"Discreditable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the saying was repeated the next day with shameless mirth as the best joke of the season. For the wood for the library had had a history distinctly discreditable and as distinctly ludicrous, at which Hillsboro people laughed with a conscious lowering of their standards of honesty. The beginning had been an accident, but the long sequence was not. For the first time in the history of the library, the farmer who brought the first load ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... returned to the Hotel Metropole, even more ragged and discreditable-appearing than I was when you saw me this morning," he resumed, "the proprietor's wife asked me where I'd been. I told her I had been on a trip to hell, and the farther that experience is behind me the stronger my conviction that ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... said Caleb, who never referred the knowledge of discreditable doings to any higher power than the deuce. "But Bulstrode has long been wanting to get a handsome bit of land under his fingers—that I know. And it's a difficult matter to get, in this part ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... towards our Government—and who, with whatever faults he had, was a strong and wise ruler, and accepted by his people—in order to force upon the Afghans a mere nominee of the British, and one whose authority could only be supported by the bayonets of an alien race. Such an enterprise was as discreditable to our councillors as it proved to ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... freest, most heroic, most artistic mould, are to me far dearer as lessons, and more precious even as models for Democracy, than the humdrum samples Burns presents. The motives of some of his effusions are certainly discreditable personally—one or two of them markedly so. He has, moreover, little or no spirituality. This last is his mortal flaw and defect, tried by highest standards. The ideal he never reach'd (and yet I think he leads the way to it.) He gives melodies, and now and then the simplest ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... discreditable whim for a young lady in your position," he said sternly; "and I beg that such a proposition may not be made to ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... that I have varied it as my occasions seemed to demand. I have slain my fellow-man more than once, but never without deliberate intention so to do. If I have trespassed with King David of Israel, I feel sure that the circumstances of my particular offence are not discreditable to me; and it is possible that he had the same conviction. For the rest, I have purposely discarded many things which the world is agreed to think highly necessary to a gentleman, but which I have proved to be of no value at all. I will only add this one observation more. For my unparalleled misfortunes ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... purpose of genealogy in this country has been largely social, it is to be feared that in too many cases discreditable data have been tacitly omitted from the records. The anti-social individual, the feeble-minded, the insane, the alcoholic, the "generally no-count," has been glossed over. Such a lack of candor is not in ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... his mind when, shortly afterwards, the man next to him was shot dead, and a little later he himself was slightly wounded by a bullet which passed between the saddle and his thigh. Into the details of the fight that ensued it is not necessary to enter here. They were, if anything, more discreditable than most of the episodes of that unhappy war in which the holding of Potchefstroom, Lydenburg, Rustenburg, and Wakkerstroom are the only bright spots. Suffice it to say that they ended in something very like an ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... for such a crisis? What wonder that our early preparations to confront the issue thus forced upon us without note of warning were hasty, incomplete, and quite inadequate to the emergency? Is it discreditable to us that we were slow to appreciate the bitterness and intensity of that hatred, which, long smouldering under the surface of Southern society, burst forth at once into a wide-spread conflagration, severing like flax all the ties of kindred, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... evasion, combine in opposition to conscience or fear. The terrors of the law have been for years ineffectually directed against a race of beings called smugglers: yet smuggling is still an extensive, lucrative, and not universally discreditable, profession. Let any person look into the history of the excise laws,[66] and he will be astonished at the accumulation of penal statutes, which the active, but ineffectual, ingenuity of prohibitory legislators has devised in the course of about thirty years. Open war was declared against ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... man. He was nowise fascinating, either in face or manner. He made no bid for her attention. Yet during the half hour he sat there, Stella's mind revolved constantly about him. She recalled all that she had heard of him, much of it, from her point of view, highly discreditable. Inevitably she fell to comparing him with other ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... having allowed you to bring me to utter and discreditable financial ruin. I remember one morning in the early October of '92, sitting in the yellowing woods at Bracknell with your mother. At that time I knew very little of your real nature. I had stayed ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Masterton, or Lord Masterton as he now was, was living what he had fondly imagined would be the ideal life with the girl he loved; but already he found it an illusion. His loss of honour, his consciousness that his conduct was discreditable, plunged him into bitter fits of remorse, from which he vainly sought relief by a round of gaiety. Lady Eleanor saw these signs with terror and despair. Though she had accomplished her desire, her life was unbearable; daily she grew more miserable. At last she determined ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... sacrifice themselves for the Larger Good. This desire was gratified—not in the way they hoped for, of course, but nevertheless in a way that must have given any impartial observer a feeling of profound, if discreditable, satisfaction. ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... out of the wood."—Italian. In the second clause we have another discreditable imputation on the weaving fraternity, implying that they only work when compelled by hunger, and are ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... self-seeking, unscrupulous, unprincipled politicians" (here she named one of the two rival parties in the State) "continue to infest and poison our local councils and undermine our Parliamentary representation; if they continue to snatch votes by nefarious and discreditable means—" ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... by President Lincoln. From this we might infer that the President has very little to do but entertain and amuse gentlemen, who apply to him for appointments, with conversation so coarse that it would be discreditable to ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... missionary-meetings were wont to speak of them as irreclaimable heathens who bid defiance to civilising influences from impenetrable fastnesses. Mr. George Smith may be credited with having broken down this discreditable state of things. He brought us face to face with this unfortunate section of our fellow-creatures, with what result it is not necessary to say. The sympathies of the public were effectually roused by the narratives which revealed to ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... since ceased to be considered disgraceful, or even discreditable, among the patrician order in Rome before the soldiers ventured to break their oaths of allegiance. Military service had, from the ignorance and selfishness of this order, been rendered extremely odious to free-born ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... that the "rule of the majority" as a political system is established. It is in essence nothing but the discredited and discreditable principle that "might makes right"; but early in the life of a republic this essential character of government by majority is not seen. The habit of submitting all questions of policy to the arbitrament of counting noses and ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... had manoeuvred so judiciously at Solebay the year before—saw the danger, he put his helm up and ran through the remaining twenty ships of D'Estrees' squadron with his own twelve (C),—a feat as creditable to him as it was discreditable to the French; and then wearing round stood down to De Ruyter, who was hotly engaged with Rupert (C'). He was not followed by D'Estrees, who suffered him to carry this important reinforcement to the Dutch main attack undisturbed. This practically ended ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... beginning. After this overture the stings and slurs came thick and fast. It seemed to the dismayed Vice-President that every one in New York took delight in recalling to publicity some detail discreditable to his Bostonian discovery. From all over the East he began to receive applications for agencies from men whom even he knew to be unworthy of trust; and he realized that he had encouraged their approach like vultures on the unhappy ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... A. Arthur proved that the President had never been so discreditable a spoilsman as the reformers had believed, or else that he had changed his spots. The term ended in dignity and Arthur hoped to secure a personal vindication through renomination by his party. His struggle precipitated a contest of leaders, and until the nominations were made, none could say where ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... ruined both the burgesses and the allies, the Roman capitalists beyond doubt contributed quite as much as Hamilcar and Hannibal to the decline in the vigour and the numbers of the Italian people. No one can say whether the government could have rendered help; but it was an alarming and discreditable fact, that the circles of the Roman aristocracy, well-meaning and energetic as in great part they were, never once showed any insight into the real gravity of the situation or any foreboding of the full magnitude of the danger. When a Roman lady belonging to the high nobility, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... her to be careful what she told Street. She distrusted the cripple profoundly. Half the evil that went on in the park was plotted by him. There had been a lot of furtive whispering about the house for a week or more. Her instinct told her that there was in the air some discreditable secret. More than once she had wondered whether her people had been the express company robbers for whom a reward was out. She tried to dismiss the suspicion from her mind, for the fear of it was like a leaden weight at her heart. But many little things ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... I told myself that it was impossible that I could have been such a simpleton as to have been mistaken on such a question as gender—was heightened by the self-evident fact that, very recently, he had been engaged in some pitched battle; some hand to hand, and, probably, discreditable encounter, from which he had borne away uncomfortable proofs of his opponent's prowess. His antagonist could hardly have been a chivalrous fighter, for his countenance was marked by a dozen different scratches which seemed to suggest that the weapons used had been ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... in the West ended, as it began, in a carnival of butchery. Treacherous attacks, massacres, burnings, and pillagings were everyday occurrences, and white men were hardly less at fault than red. Indeed the most discreditable of all the recorded episodes of the time was a heartless massacre by Americans of a large band of Indians that had been Christianized by Moravian missionaries and brought together in a peaceful community on the Muskingum. This slaughter ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... instead of appropriating Cyprus only, they had appropriated a great deal more—if they had taken Candia too, if they had taken whatever they could lay their hands upon—that majority, equally patient, and equally docile, and not only patient and docile, but exulting in the discreditable obedience with which it obeyed all the behests of the Administration—that majority never would have shrunk, but would have walked into the lobby as cheerfully as it did upon the occasions of which you have heard so much, and would have chuckled the next day ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... dog never went footsore. A dozen breeds cropped out here and there on his hardy body; his coat was distantly suggestive of a collie; his tail of a terrier. But something of width between the patient eyes and bluntness in the scarred muzzle spoke to a tough and hardy ancestor in his discreditable pedigree, as though a lady of his house had once gone away with a bulldog. His part in the company was to do tricks outside beerhouses. When the Signor's strumming had gathered a little ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... is not, of course, expected that every man is to qualify himself for the life of a statesman; but it does seem necessary for all to be so well instructed in political learning as to possess the means of forming a reasonable and philosophical opinion of the policy of the government. It is as discreditable to the intellect and judgment of a free people to complain of that which is right in itself, and rests upon established principles of right, as to submit without resistance or murmur to usurpation or misgovernment. I do not mean to undervalue the periodical press; but it must ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... Greville's "Memoirs," he makes a statement that Miss Tree was never engaged at Covent Garden. The play-bills and the newspapers of the day abundantly contradicted this assertion (at the time he entered it in his diary), and, of course, the discreditable motive assigned ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... is deficient: the deficiency, indeed, is not discreditable to him. It was the inevitable effect of circumstances. It was in the nature of things necessary that, in some part of its progress through political science, the human mind should reach that point which it attained in his ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... higher his religious profession, the more glaring appeared such an evident inconsistency. Francesca herself was blamed for it; and people used to wonder that she who was so often successful in reconciling strangers and promoting peace in families, had not the power of allaying an enmity discreditable to her husband and at variance with the dictates of religion. At last, however, by dint of patience and gentleness, she accomplished what had seemed for a long time a hopeless endeavour. The hearts of both parties were touched with remorse. Lorenzo, who was the aggrieved party, granted his enemy ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... her how, in searching these papers, among a heap of discreditable letters he had lighted upon two or three, pure as white lilies found lying upon a ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... penalties of his own constitution; which work with more energy than we believe whilst we depend on artificial restraints. The movement in this direction has been very marked in modern history. Much has been blind and discreditable, but the nature of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the revolters; for this is a purely moral force. It was never adopted by any party in history, neither can be. It separates the individual from all party, and unites him at the same time to ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... on one another's cases.... The Convention as now composed has no claim to represent the voters of the Republican party.... Any man nominated by the Convention as now constituted would merely be the beneficiary of this successful fraud; it would be deeply discreditable for any man to accept the Convention's nomination under these circumstances; and any man thus accepting it would have no claim to the support of any Republican on party grounds and would have forfeited the right to ask the support of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... when it knew or suspected the purpose for which they were tendered. Lieut. Julius A. De Lagnel, of the artillery, a Virginian, who remained long enough in the Union to be surrendered to Secession authorities (not discreditable to himself) at Fayetteville, North Carolina, with the North Carolina arsenal (April 22, 1861) informed the writer since the war that, on sending his resignation to the War Department, he followed it to the Adjutant-General's office, taking ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... world more keenly than the old. Much attached to his mother, and disposed to do all in his power for her support, Hamish yet perceived, when he mixed with the world, that the trade of the cateran was now alike dangerous and discreditable, and that if he were to emulate his father's progress, it must be in some other line of warfare more consonant to the opinions of ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... honoured, and comfortable, whereas she trembled to think of the troublous life which awaited her as Madame Honore de Balzac. Madame de Balzac's letter further strengthened her resolve. Apparently, in addition to evidence about family dissensions, it contained disquieting revelations about the discreditable Henri, and the necessity for supporting the Montzaigle grandchildren; and the veil with which Balzac had striven to soften the aspect of the family skeletons was violently withdrawn. He was in despair. At this juncture ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... discreditable circumstances under which the bill re-investing the clergy reserves in the Crown was passed. It, however, required the assent of the Queen before it became law. This it was destined never to receive, owing to a technical objection raised in England in the following October, that such a delegation ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... lover the man she had been prepared to worship as a teacher. There can be little doubt that the whole story is a fabrication, in which the Countess von Hatzfeldt had a considerable part. The Countess was rightly judged by popular opinion to have played a discreditable role in the love passages between Lassalle and Helene; and Helene's own account of the matter in her Reminiscences was an additional blow at the pseudo-friend who might have helped the lovers so much. What more natural than that ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... had happened to meet Madame Marneffe instead of Lisbeth Fischer, he would have found a protectress whose complaisance must have led him into some boggy or discreditable path, where he would have been lost. He would certainly never have worked, nor the artist have been hatched out. Thus, while he deplored the old maid's grasping avarice, his reason bid him prefer her iron hand to the life of idleness and ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... quail, upon whose chances he accordingly placed all he possessed. Doubtless evil spirits had been employed in the matter; for, to this person's great astonishment, the quail in question failed in a very discreditable manner at the encounter. Unfortunately, this person had risked not only the money which had been entrusted to him, but all that he had himself become possessed of by some years of honourable toil and assiduous courtesy ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... says that women have no right to petition on political subjects; that it is discreditable, not only to their section of the country, but also to the national character; that these females could have a sufficient field for the exercise of their influence in the discharge of their duties to their fathers, their husbands, or their ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... perhaps at this period of the most general interest. Others were puerile, and as unfit in subject as in ability for presentation in such an assembly. It is to be regretted that the Association does not adopt the only protection against such discreditable annoyances, by insisting upon the submission of everything offered for its consideration to a ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... professor of painting in the Royal Academy; and hundreds of other distinguished men commenced their career in business no more respectable; but not one of them felt that dignity was compromised by their humble vocation. They believed that honor crowned all the various branches of industry, however discreditable they might appear to some, and that disgrace would eventually attach to any one who did not act well his part in the most popular pursuit. Like them, Nat was never troubled with mortification on account of his poverty, or the humble work he was called upon to do. ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... for artisans, too small and too silent to be the abode of various lodgers, and too mean for clerks who live on salaries. They are as dull-looking as Lethe itself, dull and silent, dingy and repulsive. But they are not discreditable in appearance, and never have that Mohawk look which by some unknown sympathy in bricks and mortar attaches itself to ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Nevertheless I could detect a serious side to my companion's mood, especially when he spoke once more of Teddy Garland, and told me that he had cabled to him also before leaving Carlsbad. And I could not help wondering, with a discreditable pang, whether his intercourse with that honest lad could have bred in Raffles a remorse for his own misdeeds, such as I myself had often tried, but always failed, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... thinking of possible consequences, more out of pity for his employer in his plight than for any other reason. But he remembered that it usually required a guilty conscience to make blackmail possible and that the man who paid always paid because of something discreditable ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Another discreditable feature is, that, for a like reason, they are incapable of carrying on any war. Either they arm the multitude, and then they are more afraid of them than of the enemy; or, if they do not call them out in the hour of battle, they ...
— The Republic • Plato
... whom the stream of life is poisoned at its very source. If this be so, then it is as reprehensible in those whose vocation is to watch over the moral and spiritual development of their fellow-men to be indifferent to the conditions by which life is surrounded as it would be discreditable to the physicians of a city swept year after year by pestilence, if they took no interest in the insanitary conditions to which the epidemic was due, but lazily contented themselves with curing their ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... once or twice at the most, did my labours meet with the slightest recognition beyond payment. Once I remember that I accused a member of a discreditable manoeuvre to consume the time of the House, and as he represented a borough in my district, he wrote to the editor denying the charge. The editor without any inquiry—and I believe I was mistaken—instantly congratulated me on having "scored." At another time, when ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... a little startled that you should make such totally groundless assumptions of fact, and then leave a discreditable inference to be drawn from them. He directs me not only to repel this inference as it ought to be repelled, but also to bring to your serious consideration and reflection the propriety of such an assumed narration of facts as your despatch, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... inevitable. Sir Robert Peel, too, was then in the very midst of his lesson-taking; and as he deeply studied Mr Hume's Import Duties Report, before he brought out his new Tariff, we need not consider it to be very discreditable to him, that he read the pamphlets of Colonel Torrens before he tried his diplomatic ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... this; the marquis undertook to cut the danger short. However, he dared put in practice nothing overtly against the child, a matter still more difficult just then, inasmuch as some particulars of his discreditable adventures had leaked out, and the Saint-Geran family received him more ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to others on that mortgage was yet unpaid. Was it conceivable that one so strict and scrupulous in all monetary transactions as Parkman would have settled his own personal claim, and then sacrificed in so discreditable a manner the claims of others, for the satisfaction of which he had made ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... England stood disgracefully alone as the one civilized country in the world having a divorce law for the husband which was not also a divorce law for the wife. The writer in the Times boldly and eloquently exposed this discreditable anomaly in the administration of justice; hinted delicately at the unutterable wrongs suffered by Mrs. Duncan; and plainly showed that she was indebted to the accident of having been married in Scotland, ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... at first inclined to be angry. The whole thing was a mystification—absurd, discreditable. His daughter had grossly deceived him. It needed all the stepmother's gentle influence to soften the outraged father's feelings. But Lady Palliser said all that was kindly about Ida's youth and inexperience, her impulsive ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... sir," rejoined Dewhurst, "the occurrences of last night, though sufficiently discreditable to you, will not be without profit; for I have observed to my infinite regret, that you are apt to indulge in immoderate potations, and when under their influence to lose due command of yourself, and commit follies which ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Castle" is the story of Henry VIII., Catharine, and Anne Boleyn. "Bluff King Hal," although a well-loved monarch, was none too good a one in many ways. Of all his selfishness and unwarrantable acts, none was more discreditable than his divorce from Catharine, and his marriage to the beautiful Anne Boleyn. The King's love was as brief as it was vehement. Jane Seymour, waiting maid on the Queen, attracted him, and Anne Boleyn was forced to ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... 1061-1079. The diocese had been administered for the last four years by the Bishop of Worcester, when Queen Edith's chaplain, a foreigner by birth, Walter of Lorraine, was appointed. Beyond a probably satirical reference by William of Malmsbury, all that is known of Walter is an account of a discreditable death. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... of the case, when the Rev. Faker was called, there was nothing to cross-examine about. I knew nothing of the parties, the witnesses, the solicitors, or any one except my learned friends. It would not have been discreditable to my advocacy if I had submitted to a verdict. I will, therefore, give the points of the questions which elicited the truth from the Christian warrior; and probably the non-legal reader of these memoirs may be interested in ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... Bridgewater in these distressing circumstances was inhuman and discreditable to such a degree as is happily rare in the history of seamanship. On the day following the wreck (August 18th) it would have been easy and safe for her captain, Palmer, to bring her to anchor in one of the several wide and sufficiently deep openings in the reef, ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... strives for her. "Ha! vassal," quoth the knight to Erec, "let us withdraw and rest a little; for too weak are these blows we deal. We must deal better blows than these; for now it draws near evening. It is shameful and highly discreditable that this battle should last so long. See yonder that gentle maid who weeps for thee and calls on God. Full sweetly she prays for thee, as does also mine for me. Surely we should do our best with our blades of steel for the sake of our lady-loves." Erec replies: "You have spoken well." Then ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... unintelligent Gallic elements, the former unfortunately of German origin, united in the effort to make the work a failure when presented in the spring of 1861. The history of art discloses nothing more discreditable. The gentlemen of the Jockey-club with their dog-whistles in spite of the protests of the audience succeeded in making the performances impossible and the press declared the work merited such a fate! Wagner withdrew it after the third performance and ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... the staring wooden faces waiting to hear her try and persuade them to contribute to the alleviation of the urgent needs of the Hampstead poor, each one convinced that they needed contributions themselves. She looked as though she were hiding something discreditable but delightful. Certainly her customary clear expression of candor was not there, and its place was taken by a kind of suppressed and frightened pleasedness, which would have led a more worldly-minded audience to the instant conviction of recent and ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Stefansson stunt of living a year on an exclusive meat diet was a discreditable fake. Stefansson did not live on a meat diet, but on a diet consisting of one-fifth protein and four-fifths fat (caloric intake). When compelled against his protest to eat steaks and chops, he was made ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... a considerable period, during 1859, discreditable scenes of brawling took place at this Church as a protest against the High Church practices of the Rector, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... not nearly as discreditable as the gigantic and repulsive swindles that traders and bankers had carried on during the dark years of the Civil War. The very traders and financiers who beslimed Gould for his "gold conspiracy" were those who had built ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... coloured person or bastard, nor persons of public bad conduct, or those who have had a discreditable criminal sentence passed on them, nor any non-rehabilitated bankrupts or insolvents whatsoever shall be eligible as ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... case is far different from yours. You had an honorable origin and an honorable past. Nor were any of your adventures discreditable to you, even if some situations you have been in were distressing then and are humiliating to remember. You have nothing to be ashamed of unless it be such a trifling peccadillo as ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... king's fourth son, who has proved himself a man brave, generous, patriotic and high-minded, a soldier, a statesman, an historian, patron of art, and in all these things a man eminent among his fellows. He was only a school-boy when a tragic and discreditable event made him heir of the great house of Conde, and endowed him with wealth that he refuses to pass on to his family, proposing at his death to present it to the French people and the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... once well known in the political world, who,—as it is supposed,—had been driven to madness by wrongs inflicted on him in his dearest and nearest family relations. That the unfortunate gentleman is now insane we believe we may state as a fact. It had become our special duty to refer to this most discreditable transaction, from the fact that a paper, still in our hands, had been confided to us for publication by the wretched husband before his senses had become impaired,—which, however, we were debarred from giving to the public by an injunction served upon us in ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... she is the true prophetess, and that I am not one. This will be rather difficult for her to prove," continued she, with a mocking smile. "Beset as I am, I require your assistance, for you must be aware that it is rather discreditable to a prophetess, who has risen from the dead, to be seen all day at the gin-shop, yet without stimulants now, ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... life of Jesus, and the other in the reasonings of theologians, legends of miracles grew luxuriantly. It would be utterly unphilosophical to attribute these as a whole to conscious fraud. Whatever part priestcraft may have taken afterward in sundry discreditable developments of them, the mass of miraculous legends, Century after century, grew up mainly in good faith, and as naturally as elms along water-courses or flowers ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... as yet heard nothing of the newly-formed alliance in low life, and attributed Heathcote's uncommunicativeness either to shame for some discreditable proceeding, or else to passing ill-humour. In either case he reckoned on knowing all about it ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... diminished, by this occurrence. He had sought a quarrel with Parthia as early as A.D. 214, when he demanded of Volagases the surrender of two refugees of distinction. The rupture, which he courted, was deferred by the discreditable compliance of the Great ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... headquarters of the Allies. Charles Felix (who was unconnected with the Modena scheme) wrote a letter to the King on this subject, in which he stated it as his belief that the Austrian plan was to get Charles Albert accidentally killed, or to plunge him in vice, or to make him contract a discreditable marriage. This was why they had invited him to their camp. He adds the characteristic remark that their nephew would be in no less danger at the headquarters of the Duke of Wellington 'a cause de la religion.' Have him home and have him married, is his advice. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... number of the faithful. But it was not the sect which flourished in Ceylon and the writer of the Dipavamsa is prejudiced against it. It may be a result of this animus that he connects it with the discreditable Vajjian schism and the Chinese tradition may be more correct. On the other hand the adherents of the school would naturally be disposed to assign it an early origin. Fa Hsien says[562] that the Vinaya of the Mahasanghikas was considered "the most complete with the fullest explanations." A translation ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... probably the station-master lost little of the meaning the Patriarch desired to convey. This tended in the direction of showing the utter incapacity of the Swiss or French nature to manage a railway, and the discreditable incompetency of the officials of whatever grade. The station-master was properly abashed before the torrent of indignant speech. But he had his turn presently. Calmer inspection disclosed the fact that all the fourteen packets were delivered. It was delightful to see how the station-master, immediately ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... passed two very discreditable bills which would have been made positively infamous if it had not been for the active opposition of a few friends of liberty. One of these bills was designed to add to the stringency of the present obstructive medical law; the other was designed to assist the labors of Anthony ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... uncle, then his brother would be the heir. The arrangement, however, if practicable, would at once make all things comfortable for Ralph, and would give him, probably, a large unembarrassed revenue,—so large, that the owner of it need certainly have recourse to no discreditable marriage as the means of extricating himself from present calamity. But then Sir Thomas had very strong ideas about a family property. Were Ralph's affairs, indeed, in such disorder as to make it necessary for him to abandon ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... I have said, being sent to both, and bills in Chancery being addressed also to Bishop Alcock as chancellor. Rotheram was with the king in France as his chancellor, and is so described on opening the negotiation in August, which led to the discreditable peace by which Edward made himself a pensioner to the French king. No Privy Seals were addressed to Alcock after September 28; which may therefore be considered the close of this double chancellorship, and the date of Bishop Rotheram's return ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... faults of taste, slovenlinesses of expression, etc., is at least the opinion of the present writer. And a "safety razor" of such things might perhaps with advantage have been used on Keats's, though he has written nothing which is in the least discreditable to him. ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... piece of courtesy that wins for them my warmest esteem. The old fellow proves to be a Crimean veteran, and, besides a much-prized medal he brought back with him, he somehow managed to acquire this discreditable, perhaps, but nevertheless unmistakable, memento of having at some time or other campaigned it with "Tommy Atkins." I try to engage him in conversation, but find that he doesn't know another solitary word of English. He simply repeats the profane expression alluded to in a parrot-like manner ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... first, seem discreditable to Washington, as exhibiting the mighty strength of his passions when aroused. But upon mature consideration it does him great honor, affording equal evidence of his power of self-control, his public spirit, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... and a Commissioner of the Treasury: "Jeremiah Weymouth, the d——n of the kingdom, spoke as follows." And it may seem that the Opposition (for the affair was made a party question) can hardly be acquitted of a discreditable indifference to the dignity of the House in supporting a resolution of Colonel Barre, that "Jeremiah Weymouth, the d——n of this kingdom, is not a member of this House." On which the previous question was moved by the ministers, and carried by 120 to 38.—Parliamentary History, xvii., ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... "The discreditable conduct of the doting old King of Bavaria, in his open liaison with a wandering actress who had assumed the name of Lola Montez (but who was in reality the eloped wife of an Englishman, and whom he had created a Bavarian Countess by the title of Graefin de ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... something assured her there was a fallacy somewhere in the glowing logic of the proposition—as he saw it—even though she mightn't put her very finest finger-point on it; and to inflict upon a man who offered so much a wife with a tendency to criticise would be a peculiarly discreditable act. She had promised him she would consider his question, and when, after he had left her, she wandered back to the bench where he had found her and lost herself in meditation, it might have seemed that she was keeping her vow. But this was ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... all a most discreditable business, and I don't see how you propose to better it by cutting my throat. Of course if he's going to marry her, it's a different thing; but I don't believe he is, or he'd have asked me. You think me a fool? Well see they marry, or they'll find ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... behalf. He had been totally selfish in the matter, and yet, while it is true he had not stopped to reason whether the act was morally justifiable or not, he had felt that her attitude warranted his deception, or, rather, he had not felt that the deception was a discreditable act, as he might have felt had her attitude been kindlier. Even had he possessed any previous scruples about that act, he would have overcome them. As it was, the scruples came only when he thought of that new, chastened, subdued look on her face. Only then did he feel that his trick ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... this proceedin wi' ca'in on the editors o' the twa papers in which the injurious statements had appeared, an' requestin, nay, insistin, on their puttin in a true version o' the story, at the same time carefully markin my identity, an' separatin me frae a' discreditable transactions, of every kind, degree, an' character whatsoever. A' this I thocht o' doin, I say; but, on reflection, I changed my mind, an' determined no to gie mysel ony such trouble, but just to let things ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... seem to have been shy of disclosing that after the death of this charming woman [his first wife] he married her maid. And yet the act was not so discreditable to his character as it may sound. The maid had few personal charms, but was an excellent creature, devotedly attached to her mistress, and almost broken-hearted for her loss. In the first agonies of his own grief, which approached to frenzy, he found no relief but from weeping along with her; ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... the poorest of all positions for a nation to occupy in such a matter is readiness to make impossible promises at the same time that there is failure to keep promises which have been made, which can be kept, and which it is discreditable to break. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... usage, that sort of blunder when a man ascribes to one age the habits, customs, or generally the characteristics of another. This, however, may be a mere lapse of memory, as to a matter of fact, and implying nothing at all discreditable to the understanding, but only that a man has shifted the boundaries of chronology a little this way or that; as if, for example, a writer should speak of printed books as existing at the day of Agincourt, or of artillery as existing ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... miserable pension insufficient to command any pleasures but those of drink, a loafer's life, and a pauper's grave. Perhaps the regiment—the officers, that is to say—would succeed in getting him work, and would from their own resources supplement his pension. But what a wretched and discreditable system is that, by which the richest nation in the world neglects the soldiers who have served it well, and which leaves to newspaper philanthropy, to local institutions, and to private charity, a burden which ought to be proudly borne by ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... close together there. Swiss professors of music, painting, and languages; Swiss artificers in steady work; Swiss couriers, and other Swiss servants chronically out of place; industrious Swiss laundresses and clear-starchers; mysteriously existing Swiss of both sexes; Swiss creditable and Swiss discreditable; Swiss to be trusted by all means, and Swiss to be trusted by no means; these diverse Swiss particles are attracted to a centre in the district of Soho. Shabby Swiss eating-houses, coffee-houses, and lodging-houses, ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... "You ass," again. After all, it was not a practical question; Agnes would never hear of his fall. If his friend had been, as he expressed it, "labelled"; if he had been a father, or still better a brother, one might tell him of the discreditable passion. But why irritate him for no reason? Thinking "I am always angling for sympathy; I must stop myself," he hurried onward to ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... know—about the composition of Homer, the purpose of the Divina Commedia, the probable plan of the Canterbury Tales, the Ur-Hamlet. Nobody put preliminary advertisements in the papers, you see, about these things: there was a discreditable neglect of the first requirements of the public. So it is with Esmond. There is, I thought, a reference to it in the Brookfield letters; but in several searches I cannot find it. To his mother he speaks of the book as "grand ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... discreditable custom of the people of Qamul, a long note in the second edition of Cathay, I., ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... if he himself were entirely unconcerned in the matter, instead of having been the chief culprit, he speaks of "cool effrontery;" "magisterial assumption, towards a parcel of naughty boys caught in their naughtiness;" "most discreditable;" "the epithet outrageous is hardly too strong." Here his breath fails him, and, fortunately for me, the climax ends. And this, we are asked to believe, is not loud and boisterous but gentle and calm: it is in fact "the language of simple-minded ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... imitations. Indeed, the character of Alcmena, as drawn by Plautus, so truly innocent, simple, and loving, her distress on being suspected by her husband, and his agony at finding her, as he believes, dishonest, immediately suggest, as the accomplished translator has observed, a not discreditable comparison with our 'Othello.' We may add, too, that the conclusion of the fourth act, where Amphitryon, 'perplexed in the extreme,' and defying the gods in the intensity of his despair, rushes to the house to wreak his vengeance on his family, and is struck down by lightning, rises ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... views were popular. There was a little murmur of approval, something which sounded almost like a purr of content. It was just one more expression of that strangely discreditable yet almost universal failing,—the over-reliance upon others. The quiet remark of the man who suddenly saw fit to join in the discussion struck a chilling ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... such company. We are reminded of Lombroso's own story of the lunatic's reply to one who asked when he was coming out of the asylum: "When the people outside are sane." In fact the theories when pushed to their extreme consequences become absurd. There is nothing discreditable to a serious student of science who in the enthusiasm of discovery presses his inferences beyond their valid limits, since all theory must at first be more or less tentative. Very different is the case when these dubious theories are ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... has his other side. He has some discreditable ways, though he has not a monopoly of them, because he cannot get entirely rid of vexatious Christian competition. We have seen that he seldom transgresses the laws against crimes of violence. Indeed, his dealings with courts are almost restricted to matters connected with commerce. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I know? Discreditable, without doubt. This Mr. Inglethorp, I should say, is somewhat of a scoundrel—but that does not of necessity make him ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... me doubt that for an instant," Willa said with glowing eyes. "There could have been nothing discreditable in his past and he was a clean sportsman in the life he chose, square and philosophical; a game loser, a generous winner! Poor Dad! Mr. Thode, tell me how you succeeded in learning ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... flung upon her by every country in Europe throughout a long, disastrous, and most perplexing civil war. Gloriously did he retrieve the credit that had been mouldering and decaying during two weak and discreditable reigns of nearly fifty years' continuance—gloriously did he establish and extend his country's authority and influence in remote nations—gloriously acquire the real mastery of the British Channel—gloriously ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... by a faithful discharge of my duty; but, within the last year, my children have all gone to service. Having been rather busy this last week, sir, I have taken up but little time in the preparation of this, and I am fearful you will think it comes before you in a discreditable shape; but I hope you will be able to collect from it all that may be required for your benevolent purpose: but should you wish to be empowered to speak with greater confidence of my character, by having the testimony of others in support of my own, I believe, ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... protect her, careless whether I involved myself in a discreditable quarrel with a blackguard or not. As a matter of course, the fellow resented my interference, and my temper gave way. Fortunately for me, just as I lifted my hand to knock him down, at policeman appeared who had noticed that he was drunk, and who settled the dispute ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... that day dawns, or sunset reddens, how joyous we shall all be! Facts will be regarded as discreditable, Truth will be found mourning over her fetters, and Romance, with her temper of wonder, will return to the land. The very aspect of the world will change to our startled eyes. Out of the sea will rise Behemoth and Leviathan, and sail round the high-pooped ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... are strewn with classic transcriptions; and though he evidently plumed himself on his power of "invention"[108] in the matter of plots—a faculty which he knew Shakspere to lack—he cannot conceivably have meant to charge his rival with having committed any discreditable plagiarism in drawing upon Montaigne. At most he would mean to convey that borrowing from the English translation of Montaigne was an easy game as compared with his own scholar-like practice of translating from the Greek and Latin, and from ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... discretion, and such weight of personal influence and possession of public confidence, as must be necessary on the part of the Principal, to preside with effect over an infant University in a country like this, or to execute his part in recovering it from the utterly inefficient and discreditable condition in which it now lies, I am brought to the unavoidable conclusion not only that his appointment ought not to be confirmed, but that every delay in the disallowance of it opens a door to some new mischief within the Institution; more particularly as the powers committed ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... the whole history of controversy, we venture to affirm, there never was an instance of so triumphant a refutation as that by which these slanderous aspersions were instantly refuted, and their authors and their accomplices reduced to a silence as prudent as discreditable. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... of that, as I am sure of you," she replied. Then added with a change of tone, "You were certain for a while that Muriel Tredworth had not only been guilty of something discreditable in her past but had stabbed to death in your presence the ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... his lips. He had only a smattering of law, but he knew that the witness was right, and that he had been betrayed by temper into making a discreditable exhibition of himself. ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... might help him to take a mental share in the private lives of men like Mole, the Due Pasquier, or the Duc de Broglie. He was delighted to find that Swann associated with people who had known them. My great-aunt, however, interpreted this piece of news in a sense discreditable to Swann; for anyone who chose his associates outside the caste in which he had been born and bred, outside his 'proper station,' was condemned to utter degradation in her eyes. It seemed to her that such a one abdicated all claim to enjoy the fruits ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Military school in Petersburg, where he wrote his censurable and erotic poems that were passed about by thousands and won an immense popularity with the jeunesse dore of the time, but which were regarded as discreditable by the more serious and thoughtful society. In November, 1832, he was appointed Second Lieutenant in the Life Guard Hussar regiment, and the young poet now plunged into the vortex of society life as Pushkin had before him. In 1836 appeared his ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... you will retort that I was in love with Nancy Rufford and that my indifference was therefore discreditable. Well, I am not seeking to avoid discredit. I was in love with Nancy Rufford as I am in love with the poor child's memory, quietly and quite tenderly in my American sort of way. I had never thought about it until I heard Leonora ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... of the women exercising naked in the schools with the men ... at the present day would appear truly ridiculous.... Not long since it was thought discreditable and ridiculous among the Greeks, as it is now among most barbarous nations, for men to be seen naked. And when the Cretans first, and after them the Lacedaemonians, began the practice of gymnastic exercises, the wits of the time had it in their power to make sport of those ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... may be provided by which every promising child may be able to climb beyond the elements, and to acquire the fullest culture of which his faculties are capable. There is not only no credit at the present day in wishing so much, but it is discreditable not to do what lies in one's power to further its accomplishment. But, then, is not that to increase enormously the field of competition? I, for example, am a literary person, after a fashion; I have, that is, done something to earn a living by my pen. I had the advantage at starting of belonging ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... know, of real Christian life in the Church of Rome. He dared to admit that much that was popularly held to be Popish was ancient, Catholic, edifying; he dared to warn Churchmen that the loose unsifted imputations, so securely hazarded against Rome, were both discreditable and dangerous. All this, from one whose condemnation of Rome was decisive and severe, was novel. The attempt, both in its spirit and its ability, was not unworthy of being part of the general effort ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... prints of "The Death of Chatham" and "The Coronation of Napoleon." On the sideboard, between fluted Sheraton knife-cases, stood a decanter of Haut Brion, and another of the old Lanning port (the gift of a client), which the wastrel Tom Lanning had sold off a year or two before his mysterious and discreditable death in San Francisco—an incident less publicly humiliating to the family than ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... that the atrocities of which Montreal was the scene constitute the most discreditable features in modern Canadian history, and which, it is to be hoped, the instigators to and actors in are long since fully ashamed of; nor can the temper and judgment of the Governor-General on this trying occasion be too highly extolled. When it was imperative to dissolve the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Stewart's story," he said, "since I found that scrap in old Thomas' pocket. It bears out the statement that the woman with the child, and the woman who quarreled with Armstrong, are the same. It looks as if Thomas had stumbled on to some affair which was more or less discreditable to the dead man, and, with a certain loyalty to the family, had kept it to himself. Then, you see, your story about the woman at the card-room window begins to mean something. It is the nearest approach to anything tangible that we ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... on his dubious and discreditable way, and the woman Sally Haggard, of the cottage in the hollow, gained by virtue of a certain harsh beauty what the ladies Clomber would have ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... forefathers. I should have been sorry to find it ugly or mean, or lying in a hole, or even modern or insignificant; and when none of these charges could be brought against it, I was filled with highly discreditable pain that Providence had not seen fit to issue me into this world in the masculine form; in which case this fine property would, according to the rules of mankind, have been mine. However, I was very soon ashamed of such ideas, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... desire to convince her of the expediency of leaving Beauchamp at once for the Holt. No, even though this was Robert's wish, Phoebe could still not see the necessity, as long as Mervyn should be alone. If he should bring any of his discreditable friends, she promised at once to come to Miss Charlecote, but otherwise she could perceive no reason for grieving him, and astonishing the world, by implying that his sisters could not stay in his house. She thought him unwell, too, and wished ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... following the emancipation of the Jews. Those Jews who were advanced intellectually and materially entirely lost the feeling of belonging to their race. Wherever our political well-being has lasted for any length of time, we have assimilated with our surroundings. I think this is not discreditable. Hence, the statesman who would wish to see a Jewish strain in his nation would have to provide for the duration of our political well-being; and even a ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... successful marriage—which was her people's phrase for a happy marriage—is equality of position, combined with business instincts on the part of the man. People in her world lived to get on; it was a sacred duty with them; failure to do so was discreditable, almost criminal, as she had often heard her mother say when engaged in district visiting amongst the homes of the improvident poor. Jimmy would get on, she fully believed that, especially when he had a sensible wife to ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... your secret, if you wish it, my dear," said he; "but I warn you that such concealments between husband and wife are not wise. He loves you and would only love you the more for your frankness in confessing what you seem to consider a discreditable episode: though I for my part am free to tell you that you will be lucky if your future life affords you the opportunity of doing anything else so much to your credit. But the chances are that he will find it out sooner or later; and ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... of his secret councillors. He would have been glad, had the House expelled Mr. Bedard, one of its members, on the plea that it was prejudicial to its dignity that a representative of the people should be kept in durance, while the House was in session, and still more discreditable that that member should be charged with treason. Hardly had he delivered his speech, and the Assembly returned to their chamber, when the Governor sent a message to the House intimating that Mr. Bedard, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... Holborn from the family of Montague; and Cutts was Dean of Bristol under Bishop Montague. And Montague obtained preferment from Mr. Conduit. Neither the family of Montague, nor that of Barton, seem to have thought the connexion discreditable. Moreover, the births of these children of Geoffrey Barton, a clergyman, occurred at the very period when the name of Catherine should have been most distasteful, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... comfortably well-to-do. But, despite the exiguous nature of my own resources, it was not the money question which impressed me most in this connection, but rather the fact that, while my only acquaintances in London were of a more or less discreditable sort, Constance seemed to have friends everywhere, and these in almost every case people of standing and importance. Her army friends were apt to be generals, her political friends ex-Ministers, her journalistic friends editors, and so forth. And I—— But you ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Spain, but in regard to superstition, there is a striking similarity. Both nations have allowed their clergy to exercise immense sway; in both intolerance has been, and still is, a crying evil; and a bigotry is habitually displayed which is still more discreditable to Scotland than to Spain. It is the paradox of Scotch history that the people are liberal in politics and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... for the man of intelligence to refuse to read his Livy in the light of his Mommsen. My object has been to help in making it discreditable to him to refuse to read his Christian documents in the light of a trained scientific criticism. We shall have made some positive advance in rationality when the man who is perfectly capable of dealing sanely with ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... imagination in science. It is high time to urge the use of a little imagination in philosophy. The unwillingness of some of our critics to read any but the silliest of possible meanings into our statements is as discreditable to their imaginations as anything I know in recent philosophic history. Schiller says the true is that which 'works.' Thereupon he is treated as one who limits verification to the lowest material utilities. Dewey says truth is what gives 'satisfaction.' ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... against the character of the French people,—"You ought not to form an unfavorable judgment of a great nation from mean fellows like me, strolling about in a foreign country." I thought it very noble thus to protest against anything discreditable in himself personally being used against the honor of his country. He is a very singular person, with an originality in all his notions;—not that nobody has ever had such before, but that he has thought them out for himself. He ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... discreditable motives for everyone who would not take her at her own estimate of herself. She detested Clutton. She told Philip that his friend had no talent really; it was just flashy and superficial; he couldn't compose a figure to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... delights also to transfix the Eristic Sophist with weapons borrowed from his own armoury. As we have already seen, the division gives him the opportunity of making the most damaging reflections on the Sophist and all his kith and kin, and to exhibit him in the most discreditable light. ...
— Sophist • Plato
... opposed the law because he thought it discreditable to Pennsylvania—that there should be a law to the effect that, "If I play cards, a man may say to me—there, you have done an act that, if legally visited, would send you to the Penitentiary." Mr. Freeman ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... a notable but not discreditable fact that not even our pilgrims wept. I think there was no individual in the party whose brain was not teeming with thoughts and images and memories invoked by the grand history of the venerable ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... declare horse-stealing to be legal [Laughter], and it would be just as legal as slavery is in Kansas. But by express statute, in the land of Washington and Jefferson, we may soon be brought face to face with the discreditable fact of showing to the world by our acts that we prefer slavery to freedom—darkness ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... been blazed abroad, England would have been irritated. It is true she cannot get at Pantouflia very easily; we have no sea-coast, and we are surrounded by friendly countries. But it would have been a ticklish and discreditable position. I must really speak to Dick," which he did ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... Every audience which the Treasurer obtained was spent in arguments about the authority of the Church and the worship of images. Rochester was firmly resolved not to abjure his religion; but he had no scruple about employing in selfdefence artifices as discreditable as those which had been used against him. He affected to speak like a man whose mind was not made up, professed himself desirous to be enlightened if he was in error, borrowed Popish books, and listened with civility to Popish divines. He had several interviews with Leyburn, the Vicar ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sensational. The fact that a good deal of evidence was given by a Bosnian journalist—one Nastitch—who was proved later in the Frledjung trial to be a discreditable witness, has led to the erroneous opinion in some quarters that the plot was a bogus affair. But the plot was a very genuine one, as I learnt beyond all doubt from my own observations, from details given me by relatives of some of the men implicated, and other Montenegrin sources. It was, in ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... ridiculed an adventurous thinker upon the characteristics of races and classes, who should have leaped therefrom to the conclusion that all white men or all soldiers are thieves. And what inferences might not one draw, discreditable to all traders and manufacturers, from the universal adulteration of articles of food! These people, it is said, are disposed to falsehood in order to get rations and small benefits,—a natural vice which comes with slavery, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was regarded makes it difficult to form any just estimate of his character. Where he had no temptation to do injustice he seems to have been a very good judge; but he had no hesitation in doing gross injustice by detestable methods, for wholly discreditable reasons. He is not seen quite at his worst in Alice Lisle's trial, because she was probably guilty and Dunne was a liar; nor is he seen at his best as a cross-examiner, because he had very good material to go on. He has been unfortunate in attracting the notice of popular writers such ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... aloud, "I don't honestly think there can be any method, creditable or discreditable, that I haven't tried." Peter flung the one-sided interview into the wastepaper-basket, and slipping his notebook into his pocket, departed to drink tea with a lady novelist, whose great desire, as stated ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... me great honour, learned sir," said Dridrano. "Surely it would be very unbecoming, in one of my age and standing, to set up a theory in opposition to yours, but it would be yet more discreditable to be a plagiarist; and, with all due respect for your superior wisdom, it does seem to my feeble intellect, that no two theories can be more different. You use several remedies for one disease: I admit several diseases, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... the confidence placed in her if she makes a discreditable use of any information coming to her through her association with her husband's family. There are skeletons in every closet, and she may not tell even her own mother of what she has seen in the other house. A single word breathed against her husband's family to an outsider stamps her as a traitor, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... of Whig statesmen, it could always find room for calumnies against Mr. Macaulay which in ingenuity of fabrication, and in cruelty of intention, were conspicuous even among the contents of the most discreditable publication that ever issued from the London press. When Queen Caroline landed from the Continent in June 1820 the young Trinity undergraduate greeted her Majesty with a complimentary ode, which certainly little resembled those effusions that, in the old courtly days, an University was accustomed ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... him select a beer barrel, for thereby hung a tragic tale. He and his twin-brother had been adopted from infancy by the Sergeants' Mess and had lived in peace and plenty—in fact in too much plenty, for I regret to say that Daisy's brother died of drink from having formed the discreditable habit of emptying all the dregs of the Sergeants' beer mugs into his own inside. However, he was granted military obsequies, which were so successfully performed that an account of them found its way into one of the daily ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... excellent way than by singing. Wherefore deacons and prelates, whom it becomes to incite men's minds towards God by means of preaching and teaching, ought not to be instant in singing, lest thereby they be withdrawn from greater things. Hence Gregory says (Regist. iv, ep. 44): "It is a most discreditable custom for those who have been raised to the diaconate to serve as choristers, for it behooves them to give their whole time to the duty of preaching and to taking charge of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... he encountered almost everywhere in Europe. The praise which came to him from Europeans irritated him with its air of surprise that anything good could be expected from America or an American. Nor did he much ingratiate himself in British society, where, when the conversation turned upon matters discreditable to the United States, it became his custom to bring up other matters discreditable to Great Britain. On the Continent he pursued much the same course, and published his first "novels with a purpose," The Bravo, The ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall |
