"Disdain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sorrowed Mother of the Crucified and pray. Only my knee and my tongue worship death—my heart remains true to life. But do not look so sourly," continued the Spaniard, as he saw what little gratification his words seemed to give the Rabbi. "Do not look at me with disdain. My nose is not a renegade. When once by chance I came into this street at dinner time, and the well-known savory odors of the Jewish kitchen rose to my nose, I was seized with the same yearning which our fathers felt for the fleshpots of Egypt—pleasant tasting memories ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... giant in comparison with this dwarfish antagonist. As she approached, the little craft glided swiftly in front of her grounded consort, like a new David offering battle to a modern Goliath. As if in disdain of this puny antagonist, the Merrimac began an attack on the Minnesota. But when the two eleven-inch guns of the Monitor opened fire, hurling solid balls of one hundred and sixty-eight pounds' weight against the iron sides of her great opponent, it became at once evident that ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... even to the least so, offers moments of considerable happiness, for they are not only disposed, but able to enjoy most things within their reach. With what trifles at that period are we content; the things from which in after- life we should turn away in disdain please us then, for we are in the midst of a golden cloud, and everything seems decked with a golden hue. Never during any portion of my life did time flow on more speedily than during the two or ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... night loneliness had no fears for her. If she heard a whistle on the avenue, the honk of a car—the familiar old signals of the boys and girls, she smiled her disdain, and curling comfortably in her great chair, bent her ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... the carriage of some fair compatriote with herself and daughters. If we are paying a morning visit, in he comes, "glissarding it" into the drawing-room, and bowing like a dancing-master; nor does he disdain to produce a small book of testimonials, in which the subscribers have agreed to give him a poetic character, and compare him to a torrent, to a nightingale, to an eagle, to an avalanche. They who love flattery as a bee loves honey, are all captivated, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... "You're liberals!" What utter disdain she threw into the word. "And what's more you're citizens. In all these movements," she went on, "you always find two classes—citizens and criminals. You two are both ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... exaggerated. With more or less qualification, the same may be said of Parson Adams, of Sir Roger de Coverley, and even of the Vicar of Wakefield. . . . It follows therefore that art and correctness are far from identical, and that the one is sometimes proved by the disdain of the other. For the ideal, whether humorous or serious, does not consist in the imitation but in the exaltation of nature. And we must accordingly enquire of art, not how far it resembles what we have seen, so much as how far it ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... beside, when I think of leaving this house, my heart saddens at the thought, and tells me I cannot be happy out of it; yet I think I could return to a peasant's life with cheerfulness, rather than live in a palace under disdain and contempt." ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... young Irish recollet, in his way from Rome to his own country. He complained, that he was almost starved by the inhospitable disposition of the French people; and that the regular clergy, in particular, had treated him with the most cruel disdain. I relieved his necessities, and gave him a letter to a gentleman of his own country ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... them half so well myself," says Sylvia, with feminine disdain of reasons. "They always had so many soldiers, though the others were so cruel when ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... that it is by a not unnatural progress I pass from speaking of dinners and diners to the kindred subject of the present chapter, and I trust the reader will not disdain the lowly-minded muse that sings this mild domestic lay. I was resolved in writing this book to tell what I had found most books of travel very slow to tell,—as much as possible of the everyday life of a people whose habits are so different from our own; endeavoring to develop a just notion of ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... misunderstood. I have been speaking of only one brand of American interviewer. I encountered a couple of really admirable women interviewers, not too young, and a confraternity of men who did not disdain an elementary knowledge of their business. One of these arrived with a written list of questions, took a shorthand note of all I said, and then brought me a proof to correct. In interviewing this amounts almost to genius.... ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... kissed have no pleasure in sadness, Bitterness, cant nor disdain. Hearts to thy piping beat bravely in gladness Through poverty, exile or pain. Gold is denied us—thine image we fashion Out of the slag or the muck. We are thy people in court or by campfire,— We are thy ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... the court-bankers, etc. make the greater part of those who advance their money in all public exigencies. Such people are commonly men of mean birth, but of great wealth, and frequently of great pride. They are too proud to marry their equals, and women of quality disdain to marry them. They frequently resolve, therefore, to live bachelors; and having neither any families of their own, nor much regard for those of their relations, whom they are not always very fond of acknowledging, they desire only to live in splendour during their own time, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... the nature of the crime? Surely there was a contemptible side to it, as well as a dangerous side, or Mrs. Catherick would not have repeated my own words, referring to Sir Percival's rank and power, with such marked disdain as she had certainly displayed. It was a contemptible crime then and a dangerous crime, and she had shared in it, and it was associated with ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... was founded in wise, humane and benevolent principles. It was founded in revelation and in reason too: It was consistent with the principles of the best, and greatest, and wisest legeslators of antiquity.——Tyranny in every form, shape and appearance, was their disdain and abhorrence; no fear of punishment, nor even of death itself, in exquisite tortures, had been sufficient to conquer that steady, manly, pertinacious spirit, with which they had opposed the tyrants of those ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... a growing command of our surroundings are possible, after a little practice, without taking much of that time we call so valuable and waste so sinfully. "I haven't time," says the farmer, the banker, the professor, with a kind of disdain for the spirit of life, when, as a matter of fact, he has all the time there is, all that anybody has—to wit, this moment, this great and golden moment!—but knows not how to employ it. He creeps when he might walk, walks when he might run, runs when he might fly—and lives like a woodchuck in ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... the great Evening Star, refused to marry until her betrothed brought her a present worth her acceptance. The man went into the jungle and killed a deer, which he presented to her; but the fair lady turned away in disdain. He went again and returned with a mias, the great monkey [sic] who haunts the forest; but this present was not more to her taste. Then, in a fit of despair, the lover went abroad, and killed the first man ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... in such a magnificent tone of disdain that Joe was rather amused at the fellow. In his red shirt and coarse breeches, and brown, not overclean skin, he certainly didn't look much like a gentleman in the conventional sense of ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... populations whose official defenders it had defeated in battle; but nonesuch could vie with the Spartans in the sublimity of their military self-esteem. Overweening confidence in the prowess of her army led Sparta to trample with ruthless disdain on the rights of others. The iniquitous attack on Thebes, a state thought incapable of effectual resentment, was avenged by the defeat of Leuctra, which announced the end of the political supremacy and the military ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... start that he was afraid of the girl. It was incredible, but it was true. He had never felt that way to a woman before, but there was something in her eyes, a cold disdain which cowed even as ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... evidently possessed some authority; nevertheless, I thought I could detect an air of concern in his features, as he offered to help one of the captives out of the boat. The latter, however, regarded him with an air of disdain, and, though his hands were tied behind him, leaped ashore without assistance. He was a man of commanding stature, with a well-bronzed face, and a look of great energy of character. He wore a band of gold lace round his cap, and ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... is more pitiful than life making an attempt at art? We artists despise no one more thoroughly than the dilettante, the red-blooded man, who thinks he can be an artist occasionally and on the side. I assure you, this kind of disdain is one of my own most personal experiences. I find myself in company in an aristocratic house, we eat, drink, and converse, and understand each other perfectly, and I feel glad and grateful to be able to disappear for a time among ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... with great disdain at the other; "do you imagine for an instant that such a shabby imitation of a horse as you are can run ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... present. To a very unusual elevation is added an irregularity of form, that justly entitles it to rank among the foremost of the grand and wildly magnificent scenes of nature. It abounds with peaks and ridges, gaps and fissures, that not only disdain the smallest uniformity of figure, but are ever changing shape, as the point of view shifts. Beneath this strange confusion, the western part of this waving coast-line observes a regularity equally remarkable as the wild disorder which prevails ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... onager, confounded by our older travellers with the zebra, is the Gur-i-khar of Persia, where it is the noblest game from which kings did not disdain to take a cognomen, e.g., Bahram-i-Gur. It is the "wild ass" of Jeremiah (ii. 24: xiv. 6). The meat is famous in poetry for combining the flavours peculiar to all kinds of flesh (Ibn Khallikan iii. 117; iii. 239, etc.) and is noticed by Herodotus (Clio. cxxxiii.) and by Xenophon (Cyro. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Fabian, I don't happen to be in love with him," replied Corona, with just a shade of disdain in her manner. ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... to a generous mind, that, by harboring unjust suspicions of another, one has been led to repel friendly advances with indifference or disdain. In order to assuage some remorseful pangs, Miss Blake began from this time to treat Laura with distinguished favor. On the other hand, Laura, delighted at this pleasant change in Miss Blake's demeanor, sought frequent opportunities of testifying her joy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... during the late war to receive the Idan mother (Cybele) when new gods were invited hither to relieve our distresses? Who poured out their riches to supply a depleted treasury during that same war, now so fresh in memory? Was it not the Roman matrons? Masters do not disdain to listen to the prayers of their slaves, and we are asked, forsooth, to shut our ears to the petitions ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... enormous yellow-haired muzzle on its front paws... they regarded one another calmly... then something odd happened. Perhaps it was the sight of the rifle, perhaps it recognised an enemy of its kind, but the lion which up until then had looked on the people of Tarascon with sovereign disdain, yawning in their faces, seemed to feel a stirring of anger. First it sniffed and uttered a rumbling growl, it stretched out its forefeet and unsheathed its claws, then it got up, raised its head, shook ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... overcome all that; and as you are to go away, I look upon you now as Mrs. Jervis's guest while you both stay, and not as my servant; and so you may say what you will. But I'll tell you, Pamela, why you need not take this matter in such high disdain!—You have a very pretty romantic turn for virtue, and all that.—And I don't suppose but you'll hold it still: and nobody will be able to prevail upon you. But, my child, (sneeringly he spoke it,) do but consider what a fine opportunity you will then have for a tale every day to good mother ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... this point was ill chosen," said Richelieu, with disdain; "it in no way advances the taking of Perpignan, and must have cost ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... acknowledged them, acknowledged the Jewish religion for Christians, was not confined to the early Quakers, but admitted among many other serious Christians of those times. The great John Milton himself, in a treatise which he wrote against tithes, did not disdain to use it. "Although, says he, hire to the labourer be of moral and perpetual right, yet that special kind of hire, the tenth, can be of no right or necessity but to that special labour for which God ordained it. That special ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... is very graceful and beautifully made, and the capitals and the arches in the vaulting of the side aisles show that some good architect was left in Tuscany, or had arisen there. In fine the architecture of this church is such that Pippo di Ser Brunnellesco did not disdain to make use of it as his model in designing the churches of S. Spirito and S. Lorenzo in the same city. The same progress may be noticed in the church of S. Mark's at Venice, not to speak of that of S. Giorgio ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... spite of my efforts I burst out laughing, while Jeremy began to hammer again; whereupon Diana wrested the book from me and stood, flushed and angry, viewing me in lofty disdain. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... against John, absolved his subjects from their allegiance, proclaimed a crusade against him as an enemy to Christianity and the Church, and committed the execution of the sentence to the king of the French. John met the announcement of this step with the same scorn as before. His insolent disdain suffered the Roman legate, Cardinal Pandulf, to proclaim his deposition to his face at Northampton. When Philip collected an army for an attack on England an enormous host gathered at the king's call on Barham ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... when still an animal, now thought herself called to the loftiest destinies. She considered that the time had come to raise a tall barrier between herself and the Dog, who had never been more than an ill-bred person in her eyes; and, stepping back in disdain, ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... the footmen. Mary could not hear what he said, but the Casino servant's answer was distinctly audible. It was politely spoken, yet there was, or seemed to be, in the man's manner a slight indifference, and even disdain, which would not have been there in addressing a successful, not ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Again the well-known tune That promised this bright future, And ask'd her for its own: Then words of sorrow, broken By half-reproachful pain; And then a farewell, spoken In words of cold disdain. ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... you value the power and privilege which the right of suffrage has conferred upon you, and in your honest, manly souls you can not but disdain the meanness and injustice which might prompt you to deny it to women. Language utterly fails me when I try to describe the painful humiliation and mortification which attend this abject condition ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... What endless undulations in the various declivities and ascents,—here a slant, there a zigzag! With what majestic disdain yon roof rises up to the left! Doubtless a palace of Genii, or Gin (which last is the proper Arabic word for those builders of halls out of nothing, employed by Aladdin). Seeing only the roof of that palace boldly ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Paradise of Fiction are folk of all nations and tongues; but the English (as Swedenborg saw them doing in his vision of Heaven) keep very much to themselves. The American visitors, or some of them, disdain our old acquaintances, and associate with Russian, Spanish, Lithuanian, Armenian heroes and heroines, conversing, probably, in some sort of French. Few of us "poor islanders" are so cosmopolitan; we ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... astonishment, as interpreting equally the social valuation of the English merchant, and also the social valuation of the English servant; for, in the truest sense, England is the paradise of household servants. Liberal housekeeping, in fact, as extending itself to the meanest servants, and the disdain of petty parsimonies, are peculiar to England. And in this respect the families of English merchants, as a class, far outrun the scale of expenditure prevalent, not only amongst the corresponding bodies of continental nations, but even amongst the poorer sections of our own nobility—though confessedly ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... rather be a canker in a hedge, then a rose in his grace, and it better fits my bloud to be disdain'd of all, then to fashion a carriage to rob loue from any: in this (though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man) it must not be denied but I am a plaine dealing villaine, I am trusted with a mussell, and enfranchisde with a clog, therefore I haue decreed, not to sing in my ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... recently; there wa'n't none in the city! They toted out great calendars, in every shape and style. I looked at 'em in cold disdain, and answered 'em in pity - "I'd rather have my almanac than all that costly pile." And though I take to city life, I'm lonesome after all For that old yellow almanac ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... waters amain In ruthless disdain, - Her who but lately Had shivered with pain As at touch of dishonour If there had lit on her So coldly, so straightly Such arrows ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... in introducing Mr. Bunce to the republicans of this county, after finding him too independent to bend to their "particular" views, and after he had rejected with disdain their proffers to surrender to them his rights as an editor, they formed themselves into a court of Inquisition, and ushered forth their courtly mandates "Bunce must be sacrificed" "the Journal shall go down," even this proscription extended to his family, and to his fireside; ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... double worship,— Where one part does disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason, where gentry, title, wisdom, Can not conclude, but by the yea and no Of general ignorance,—it must omit Real necessities, and give away the while To unstable slightness. ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... addressed to this voluminous female she would answer in a shrill voice accompanied by a rather disagreeable gesture of disdain. Leaving the den of this woman-cannon to one side, you would proceed; at the left of the entrance began the staircase, always in darkness, with no air except what filtered in through a few high, grated windows that opened upon a diminutive courtyard ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... his energies of apprehension, judgment and feeling may be occupied with, and aroused by, what his author furnishes, whatever it may be. If repetition or review will aid him in this, as it often will, let him not disdain or neglect frequent reviews. If the use of the pen, in brief or full notes, in catchwords or other symbols, will aid him, let him not shrink from the drudgery of the ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... has been described as showing a lofty independence, which makes him disdain to feed on anything that is not slain by his own strength. But Alexander Wilson, the great naturalist, says that he has seen an eagle feasting on the carcass of a horse. The eagle lives to a great age. One at Vienna is stated to have died after a confinement ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Brothers of Provence, in number two hundred and fifty, and previously in the pay of Malatesta of Rimini;—tall, stern, sedate, disciplined,—eyeing the crowd with a look, half of barbarian wonder, half of insolent disdain. No shout of gratulation welcomed these sturdy strangers; it was evident that their aspect cast a ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... high disdain, "what is he talking of? Poor Cloctaw has gone past his prime; however, we must make allowance for his infirmities. You want some one with a decided opinion like ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... look with disdain upon us because we are not cleanly and neat? It is true that the masses of our race have not shown that regard for personal cleanliness and nicety of dress, which a wealthy and educated people have the means and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Paris dwellings, from the earliest times, of a profound luxuriance of design and execution, but the private hotels, the palaces, one may well say, of the nobility were of the same superlative order, and kings and queens alike did not disdain to lodge therein on such occasions as suited their convenience. The suggestive comparison is made because of the close liens with which royalty and the higher nobility ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... promised by a guilty hope, and, with them, the madness that has seized thee. By this aged breast, long harassed by many cares, from which thou didst take thy first nutriment, I humbly beseech thee to have the courage to aid thyself, to have a concern for thine own honor, and not to disdain my warnings. Bethink thee that the very desire to be healed is ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... greater part of them disdain book-learning, and never came where learning grew. . . . They are such as cannot abide to take any pains or travel in study. They reject incomparable Galen's learned Commentaries, as tedious and frivolous discourses, having ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... coarseness of her face, and changed vulgarity into the attractive originality of a spirited character. Many there knew her, but she recognized nobody. She yawned once, in a fair piece of acting, and in her movements and the poise of her head there was a disdain almost plain enough to be insolence. Purdy turned to her, and the strange pair conferred. I heard Hanson say to himself: "What on earth." She left Purdy, bent her head with a gracious but stressed smile to Macandrew, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... permits herself any amusements. On one occasion she had tickets sent her for the theatre. She worked till the carriage was announced. "Je suis prete," said Rosa, and went to the play in her working dress. A daintily gloved man in the box next to hers looked over in disdain, and finally went into the vestibule and ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... every change of a fickle and inconsistent temperament. The atmosphere of Cain is almost wholly negative; for under the guise of a drama, which is mainly a dialogue between two halves of his mind, the author appears to sweep aside with something approaching to disdain the answers of a blindly accepted tradition, or of ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... considerable time). Ay, pity 'tis thou art! Alas, that home To thee has grown so strange! Oh, Uly! Uly! I scarce do know thee now, thus deck'd in silks, The peacock's feather[*] flaunting in thy cap, And purple mantle round thy shoulders flung; Thou look'st upon the peasant with disdain; And tak'st his honest greeting ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... institution; at the end of two years he led forth her third colony, or daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux [29] in Champagne; and was content, till the hour of his death, with the humble station of abbot of his own community. A philosophic age has abolished, with too liberal and indiscriminate disdain, the honors of these spiritual heroes. The meanest among them are distinguished by some energies of the mind; they were at least superior to their votaries and disciples; and, in the race of superstition, they attained the prize for which such numbers contended. In speech, in writing, in action, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... was imperceptible, as she thrummed with a pencil upon the book, glancing now and then at the side door, watching for Bascom's entrance. The meeting buzzed light conversation, as a preliminary. Had she miscalculated on the very first move? Was he going to treat the whole affair with lofty disdain? As the hour struck, dead silence reigned in the room, expectant; and Jonathan, who sat ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... it were,) of the outmost and superficial spheres of knowledge—that knowledge which separates, in bitterness, hardness, and sorrow, the heart of the full-grown man from the heart of the child. For out of imperfect knowledge spring terror, dissension, danger, and disdain; but from perfect knowledge, given by the full-revealed Athena, strength and peace, in sign of which she is crowned with the olive spray, and bears ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... will be seen to have bristled with galling ridicule: "As to the gentleman's cruel sarcasm, I hope he will not be too severe. The contempt of that large-minded gentleman is so wilting, his haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic supereminent, overpowering turkey-gobbler strut, has been so crushing to myself and all the members of this House that I know it was an act of the greatest temerity for me to enter upon a controversy ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... expose the Foible of a Character, a real Person is introduc'd, abounding in this Foible, gravely persisting in it, and valuing himself upon the Merit of it, with great Self- sufficiency, and Disdain of others; this Foible is then solely ridiculed ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... With the exception of the small powerless group around Malouet and Mounier, the warnings of Morris, Jefferson, Romilly, Dumont, Mallet du Pan, Arthur Young, Pitt and Burke, all of them men who have experience of free institutions, are received with indifference or repelled with disdain. Not only are our new politicians incapable, but they think themselves the contrary, and their incompetence is aggravated ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Dickens or Kipling kind of man, it would be impossible to wish better luck than to be born into that bubbling pot-full of things. But Mr. James's over-accentuated refinement of mind has received the very impetus of which it stood least in need. He has grown into a humorous disdain of vulgar emotions, partly because he found them so rich about him. The figures which Bret Harte sees through a haze of romance are to him essentially coarse. The thought of Mr. James in association with Tennessee and Partner over a board supplied with hog, flapjack and forty-rod ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... Nancy and I were justified in our disdain—whale-oil has perhaps no greater claim to social distinction than ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... succession as he states; and the date of that reply will show, that it was made at least a month after the date on which Keys swears he saw the Anderson assignment. But enough. In conclusion I will only say that I have a character to defend as well as Gen. Adams, but I disdain to whine about it as he does. It is true I have no children nor kitchen boys; and if I had, I should scorn to lug them in to make ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... exposition of ancient revelation. They profess to liberate the soul from the evils of mortal life,—to arrive at eternal beatitudes. But the state of perfectibility could be reached only by religious ceremonial observances and devout contemplation. The Indian systems do not disdain logical discussions, or a search after the principles of which the universe is composed; and hence we find great refinements in sophistry, and a wonderful subtilty of logical discussion, though these are directed to unattainable ends,—to the connection of good ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... stayed at Haworth, Charlotte was ill one day and could not go out with her friend. To their surprise Emily volunteered to take the stranger a walk over the moors. Charlotte waited anxiously for their return, fearing some outbreak of impatience or disdain on the part of her untamable sister. The two girls at last came home. "How did Emily behave?" asked Charlotte, eagerly, drawing her friend aside. She had behaved well; she had shown her true self, her noble, energetic, truthful soul, and from that ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... declaration must bring all forward. There are twenty ways, my dear, that you would find out for another in your circumstances. He will disdain, from his native insolence, to have it thought he has any body to consult. Well then, will he not be obliged to declare himself? And if he does, no delays on your side, I beseech you. Give him the day. Let ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... In especial disdain, from her position upon the corner of the table, her glance wandered down the board and rested on Rabelais, the gourmand, before whom were an empty trencher and tankard. The priest-doctor-writer-scamp who affected the company of jesters and liked not a little ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... breakfast; one could see that by the way in which the servants waited upon him, by the way in which the Nabob consulted him, calling him "Monsieur le Marquis," as they do at the Comedie Francaise, less from humility than from pride because of the honor that was reflected on himself. Filled with disdain for his fellow-guests, Monsieur le Marquis talked little, but with a very lofty manner, as if he were obliged to stoop to those persons whom he honored with his conversation. From time to time he tossed at the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... eyes seemed to conceal amusement, and there was good-humoured disdain in the setting of her lips. With audacity so incredible that it all but made her laugh, Dymes, not heeding her inquiry, jerked out the personal application of his abstract remarks. Yes, it was a proposal of marriage—marriage on the new plan, without cares or encumbrance; a ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... gravely and simply uttered and revealed a haughtiness of soul which Suzanne had not suspected. She felt a sort of confusion in the presence of the rival whom she was attacking and who held her at bay with such disdain. ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... forward to meet me. Confusion and shame were visibly depicted in his countenance. He approached me hastily and without uttering a word, took my hand. I withdrew it. "O Miss Wharton," said he, "despise me not. I am convinced that I deserve your displeasure and disdain; but my own heart has avenged your cause." "To your own heart, then," said I, "I will leave you. But why do you again seek an interview with one whom you have endeavored to mislead—with one whom you have ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... chals or "malas," each family occupying one or at most two rooms in a building, the passages, corridors and staircases of these human warrens become the chosen paths of those astute mendicants who disdain not, when chance offers, to turn their hand to a little quiet thieving. Even as they fare upon their rounds, you catch the welcome call of the vendor of "jaleibi malpurwa," who sells wheat-cakes fried rarely in ghi ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... disdain Corebo heard (Who kind and courteous was) the Biscayneer, And termed him traitor; and by deed and word Withstood the purpose of his foul compeer. This mighty wrath in either warrior stirred; In sign whereof their ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... always a good boy," replied his friend, benignantly. "So go to work; but don't forget to walk out of town now and then; in which case, I hope you won't disdain the company of one of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... with your stories and croak and croak, and still not one of you would dare say a word to Pete's face, not one of you but would stand and let him twist your nose if he saw fit." He glowered from one horn of the silent, listening semicircle to the other, with all-including disdain. "If you don't like it, why don't you put a stop to it? If Jim Burton has sneaked, why don't you elect a new marshal? You're damned cowards, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... disregarded, laid claim, as being a nearer relative of the deceased. A marriage, as Chancellor Duprat suggested, would have served to reconcile the parties, but the Constable having rejected the proposed alliance—with disdain, so it is said—the suit was brought before the Parliament and decided in favour of Louise. Such satisfaction as she may have felt was not, however, of long duration, for Charles de Bourbon left France, entered ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... range of vision. The untamed, rebellious nature of the girl had touched a responsive chord; unseeking any such result she had directly appealed to his better judgment, and enabled him to perceive her from an entirely fresh view-point. Her clearly expressed disdain, her sturdy independence both of word and action, coupled with her frankly voiced dislike, awoke within him an earnest desire to stand higher in her regard. Her dark, glowing eyes were lowered upon the white face of the dead man, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... tyranny, having struggled madly and shed blood in tearing themselves free, turned stern backs upon their unconquered enemies, broke all cords that bound them to the past, flinging off ties of name, kinship and rank, beginning with fierce disdain a new life. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... bestow three rounds of applause upon a song, to which, had it occurred in the first act, he would have given but one. He held that towards the middle of a performance success should be quietly fostered, but never forced. For the claqueurs of other theatres Auguste entertained a sort of disdain. It was, as he averred, the easiest thing in the world to obtain success at the Opera Comique, or the Vaudeville. The thing was managed there not so much by applause as by laughter. There was the less need for careful management; ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... of poor citizenship is the general contempt in which immigrants are held, and especially the treatment accorded them by the police and by most of the minor officials with whom they come in contact. This primitive disdain of "barbarians" is common among the school children and tends to make the foreign children more delinquent and anti-social than they would otherwise be. A very recent case sums up the situation. A gang of five Polish boys "beat up" a messenger boy, apparently ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... of the performer. It was market day, and the singer was selling printed sheets of poesy. The old tune was fairly correct, but the words were strange and sad. "When Britain first at Hell's command Prepared to cross the Irish main, Thus spake a prophet in our land, 'Mid traitors' scoff and fools' disdain, 'If Britannia cross the waves, Irish ever shall be slaves.' In vain the warning patriot spoke, In treach'rous guise Britannia came—Divided, bent us to her yoke, Till Ireland rose, in Freedom's name, and Britannia boldly braves! Irish are no longer slaves." The people were too busily engaged ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... their numbers for strength, and their fanaticism for the support and inspiration of Heaven. In the eyes of both nations Alexius was false and contemptible; the base and spurious race of the Angeli was rejected with clamorous disdain; and the people of Constantinople encompassed the senate, to demand at their hands a more worthy emperor. To every senator, conspicuous by his birth or dignity, they successively presented the purple: by each ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... was already up, and seated among her maids, spinning at her wheel, as the fashion was in those primitive times, when great ladies did not disdain housewifery: and the king her father was preparing to go abroad at that early hour to council with ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... have one more request to make, boys, before we part. Never place your affection on a charming sweetheart. She is dancing before you your affections to gain; Just turn your back on them with scorn and disdain. ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... When a bird is dying his notes are sad; when man is dying his words are good. Three branches of the Way are dear to a gentleman: To banish from his bearing violence and disdain; to sort his face to the truth, and to banish from his speech what is low or unseemly. The ritual of chalice and platter[75] has servitors to see ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... consequence, often applied to them; but although the sickle feathers are thus modified, no bird possesses higher courage, or a more gallant carriage. The attitude of the cock is, indeed, singularly proud; and he is often seen to bear himself so haughtily, that his head, thrown back as if in disdain, nearly touches the two upper feathers—sickles they can scarcely be called—of his tail. Half-bred birds of this kind are not uncommon, but birds of the pure breed are not to be obtained without trouble ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... slight and scorn was merely what Belasez had been accustomed to receive from Christians ever since she had left her cradle. The disdain of Levina, therefore, though she could hardly enjoy it, made far less impression on her than the unaccountable ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... afternoon I put the vase of delicious rosebuds, and a beautiful China plate of peaches and grapes, and a basket of splendid golden Porter apples on his table; and we opened the western door [leading from the Study to the lawn] and let in a flood of sunsetting. Apollo's "beautiful disdain" seemed kindled anew. Endymion smiled richly in his dream of Diana. Lake Como was wrapped in golden mist. The divine form in the Transfiguration floated in light. I thought it would be a pity if Mr. Hawthorne did not come that moment. As I thought ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... began to hearken to other and more melodious voices—to Shelley and Keats, to Wordsworth and Coleridge and the 'faultless and fervent melodies of Tennyson.' In course of time Byron was forgotten, or only remembered with disdain; and when Thackeray, the representative Briton, the artist Philistine, the foe of all that is excessive or abnormal or rebellious, took it upon himself to flout the author of Don Juan openly and to lift up his heavy hand against ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... in life was far too large and all-embracing for him to be indifferent to the smallest or most insignificant part of it. He had none of the disdain for everyday details, none of the fear of the commonplace that oppresses many men who think themselves great. Nothing that lived came amiss to his philosophy or his pleasure. He could talk as brilliantly upon the affairs of the kitchen ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... bouncing, familiar manners as if they were born to be his playthings—he was so serious and yet so droll, so stupidly self-assertive and yet so irresistibly affectionate! He seemed to take his pleasures sadly, wearing, if such be possible to a fox, an air of melancholy disdain; and yet his beady eyes were ever on the lookout for mischief, and for the chance of a helter-skelter romp with his sisters round and round the chamber, or to the entrance of the "earth," where the sprouts of the green grass and the flowers of the golden ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... and make you walk ashore," she added, treating his remark with the haughty disdain ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... was determined to overcome the resistance. He recalled, without the least remorse, the scene with his wife in the bedroom, and her scornful words that foretold his failure with the countess. Josephina's disdain was only another spur to urge him ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sudden light touch of disdain, which she could not forego. "The smallest sketch of a head painted by him will fetch ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... nation, you will agree, I think, with me, that he did well and not ill; you will not sacrifice his great name to the disdain of a shallow philosophy, or to the grimacing of a dead superstition, whose ghost is struggling out ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... hose, that the personality he had put on had nerves curiously associated with his own nerves, and that, though he might say to himself a hundred times with respect to the attitudes of other people, "Pah! they don't mean me," that formula was no charm against disdain. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... the last of all to hear of these strange doings, for the new wife took care that they should never be about the house at midnight. But one night as he lay in bed he had forgotten something and asked her to fetch it from below. She looked at him with a disdain out of the mists of her black hair, which she was combing to her knee. Perhaps for a minute she resented his unfaithfulness to the dead. 'No,' she said, with deliberation, 'not till that dog and his companion pass.' She flung the door open, ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... the colony were now disarmed; and she proceeded to Rhode Island, an accustomed refuge for the exiles of Massachusetts in all seasons of persecution. Her enemies believed that the anger of Heaven was following her, of which Governor Winthrop does not disdain to record a notable instance, very interesting in a scientific point of view, but fitter for his old and homely narrative than for modern repetition. In a little time, also, she lost her husband, who is mentioned in history only as attending her footsteps, and whom we may conclude to have been ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... allies could resume their peaceful occupations, feeling assured that the war was practically ended, now that Roman troops had taken it in hand. This action rendered the Gauls all the more tractable. They made less difficulty about the war-tax, now that they had got their men back again, while his disdain only sharpened their sense of duty. On the other side, when Civilis and Classicus heard of Tutor's defeat, the destruction of the Treviri, and the universal success of the Roman arms, they fell into a panic, hastily mobilized their own scattered forces, and kept sending ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... said, 'that as your Honour has a predilection for all those curious and often foolish tales which circulate among the common people, you might not perhaps disdain these four poor volumes which I chance to have in my possession. Deign to accept them as a ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... was so famous an upholder of our venerated church in the evil days through which it so happily passed; and with no little perturbation of mind, and great confusion of face, did I see the look of astonishment, not to say disdain, with which she regarded my position; more particularly as little Charles, elevated, as I have said, upon my shoulders, with his legs on each side of my neck, did lift up the professional hat, which did entirely absorb his ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various |
