire, and whose every gesture betrayed spirit, grace, and quick understanding. A child for a father to be proud of. No meanness there; no littleness in the fine, high-bred features; everything that the father's heart could wish, except perhaps some little want of robustness; one might have desired that the limbs were less exquisitely graceful and delicate—more stout ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... shining eyes rested upon her patroness with a light in them which was keen with indignation and wonder. She cried, "And why the change—and why the change, Madama?" with a high indignant tone, such as youth assumes in presence of ingratitude and meanness. Bice knew much that a young girl does not usually know; but the reason why her best friend should be thus slighted was ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... hand to haste. And it does not matter whether he seek for his subjects among peasants or nobles, among the heroic or the simple, in courts or in fields, so only that he behold all things with a thirst for beauty, and a hatred of meanness and vice. There are, indeed, certain methods of representation which are usually adopted by the most active minds, and certain characters of subject usually delighted in by the noblest hearts; but it is quite possible, quite easy, to adopt the manner of painting without ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... St. Jude the apostle, who himself was the brother of Jesus Christ. Their natural pretensions to the throne of David might perhaps attract the respect of the people, and excite the jealousy of the governor; but the meanness of their garb, and the simplicity of their answers, soon convinced him that they were neither desirous nor capable of disturbing the peace of the Roman empire. They frankly confessed their royal origin, and their near relation to the Messiah; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... could they depict the meanness of soul that dwelt in that extraordinary shell? The blithesome tapestry-makers, albeit adepts in form, grace and harmony, could not touch the subjectiveness of existence. Thus it was a double pleasure for Triboulet to see, limned in well-chosen hues, his form, the crookedness of which ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... ... with all meekness and lowliness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.' That is one side of the vocation, and the life that is worthy of it will be a life emancipated from the meanness of selfishness, and delivered from the tumidities of pride and arrogance, and changed into the sweetness of gentleness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... that it can befal a wise man to be oppressed with grief, that is to say, with misery? for, as all perturbation is misery, grief is the rack itself. Lust is attended with heat, exulting joy with levity, fear with meanness, but grief with something greater than these; it consumes, torments, afflicts, and disgraces a man; it tears him, preys upon his mind, and utterly destroys him: if we do not so divest ourselves of it as to throw ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... interesting brunette of sixteen. She had a good knowledge of French and Italian, graceful manners, and a dignity which endowed her with a very noble appearance. She informed me of her affairs without meanness, yet without that timidity which seems to arise from a fear of the person who listens being disposed to take advantage of the distressing position confided to his honour. She seemed neither humiliated nor bold; she had hope, and she did not boast of her courage. Her ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... for that was only a constructive right, and one dependent on general principles, whereas this is an attempt at a most mean evasion of a written law, the meanness of the attempt being quite as culpable as its fraud. Every human being knows that such a tax, so far as it has any object beyond that of an election-sop, is to choke off the landlords from the maintenance of their covenants, which is a thing that no State can do directly, without ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... affections and inclinations of a man very much on one side, had directed all his efforts to showing the pitiful feebleness and incurable helplessness of man in the sphere of the understanding. Vauvenargues is thus confronted by two sinister pictures of humanity—the one of its moral meanness and littleness, the other of its intellectual poverty and impotency. He turned away from both of them, and found in magnanimous and unsophisticated feeling, of which he was conscious in himself and observant in others, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... hoard his tiny savings! Yet he is not otherwise selfish, and loves us all with a warm heart. Just now it is the moments of Antony's company he counts, like a little miser. Well! that may save him perhaps from developing a certain meanness of character I have ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... their right to create their own government, and erect a free commonwealth on the ruins of the tyranny they have overthrown. And Kansas, at no distant period, will be welcomed by her Free Sisters to her place among them, with no stain of bribes in her hands, and with no soil of meanness upon her garments. And then the "peace" and "prosperity," which President Buchanan saw in vision on the eve of May-day, will indeed prevail and be established, while the blackness of infamy will brood ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... ease and elegance, with the irresistible charm of the most engaging feminine softness. Her understanding was excellent, and well cultivated, her manners correct, and her heart the seat of virtue and purity. Perfectly free from any meanness of temper, she felt no envy at the beauty of Amaranthe, but was, on the contrary, an unfeigned admirer of it, and eagerly sought her friendship. Amaranthe, who for some time felt gratified and obliged by Ethelinde's early notice, was equally desirous of ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... cause to accuse me of meanness. You shall not say that I left you on your wedding-day without a shilling in your pocket, as your friend was left on ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... as though the chief sin of Conversation were the wounding the self-love of those to whom they speak, by expressing any difference of opinion from them. Thus they are continually temporizing, and often contradicting themselves, and exhibiting a cowardly meanness of spirit, which is one of the most contemptible of all the varied forms ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... earlier freedom, wandering in the sunlight of silent lands. Surely there needed but a little common-sense, a little decision, to save himself from this rushing current. One word to Alma—would it not suffice? But of all things he dreaded to incur the charge of meanness, of selfishness. That had ever been his weak point: in youth, well-nigh a cause of ruin; in later life, impelling him ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... not answer, yet the distaste grew. Irresistibly he had acquired a habit of seeing unpleasant things: the meanness and the smallness of his surroundings; the uncouth furnishings of his home; the lack of grace in his parents and acquaintances; the trifling incidents that required so many hours of discussion; and in all things the absence ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... pretentiousness and self-display of what was popularly accepted as earnest religion; morally the preacher was revolted at its unctuous boasts and pitiful performance, and intellectually by its narrowness and meanness of thought and its thinness of colour in all its pictures of the spiritual life. From first to last, in all manner of ways, the sermons are a protest, first against coldness, but even still more against meanness, in religion. With coldness they have no sympathy, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... not without its faults, chief among which is the curious awkwardness of design which makes of the composition, cut in two by a central tree, two pictures instead of one. Undeniably, too, there is a certain meanness and triviality in the little nymph or mortal of the foreground, which may, however, be due to the intervention of an assistant. But then, with an elasticity truly astounding in a man of his great age, the master has momentarily ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... imbecility and dotage of Louis XV, and the weakness of his minister, paid too little attention to the interests of their own nation to be likely to think of others. They made the most frivolous excuses, and even had the meanness to attempt to shift the blame on the shoulders of their ambassador at Vienna, pretending that he amused himself with hunting instead of politics, and had no knowledge of the design of partition ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Amelia. Said to be a drawing of the author's own character and experiences. He has all the vices of Tom Jones, with an additional share of meanness.—Fielding, Amelia (1751). ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Madam Liberality should ever have been accused of meanness, and yet her eldest brother did once shake his head at her and say, "You're the most meanest and the generoustest person I ever knew!" And Madam Liberality wept over the accusation, although her brother was then too young to form either his ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... own laws, as essential to their freedom, safety, and welfare, and then to deprive all the women of all these safeguards, solely on the ground of a difference of sex, is to evince the pride of self-esteem, the meanness of usurpation, and the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... that effect erected in some convenient part of the proscenium, which an unsuccessful author should be required to mount, and stand his hour, exposed to the apples and oranges of the pit. This amende honorable would well suit with the meanness of some authors, who in their prologues fairly prostrate their skulls to the audience, and seem ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... that which was best in him. It is surely a service sufficient to compensate for many more faults than can be charged against him that wherever there was any latent poetic dissatisfaction with the vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life he gave it expression, and that he has awakened in the PEOPLE lofty emotions which, without him, would have slept. The cultivated critics, and the refined persons who have schrecklich viel gelesen, are not competent ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... will the institution be opposed by the prejudices, or the meanness and malice of persons who are themselves used to mendicity, or to exercise an ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... life. I was never allowed a shelter of any kind, not even a blanket; and, when my clothing was worn out, I could not obtain another suit. 'Stick to your dirty blue,' said the officer under whose charge I had been placed, 'and every time you look at it, think of the meanness of which you have ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... better of me," said Modeste. "Such meanness sent the blood to my head and I told him what I thought ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... better of another girl, though I can see that it is the most natural thing in the world for you to feel as you do, and I can see that Clara has really brought it on herself, but I do want my dear little girls to be charitable and above the petty meanness ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... have two proverbs, which show how desirable it is, while taking a fixed engagement, to keep their hold on the traghetto. One is to this effect: il traghetto e un buon padrone. The other satirises the meanness of the poverty-stricken Venetian nobility: pompa di servitu, misera insegna. When they combine the traghetto with private service, the municipality insists on their retaining the number painted on their gondola; and against this their employers frequently object. It is, therefore, a great ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... relates that on her death bed she told him who his father was, and [TR: "also told him" crossed out] how to live so as not to get into trouble, and, [HW: due to her advice] that he has never been in jail nor in any meanness of any kind [TR: "due to what ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... them. Like Sidonia he moves among them not to feel with them but to understand and learn from them. Such sympathy as he had was either purely sensuous, as for youth and beauty and all kinds of comeliness; or purely intellectual, as for intelligence, artificiality, servility, meanness. And as his essence was satirical, as he was naturally irreverent and contemptuous, it follows that he is best and strongest in the act of punishment not of reward. His passion for youth was beautiful, but it did not make him strong. His scorn for things contemptible, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... square, and crying it at thirty purses. The prince called to the crier, and asked to see the carpeting, which seemed to him to be valued at an exorbitant price, not only for the size of it, but the meanness of the materials. When he had examined it well, he told the crier that he could not comprehend how so small a piece of carpeting, and of so indifferent an appearance, could be set at ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... a lady of fashion, struggling always with narrow means; and there were times when her son's heart grew sick, remembering the falseness, the meanness, the petty cunning maneuvers she had been ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... part his sympathy with the losing side is only betrayed in his despondency over all things. But it is in his criticism of life that the power of Palladas lies; with a remorselessness like that of Swift he tears the coverings from human frailty and holds it up in its meanness and misery. The lines on the Descent of Man (/Anth. Pal./ x. 45), which unfortunately cannot be included in this selection, fall as heavily on the Neo-Platonic martyr as on the Christian persecutor, and remain even now among the most ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... bitterly, "for here are letters addressed to him. I may even take the privilege of reading them tomorrow, for in that way I can perhaps discover some evidence that will force him to stop this ugly business. Oh! the meanness of Robert to strike this cowardly blow at me, his own cousin! He's a disgrace to the ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... preparation for the event—a chamber, or anything else. No fruit of unhallowed love, no houseless beggar's child enters life more obscurely than the Son of God. The very tokens by which the shepherds were taught to recognise Him were not the majesty but the extreme meanness of his condition: "This shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." In fact, the Lord of heaven was to be recognised by his humiliation, as its heirs are by their ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... it has to say for itself, and what God has made it to be. And then at last that little black rounded pebble, from the street outside, may, and will surely, if I be patient and honest enough, tell me a tale wilder and grander than any which I could have dreamed for myself; will shame the meanness of my imagination, by the awful magnificence of God's facts, and say ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... womb brayed a music-box, such as the old-time carousels made use of before the days of electricity and steam. It was being worked by inexpert hands, for the time was something jerky; but it was robbed of its tinny meanness and even majesty by the hugeness of a cavern's roof, as well as by the crashing, swinging march it played— wild -wonderful—invented for lawless hours and a ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... of him, in an obituary notice in his paper, as "a gentleman of a humane and pious disposition, indefatigable in his ministry, easy and affable in his conversation, open and sincere in his friendship, and above every species of meanness and dissimulation." ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... small-minded a people as to be jealous of the success of others. It is the other way about: we are the most extraordinarily ambitious, and the success of one man in any walk of life spurs the others on. It does not sour them, and it is a libel even to suggest so great a meanness of spirit. ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... voyage Gulliver is abandoned in Brobdingnag, where the inhabitants are giants, and everything is done upon an enormous scale. The meanness of humanity seems all the more detestable in view of the greatness of these superior beings. When Gulliver tells about his own people, their ambitions and wars and conquests, the giants can only wonder that such great venom could exist in ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... fairly: am I now to be charged to my face with a lie?" "Ha!" said he, rising from the table and striding through the apartment with violent gestures, "who dares doubt my word, and impute to me the meanness of a lie? Are ye drunk? Can this wine have made you mad?" and seizing a bottle, he dashed it to the ground, stamping with rage. "Has the blood of last night unsettled your nerves and made you delirious? Basta! basta! Let me not hear another ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... that, beyond the turn of one of these cut-throats' haunts, "they" would leap from the shadow and fall on his back. I warrant you, "they" would have been warmly received, though; but, alack! by reason of some nasty meanness of destiny, never indeed did Tartarin of Tarascon enjoy the luck to meet any ugly customers—not so much as a dog or a drunken ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... the people also was irksome to me; I thought there was something in it very sordid. The entire empire the priests have over both the souls and bodies of the people, gave me a specimen of that meanness of spirit, which is nowhere else to be seen but in Italy, especially ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... bishop against the tormented curate; but the public against the system of tormenting, as tending to bring scandal upon religion and religious men. By the late alteration in the laws,[80] the Labourers in the vineyard are given up to the power of the Inspector of the vineyard. If he has the meanness and malice to do so, an Inspector may worry and plague to death any Labourer against whom he may have conceived an antipathy.... Men of very small incomes have often very acute feelings, and a curate trod on feels a pang as ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... which seemed to strip the wretch of his last claim to manhood. Then followed the brutal instant of extinction, and the paltry dangling of the remains like a broken jumping-jack. He had been prepared for something terrible, not for this tragic meanness. He stood a moment silent, and then - "I denounce this God-defying murder," he shouted; and his father, if he must have disclaimed the sentiment, might have owned the stentorian voice ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... instead of learning by sad experience, that tin trumpets and torn clothes do not necessarily signify depravity, and that quiet children are not always free from deceit, cruelty, and meanness. The quiet, ideal child, of whom Mr. Abbott thinks so highly, generally proves, in real life, neither more nor less than a prig. He is more likely to die than live; and if he lives, you may ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... congratulate you on the happy and important News from Europe which will be conveyd to Congress by Mr Dean the Brother of our late Commissioner who will be so kind as to deliver you this Letter. France has acted with Magnanimity; while Britain continues to discover that Meanness and Poverty of Spirit, which renders her still more than ever contemptible in the Eyes of all sensible People. The Moderation of France is such as becomes a great and powerful Nation. Britain forgetfull of her former Character, sinks into Baseness in the Extreme. The one ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... young man can do a mean, cowardly wrong like this without suffering severest injury. It is the very spirit of the slaveholder, a dastardly and detestable, a tyrannical and cruel spirit. If young men are so blinded by custom and habit that a meanness is not to them a meanness because it has been practised for years, so much the worse for the young men, and so much the worse for our country, whose sweat of blood attests the bale and blast which this evil spirit has wrought. If uprightness, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... spent, leaning mightily on his young friend made his way to the great hall. And as we have recounted, though all were struck by oddness and meanness of the stranger's clothes, yet only Sir Kay made point to taunt him. Yet did he make no answer to these taunts but waited with a great meekness for his turn before the King. And that he should wait with such meekness was strange for he seemed to ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... Nevertheless he was afraid. He was afraid because he knew, vaguely and still deeply, that he could neither buy nor sell as well as his father. It was not a question of brains; it was a question of individuality. A sense of honour, of fairness, a temperamental generosity, a hatred of meanness, often prevented him from pushing a bargain to the limit. He could not bring himself to haggle desperately. And even when price was not the main difficulty, he could not talk to a customer, or to a person whose customer he was, with the same rough, gruff, cajoling, bullying skill as his ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... riches, with an amiable curiosity concerning their footmen's calves. Nevertheless, to the end he was not kinder to Dives' oppression, less sympathetic towards the troubles of Lazarus, nor more indulgent to the vulgarity of the snob; nor a whit more tolerant of viciousness, affectation, or meanness ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... the converts have made detailed confession of sins (stealing, e.g.); some who have been neglectful of school privileges have returned to get the religious impetus; and at least two that had been dismissed for meanness have experienced a change of heart. We shall look for permanent results, and work to that end with hope; yet this people are so emotional and so stolid! so ready to move along a certain line in a body, but indifferent to duty when it leads along an uninteresting path of individual effort. ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 50, No. 05, May, 1896 • Various
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