"Belittle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... believe anything they like about me," Mead went on, "and I don't intend to belittle myself askin' 'em not to. It's all right, boys. I didn't blame you for believin' I'd done it But I did think you'd notice he'd been shot in the back. I'm goin' out now. I'll see you later." And he hurried off down Main street to ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... the bungalow he thought of the man he had just left. There had been no need for Coryndon to question him about Mrs. Wilder: her secret mission to the river interested him no further. Heath had protected her and had kept silence where her name was concerned, and yet she chose to belittle him ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... holds the country, but I'm a little disappointed in the Moritos. As for San Diego, Colonel Booth of your old regiment is in command, and I half think he didn't back up the Morito garrison out of jealousy toward you. He wanted to have the Morito country go back, so as to belittle our exploit. But we'll get even with him. I've seen the cable-censor, and not a word about it will go home. I have just sent a despatch saying that the whole island is entirely in our hands and that the natives ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... trait, if the truth were told. In August 1856 an event took place which had far-reaching consequences: the first interview between Cavour and Garibaldi. Cavour was one of Garibaldi's earliest admirers; he applauded his exploits at Montevideo and at Rome, when the old Piedmontese party tried to belittle him and obliged Charles Albert to decline his services. In one way the hero was a man after the minister's own heart: he was absolutely practical; he might be obstinate or rash, but he was no doctrinaire. Cavour never ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... at him, her eyes alight with mischief. That day on the edge of the butte overlooking the river, when Duncan had talked about Dakota, she had detected in his manner an inclination to belittle the latter; several times since then she had heard him speak venomously of him, and she had suspected that all was not smooth between them. And now since Duncan had related the story of the calf incident she was certain that the relations between the two men were strained to the point ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... that for all we know of him, we are indebted to his implacable enemies. No Carthaginian record of that astounding career has come down to us. The Romans did all that unscrupulous malignity can, to blacken the fame and belittle the deeds of the most terrible of their foes. Yet, though calumny has done its bitterest against him, Hannibal not only dazzles the imagination, but takes captive the heart. He stands out as the incarnation of magnanimity and patriotism and self-sacrificing ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... emergencies, moderation is generally safer than radicalism; and as this struggle is likely to be long and earnest, we must not, by our action, repel any who are in sympathy with us in the main, but rather win all that we can to our standard. We must not belittle nor overlook the facts of our condition—that we are new and comparatively weak, while our enemies are entrenched and relatively strong. They have the administration and the political power; and, right or wrong, at present they have the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the correspondence that eager devotees have found between them and the Bible is a slur that falls altogether on the religion and not on the science. This is a great error, and those who are drawn into it belittle the cause that is dear to them. While our author is catholic in his reading, he does not seem to assign to all writers in his field their just value. His quotations, the fresh, the obsolete, the trustworthy, and the doubtful, are mingled in a confusion that only the experienced can penetrate. His ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... showier and better-looking than they are, even though you do give her only about thirty-five cents a year to do it on! They've all done everything on earth they could to drive the young men away from her and belittle her to 'em; and this mean little Henrietta Lamb's been the worst of the whole crowd to Alice, every time ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... first remember that the latest prejudice from which our historical school has suffered, and one which still clings to its more orthodox section, was to belittle as far as possible the general influence of European civilisation upon England; to exalt, for example, the Celtic missionaries and their work at the expense of St Augustine, to grope for shadowy political origins among the pirates of the ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... thinking and speaking for yourself—a widower," Beckmesser cried, trying to belittle ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... do not advocate the business of prospecting as a way of making a living—I had rather pitch hay or dig potatoes myself—I am far from wishing to disparage the prospector himself or to belittle the results of his work. He is the pioneer of civilization; and personally he is generally a fine fellow. At the same time, as in every other profession, the ranks of the prospectors include their share of the riff-raff. It was so in our district, and we were destined ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... "who could do the same thing." On this point we cannot argue with Mr. Belloc. He may know them: we do not. What we do know is that there are many men who are trying to do the same thing. In saying this we have no wish to belittle either individuals or as a class those courageous gentlemen, among whom the best-known, perhaps, are Colonel Repington and Colonel Maude, who are striving, and striving honestly, we believe, to provide the readers of various papers with an intelligent explanation of the courses taken by the ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... able to do so, I should in no degree belittle the achievements of the physical sciences and their technologies, for I believe whole-heartedly in their value, and long for the steady increase of our power to control our environment. But when these achievements are offered as means of creating or maintaining certain desired conditions of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... right to demand this sacrifice of him? Was it not a devilish temptation to take him from his calling, from that work in which God had evidently intended him to work for the world? Had he a right to spoil his life, to belittle his soul, for any consideration? If Hepsy Ann Nickerson had claims, had not he also, and his Art? If he were willing, in this dire extremity, to sacrifice his love, his prospects of married bliss, might he not justly require the same of her? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... inevitable that, 'trained to keep silence in the churches'—(and the City Hall as well)—our women are without the large-minded grasp of affairs,—the broad and liberal judgment, necessary to cope with these affairs. Neither can we as self- respecting husbands and fathers, consent to see them so belittle their own dignity and influence as to step out into the arena of public life. The election of a woman,—no matter how able and high-minded she might be,—would be a step downward for our ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... to worry the princess in the least; nor did her father's appeal not to belittle him in the eyes of his fellow monarchs have the slightest ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... coming to that," she responded. "It was just at this point that, goaded into secret fury by my innocent speech about cattle-stealing, he began to belittle American literature, the poetry especially. Of course he waxed eloquent about the royal line of poet-kings that had made his country famous, and said the people who could claim Shakespeare had reason to be the proudest nation on ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the world who belittle empire," Duncan answered. "It is from the money-grabbers of the Transvaal that we have most to fear. Only those can know what Africa is, what it might mean to us, who shake the dust of civilization from their feet, and creep a little way into its heart. It is here in the quiet places that ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... enough, but they bring in another disquieting group of associations. The rainbow is almost, if not quite, a universal symbol of failure. We all know the old story of going to the end of the rainbow for a pot of gold, and if we want to belittle any effort we say that the individual is chasing the rainbow. So here I am again on the downhill road between two failures, following the rainbow to a hopeless condition of muddy uselessness. And if it were not bad enough to be following one rainbow, I am following a great number ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... forget it,' said he. 'And now I bid thee to kiss me even before all these that are looking on; for there is nought to belittle us therein, ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... modest, sir," the Spaniard said. "You are one of those who belittle your own good deeds. I feel indeed more grateful than I can express to you as well ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... um go out av his way to belittle himsilf an' phwat he knows, an' Oi w'udn't trust him wid a bent penny as far as Oi cud t'row a bull be th' tail fer 'tis done wid a purpose. 'Tis so ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... that would be offered to her. But the practical resolve needed a greater effort than she had imagined. Above all, she feared an ignominious failure of purpose after her word was given; that would belittle her in Everard's eyes, and so shame her in her own that all hope of happiness in marriage ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... of him, she found herself in a difficulty. She didn't want to enter into a secret with him—with any man, this meant, of course—against Rodney. She couldn't think of any way of stating her reason for wanting her husband kept in the dark that didn't seem to slight him, belittle him, make him faintly ridiculous—like the pussy-cat John Galbraith had snapped ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the meaning of the English attitude as to the western posts, commerce, and international relations. Washington brought it to the attention of our leading men, educating them on this as on other points, and showing, too, the stupidity of Great Britain in her attempt to belittle the trade of a country which, as he wrote Lafayette in prophetic vein, would one day "have weight ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... placed on Mr. Murdoch's judgment. My own feeling certainly is that in his admiration for the Australian Forces, and in his grief at their heavy losses (in both of which feelings I fully share) he has allowed himself to belittle and to criticize us all so that their virtues might be thrown into even ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... heard evil reports about myself, most blessed Father, by which I know that certain friends have put my name in very bad odor with you and yours, saying that I have attempted to belittle the power of the keys and of the Supreme Pontiff. Therefore I am accused of heresy, apostasy, and perfidy, and am called by six hundred other names of ignominy. My ears shudder and my eyes are astounded. ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... Thoreau-like, set down in details and in figures the exact character and cost of every designed alteration to this scene; but the idea, as soon as it occurred, was sternly suppressed, for however cheerful a disciple I am of that philosopher, far be it from me to belittle ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... and out of it Mr. Chertkov has been the subject of violent attack. Many of the misunderstandings of Tolstoy's later years have also been attributed by critics, and by those who hate or belittle his ideas, to the influence of this friend. These attacks are very regrettable and require a word of protest. From tales, suited to the means and intelligence of the humblest peasant. The undertaking was initiated in 1885, and continued for many years to occupy ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... they have touched. Their squat little town is a caricature like themselves. Everything they touch they belittle. Here they sit while side-walks rot and ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... he published Alton Locke, describing the life of a young tailor whose mind and whose fortunes are profoundly influenced by the Chartist movement. From a literary point of view it is far from being his best work; and the critics agreed to belittle it at the time and to pass it over with apology at his death. But it received a warm welcome from others. While it roused the imagination of many young men and set them thinking, the veteran Carlyle could speak of 'the snatches of excellent ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... intermittent fear, or fever, of foreign intervention. How absurd! Americans belittle themselves talking and thinking about it. The European powers will not, and cannot. That is my creed and my answer; but some of our agents, diplomats, and statesmen, try to made capital for themselves from this fever which they evoke to establish before the public that their ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... compared with the dark child of Nature. Agnes was tall and slender, and moved with a great air of dignity and calm self-possession, and this to the uncontrolled Chaldea was also a matter of offence. She inwardly tried to belittle her rival by thinking what a milk-and-water useless person she was, but the steady and resolute look in the lady's brown eyes gave the lie to this mental assertion. Lady Agnes had an air of breeding and command, which, with all her beauty, ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... mean to belittle the part that I played in our reduced domestic economy. Indeed, I am very particular to get all the credit due me. I always remind my sister Deborah, who was the baby of those humble days, that it was I who pierced her ears. Earrings were a requisite part of a ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... having been spun of that article. Perhaps I have somewhat exaggerated these illustrations of the dapper nicety of our neighborhood,—a neatness and conciseness which I think have a general tendency to belittle, dwarf, and contract their objects. For we gradually fell into small ways and narrow ideas, and to some extent squared the round world outside to the correct angles ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... Italy, he described Lake Como and compared it with Tahoe in Innocents Abroad, and while his prejudices against the Indians led him to belittle the Indian name—Tahoe—and in so doing to make several errors of statement, the descriptions are excellent and the interested reader is referred to them as being well ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... stand behind it! But would they? It was a question which was forever popping up to obscure the future. Many tongues were busy with inuendo to belittle what the farmers had accomplished already and to befog their efforts to advance still farther. At every shipping point in the West industrious little mallets were knocking away on the Xylophone of Doubt, all playing the same tune: "Just ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... was the fashion in most European countries to question the motives as well as to belittle the qualifications of the delegates. Now that political passion has somewhat abated and the atmosphere is becoming lighter and clearer, one may without provoking contradiction pay a well-deserved tribute to their sincerity, high purpose, and quick response to the calls of public duty and ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the supreme merit of Columbus that he was the first to cut loose from one continent to find another, and to steer boldly across an unknown sea, in search of an unknown world. We need not belittle (still less need we deny) the finding of Greenland and of other parts of North America by the Norsemen in the ninth and tenth centuries. We may hail Eric the Red and his stout son, Leif Ericson, as pioneers in what may be ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... machines, Mary," Brooks said, with a kind glance towards her. "Come, we mustn't any of us belittle our share ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "Nonsense!" But he was evidently considerably bothered by this defamer, this jealous fellow who had criticised him, and tried to belittle his exploit. If not Paulsberg, who then? Who among them had done better during the last two and a half years? Irgens knew nobody; among the younger writers he was absolutely paramount. Suddenly something struck ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... been too modest in the matter of Wellington. To make Wellington so great is to belittle England. Wellington is nothing but a hero like many another. Those Scotch Grays, those Horse Guards, those regiments of Maitland and of Mitchell, that infantry of Pack and Kempt, that cavalry of Ponsonby and Somerset, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... There was little romance in the undertaking; there was far less in the work to be performed. I simply desire to protest against the correctness of the distorted pictures drawn ostensibly to magnify the sacrifices, which were many, and to belittle the rewards, which were great, in the performance of an ordinary piece of work, by a class of persons now rapidly disappearing from the scenes that once knew them. Their work is fast being transferred to the hands of colored men and women—the ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... end in pain. They are 536:21 "of few days, and full of trouble." Their supposed joys are cheats. Their narrow limits belittle their gratifica- tions, and hedge about their achievements with thorns. 536:24 Mortal mind accepts the erroneous, material concep- tion of life and joy, but the true idea is gained from the immortal side. Through toil, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... good destroys the sense of evil. To illustrate: It seems a great evil to belie and belittle Christian Science, and persecute a Cause which is healing its thousands and rapidly diminishing the percentage of sin. But reduce this evil to its lowest terms, nothing, and slander loses its power ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... the most reasonable of any I have studied, and approaches more nearly than any other to the highest speculations of the Greek philosophers. You believe in one God, who is invisible and impersonal, who pervades all nature; but having formed so lofty an idea of him, you belittle him by making him a special god of your own country, while if he pervades all nature he must surely be universal. The Jews, too, believe in a single God, and in this respect they resemble you in their religion, which is far more reasonable than that of nations who worship ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... "and we must not belittle the good we have, because we look for something better. Let us be thankful for our feet, though they ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... to custom, set aside, in deciding to leave London that day, all logical methods of reasoning and acted on what was nothing more than an irresistible impulse, he did not attempt to belittle to himself the possible consequences that might accrue from his action. He was not following the course intelligence had directed; he was not embarking on a journey his best interests would have prompted; on the contrary, he knew himself mad, foolish. But not for one moment did he regret ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... eastern extremity of Asia. But the world which knows that Columbus did, as a matter of fact, do it the service of finding America, and is aware that without him the voyage from Palos would never have been undertaken, has refused to belittle him because he did not know beforehand what was only found out ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... the American tinned-food habit, nor, on reading the chap's screed, did they impress me as being fraught with vital interest to thinking people; in truth, I was more concerned with the comparison of myself to a restaurateur of the crude new city of New York, which might belittle rather than distinguish me, I suspected. But what was my astonishment to perceive in the course of a few days that I had created rather a sensation, with attending newspaper publicity which, although bizarre enough, I am bound ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... belittle the aristocracy, but with his eyes gleaming). Hm, I thort you wouldn't git a piorr's (peer's) nevvy visitin' in Victoria Park unless he were a bit of a flat. (Looking again at the picture.) Of course I don't 'old with that pictur, Candy; ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... of them is a matter of pure luck. The traveller may, of course, meet a lion on the road by broad daylight; but many experienced hunters, who count their slain lions by the dozen, will tell you they were years in the country before they ever saw the kings of beasts, and these are men who do not belittle the danger incurred in hunting them. One old hunter is supposed to have said to an enthusiastic newcomer, who had heard of a lion in the vicinity, and immediately asked the old stager if he were going ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... battle. Here Don Quixote interrupted with a Latin quotation, which had an evil effect on Sancho, for it made him retaliate with the blanket episode which to him still seemed the height of all his suffering in the world. But this attempt to belittle the fairness of his master's division of honors in battle was speedily parried by Don Quixote, who maintained that his squire's bodily suffering in the blanket was as nothing compared with the painful agony of his own heart and soul ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... in government; the Socialists must go and do likewise. Reforms which were steps in capitalism thus become to them steps in Socialism. It is not the fashion of "reformists" to try to claim that they are very great steps—on the contrary, they usually belittle them, but it is believed that agitation for such reforms as capitalist governments allow, is the best way to gain the public ear, the best kind of political practice, the most fruitful mode ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... should, after all, remain at the helm? Great Heaven! the very idea maddens me! For I know them! I know that they will ruin every thing. At the decisive moment they are vacillating, and, in order to dishearten others, too, they exaggerate the strength of the enemy a hundred-fold, and belittle our own resources in the same proportion. Would that Heaven were to decree, 'Blucher shall command the Prussians!' Good Lord, I pledge Thee my head that I would expel Bonaparte with all his French from Germany, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... most human. Let them fling The first stone who are tempted even as he, And have not swerved. When did that rare soul sing The victim's shame, the tyrant's eulogy, The great belittle, or exalt the small, Or grudge his gift, his blood, to disenthrall The slaves of tyranny or ignorance? Stung by fierce tongues himself, whose rightful fame Hath he reviled? Upon what noble name Did the winged arrows of the barbed ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... and in starting new topics of discussion entered with zest into the task of creating and upholding imaginary partisans with one hand, whilst with the other hand bringing forth caustic opponents to vilify and belittle them. As a fact, I believe I made its correspondence the most amusing and interesting feature in the paper. But, as his way was, Arncliffe lost his enthusiasm for it after a time, and, delegating the care of its remains to some underling, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Owen, to which references occur in the "Life and Letters," II., page 300. The amende to the "Vestiges" is not so full as the author felt it to be; but it was clearly in place in a paper intended to belittle the "Origin"; it also gave the reviewer (page 511) an opportunity for a hit at ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... toleration, enterprise, industriousness, and progress—which is England—plus the element of equality and opportunity caused by pioneer settlement. It is the expression of the world's highest race under the most favourable social, political, and geographical conditions. Those who endeavour to belittle the importance of our British ancestry, are invited to consider the other nations of this continent. All these are equally "American" in every particular, differing only in race-stock and heritage; yet of them all, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... her eyes flashed fire! With what disdain she treated me! 'What do you mean by "of a kind?" My dear Sydney, are you not aware that it is an attribute of small minds to attempt to belittle those which are greater? Even if you are conscious of inferiority, it's unwise to show it. Mr Lessingham's was a great speech, of any kind; your incapacity to recognise the fact simply reveals your lack ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... recorded, there are many who make light of any mention of the public labors of these women. Sometimes, indeed, the talents and usefulness of these women, and of the earnest women of our own day, are admitted after a fashion; but it is done in such a way as, in reality, to belittle the sex as much as possible. They are considered as occupying the same relation to men that the moon does to the sun, and all that is desired of them is to reflect a borrowed light. If she be unable to reflect a light ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... engagement, or, if you prefer it, escapes through the safety-valves of an imprisoned force which promises the explosion of society. You may pooh-pooh it; you may say that this trouble, like an angry child, will cry itself to sleep; you may belittle it by calling it Fourierism, or Socialism, or St. Simonism, or Nihilism, or Communism; but that will not hinder the fact that it is the mightiest, the darkest, the most terrific threat of this century. All attempts ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... than some (and for all I know to the contrary, than all) of the peoples of Europe. What I am denying is that Americans have any greater reverence for women, any higher chivalrousness, than Englishmen. And this denial I make not with any desire to belittle the chivalry of American men but only in the endeavour to correct the popular American impression about Englishmen, which does not contribute to the promotion of that good-will which ought to exist between the peoples. ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... of conversation with that spoiled young person; it seems to appeal to her in three different ways: she likes to belittle herself, she likes to shock Salemina, and she likes to have information given her on the spot in some ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... facilities for travel, transportation and intercommunication; to the innumerable and wonderful inventions that in their application have brightened our civilization. They exalt present conditions and they belittle the ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... sun, with the baby kicking his heels on the spread quilt. They continued the discussion after they went back to the house. Hollister dreaded uncertainty. He wanted to know how great a measure of her sight would return, and in what time. He did not belittle the oculists because they had once mistaken. Neither did Doris, when she recovered from the excitement engendered by the definite assurance that her eyes were ever so slightly resuming their normal function. She did believe that her sight was being restored naturally, as torn flesh heals ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Magazine) may be rated higher, but it is not essentially a humorous story. Rather it is incisive satire, with too biting an undercurrent to pass muster in the company of the genial in literature. Poe's humorous stories as a whole have tended to belittle rather than increase his fame, many of them verging on the inane. There are some, however, which are at least excellent fooling; few more ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... charges, but he wanted to place the blame for the whole matter where it belonged. He wanted to track the man who had conferred with known conspirators back to his home. He wanted to be able to point out the treacherous government which had so sought to belittle the United States in ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... not belittle herself in any such tendernesses of regret. She endeared herself by her grief, her self-reproach, her childish humility before the power of death. Her tears were beautiful in Jim's sight. But it is the blessing and the shame of tears that they cure the grief that causes them. At first ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... daughter, don't talk after her; gossip is liable to degenerate into evil speaking and then I think it tends to degrade and belittle the mind to dwell on the defects and imperfections of our neighbors. Learn to dwell on the things that are just and true and of good report, but I am sorry for ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... that Jewish legends concerning Jesus are found in the Talmud and Midrash and in "the life of Jesus (Toledot Yeshu) that originated in the Middle Ages. It is the tendency of all these sources to belittle the person of Jesus by ascribing to Him illegitimate birth, magic, and a ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... lips closed; not even for pride's sake, and retort's sake, will she desecrate the past, belittle her own first love. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... healed; and ever after, as they live in the Spirit, their boast is in Him and their glory is in the cross. Remembering the hole of the pit from which they were digged, they are filled with tender pity for all who are out of the way; and, while they do not excuse or belittle sin, yet they are slow to believe evil, and their ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... widow, or every childless wife, of the power of exercising her warm sympathies for the good of others, is to deprive her of the greatest happiness of which she is capable; to rob her highest faculties of their legitimate operation and reward; to belittle and narrow her mind; to dwarf her affections; to turn the harmonies of her nature to discord; and, as the human mind must be active, to compel her to employ hers with low and grovelling thoughts, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... not have her at any price, because his ideal Shakespear is rather like a sailor in a melodrama; and a sailor in a melodrama must adore his mother. I do not at all belittle such sailors. They are the emblems of human generosity; but Shakespear was not an emblem: he was a man and the author of Hamlet, who had no illusions about his mother. In weak moments one almost ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... said that the finest heritage of an Englishman was freedom of speech, and the more that freedom became licence the finer the Englishman. (Cheers.) By freedom of speech he meant the right to say instantly whatever came into one's head, particularly if it appeared to belittle one's own country. Because one could not belittle England really. England was too great for that. But it was salutary to try. It was also valuable to our Allies, because it tended to prove to them how much in earnest and how ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... future is to be, it is certain not to be the painting of Monet. For the present, no doubt, Monet is the last word in painting. To belittle him is not only whimsical, but ridiculous. He has plainly worked a revolution in his art. He has taken it out of the vicious circle of conformity to, departure from, and return to abstractions and the so-called ideal. No one ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... opinion. The fact is that the formation of opinion to-day is by no means confined to the educated classes, but the masses have taken it upon themselves not only to formulate opinion but to enforce it. It would be a mistake to belittle or ignore this opinion, or to ascribe it to a temporary upheaval. It would be equally a mistake to suppose that this awakening amongst the masses is due either to the activity of the Ali Brothers or myself. For the time being we have the ear ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... bitter fancy' is dangerous food. But it has certainly done us good. When Mr. Douglas obtained leave to publish it as a whole, there were, I believe, wiseacres who dreaded the effect of the publication, thinking that the passages which Lockhart himself had left out might in some way diminish and belittle our respect for Scott. They had no need to trouble themselves. It was already, as published in part in the Life, one of the most pathetically interesting things in biographical literature. This quality was increased by the complete publication, while it also became a new proof that 'good blood cannot ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... of the possibilities of their mental forces are so limited and below their real worth that they are far more likely to belittle their possibilities than they are to exaggerate them. You don't want to think that an aim is impossible because it has never been realized in the past. Every day someone is doing something that was never ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... Zola and George Moore and various memoirs that were supposed to be window panes in their respective breasts; but, mostly, all of them were either liars, actors, or posers. (Of course, I'm not trying to belittle the greatness ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... you may find still another mode of defence, entirely personal, seldom employed by husbands, but the men of superiority will not fear to attempt it. It is to belittle the lover without letting your wife suspect your intention. You ought to be able to bring it about so that she will say to herself some evening while she is putting her hair in curl-papers, "My husband ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... one of the most serious obstacles to the furtherance of his enterprise: the stubborn hostility of the Sandstone County mountaineers. To the gentlest of them it meant changes that would make game scarcer and circumscribe and belittle their consciously small and circumscribed lives; to the wilder sort it meant an invasion of aliens who had never come before for other purpose than to break up their stills and drag them to jail. As he came out into the Susie and Pussie pike he met a frowsy pinewoodsman astride a mule, returning ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... and in turn becomes the object of Chapman's invectives. After Shakespeare's death Jonson made amends for his past ill-usage by defending his memory against Chapman, who, even then, continued to belittle ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... seen till a few minutes ago, should be in the inner circle of knowledge of the life of her husband and herself, without her self-esteem being hurt like this. She was very woman, and the look of the thing was not nice to her eyes, while it must belittle her in theirs. Had this girl done it on purpose? Yet why should she—she who had so appealed to her to come to him—have sought to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... have described it, is not, however, incompatible with a certain kind of pride; not that form of it which boasts of physical excellence, nor that arrogance which leads a man to look down upon others and belittle their achievements. These forms of pride are bad and diametrically opposed to true humility. Legitimate mental pride is that which leads a person blessed with intellectual gifts to feel grateful to God for his favor, ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... from the death of the first sailor, seven others were sick; and all went through the symptoms—restlessness, talkativeness, and the tendency to belittle the case and to deny their danger. But the real symptom, which they had to accept themselves, was their inability to drink water. It was frightful to see the poor wretches, staggering around with eyes wide open and the terrible fear of death in them, going to the barrel for a drink, only ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... precise idea of each. His style is rather graphic and vigorous than ornate. He introduces effective details and personal episodes. His facts are gleaned from a variety of sources as well as from personal knowledge; and though proud of his own cause and of his companions, he does not belittle their renown by decrying the valor or the intelligence of his opponents. The conflicts themselves will never be forgotten. It is desirable that they shall be kept vivid and clear in the minds of the rising generation, to cultivate a correct idea of the necessity of personal ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... letting of blood, 'Something leaner of body—something keener of mood. 'And the men new-freed from the levies return to the fields again, 'Matching a hundred battles, cottar and lord and thane. 'And they talk aloud in the temples where the ancient wargods are. 'They thumb and mock and belittle the holy harness of war. 'They jest at the sacred chariots, the robes and the gilded staff. 'These things fill them with laughter, they lean on their spears and laugh. 'The men grown old in the war-game, ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... occasion, or singular opulence of natural power, a man's life may possess all that majesty which the imagination pictures in archangels and in gods. Indeed, it is but simple statement of fact to say, that he who rests utterly in his action shall belittle not only whatsoever history has recorded, but all which that poet of poets, Mankind, has ever dreamed or fabled of grace and greatness. He shall not peer about with curiosity to spy approbation, or with zeal to defy censure; he shall not know if there be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... successful man of business. Henry permitted himself to indulge his pedagogical and ministerial instincts for the benefit and improvement of his kinsman. They seem to have carried on a mutual recrimination in their letters: Neville was inclined to belittle the divine calling of poets in their teens; while Henry deplored his brother's unwillingness to write at length and upon serious and "instructive" topics. Alas, the ill-starred young man had a mania for self-improvement. If our great-grandparents were all ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... century, and they were even more interested in the story of our voyage from Elephant Island than the younger generation was. They congratulated us on having accomplished a remarkable boat journey. I do not wish to belittle our success with the pride that apes humility. Under Providence we had overcome great difficulties and dangers, and it was pleasant to tell the tale to men who knew those ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... see just now it is my business to belittle Godwin. Therefore I declare—which you, who know more about it, can believe or not as it pleases you—that Godwin's heart is like that of the old saint in the reliquary at Stangate—a thing which may have beaten ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... Boers, favourable and unfavourable, are consistent with the records established in the War of Independence. None dare belittle the spirit which moved them to take up arms against the greatest Power in the world. Their ignorance may have been great, but not so great as to blind them to the fact that they were undertaking an unequal contest. It is not possible to say, with due regard to their ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... cold water, could not add a pang to her torture. All that I have described happened, of course, in a few seconds; the man had barely gone under before one of the ship's butchers, in his white clothes, was in after him. Let no one belittle the race of butchers. The life-taker knew how to save life, and Master Butcher had his man in a moment, turned him on his back, and began to swim ashore; indeed, there was no fear of the man's drowning, for there ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... be constantly coaxed to right-doing by promised rewards,—a new toy, a book, an excursion, nor even the pleasures of Heaven. All of these incentives are selfish, and invariably narrow the character and belittle life when made the chief motives of action. But rather begin at the earliest possible moment to instill into the mind a love for right, and truth, and purity, and virtue, and an abhorrence for their contraries; ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... bulk of his troops were loyalists from principle, and men of good standing, especially those from the seaboard. Many of the worst tory bandits did not rally to him, preferring to plunder on their own account. The American army itself was by no means free from scoundrels. Most American writers belittle the character of Ferguson's force, and sneer at the courage of the tories, although entirely unable to adduce any proof of their statements, the evidence being the other way. Apparently they are unconscious of the fact that they thus wofully diminish the credit to be given to the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the Scriptures than in lecturing on secular subjects, the number of my students in these two courses began to increase greatly, and the attendance at all the other schools was correspondingly diminished. Thus I aroused the envy and hatred of the other teachers. Those who sought to belittle me in every possible way took advantage of my absence to bring two principal charges against me: first, that it was contrary to the monastic profession to be concerned with the study of secular books; and, second, ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... had risen with the intensity of her mood. She said more solemnly: "You are afraid of other men, of other moods of mine—you have no reason. This love which comes to some as the awakening of life is to me the end of all things. If anything should wound it or belittle it, I ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... wrote a letter to Piero de'Medici, which is interesting, firstly, as showing the good relations prevailing between them; secondly, as refuting a story in Guicciardini, wherewith that historian, ready, as ever, to belittle the Borgias, attempts to show him cutting a poor figure. He tells us(1) that, whilst at Pisa, Cesare had occasion to make an appeal to Piero de'Medici in the matter of a criminal case connected with one of his familiars; that he went to Florence and waited several hours in ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... purpose to belittle the great work that has been done in improving existing machines, for this, after all, is the real great work that must be done. It is the work to which the world owes its greatest debt for progress in material wealth. Furthermore, it ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... exactly frindship, my lord; but I've my rasons why I'd wish you not to belittle the Lynches. Your lordship might forgive them all, now the old ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... smiled down. O hoary and unassailable mushroom!... But if a man carry his sense of proportion far enough, lo! he is back at the point from which he started. He knows that eternity, as conceived by him, is but an instant in eternity, and infinity but a speck in infinity. How should they belittle the things near to him?... Oxford was venerable and magical, after all, and enduring. Aye, and not because she would endure was it the less lamentable that the young lives within her walls were like to be taken. My equanimity was gone; and a ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... easy at Las Guasimas," Elsie said, with a strained little laugh. "You remember the last war, mother; did you belittle your volunteers?" ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... perhaps reaches its maximum with those who have made a specialty of the investigation and application of physical laws. Young men who have learned how to harness the powers of nature and guide them to do their will are apt to belittle the difficulties they have yet to overcome, and have a false impression of the problems of life. This feeling is shown to a minimum extent by graduates of the Stevens Institute, on account of their careful practical ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... child, who has done something wrong or annoying: "I don't love you any more. I don't like you now at all." And I have known countless cases where mothers, themselves, have said and acted the same thing. And the effect of that is to belittle and corrupt in the child's heart a bigger and deeper conception of love, as a loyal and steadfast thing, with no string attached to it. If a nurse, or a mother, can withdraw her love, for a slight cause, then a child when ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... the Universe," shows, I think, indications of the vast importance of that Universe as the producer of Man which so many scientific men to-day try to belittle, because of what may be, in the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... and hands met his, her soul gave a little half-humorous "Oh!" of surprise; for photography, which seems to have been invented to flatter the mediocre and belittle the exceptional, had indeed given Londonderry an "interesting face," as we have heard, but missed all the rest—"all the rest" of a large, mobile, talking face, not exactly handsome perhaps, but decidedly good-looking and full of various commands and appeals, thought on the brow and ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... the sea-weed. Let us remember, then, that in the Silurian period the world, so far as it was raised above the ocean, was a beach; and let us seek there for such creatures as God has made to live on seashores, and not belittle the Creative work, or say that He first scattered the seeds of life in meagre or stinted measure, because we do not find air-breathing animals when there was no fitting atmosphere to feed their lungs, insects with no terrestrial plants to live upon, reptiles without marshes, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and it was a very mild confession that she heard, involving a great deal of unnecessary sacrifice in helping a pauper uncle. Hope strove to belittle his good deeds as much as possible, but Lucy saw plainly the good heart that had dictated the giving up of his small income for some years. When in possession of all the facts, she threw her arms around his neck and ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... peace finance and the war finance will differ in one most important respect. The war finance was purely destructive. From it came national security and the triumph of right over wrong. No one would belittle the worth of the sacrifice. But in the narrower sense of production, of bread winning, there came nothing; or nothing except a new power of organization, a new technical skill and a new aspiration towards better things. But the burden of peace finance directed towards social efforts ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... privilege; and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem, even to himself, to be different from other Americans, and better. As his opinion of his superior Americanism grows, and swells, and concentrates and coagulates, he will go further and try to belittle the distinction of those that saw the Prince do things, and will spoil their pleasure in it if he can. My life has been embittered by that kind of person. If you are able to tell of a special distinction that has ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... "Le faux bon"? It is something exceedingly difficult to produce. We do not wish to belittle it; we wish to make plain its nature. If we succeed, we shall show also how choice and rare a thing this OEdipus is. At any rate, it keeps good company. The plays of Mr. Stephen Phillips are classical ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... patriotic chagrin Meredith produced in me was an attempt to belittle his merit. "It isn't a ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... schools, must all go before the local civil and military authorities so that they may be burned. Those who shall dare to discuss among themselves the Shi-King and the Shu-King shall be put to death and their corpses exposed in a public place; those who shall make use of antiquity to belittle modern times shall be put to death with their relations.... Thirty days after the publication of this edict, those who have not burned their books shall be branded and sent to forced labour. The books which shall not be proscribed are those of medicine and pharmacy, of divination ..., of agriculture ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell |
