"Contemptible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Garter reads more in the jewel on his collar than the George and Dragon of a public-house expresses to the host or to his customers. Thus, to the mean person the myth always meant little; to the noble person, much; and the greater their familiarity with it, the more contemptible it became to one, and the more sacred to the other; until vulgar commentators explained it entirely away, while Virgil made the crowning glory of his ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... swine, or a much less voracious animal, be surveyed by a glutton; and how contemptible must the talents of other sensualists appear, when opposed, perhaps, to some of the lowest and meanest of brutes! but in conversation man stands alone, at least in this part of the creation; he leaves all others behind him at his first start, and the greater progress he makes the greater ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... that the usual time for going to bed had passed. As the following day was a Sunday, he was satisfied. They generally had quiet evenings then and there would be no interruptions to the story. Bruno, too, had now calmed down. It had softened him that his mother had found the Knippel boys' behaviour contemptible and that she had not excused them in the least. He might have told the Rector about it, but such accusations he despised. He felt quite appeased since his mother had shared his indignation and knew about the matter. Soon the house lay peacefully slumbering under ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... Did he see in her only a willing accomplice to her father's money-making schemes? The one perhaps who spent the gains heartlessly and carelessly elsewhere? Beside those settlers' wives he had said were heroines, was she but an idle, contemptible, useless heiress? She spurred her horse on, letting her thoughts run away with her, unwilling that he should overtake her until she had got herself well in hand; and Carew followed behind, feeling again that sense ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... worthless and contemptible if its men cease to work hard and, at need, to fight hard; and if its women cease to breed freely. If the best classes do not reproduce themselves the nation ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... and then go through days like children, without a word. You will see something similar in social life among men and women equally—petty jealousies, personalities, slanderings, mean little stories of no great consequence in themselves, except in the converse sense of showing how small and contemptible everything and everyone concerned is. A keen eye notes with some depression the absence from both spheres of a fine manliness, a generous conception of things, a large outlook, that prevents a squabble with a smile, and ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... wiser thing," it commented, "to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop, Mr. John, back to 'plasters, pills and ointment boxes.'" And even when Shelley wrote his "Adonais" on the death of Keats, Blackwood's met it with a contemptible parody: ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... one very noteworthy fact: from the point of view of a London manager the scenery and appointments were contemptible, and this apparently did not matter a rap. An audience, five-sixths of it British, was enthralled by these players, although the scenery and the furniture of the indoor sets had no pretension to magnificence, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... hopelessly entangled. And yet, continuing to ponder the situation, he saw that he need not completely yield to pessimism. For though circumstances—and his own lack of foresight—had placed him in a contemptible position—he need not act the blackguard. On the contrary, he could admirably ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... perfectly); "you will please to come again soon, and console me for my disappointment. I am Mrs. Gregory St. Michael, and my house is in Le Maire Street (Pronounced in Kings Port, Lammarree) as you have been so civil as to find out. And how does your Aunt Carola do in these contemptible times? You can tell her from me that vulgarization is ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... but fools have ever made love to me! Oh, if an honest, noble man did but love me, and I could marry, and get out of this friendless desolation, this contemptible, scheming, match-making set, where I and my feelings are talked of, speculated on, bandied about from house to house. It is horrible—horrible! ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... think of him, and wonder which is the real man—the one I thought he was—and I thought him very fine and splendid. Or is he just trifling and commonplace? Perhaps he is just between, not as wonderful as I thought him, nor as contemptible as ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... "A contemptible dreamer," I said. "Pity him, Sire. He has his uses. To remove him would be to remove a channel through which we can always obtain knowledge precisely ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... despising him hastily for his outward form, and since my own beauty has been slighted by his comparison, ye two shall be punished, she for her beauty, and thou for thy insolence, and through the means of that very beauty, on account of which my father and I have become contemptible. See, O thou who despisest a suitor, whether thou canst easily procure another. This shall be the condition of thy daughter's marriage. Whatever suitor shall lay claim to her, thou shalt send up to this terrace alone ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... you are getting very much the worst of it in this deal. It is the most contemptible scheme to rob that I ever heard of. By this arrangement you are to get farming lands and building lots in rural towns worth in all about $100,000, I'd say. Don't you know that you are entitled to nearly half ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... ignorant,' 'most unchristian and wicked,' 'a piece of proud folly,' 'so very dirty a creature that he disdains to dirt his fingers with him,' 'Bunyan can no more disgrace him than a rude creature can eclipse the moon by barking at her; or make palaces contemptible by lifting up their legs against them,' 'a most black-mouthed calumniator,' 'infamous in Bedford for a pestilent schismatic,' and with a heart full of venom he called upon his majesty not to let such a firebrand, impudent, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... friendship with France had been succeeded by an arrogant assumption of patronage and almost of suzerainty menacing to our national independence. Such were the clouds that rose above the ocean horizon, while the western sky was darkened by the shadow of Indian hostility as yet far from contemptible, and directed by able chieftains, like Little Turtle, more than a match in the field and in diplomacy for most of their white antagonists. These were the circumstances which made it apparent to Americans that the Federal Constitution had come not a day too soon, which welded the nation ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... supposed wealth, make the brief experiment of shopping at the rich man's hour, instead of at the poor man's; he will be surprised to note the difference of the social atmosphere. A man's clothes may be poor enough, and his appearance contemptible, but if he will shop at the hour when all the drudges are at work, no one will take him for a drudge. I will confess it gave me pleasure to note this change of estimate. I seemed to taste the first privilege of a ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... newspapers the other day that the German Emperor made a speech to some of his regiments in which he urged them to concentrate their attention upon what he was pleased to call "French's contemptible little army." [Laughter.] Well, they are concentrating their attention upon it [laughter and cheers] and that army, which has been fighting with such extraordinary prowess, which has revived in a fortnight ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... back to the Lodge, was sick at heart. He came of a family of clean, honest gentlemen. Most of them had been soldiers. Occasionally one had gone to the devil as this young cousin of his had done. But there was something in this whole affair so contemptible that it hurt his pride. The theft itself was not the worst thing. The miner had traded on their faith in him. He had lied to them, had made a mock of their friendly offers to help him. Even the elements of decency seemed to be ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... stay," answered Jack. "But I shall be leaving either to-morrow or the next day—for a short time. Now, Don Sebastian Alvaros, disgrace to the uniform that you wear, unmitigated blackguard and scoundrel, mean, contemptible coward, and, as I believe, colossal liar, listen to me! As I told you a moment ago, I am leaving Cuba within the next day or two. But I shall return, Senor; and if it should ever prove that the infamous story which you have just ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... mean, the most cruel and contemptible thing under the sun!" she said, passionately. "What is the quality that makes a great hero—a great general—nowadays? Courage? Not a bit. It is callousness!—an absolute indifference to the slaughtering of human lives! You sit in ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... so great a blessing by only asking for it? No part of the effort that we make to acquire the transient enjoyments of this life is necessary to obtain these heavenly blessings. What will we not do, what are we not willing to suffer, to possess dangerous and contemptible things, and often without any success? It is not thus with heavenly things. God is always ready to grant them to those who make the request in sincerity and truth. The Christian life is a long and continual tendency ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... into his lonely cell, he wept with a young man's boundless grief when reality contradicts his expectations, and he finds that all which he has learnt to prize is only contemptible and common. ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... are,' says I. 'You're a plain, contemptible miser. You preach supply and you forget demand. Now, supply,' I goes on, 'is never anything but supply. On the contrary,' says I, 'demand is a much broader syllogism and assertion. Demand includes the ...
— Options • O. Henry
... understand what you felt sitting on the top of the Pyrenees. We men are but a sorry part of the creation. Now and then there comes to us a breath out of another order of things; a sudden perception—coming we cannot tell how—of the artificial and contemptible existence we are all living; a longing to be out of it and have done with it—by a pistol-shot if nothing else will do. I continually wonder at myself for remaining in London when I can go where I please, and take with me all the occupations I am fit for. Alas! it is oneself that one ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... accustomed to read, and sometimes to make, ridiculous accusations against the Theatrical Manager. We condemn the mercenary fellow because he will not risk a loss of two or three thousand pounds on the intellectual masterpiece of a promising young dramatist, preferring to put on some contemptible but popular rubbish which is certain to fill his theatre. But now we see that the dramatic critic, that stern upholder of the best interests of the British Drama, will not himself risk six shillings (and perhaps ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... Claverhouse returned to Scotland, and whose history of the Scottish Church was not published till more than thirty years after the battle of Killiecrankie.[18] Wodrow's work is very far from being the contemptible thing some apologists for Claverhouse would have us believe; but he is not a witness whose unsupported testimony it is always safe to take for gospel-truth. He wrote at a time when the naturally romantic imagination of the Scottish peasantry, stimulated ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... this, and the general contempt. Such men, and such social coteries, are few in this country. Fortunately, wealth which is only used as a means of ostentatious display is worthless to communities, and its possessor is contemptible. "Wealth is power" is an adage, and is true where it is used to promote the general good. Without it no people can be prosperous or intelligent, and the prosperity and intelligence of every people is greatest where there is most wealth, and where it is most generally diffused. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the wretched, filthy, and contemptible places in this world of ours, none can present to the eye of a stranger so miserable an appearance, or can offer such disgusting and loathsome sights as this abominable Brass Town. Dogs, goats, and other animals were running about the dirty streets ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Borgia—this Machiavelli—this monster of duplicity! Matters are approaching a point where something has got to be done short of murder. I've stood all his envy and jealousy and cheap imputations and hints and contemptible innuendoes that ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... that I had vowed to her. Such the services which it was the business of my life to perform. I had snatched her brother from existence. I had torn from her the hope which she so ardently and indefatigably cherished. From a contemptible and dastardly regard to my own safety I had failed in the moment of trial and when called upon by Heaven to evince ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... handle of this, above any other part of the action, to reproach and render the whole of the work contemptible, calling it Jesuitic superstition, enthusiasm, advancing our own confessions into the room of Christ's satisfaction, and expecting pardon upon the score of superficial public acknowledgments:—therefore, to vindicate this part of the work from such groundless calumny, ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... mouse!'" cried the lieutenant. "Is that all, my brave, fire-eating captain? Report all to Major Lacey! By Jingo, sir, I'll spare you the trouble. I'll go and tell him what a miserable, contemptible, beggarly coward he has in his troop, and that he is allowing you to drag down your wretched pupil to your own level. There, stand ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... pounds to expend upon those new books and music which served so often as the excuse for a visit to the Lawn. He wanted pounds for very trivial purposes; but he wanted them desperately. A lover without pounds is the most helpless and contemptible of mankind; he is a knight-errant without his armour, a troubadour without ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... than his elder brother Esau, not because of Jacob's goodness but because of Esau's weakness. God was narrowed to these two grandsons in carrying out the promise to Abraham. Jacob was contemptible in his moral dealings, but he had qualities of leadership wholly lacking in his brother. His moral character was a serious hindrance. God had to handle him heroically before He could get the use of his stronger mental ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... 'barracking' that was carried on at football matches was a mean and contemptible system, and was getting worse and worse every day. Actually people were afraid to go to them on account of the conduct of the crowd of 'barrackers.' It took all the interest out of the game to see young men acting like a gang ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... persuaded he was the only inventor. That man has a malignant and ungenerous heart; and he is base enough to assume the mark of a moralist in order to decry human nature, and to give a decent vent to his hatred to man and woman kind.—But I must quit this contemptible subject, on which a just indignation would render my pen so fertile, that, after having fatigued you with a long letter, I would surfeit you with a supplement twice as long. Besides, a violent head-ach ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... that consume the substance of mankind. If we could not obtain Utopia then, we might, at least by abolishing the subnormals and abnormals who constitute the slaves and careerists of society, render the human race less contemptible ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... high that is wrong; but it is cutting it too fine to be seen, wherever it is. This is the great modern mistake: you are actually at twice the cost which would produce an impressive ornament, to produce a contemptible one; you increase the price of your buildings by one-half, in order to mince their decoration into invisibility. Walk through your streets, and try to make out the ornaments on the upper parts of your fine buildings—(there are none at the bottoms of them). ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... gallery, a light of defiance in his eye). "You come here to intimidate us, but you can't do it. You're too contemptible ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... it was that our New Armies had a glimpse of what the old "Contemptible Little Army" has seen and faced so often, the huge gray bulk looming through the drifting smoke, the packed mass of the old German infantry attack. There were some of these "Old Contemptibles," as they proudly style themselves now, who said when it was all ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... fishermen, making black silk lace. Though I call them villages, and though they are in reality so, yet the houses were such, in general, as would make a good figure even in a fine city; for they were all well built, and many adorned on the outside with no contemptible paintings. ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... We had fought a hard battle there with the English, and found them rough customers. The Spaniards bolted like sheep. As soldiers, they are the most contemptible curs in the world. They fought well enough in the mountains under their own leaders, but as soldiers, why, our regiment would thrash an army of 15,000 of them. The English were on the top of the hill—at least at the beginning there were ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... military abilities, though the country was not indebted to them for a single statesman, orator, successful warrior, great lawyer, learned divine, eminent author, illustrious man of science, they had contrived, if not to engross any great share of public admiration and love, at least to monopolise no contemptible portion of public money and public dignities. During the seventy years of almost unbroken whig rule, from the accession of the House of Hanover to the fall of Mr Fox, Marney Abbey had furnished a never-failing crop of lord privy seals, lord presidents, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... life is terrible. Such a death they die who are held together, not by the bonds of the spirit, but by those of convention. They who would go from each other and dare not, die the ignominious death of fear. The suicide is contemptible, besides being pitiable, when he is hounded out of life despite himself, when he is a little embezzler of a clerk who rushes from the music hall to the Thames and thinks of the unfinished glass with his last breath. No, I do not underestimate ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... a sinner, the most ignorant and least of all the faithful, and the most contemptible among many, had for my father Calpornius the deacon, son of the presbyter Potitus, the son of Odissus, who was of the village of Bannavis Tabernia; he had near by a little estate where I was taken captive. I was then nearly sixteen years old. But I was ignorant of ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Arato being probably more valuable than any which had ever entered that port, seemed to put an entirely new face upon the relations between her and the owner of this vast wealth, if, indeed, he were able to establish that ownership. The more she thought of this point, the more contemptible appeared her own position—that is, the position she had assumed when she and the captain stood together for the last time on the shore of Peru. If that gold truly belonged to him, if he had really succeeded in his great enterprise, what right had she to insist that he should accept her as a condition ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... praise in honour of the gloriously overcrowded valley. On the contrary, he felt deeply cynical and depressed. He thought that the unseen power—whether it was called Nature, Life, Will, or God—that was so frantic to rush forward and occupy this small, vulgar, contemptible world, could not possess very high aims and was not worth much. How this sordid struggle for an hour or two of physical existence could ever be regarded as a deeply earnest and important business was beyond his comprehension The atmosphere choked him, he longed for air and space. Thrusting ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... crowned, however, by an English, not by a French prelate. None of the great French nobles even were present. The coronation was a failure. Gradually all France was won over to the side of Charles. He was a contemptible monarch, but he was the legitimate King of France. All classes desired peace; all parties were weary of war. The Treaty of Arras, in 1435, restored peace between Charles and Philip of Burgundy; and in the same year the Duke of Bedford died. In 1436 Charles took possession of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... think he had preached to some purpose; and could die with a safe conscience, as he should think he had not laboured in vain in his vocation. Of all men, I think a dissipated clergyman is the most contemptible. How much Commissioner Falconer has to answer for, who forced him, or who lured him, knowing how unfit he was for it, into the church! The commissioner frets because the price of iniquity has not yet been received—the living of Chipping ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... he is the most contemptible scoundrel I ever knew. He is rich, and therefore has no excuse for stealing. Worse than all, he tried to ruin a young man whose shoe-latchet he is ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... despicable, can render a country more desolate than Genghis Khan or Tamerlane. When God Almighty chose to humble the pride and presumption of Pharaoh, and to bring him to shame, He did not effect His purpose with tigers and lions; but He sent lice, mice, frogs, and everything loathsome and contemptible, to pollute and destroy the country. Think of this, my Lords, and of your listening here to these people's long account of Tamerlane's camp of two hundred thousand persons, and of his building a pyramid at Bagdad with the heads of ninety thousand ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... little Bessie;" and they began so low and confidentially, that Rachel wondered if her alarms wore to be transfered from the bearded colonel to the dapper boy, or if, in very truth, she must deem poor Fanny a general coquette. Besides, a man must be contemptible who wore gloves at so small a party, when ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... London at the height of his autocracy, he was visited by a composer named Gluck, whom we think of to-day as a revolutionist in music, and a man of the utmost historical importance. To the lordly Haendel, however, he was more or less contemptible, and people who know nothing else of either genius, know that Haendel said, "Gluck understood about as much counterpoint ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... Mr. ASQUITH dwelt upon the growing unity of control among the Allies, which would counteract the advantage in this respect hitherto enjoyed by our foes; and noted the amazing growth of the once "contemptible little" British Army. He further reminded us that we had already incurred liabilities which it would take us a generation to wipe out; and it was the first duty of every patriotic citizen to practise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... contemptuously to the paper where her interpretation was written out. "There's no meaning in it except this, which I have now noticed for the first time—that the miserable scoundrel who wrote this has done it so as to throw suspicion upon the man whom he was bound to love with all his contemptible heart, if he had one, which he hadn't. I see now. The ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... admirer of Byron, and he anticipated Borrow in the spirit of his remark to John Murray that the author's trade was contemptible compared with the jockey's. At that moment it was unquestionably so. Soon even reviewing failed. The "Universal Review" died at the beginning of 1825, and Borrow seems to have quarrelled with Phillips because some Germans had found the German ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... formidable affair. There it may be said that the whole country was in arms, and the element of religious fanaticism came into play; but in spite of that the resistance which they opposed to the troops was absolutely contemptible; however, it is just as well that you did not see them drill, because now, if by any chance this lad should die, and inquiry were made about it, there would be no occasion for you to allude to the subject at all. You would be able to say truthfully that finding that he was ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... their ministers, repaired from London to Newcastle. The king, according to his promise, listened to the arguments of his new instructor; and an interesting controversy respecting the divine institution of episcopacy and presbyteracy was maintained with no contemptible display of skill between the two polemics. Whether Charles composed without the help of a theological monitor the papers, which on this occasion he produced, may perhaps be doubted; but the author whoever he were, proved himself a match, if not more than a match, ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... about the room and coming back to her sat down in a chair at her side. A mocking hand seemed to dash the words from his lips. There was nothing on earth that he could say to her that wasn't foolish or cruel or contemptible... ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... And shake thyself!' I tremble—but 'tis so; Wretch as thou art, what answer canst thou make? Oh! without question, thou wilt go and shake. What's here? 'The School for Scandal'—pretty schools! Well, and art thou proficient in the rules? Art thou a pupil? Is it thy design To make our names contemptible as thine? 'Old Nick, a novel!' oh! 'tis mighty well - A fool has courage when he laughs at hell; 'Frolic and Fun;' the Humours of Tim Grin;' Why, John, thou grow'st facetious in thy sin; And what?—'The Archdeacon's Charge!'—'tis ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... very poor, but I remained gay. I wish for nothing, except for things that can't be purchased. Still, want is the great abomination which distresses me. I can understand that you should have felt everything crumbling when charity appeared to you so insufficient a remedy as to be contemptible. Yet it does bring relief; and, moreover, it is so sweet to be able to give. Some day, too, by dint of reason and toil, by the good and efficient working of life itself, the reign of justice will surely come. But now it's I that am preaching! ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... conviction that it was part of the sailor's business to take whatever food was put aboard for him. Running short of provisions was to them only an incident natural to the sailor's calling. This view had been handed down by successive generations of avaricious stoats, not the least prominent and contemptible of whom was Elizabeth, with her chilly heart, at one time receiving from Drake the spoils of his voyage in the Pelican; at another walking through the parks publicly with him, and listening with eager fascination to his stories of "amazing adventure," adventures that some of her Catholic ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... the time you have read this letter it will have passed away.... There is nothing to dread but truth and material persecution; beyond these two things enemies can do absolutely nothing. And what an enemy! only a contemptible woman who is jealous of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... regeneration and upraising lay in the individual; and that if the tone of individual feeling could be purified and strengthened, these organisations would become mere unmeaning words. The things that they represented seemed to Hugh unreal and even contemptible, the shadows cast on the mist by the evil selfishnesses, the stupid appetites, the material hopes of men. As simplicity of life and thought became more and more dear to him, he began to recognise that, though there was no doubt room in the world, as it was, for these other busy and fertile ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that are strong enough to bring infinitude into love are angelic exceptions; they are among women what noble geniuses are among men. Their great passions are rare as masterpieces. Below the level of such love come compromises, conventions, passing and contemptible irritations, as in ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... rant, and fustian! The nations are rotten with dirty pride, and dirty greed, and mean lying, and petty ambitions, and sickly sentimentality. Holiness! I should be ashamed to show my face at Heaven's gates and say I came from such a contemptible planet. ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... poet understood that custom was no contemptible instructor how to bear pain. But the same hero complains with more decency, though in ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... will Z be paid for the loss caused him by the profit charged by A in the beginning? BY THE CONSUMER, replies Say. Contemptible equivocation! Is this consumer any other, then, than A, B. C, D, &c., or Z? By whom will Z be paid? If he is paid by A, no one makes a profit; consequently, there is no property. If, on the contrary, Z bears the burden himself, he ceases to be a member of society; since it ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... glad that his posture enabled him to conceal a smile; but perhaps Clement guessed at it, for he exclaimed, 'A fit consequence, to have made myself contemptible ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... believe that some peoples now broken, And crushed by the Turk and the Hun Will arise from their darkness unspoken, And stand in the light of the sun. And it may be that Germans, grown wiser And taught at so fearful a cost, Will have hanged their contemptible Kaiser And regained the ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... have been swept away before the march of those Teutonic folk, whose women were virile and could give birth to men; a folk among whom the woman received on the morning of her marriage, from the man who was to be her companion through life, no contemptible trinket to hang about her throat or limbs, but a shield, a spear, a sword, and a yoke of oxen, while she bestowed on him in return a suit of armour, in token that they two were henceforth to be one in toil and in the facing of danger; that she too should dare with him in war and suffer with ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... love you as well as I do now. You or I may be guilty of a fault; but there is something noble and generous in owning our errors, and striving to mend them; but a lye more than doubles the fault, and when it is found out, makes the lyar appear mean and contemptible.... Thus, my dear, the lyar is a wretch, whom nobody trusts, nobody regards, nobody pities. Indeed papa, said Miss Fanny, I would not be such a creature for all the world. You are very good, my little charmer, said her papa and ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... eyes flashed. Nancy marvelled at this fire, drawn from a gentle nature by what seemed to her so inadequate, so contemptible a cause. 'Of course she denied it, and got angry with me; but any one could see she was glad of what had happened. There's an end between us, at all events. I shall never go to see her again; she's a woman who thinks of nothing but money and fashion. I dislike ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... Horse Guards; and my noble brother lost as little time in making me put my hand to a paper, in which, for prompt payment, I relinquished one half of my legacy. But what cared I for money? I had obtained a profession in which money was contemptible, the only purse the military chest, and the only prize, like Nelson's, a peerage or Westminster Abbey. The ferment did not cool within the week, and within that period I had taken leave of half the county, been wished laurels and aiguillettes by a hundred ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... each other? A man is punished for private libel (over here at any rate), although the consequences can only be slight. But a man may perpetrate international libel, which is a very heinous and far-reaching offence, and there is no law in the world which can punish him. Think of the contemptible crew of journalists and satirists who for ever picture the Englishman as haughty and h-dropping, or the American as vulgar and expectorating. If some millionaire would give them all a trip round the world we should have some rest—and if the plug came out of the boat midway ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... plow and harness. Failure also is a curative agent, and so also is success. But chiefly do the ideals rebuke conceit. The imagination is God in the soul, and lifting up the possible achievement, the glory of what men may become, shames and makes contemptible ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the simple abolition of money, vice and misery would, for the most part, disappear of themselves. Hence in his Utopia, criminals are bound in golden chains and the chamber-pots are made of gold and silver in order to make these metals contemptible. (Ed. 1555, ff., 197 ff.) Similar views among the over-cultured Romans. (Compare 79, 204.) Auri sacra fames. Virgil, AEneid, III, 56. Pliny, too, would recall the days of trade by barter. (H. N., XXXIII, 3.) Even in Boisguillebert, Factum ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... with tempered indulgence, with a conscience satisfied with the hack routine of what is called respectability,—such a man feels no wretchedness; no inward uneasiness disturbs him, no desires which he cannot gratify; and this though he be the basest and most contemptible slave of his own selfishness. Providence will not interfere to punish him. Let him obey the laws under which prosperity is obtainable, and he will obtain it, let him never fear. He will obtain it, be he base or noble. Nature is ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Lecture was first exhibited, a very paltry abridgment was published by a bookseller in the city. This edition was so different from the original delivered by Mr. Stevens, that he thought it too contemptible to affect his interest, which alone prevented him from commencing any legal process against the {VI}publisher for thus trespassing on his right ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... is a house with an inscription denoting that the Genevan philosopher first drew breath under its roof. A little out of the town is Ferney, the residence of Voltaire; where that wonderful, though certainly in many respects contemptible, character, received, like the hermits of old, the visits of pilgrims, not only from his own nation, but from the farthest boundaries of Europe. Here too is Bonnet's abode, and, a few steps beyond, the house of that astonishing woman Madame de Stael: perhaps the first ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... Cleveland, reporter for the Chicago Herald, testified: "I was ... on the Western Indiana tracks for fourteen days ... and I suppose I saw in that time a couple of hundred deputy marshals.... I think they were a very low, contemptible set ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... until the time comes for fruitful display. But they must not, in after-life, imitate the spendthrift vegetable, and blossom only in the strength of what they learned long ago; else they soon come to contemptible end. Wise people live like laurels and cedars, and go on mining in the earth, while they adorn and ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Mrs. Piozzi in the European Mag. for 1788, xiii. 313, 393, and xiv. 89. He calls her 'the frontless female, who goes now by the mean appellation of Piozzi; La Piozzi, as my fiddling countrymen term her; who has dwindled down into the contemptible wife of her daughter's singing-master.' His excuse was the attacks made on him by her in the correspondence just published between herself and Johnson (see Piozzi Letters, i. 277, 319). He suspected her, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... attempting to cast a blemish on the opera, or to excommunicate Signor Senesino or Signora Cuzzoni. With regard to myself, I could presume to wish that the magistrates would suppress I know not what contemptible pieces written against the stage. For when the English and Italians hear that we brand with the greatest mark of infamy an art in which we excel; that we excommunicate persons who receive salaries from the king; that we condemn ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... amity, have been clenched at each other, or have dipped furtively in one another's pockets. I know that we didn't dine together the next year, because young Barker swore he wouldn't put his feet under the same mahogany with such a very contemptible scoundrel as that Mixer; and Nibbles, who borrowed money at Valparaiso of young Stubbs, who was then a waiter in a restaurant, didn't ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... piece of advice to give you, which you'll find useful through life. Never go and repeat what you hear about anybody. It's done by people through idleness sometimes, and often through ill-nature, or with a downright evil intention; but whatever is the cause, it's a contemptible propensity, and is certain to lead to harm." I promised that I would follow this advice, ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... like yourself in this, Helen," said Irene. "You're not speaking as you think. Another time, you'll confess it's abominable savagery, with not one good word to be said for it. And more contemptible than I ever suspected! I'm so glad I've seen this. It helps to clear my ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... impossibility of preserving in it the purity of his character as a philosopher or a man. He was aware that in the existing state of society at Rome, wealth was necessary to men high in station; wealth alone could retain influence, and a poor minister became at once contemptible. The distributor of the Imperial favours must have his banquets, his receptions, his slaves and freedmen; he must possess the means of attracting if not of bribing; he must not seem too virtuous, too austere, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... not have a higher duty than to follow it, we should seek to meet those whose aims were incompatible with it as we meet things physically inconvenient, without insulting them as if they were morally vile or logically contemptible. Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others. Beyond the pale of actual unanimity the only possible unselfishness is chivalry—a recognition of the inward right and justification of our enemies fighting against us. This chivalry has long been practised in the battle-field ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... loose confederacies of tribes, distrustful of each other, unaccustomed to act together, and, though brave, possessing no discipline or settled military organization. At the same time, his adversaries must not be regarded as altogether contemptible. The Philistines and Canaanites in Palestine, the Arabs of the Sinaitic and Syrian deserts, the Rutennu of the Lebanon and of Upper Syria, the Nairi of the western Mesopotamian region, were individually brave men, were inured to warfare, had a strong love of independence, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... occupied fifteen days. Bouvard was dying of fatigue. He let everything go for a sum so contemptible that Gouy at first opened his eyes wide, and ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... insurgents was thus raised to about a hundred and fifty—a very small body of men, contemptible in point of numbers compared with the overwhelming forces by which they were opposed, but all animated by a determined spirit, and commanded by fearless and indomitable leaders. The band was divided into three brigades of fifty each; Laporte taking the command of the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... priests, aided to foster Roland's belief that he was supporting a beloved king against the professors of those revolutionary and Jacobinical doctrines which to him were the very atheism of politics. The experience of a few years in the service of a bigot so contemptible as Ferdinand, whose highest object of patriotism was the restoration of the Inquisition, added another disappointment to those which had already embittered the life of a man who had seen in the grand ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Letter, calls this "a most disgraceful and most contemptible wish;" but it may be paralleled out of Euripides, and still more closely out of Homer. "Talk not," says the shade of Achilles to Ulysses ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... remembered the promise he had made her in the matter of playing that night. He winced sharply at this, and the remembrance of his fault harried and harassed him. In spite of himself, he felt contemptible. Yet he had broken his promises to her in this very matter of playing before—before that day of their visit to the Chinese restaurant—and had felt no great qualm of self-reproach. Had their relations changed? Rather the reverse for they had done ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... the reader will recollect from my Ethics, Courage comes from the same source as the virtues of Justice and Humanity. This is, I admit, to take a very high view of the matter; but apart from it I cannot well explain why cowardice seems contemptible, and personal courage a noble and sublime thing; for no lower point of view enables me to see why a finite individual who is everything to himself—nay, who is himself even the very fundamental condition of the existence of the rest of the world—should not ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... was conspicuous in the ranks of the enemy; together with the young Duc de Candale, the son of D'Epernon, who had embraced the reformed faith, the Duc de Piney-Luxembourg, and the Dowager Countess of Soissons, who withdrew from the Court at Tours, and joined her son at Loudun. This example, contemptible as it was, proved contagious, and was followed by two of the greatest Princesses of the Blood, the Dowager Princesses of Conde and Longueville,[219] to the extreme annoyance of the Queen-mother, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... it is, that thus puts the life of the innocent and injured in the scale with that of the destroyer, and leaves the decision of immutable differences to skill, to fortune, and a thousand trivial and contemptible circumstances. You are not to be told how much more there is of true heroism in refusing than in giving a challenge, in bearing an injury with superiority and virtuous fortitude, than in engaging in a Gothic ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... saint, and, never stopping to give his better nature time to rise and rebuke him, he had summoned Janet. It was to sting Blakely, more than to punish the girl, he had ordered Natzie to the guard-room. Then, as the hours wore on and he realized how contemptible had been his conduct, the sense of shame well-nigh crushed him, and though it galled him to think that some of his own kind, probably, had connived at Natzie's escape, he thanked God the girl was gone. And now having convinced herself that here at last she had positive proof ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... much more, which I shall omit. It forgot, however, to remark that this vaunted nonchalance may be the offspring of the most contemptible and the most odious of passions: and that while it may be exceedingly refined to appear uninterested when others are interested, to witness excellence without emotion, and to listen to genius without animation, the ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... no contemptible bard; he composed a national poem, "The Worthiness of Wales," which has been reprinted, and will be still dear to his "Fatherland," as the Hollanders expressively denote their natal spot. He wrote in the "Mirrour of Magistrates," ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... study the noble and beautiful stars for their own sakes to find out what they are, and what they are doing, what is their nature and what their place in the great scheme, or do you peek and pry at them through the keyhole of a contemptible curiosity in order to discover what you think they can do for you, to set you on high, to puff you out into a personage and cause you to be noticed of the foolish ones of this world? Which are you, sir, a young man ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... course, prepared to hear that of all the names in the universe the philosopher had the most unconquerable aversion for Tristram, "the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it of anything in the world." He would break off in the midst of one of his frequent disputes on the subject of names, and "in a spirited epiphonema, or rather erotesis," demand of his antagonist "whether he would take upon him to say he had ever remembered, ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... to accuse you of taking Ripley's scarf-pin, nor do I like to suspect him of putting up such a contemptible trick," explained Dr. Thornton, thoughtfully. "As far as the incident of the scarf-pin goes I am willing to admit that your explanation is just as likely to be good as is ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... America, where, into the bargain, we had done nothing, the uneasiness on the convention at Stade, which, by this time, I believe we have broken, and on the disappointment about Rochfort, added to the wretched state of our internal affairs; all this has reduced us to a most contemptible figure. The people are dissatisfied, mutinous, and ripe for insurrections, which indeed have already appeared on the militia and on the dearness of corn, which is believed to be owing to much villany in the dealers. But the other day I saw a strange sight, a man ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... diligent ministers. As for the majority, they have been possessed by a spirit of 'deep delusion;' their only idea of a 'clergyman is a preaching machine, that makes a prodigious vociferation, and pleases the herd.' They are destined to become' contemptible and base;' their attitude is an 'unrighteous attitude;' they are aiming, 'like Popish priests,' at 'supremacy' and a deadly despotism, through the sides of the people; they are 'suicidally divesting themselves of their power as clergymen, by surrendering ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... an agony, like that which finds no comforter, was stamped on her face; and with these a hate, a horror, a contempt, mingled triumphantly. The door opened,—it was closed,—and my wife was lost to me forever. I essayed to call her back. "Eudora" came faintly to my lips. It was too late. Then a contemptible, jealous hatred took possession of me. Ere I left my apartment, I said, "She shall pay dear for this! she shall soon come submissive to my feet! she cannot live away from me; and before I forgive, she must be humiliated!" How little did I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... taking his part. I think he was contemptible beyond words; but—isn't it possible that he has regretted, that he has not taken the money ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a picture, still look upon it with the quiet devotion of an old worshipper, who no longer offers incense on the shrine, but peaceably presents his inch of taper, taking special care in doing so not to burn his own fingers. Nothing in life can be more ludicrous or contemptible than an old man aping the passions of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Napoleon had espoused the cause of Ferdinand, and intended to deliver the Spanish nation from the detested rule of Godoy. Since the open attack made upon Ferdinand in the publication of the pretended conspiracy, the Crown Prince, who was personally as contemptible as any of his enemies, had become the idol of the people. For years past the hatred of the nation towards Godoy and the Queen had been constantly deepening, and the very reforms which Godoy effected in the hope of attaching ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... his eye sparkling with enthusiasm, "and the bravest, and the most generous, and the best; and no quality that can adorn one of God's creatures shall be wanting in him when I have taught him the divine art. It is not with a little contemptible gold that he means to reward my zeal. To him I am as a second father; and it is with the confidence of a son that he explains to me his labors ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... and she sat in the hotel hall, musing. Deane's revelation of Charlie's treachery hardly surprised her; she meant to upbraid him severely, but she was conscious that, if little surprised, she was hardly more than a little angry. His conduct was indeed contemptible; it revealed an utter instability and fickleness of mind which made her gravely uneasy as to Mary Travers's chances of permanent happiness. Yes, scornful one might b; but who could be seriously angry with the poor boy? And perhaps, after all, she did him injustice. Some natures ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... vicious habits by long and repeated indulgences of inbred corruption, each one following the bent of his own corrupt mind, and countenancing his neighbour in the pursuit of sensual gratifications. Here iniquity abounds, and those outward gross sins which in Europe would render a person contemptible in the public eye, and obnoxious to the civil law, are become fashionable and familiar—adultery, fornication, theft, drunkenness, extortion, violence, and uncleanness of every kind, the natural concomitants of deism and infidelity, which have boldly ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... underground railroad." The Federal Constitution required their return, but this task had been left to State laws and courts, and was performed slackly, if at all. The total number of fugitives was not large nor the pecuniary loss heavy, but the South was exasperated by what it considered a petty and contemptible depredation. So there was a demand that the Federal government should undertake and enforce the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... should also receive a stated allowance for dress, within which limit she ought always to restrict her expenses. Any excess of expenditure under this head should be left to the considerate kindness of her husband to concede. Nothing is more contemptible than for a woman to have perpetually to ask her husband for small sums for housekeeping expenses—nothing more annoying and humiliating than to have to apply to him always for money for her own ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... fight against my brothers, so to speak, in a cause that I felt I must hate. As I rode on, thinking thus, I could see that there was no such oppression and tyranny as the Irish captain spoke of; nothing but a bitter and contemptible race-hatred, fostered by ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... see and face my accusers," he said boldly. "What man has dared to charge me and my friends with the mean and contemptible crime ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... are a contemptible lot over yonder. Some of you are Commissioners and some are Lieutenant-Governors, and some have the V. C., and a few are privileged to walk about the Mall arm in arm with the Viceroy; but I have seen Mark Twain this golden morning, have shaken his hand and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... infested Berlin, and now have made Prussia so unhappy. But, instead of suppressing this agitation in time, you looked on idly, while miserable scribblers and journalists, influenced by women, constantly added fuel to the fire. I have been told of a contemptible journal in this city which is said to have preached war against France with a rabid fanaticism. You ought to have silenced the madman who edited it. Why did ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... man who threw a girl over as something contemptible, and he certainly did not want to appear to himself in that light; or, for her sake, that people should think he had tired of her, or found her wanting in any one particular. He knew only too well how people would ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... to put considerable emphasis and scorn into his vivid description of the contemptible actions of the reformed tramp. Hugh was laughing to himself over his chum's righteous indignation; nor did he have any doubt but that, given the opportunity, Thad would most heartily have assisted in a little operation calculated to furnish the said Brother ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... [281] Equivalent to—poor, contemptible fellow: but I must leave the reader to determine the exact meaning of this term of reproach. As pingle signifies a small croft, Nares (citing a passage from Lyly's "Euphues") says that pingler is "probably a labouring horse, kept by a farmer in his homestead." "Gloss." ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... Vapid. A peer! pshaw! contemptible;—when I ask a man who he is, I don't want to know what are his titles, and such nonsense; no, Old Scratch, I want to know what he has written, when he had the curtain up, and whether he's a true son of the drama.—Harkye, don't make yourself uneasy on my account—In my next pantomime, perhaps, ...
— The Dramatist; or Stop Him Who Can! - A Comedy, in Five Acts • Frederick Reynolds
... undertooke; and his stricte and unsociable humour in not keepinge company with the other officers of the Army in ther jollityes and excesses, to which most of the superiour officers under the Earle of Essex were inclined, and by which he often made himselfe ridiculous or contemptible, drew all those of the like sowre or reserved natures to his society and conversation, and gave him opportunity to forme ther understandings, inclinations, and resolutions to his owne modell; and by this ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... over the early part of this journal, and when I came to the conversation I had with Mrs. Cabot, in which I made a list of my wants, I was astonished that I could ever have had such contemptible ones. Let me think what I really and ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... RUPPRECHT of Bavaria, in an order to his troops last week, referred to the British in the following words:—"Here is the enemy which chiefly blocks the way in the direction of restoration of peace." Conceive a "contemptible little army" being able to do that! It makes one wonder whether the first epithet was perhaps a ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... that," says Mr. Robert, "a sneaking, contemptible hound! Trying to pass yourself off for Melly, were you?" he goes on. "Of all ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... gave him a qualm. The man was so contemptible; so unutterably low and vile and cowardly. To kill him would be like crushing vermin. He would not fight; he would cower and cringe and shriek. There might be a battle when they took De Launay for the "murder," of course, but ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... may seem to some minds a dreadfully low and contemptible state of things. "What!" a romantic reader may exclaim, "they had arrived in that celebrated city, from which in days of old the stalwart Vikings used to issue on their daring voyages, in which the descendants of ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... did the iron trade revive than the price of cheese responded. The elder men cannot refrain from chuckling over the altered tone of the inhabitants of cities towards the farmers. 'Years ago,' they say, 'we were held up to scorn, and told that we were quite useless; there was nothing so contemptible as the British farmer. Now they have discovered that, after all, we are some good, and ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... doesn't see that in the world at large men have the best of it almost in everything. The husband is not only justified in being a tyrant, but becomes contemptible if he is not so. A man has his pocket full of money; a woman is supposed to take what he gives her. A man has ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... but a mere woman disgracing the clothes he wears. Had I been a puny thing like him I should have ran away just as he did, and left you to die on yon rocks. And yet you talk of my copying him. Why, he's just a soft-muscled contemptible coward." ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... adversaries: that seeing the plummet is now in the hands of our Zerubbabels, all mountaines may become plains, and they may bring forth the capstone of the Lords House with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it: and that how weak and contemptible builders soever we be, the Lord would enable us to build with them, that none may have cause to despise the day of our small beginnings, nor to stop our progresse in the work which he hath given us to do, And as for us, who cannot ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... think me very good for loving the only good person in the whole world! That is very odd! Why, Davie, I should be the most contemptible creature, knowing him as I do, not to love him with all my heart—yes, with all the big heart I shall have one day when ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... his little Instrument in both his hands, and continued pissing into the hotte water, fresh coole water. In this delicious place of pleasure, I was verie iocund and full of content, but the same was much apalled, in that I thought my selfe a contemptible bodie, among such beauties, and dewe coniealed into Snowe, and as it were a Negro or ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna |
