"Belittle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 4: Recollection of past goods in so far as we have had them, causes pleasure; in so far as we have lost them, causes sorrow; and in so far as others have them, causes envy, because that, above all, seems to belittle our reputation. Hence the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii) that the old envy the young, and those who have spent much in order to get something, envy those who have got it by spending little, because they grieve that they have lost their goods, and that ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... such horrible doubts," she said suddenly with suppressed bitterness. "I do not belittle my love. I know that I loved him with all my heart and soul, and that I gave him more than most women would have done, because love means infinitely more to me than it does to them. I knew all the ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... attention to the vast extension of commerce, to the marvelously increased 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 long past conditions ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... from the nose. Add cleanness that aye cleanlier shows A bum than salt-pot cleanlier, Nor ten times cack'st in total year, 20 And harder 'tis than pebble or bean Which rubbed in hand or crumbled, e'en On finger ne'er shall make unclean. Such blessings (Furius!) such a prize Never belittle nor despise; 25 Hundred sesterces seek no more ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... Europe as a lecturer, when for days and months he could have done it so authoritatively as a Senator of the United States; could have done it from his senatorial chair, and in the fulfilment of the most sacred public and patriotic duty. How could the Senator thus belittle one of the most elevated political positions in the world, that of a Senator of ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... which treateth of women's trickery and wherein is a warning to whoso will be warned and an admonishment to whoso will be admonished and whoso hath sight and insight; but I fear lest the hearing of this belittle me with the liege-lord and lower my degree in his esteem; yet I hope that this will not be, because 'tis a rare tale. Women are indeed mischief-makers; their craft and their cunning may not be told nor may their wiles be known; while men enjoy their company and are not instant to uphold ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... then 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, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... institutions. The old German monarchic institutions are good enough for Germany. Read the treatise of Treitschke, the great historian and political philosopher of modern Prussia. He systematically attempts to belittle every achievement of the Parliamentary system; and every prominent writer follows in his footsteps. Prussia has not produced a Guizot, a Tocqueville, a Stuart Mill, or a Bryce. Her thinkers are all imbued with the traditions of enlightened despotism. ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... 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 examples of the "faux bon," and, to remove a suspicion of disparagement, we hasten ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... bondmaids.[5] "What would ye of me?" asked Loch. "To have fight with Cuchulain," replied Medb. "I will not go on that errand, for I esteem it no honour nor becoming to attack a tender, young, smooth-chinned, beardless boy. [6]'Tis not seemly to speak thus to me, and ask it not of me.[6] And not to belittle him do I say it, but I have [7]a doughty brother, [8]the match of himself,"[8] said Loch,[7] "a man to confront him, Long macEmonis, to wit, and he will rejoice to accept an offer from you; [9]and it were fitting for him to contend ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... Jonson, in time, tires of Chapman's everlasting envy and misanthropy, and quarrels with him 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 his reputation. ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... well-grown specimens of our own "mountain lion." I tell you this that you may realize, as I did not, the size to which a wild lion grows. Either menagerie specimens are stunted in growth, or their position and surroundings tend to belittle them, for certainly until a man sees old Leo in the wilderness he has not understood what a fine old chap ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... 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 when there is ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... 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 ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... for the man who goes to Madrid, or any other shrine, in a spirit of opposition,—supremely egotistical, supremely confident of his own methods, disposed to belittle the teaching and example of others,—than there is for the man who goes to servilely copy and imitate. The disposition to learn is a good thing, but in all walks of life, as well as in art, it may be carried too far. No man should surrender his individuality, should yield that within ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... should they 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; then will he have a worthy principle ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... nucleus of her summer library; she said that they gained tang and vigor from their winter hibernation at the cottage. Her references to nature were a little self-conscious, as seems inevitable with such devotees, but we cannot belittle the accuracy of her knowledge or the cleverness of her detective skill in apprehending the native flora. She found red and yellow columbines tucked away in odd corners, and the blue-eyed-Mary with its four ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... That all men and women are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These women of all in America were the first to belittle themselves by seeming to assume that in a revolutionary document that was promulgated to declare a determination to wrest from tyranny the liberty that was an inalienable right for all, they and their sex were excluded because the generic term "man" was employed in relation ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... stupidity of Aristotle's logic, and its power to belittle and benumb the intelligence of its reverential students has been shown in every college where this effete study is kept up. We have no better illustration of late than its effect on Prof. Harris, who is a very intelligent and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... the adventure that this book relates, this strange passion of his temperament remains the vital clue. For it happened in, as well as to, himself. His Being could include the Earth by feeling with her, whereas his intellect could merely criticize, and so belittle, the ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... one another as 'I,' and 'the other.' They converse together in their language, not by necessity according to our thoughts, but what they will. And note, too, that there may be anger between them, and one may belittle or injure the other; this injury is in the Soul, the Soul in the body. Then the body suffers and is ill— not materially or from a material Ens, but from the Soul. For this we need spiritual remedy. Ye are ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... is indeed, as Gibbon called it, "a golden volume, not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or of Tully." To belittle its originality and sincerity, as is sometimes done, with a view to saving the Christianity of the writer, is to misunderstand his mind and his method. The Consolatio is not, as has been maintained, a mere patchwork of translations from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists. Rather it is the supreme ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... published letters, written while in Canada, and he was ever looking forward to the time when he could rejoin them in his beloved chateau of Candiac, and resume the studies he liked so well. Some Canadian writers have endeavoured to belittle Montcalm, that they may more easily explain away the failings of Vaudreuil, a native Canadian, who thwarted constantly the plans of a greater man; but an impartial historian can never place these two men on the same high level. Wolfe's family was of respectable ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to the world. Social and industrial organization, systematic instead of loose ways of doing things, prudence, thrift, obedience and subordination of the individual to the state, discipline—in a word, an efficient society. It is a great lesson! No one to-day can belittle its meaning. Possibly the remote, hidden reason for all this seemingly useless bloody sacrifice in our prosperous modern world is to teach the primary principles of the lesson. God knows that we all need it—we ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... later 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 poetical description, occasional sunbursts ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... obsolete. I invite the attention, not of Congress, but of the people of the United States, to the causes and effects of these unhappy questions. Is there not a disposition on one side to magnify wrongs and outrages, and on the other side to belittle them or justify them? If public opinion could be directed to a correct survey of what is and to rebuking wrong and aiding the proper authorities in punishing it, a better state of feeling would be inculcated, and the sooner we would have that peace which ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... that you should try to belittle this family whom you do not know. Francois Darbois, the philosopher, is a fine character, of unparalleled honour and integrity: his wife has never frequented the world where people are 'taken in,' as you say, and ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... decorations, I am convinced, will prove possessions for ever to the American people. As for the Rotunda Reading Room, it is, I think, almost above criticism in its combination of dignity with splendour. Far be it from me to belittle that great and liberal institution, the British Museum Reading Room. It is considerably larger than this one; it is no less imposing in its severe simplicity; and it offers the serious student a vaster quarry of books to draw upon, together with wider elbow-room ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... turn to hesitate. She wished to play the game and not for the world would she attempt to belittle Bridget if Mark desired to exalt her. On the other hand any reluctance to express a candid opinion might appear suspicious ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... think it was 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
... had despised the little man in a general way. He uncinched his saddle on the wrong side; he clucked at his horse; he removed his hat when he talked to women; he was a weak and innocent fool to Smith, who lost no occasion to belittle him. Now, when the prisoner saw him moving about, free to go and come as he pleased, while he, Smith, was tied like an unruly pup, it, of a sudden, made his gorge rise; and, with one of his swift, characteristic transitions ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... not seek to belittle the achievements of modern scientists, we have the greatest admiration for them and we entertain high expectations of what ambitions they may yet realize, but we perceive a limitation in the fact, that all discoveries of the past have been made by the ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... got over that now. The courts, where I have been a frequent spectator, seem to me full of talented men who fine down and belittle their talents in the practice of law. Nothing uses up the nobler virtues more quickly than a practice at the bar. Generosity, enthusiasm, sensibility, true and ready sympathy—all are taken, leaving the man, in many ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... the big cookstove, made the back room into sleeping quarters, and turned our front room into a sort of clubhouse. White Mountain gave us a wonderful phonograph and plenty of records. If one is inclined to belittle canned music, it is a good plan to live for a while where the only melody one hears is a wailing coyote or the wind ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... of a demagogue. He did not attempt to belittle the public service. He championed the provision for higher pay for the United States Judges, and for increasing the stipend of army officers, although he denounced the system of double rations as vicious. He did not hesitate to hit an unnecessary expense in every shape. All overflowing pension ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... sure that you'll get it," sneered Gresham, and laughed. He was anxious to belittle Gamble in ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... followers—who had preceded him—erected in the royal hall at Toledo the ivory seat he had won at Valencia, and Alfonso himself openly declared the Cid quite worthy to occupy a throne by his side, seeing no one had ever served him as well as the man whom the courtiers were always trying to belittle. The day for the solemn session having dawned, the Cid entered the hall, followed by a hundred knights, while the Infantes of Carrion appeared there with equal numbers, being afraid of an attack. When summoned to ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... "Well, you can belittle it as much as you like, but you certainly saved me from an awfully nasty situation. And you didn't know who I ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... says, "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 ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... their own compound, and, who, when they do go up the river, travel at ease, not in a canoe, or on foot through the jungle, but in the smoking-room of the steamer and in a first-class railroad carriage. That they are able so to travel is due to the man they would belittle. The nickname given to Stanley by the natives is to-day the nickname of the government. Matadi means rock. When Stanley reached the town of Matadi, which is surrounded entirely by rock, he began with dynamite to blast roads for his caravan. The natives ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... twice o' what I said a minute since. I was hot 'cause you couldn't see no wisdom in my plan. But that's the way of folks. They belittle a chap's best thoughts and acts till the time comes for luck to turn an' bring the fruit; then them as scoffed be the first to turn round smilin' an' handshaking and sayin', 'What did us say? Didn't us tell 'e ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... she listened to Siddons, who began patiently to dwell once more on the ill effect of the conditions he had discovered on the welfare of the entire community. She had never thought of this. She was surprised that Ditmar should seem to belittle it. Siddons was a new type in her experience. She could understand and to a certain extent maliciously enjoy Ditmar's growing exasperation with him; he had a formal, precise manner of talking, as though he spent ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... gratitude on men who from preference or from necessity have remained childless, and yet habitually treat women as if they could render no service to their country except by giving it children? If it be folly and shame, as I think, to belittle and decry the dignity and worth of motherhood, as some are said to do, it is no less folly, and shame quite as great, to deny the grand and patriotic service of many women who have died and left no children among their mourners. Plato puts into the mouth of a woman,—the eloquent Diotima, in ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... enough money to live on?" There was an anxious, vibrant tone in Harry's voice that aroused St. George to a sense of the boy's share in the calamity and the privations he must suffer because of it. Pawson hesitated and was about to belittle the gravity of the situation when St. ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... constituencies to lead their political life. Almost the only pain I have experienced during my term here has been caused by the personal attacks which are too frequently made on both sides against party men. Believe me, gentlemen, such personal attacks do no good in advancing any cause, but belittle the nation in the eyes of strangers. They are also, as a rule, as unwarrantable as they are repulsive, useless and mischievous. I have seen a good deal of the public life and of the politicians of many countries, and I unhesitatingly ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... yielded," it said, "to the temptation to deride or to belittle the resistance of Ulster to Home Rule.... The subjugation of Protestant Ulster by force is one of those things that do not happen in our politics.... It is, we know, a popular delusion that Ulster is a braggart whose ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... 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, which lead ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Ministry is only a mask, or, more properly speaking, a screen that hides a baboon. Thiers is behind it. This is beginning to bother Louis Bonaparte. He has to contend against eight Ministers, all of whom seek to belittle him. Each is pulling his own way. Among these Ministers some are his avowed enemies. Nominations, promotions, and lists arrive all made out from the Place Saint Georges. They have to be ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... 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, Chaldea lacked, and as she ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... wholly sympathetic listener throughout the discussion, could now no longer withhold his protest. "No wonder," he abruptly exclaimed, "that there are so few deep convictions to-day concerning the great essentials of Christianity! As I sit here and listen to you belittle God and rend the great truths of His Christ, as announced in His Word, the Bible, I am moved by feelings poignantly sorrowful! The Christ has once been crucified; and will you slay ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... 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 is ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... has been overmuch to belittle things American. The commercial spirit in the United States, which affects to be nationalistic, is in reality cosmopolitan. Money being its god, French money, English money, anything that calls itself money, is wealth to it. It has no time to waste ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... eyes rested with pride on the gloss of his hair, which had gone grey in the last year, and on his figure, with its square shoulders and its look of obvious distinction, as of a man who had achieved results so emphatically that it was impossible either to overlook or to belittle them. How splendid he looked! And what a pity that, after all his triumphs, he should still be so nervous on the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... because she's 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
... method 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 succinct, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in order to see whether one is made for the other, and whether we can assure ourselves that the hearer will be, as it were, forced to surrender. We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple and natural, and not to magnify that which is little, or belittle that which is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject, and there must be in it nothing of ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... moulded public 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 of ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... 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 to harm; for even ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... raised,' he replied, 'but no one in Germany was shaken. Moreover, they knew—what I knew—that England raised these doubts merely to cover her own original stupidity and ignorance. She was now convinced that it was by LEONARDO, because she knew I could not err, and her game was to belittle the bust. How barbaric! how devilish! but how characteristic! And why did ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... not 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
... I 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 girl's toilet. Even a ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... had allowed his surroundings to belittle himself. Many a brilliant "social event" might properly be chronicled under the head-line: "Total Eclipse of the Host!" so insignificant does the man become when he carries his standards of social entertaining in his pocket-book ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... question the modern drama necessarily is based, since the dramatist, in any period when the theatre is really alive, is obliged to tell the people in the audience what they have themselves been thinking. Those critics, therefore, have no ground to stand on who belittle the importance of the modern social drama and regard it as an arbitrary phase of art devised, for business reasons merely, by a handful of ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... relation to 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 to say contributed not a little to the consideration ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... purpose for them, and were fully sensible of the fact that the loss of these important points, Memphis and New Orleans, were disasters most discouraging. When they were in the presence of those to whom they knew they could speak freely, they sneered at the efforts made by their superiors to belittle the Union victories, and laughed to scorn Mayor Monroe and the "city fathers" for the attitude they had seen fit to assume while Farragut's powerful fleet held the Crescent city under its guns. If the pompous little mayor, by folding his arms and standing in front ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... in debt to the moneylender. They shoot partridge and they are forced to ride foxes because there are no wild pig here. They know nothing of hawking or quail-fighting, but they gamble up to the hilt on all occasions and bear losses laughing. Their card-play is called Baraich [Bridge?]. They belittle their own and the achievements of their friends, so long as that friend faces them. In his absence they extol his deeds. They are of cheerful countenance. When they jest, they respect honour. It is so also ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 him by parody. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... mind, and as the lower lights were switched off and the alcove grew dimmer, the talk became increasingly intimate. A vein of poetry, of unsuspected romance, developed in Rimrock's mind and, far from discouraging it or seeming to belittle it, Mrs. Hardesty responded in kind. It was a rare experience in people so different, this exchange of innermost thoughts, and as their voices grew lower and all the world seemed far away, they took ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... going on so rapidly that a movement for annexation, were it once started in certain districts of Canada, might be irresistible. The harsh and powerful face of the speaker became transfigured; one divined in him some hidden motive which was driving him to contest and belittle the main currents and sympathies about him. He spoke as a prophet, but the faith which envenomed the prophecy ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "I do not belittle the prospect you open before me. I see the practical difficulties, but I see well ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the tribune and of the press combined, these two great forces of civilization,—it is not I who seek to deny or belittle them; but see how many efforts of all kinds it would have required, in every direction, and under every form, by the tribune and by the newspaper, by the book and by the spoken word, to succeed even in shaking the universal prejudice in favor of ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... crier, "it will be all the better for my tongue and your ears if I do not answer that question. I simply do what I have been told to do. I unveil this odalisk, I proclaim what she can do, to what use she can be put. I neither belittle her nor do I exalt her. I advise nobody to buy her and I advise nobody not to buy her. Allah is free to do what He will with us all, and that which has been decreed concerning each of us ages ago must needs befall." And with these ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... try to analyse man's love for woman, to explain it, or explain it away, belittle it, nay, even resent and befoul it, it remains an unaccountable phenomenon, a "mystery we make darker with a name." Biology, cynically pointing at certain of its processes, makes the miracle rather more miraculous ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... is at hand. He could wait for the cover of darkness. Not even his wife should know but that he had shot the fox. Wouldn't she stare at him? She had always defied him and tried to belittle him. No, she should not learn the truth, she least of all. He would not tell a soul. Now Samur, he knew how to hold his tongue, faithful creature! Arni sat down on the rock, with the fox on his knees, and started singing to pass the time, allowing ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... womanhood 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. I am not suggesting ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... without any warning, the stage front gave way, and we (still energetically working the figures) were thrown right into the auditorium. Talk about tumbling head over heels! Why, words would only belittle this part of our "performance." Suffice it to say that the wreckage just cleared the front seat, on which the Vicar and his good ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... the hint about giving an occasional lead, 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, spurred me on to fresh fields ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... papa! don't tantalize me. You cannot belittle this struggle or its consequences. Our enemies are at our very doors, and they are not soldiers. I would rather face scalping Indians than the wretches that I saw an hour since. If Merwyn will do a man's part to quell this mob I shall feel honored by ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... "But I would belittle my own sense of Osgood's real worth if I confined myself to expatiating on his brilliant physical achievements. His moral worth and gentle bravery were to me the chief points in him that arouse true admiration. When I, as coach of Penn's football ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... chagrin Meredith produced in me was an attempt to belittle his merit. "It isn't a ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... 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 ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... not be." Her voice 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 should ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... that every schoolboy would be proud and glad to die for him. There is no country in the world whose people are more passionately devoted to their fatherland than the Japs. The idea of prominent Japanese going about in foreign countries trying to belittle their own, or undermine her power in the countries she has won by ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... enthusiasm, to the impression which great objects would fain make upon us, and to embody that impression in worthy language. It is rare to meet now even with young people who will abandon themselves to a heroic emotion, or who, if they really feel it, do not try to belittle it in expression. Byron's poetry, above most, tempts and almost compels surrender to that which ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... never rises above its source, nor a home above the ideals of its founders. No matter how humble the home, do not belittle its possibilities. Anything so sacred as home can command heaven's choicest and best blessings. The humblest cabin may contain that element which makes home the shrine of happiness and the temple of peace, and will cause it to send forth ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... it is easy to do so, we must not belittle this cry of "Race-Suicide!" It is not usually accompanied by definite argument, but it assumes that birth-control is the method of such suicide, and that the first and most immediately dangerous result is that one's own nation, ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... 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 changed his opinion of people, and even after the General ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... both for the sport of it and because the peal of the horn and the sight of the circle of beaters recalled to him the days of his youth, when he had kept many hunters and many famous hounds. Of his whole kennel but two dogs remained, and now they wanted to belittle the glory of one of these! So he approached, and, slowly stroking his side whiskers, said with a laugh—but it was a laugh full ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... lips closed; not even for pride's sake, and retort's sake, will she desecrate the past, belittle her own ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by himself for the center temple of an everlasting union, what would he then say as to that boast made on his behalf by his countrymen, that he was first in war and first in peace? Washington was a great man, and I believe a good man. I, at any rate, will not belittle him. I think that he had the firmness and audacity necessary for a revolutionary leader, that he had honesty to preserve him from the temptations of ambition and ostentation, and that he had the good sense to be guided in civil matters by men ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... read us many a tale of his life in the woods. They were the same old hunter's stories, except that they evidently had the merit of being strictly true, and hence were not very thrilling or marvelous. Uncle Nathan's tendency was rather to tone down and belittle his experiences than to exaggerate them. If he ever bragged at all (and I suspect he did just a little, when telling us how he outshot one of the famous riflemen of the American team, whom he was guiding through these woods), ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... will 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
... low, and these darkened souls brought to the Light of the World. But to-night he felt strangely fearful, almost cowardly, for the whole tribe had gathered to pay tribute to their god, and it is a dangerous thing to belittle the god or the faith of any nation that is ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... morbidly obsessed by the physical facts of sex, and their thoughts continually directed into turbid channels. But it is possible by the grace of GOD to conquer, though there may be relapses before the final victory is won. It is important neither on the one hand to belittle the gravity of the evil, nor on the other to grow hopeless and despondent, but to have faith in GOD. It is also a counsel of common sense to distract the mind, so far as possible, in other directions, and to avoid deliberately whatever is likely to prove an occasion or stimulus to ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... would 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 Kiss Yourself ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... humor often present themselves under aspects somewhat different from those preferred by us, we belittle their efforts unjustly. As a matter of fact, the British attainments in this direction are the best in the world, next to our own. Moreover, in the British colonies is to be found a spirit of humor that exactly ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... 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
... parallel in literary journalism occurs to me. I have noticed lately a tendency in the intellectual underworld—for here I take leave of first-class criticism—to belittle Ibsen, with the object, apparently, of magnifying Tchekov, and always it is in the name of art that Ibsen is decried. Now, if our literary ragamuffins cared two pence about art they would all be on their knees before ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... in 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 ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... to the weaknesses and prejudices of readers; writings in which the violation of actual truth cannot, save by stark stupidity, be attributed to innocent error; writings that scoff at humanitarian feeling and belittle the importance of achievements resulting therefrom; writings which strike at the root of national manliness, by eulogizing brute force directed against weaker folk as a fit and legitimate mode of securing the wishes of a ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... firm, human mouth were precious to him. Peter—his friend, his father, his comrade! Could he ever insult him by such a mean, cowardly feeling as gratitude? And was the woman he loved as he loved nothing else in life—was she—was Ruth going to belittle their relations with the same substitute? It was a big pin, that which Miss Felicia had impaled him on, and it is no wonder the poor fluttering wings were nigh ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... 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 ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... party, Hillquit, on the witness stand in the Judiciary Committee's inquiry at Albany, sought in every way to belittle the significance of his and his party's Chicago Manifesto, the Moscow Manifesto, and the evident connection between the two, belittling, also, his party's affiliation with the Third (Moscow) International. How unscrupulous and hypocritical his ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... 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 ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... 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 a spectator in the world; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... nature of the proposal 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 must be at ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... he believed, but the forms of their expression were different. 'Our sin is a voluble boastfulness; theirs is an irritating, unrestrainable, all-but-constantly manifested, satisfied self-consciousness. The same results are reached by different avenues. We praise ourselves; they belittle others.' Then he added with a smile: 'Thus even in these latter days are the Scriptures exemplified; the ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent |
