"Decry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The great men in literature are the epoch makers, and Sir Walter is the only man in the literary history of the world who was an epoch maker in more than one direction. It is the fashion to-day to decry him as a poet. There are critics who, setting a high value on the verse of Wordsworth or of Browning, for example, cannot concede the name of poetry to any modern work which is not subtle and profound, metaphysical or analytical. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... English contractors in South America took advantage of the statements in this book to depreciate the American railway system and American civil engineers, for their own private advantage in obtaining work, some Americans have been so foolish as to decry the book altogether, as traitorous to the interests of the country. Such mingled bigotry and conceit, shrinking from just criticism, would fetter all progress but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... using dull coloured carpets and hangings, have your modern reproductions antiqued. If you prefer gay, cheering tones, let the painted furniture be bright. These schemes are equally interesting in different ways. It is stupid to decry new things, since every grey antique had its ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... few designing factious men, who have it at heart to establish some favourite schemes at the price of the liberty of mankind, and the very essence of religion, it is not in the power of such persons to decry any book they please; witness that excellent book called, 'A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament;' a book written (if I may venture on the expression) with the pen of an angel, and calculated to restore ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... some measures can be devised and speedily executed to restore the credit of our currency and restrain extortion and punish forestallers.' A few days later: 'To make and extort money in every shape that can be devised, and at the same time to decry its value, seems to have become a mere business and an epidemical disease.' On December 30th, 1778, 'speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seems to have got the better of every consideration, and almost of every order of men; * * party disputes and personal quarrels are ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Here seemed my opportunity. I showed her the nine and facetiously asked her to choose; or should I spread them all at once? She always has too much in hand to stop to jest over trifles; she waved the tea-cloths aside, and seized her cup off Mrs Bust's tray, and went on talking shop. I don't want to decry Jessica. She's worth all the rest put together. While they gabble, she does things. If Mrs Carter (who hates the sight of her, by the way) and the rest of them would only let ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... it was nearly empty, and poured out a wine-glass of the liquor. With these little exertions he was so much exhausted as almost to faint. Nothing saved him, probably, but a sip of the wine which he took from the glass as it stood on the table. It has been much the fashion, of late years, to decry wine, and this because it is a gift of Providence that has been greatly abused. In Mark Woolston's instance it proved, what it was designed to be, a blessing instead of a curse. That single sip of wine produced an effect on him like that of ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... made nothing! I feel quite guilty among you all, for I took not a single coin the whole afternoon," said Maud the modest; but Jim would not allow his favourite sister to decry herself in his presence, and was up in arms in a ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... men, that after 30 years not unsuccessful practice in this great City, I should now at last forbear sending my Bills to the Apothecaries, knowing that hereby a whole Company of men interested in the World (who by their number, noise, and tricks, may be able to decry any Physician) will become my implacable adversaries, and by their private whispers of untrue tales, will endeavour to their utmost, either to keep me from any new, or shuffle me out of my fixed imployment. But not fearing ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... him more and more, giving throughout often a sense of extreme artificiality and of the self- consciousness usually bred of it, is but another incidental proof of this. And let no reader think that I wish here to decry R. L. Stevenson. I only desire faithfully to try to understand him, and to indicate the class or group to which his genius and temperament really belong. He is from first to last the idealistic dreamy or mystical romancer, and not the true idealist or dealer ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... I, "Mr. North, is the 'Northern Evil' again. Oh, what a shame it is for intelligent people to decry Southern Christians in this way, and to erect their own moral sense into ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... deny the necessity, or decry the utility, of such an education, are generally deficient in a sense of what makes good literature—they are 'word-deaf,' as others are colour-blind. All writing is a kind of word-weaving; a skilful writer will make a splendid tissue out of the diverse fibres of words. But to care for words, to ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... all should be assailed, for the awakening of any one of them may bring to pass the accomplishment of the preacher's glorious purpose. Of course we have become familiar with all that is said by superior persons about what they are pleased to decry as "mere sentiment." We know, but too well, the man who at once, and invariably, characterises any preaching that touches the hearts of men as "playing to the gallery,"—the man whose one and only demand is for intellectualism. Him we know in his superiority to feeling, his scorn of smiles and ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... me to decry the holy state of matrimony, Mrs. Dr. dear, but I felt that when a man was running a revolution he had his hands full and should have postponed marriage until a more fitting season. The Russians are done for this time and there would be no sense in shutting ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... I am no more inclined to decry social culture than moral principle; but I acknowledge no aristocracy except one of service and self-sacrifice, in which he that is chief shall be servant, and he that is greatest of all, servant of all. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... opinion, "the tragedy has lost half its beauty." Dennis has remarked, whether justly or not, that, to secure the favourable reception of Cato, "the town was poisoned with much false and abominable criticism," and that endeavours had been used to discredit and decry poetical justice. A play in which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miscarry, may doubtless be good, because it is a just representation of the common events of human life: but since all reasonable beings naturally ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... have been conceded to be man's province. He has used new materials and labor-saving devices in railway stations and place of amusements, not selfishly, but because of the appreciation of the travelling public. It is the fashion to decry labor-saving devices in the house, because they do away with that sign of pecuniary ability, the capped and aproned maid. The obvious saving of steps by the speaking-tube and telephone-call is frowned upon for the same reason. It is this attitude of society which stands ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... beautiful in summer, when all the fine trees are in full grandeur, for I never saw any larger or more flourishing. It is the custom for the French to decry everything Spanish, even to the natural productions; and I had often been told that the moment the French side was quitted all was barren and worthless; I found, however, on the contrary, that the mountain-scenery greatly increased in sublimity the nearer ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... he has come out from the misty twilight of Transcendentalism into the clear daylight of common sense. And surely it is not for us to decry the bridge, or, if you please, the tunnel through which he has crossed. He agitates the necessity and practicability of social reform, but it must be through individual effort. Years ago he decided that society was in a low state, now he calls on all men to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... officious neighbors that his father was speaking ill of him. After having been proud of his son's successes, and having boasted of them everywhere, Melchior was weak and shameful enough to be jealous of them. He tried to decry them. It was stupid to weep; Jean-Christophe could only shrug his shoulders in contempt. It was no use being angry about it, for his father did not know what he was doing, and was embittered by his own downfall. The boy said ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... attempt to reflect on the staying powers of the race, I have not the remotest idea of pandering to conceit or vanity, to the contrary, I decry any disposition to extol and magnify whatever we are subjectively, and whatever we have achieved. The fierce conflicts we have undergone and the terrible crucible through which the cruel hand of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... war?—Go, fool, to Dardan ears These bodings whisper, to thy new ally. Go, swell the panic, spread the coward's fears. Puff up the foemen's prowess to the sky,— Twice-conquered churls,—and Latin arms decry. See now, forsooth, the Myrmidons afraid Of Phrygian arms, Tydides fain to fly, Achilles trembling, Aufidus in dread Shrunk from the Hadrian deep, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... Scene is only changed; for who wou'd lay A Plot, so hopeful, just the same dull way? Poets, like Statesmen, with a little change, Pass off old Politicks for new and strange; Tho the few Men of Sense decry't aloud, The Cheat will pass with the unthinking Croud: The Rabble 'tis we court, those powerful things, Whose Voices can impose even Laws on Kings. A Pox of Sense and Reason, or dull Rules, Give ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... betwixt me and starvation, and maybe working my way before the mast to get there at all, had a sting in it. 'Twas a strange thing that anything so noble and partaking of the divine as the love of an honest man for a woman should have any tincture of aught ignoble in it, and one is caused thereby to decry one's state of mortality, which seems as inseparable from selfish ends as the red wings of a rose from the thorny stem which binds it to earth. Truly the longer I live the more am I aware of the speck which mars the completeness of all in this world, and ever the desire ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... these principles, every considerable father of a family loses the sanctuary of his house. Debet sua cuique domus esse perfugium tutissimum, says the law, which your legislators have taken so much pains first to decry, then to repeal. They destroy all the tranquillity and security of domestic life: turning the asylum of the house into a gloomy prison, where the father of the family must drag out a miserable existence, endangered in proportion to the apparent means of his safety,—where he is worse ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... any applicability to the case in hand, or if he will arrest and photograph 'the genius of the English tongue,' so that we may know the original when we meet with it, he will confer a public favor. And now I submit for consideration whether the sole strength of those who decry is being built and its congeners does not consist in their talent for calling hard names. If they have not an uneasy subconsciousness that their cause is weak, they would, at least, do well in eschewing the violence to which, for want of something better, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... wold bass-viol that I set such vallie by." Squire.—"You may hold the manse in fee, You may wed my spouse, my children's memory of me may decry." ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... "I do not decry St. Paul," answered Bonpre quietly—"He was a gifted and clever man, but he was a Man—he was not God-in-Man. Christ's doctrine leaves no place for differing sects; St. Paul's method of applying that doctrine serves as authority for the establishment of ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... such reputation, that the Jesuits and Dominicans began to be greatly alarmed, and determined to put a stop to the progress of this method. To do this, it was necessary to decry the author of it; and as heresy is an imputation that makes the strongest impression at Rome, Molinos and his followers were given out to be heretics. Books were also written by some of the Jesuits against Molinos and his method; but they were ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Canning, each of whom administered our foreign policy with no small share of success, were not linguists; and as to Charles Fox, he has left a French sentence on record that will last even as long as his own great name. I do not want to decry the study of languages; I simply desire to affirm that linguists—and through all I have said I mean colloquial linguists—are for the most part poor creatures, not otherwise distinguished than by the gift of tongues; and I want to protest against the undue pre-eminence accorded to the possessors ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... few are observed to be happy, is a token of its price and value. If well formed and rightly taken, 'tis the best of all human societies; we cannot live without it, and yet we do nothing but decry it. It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out. Socrates being asked, whether it was more commodious to take a wife or not, "Let a man take which course he will," said he; "he will repent." 'Tis a contract ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... names, call by ugly names; avile|, revile; vilify, vilipend[obs3]; bespatter; backbite; clapperclaw[obs3]; rave against, thunder against, fulminate against; load with reproaches. exclaim against, protest against, inveigh against, declaim against, cry out against, raise one's voice against. decry; cry down, run down, frown down; clamor, hiss, hoot, mob, ostracize, blacklist; draw up a round robin, sign a round robin. animadvert upon, reflect upon; glance at; cast reflection, cast reproach, cast a slur upon; insinuate, damn with faint praise; "hint ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... She could not bear in the least to decry her dear 'Jass,' and yet she knew that her sister had so far troubled her head very little, if at all, about her aunt's girls' club ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... of the character of Free States, and makes them voluntary participators in the guilt of slaveholding. Because it is a law Which disgraces our country in the eyes of the whole civilized world, and gives plausible occasion to the votaries of despotic power to decry republican institutions. Because it is a law which forbids us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and which makes it a crime to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and to visit and succor the sick and imprisoned. Because it is a law which renders the ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... scientific circles, the "species question" divides with Italy and the Volunteers the attention of general society. Everybody has read Mr. Darwin's book, or, at least, has given an opinion upon its merits or demerits; pietists, whether lay or ecclesiastic, decry it with the mild railing which sounds so charitable; bigots denounce it with ignorant invective; old ladies of both sexes consider it a decidedly dangerous book, and even savants, who have no better mud to throw, quote antiquated writers to show that its author is no better than an ape himself; ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... did not hesitate to decry the Covenant, and to make eager profession of his own recantation of its bigotry, urged that no premature steps should be taken for restoring Episcopacy. That it would come in time he had no doubt; but it would be the height of folly to arouse susceptibilities that ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Mythology Momus is said to be the Son of Nox and Somnus, of Darkness and Sleep. Idle Men, who have not been at the Pains to accomplish or distinguish themselves, are very apt to detract from others; as ignorant Men are very subject to decry those Beauties in a celebrated Work which they have not Eyes to discover. Many of our Sons of Momus, who dignify themselves by the Name of Criticks, are the genuine Descendants of these two illustrious Ancestors. They are often led into ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... are not among those who decry the Greek and Latin classics. We think it a glorious privilege to read both those grand old tongues, and that an intelligent, cultivated man who is shut out from the converse of the splendid minds of those olden times loses a part of his birthright; and therefore it is that we mourn that but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... ready to lay down his worldly possessions, and even life itself, for the cause of the gospel; while the other may be an unregenerate man, so little desirous of the conversion of others, that he would but decry and detest them did he find them converted already, and so careless of the gospel, that did not his living depend on professing to preach it, he would neither be an advocate for it himself, nor yet come within earshot of where it was advocated by others. The Highlanders of Sutherland ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... ever can succeed upon the English Stage. For, if you consider the Plots, our own are fuller of variety; if the Writing, ours are more quick, and fuller of spirit: and therefore 'tis a strange mistake in those who decry the way of writing Plays in Verse; as if the English therein imitated ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe |
