"Meanness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hazard, suffers sacrifice without pretense of martyrdom, bears calumny without reply, imposes superior will and understanding on all around it, capitulates to no unworthy triumph, but must carry all things at the point of clear and blameless conscience. Scorning all manner of meanness and cowardice, his bursts of wrath at their exhibition heighten our admiration for those noble passions which were kindled by the inspirations and exigencies ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... English language. If there is a word in the English language that means treachery, servility, and cowardice, it is that word 'conservative.' It ought never hereafter to be on the lips of an American statesman. For twenty years it has stood in America the synonym of meanness and baseness. I have studied somewhat carefully the political history of the country during the last fifteen or twenty years, and I have always noticed that when I heard a man prate about being a conservative and about conservatism, he was about to do ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... the suburbs of Manilla, to which they are restricted. The greater part of them are clever and industrious mechanics; the rest are merchants, and some of them very rich: they are the Jews of Lucon, but even more given to cheating and all kinds of meanness than are the Israelites, and with fewer, or rather with no exceptions. They enjoy no privileges above the lowest of the people, but are despised, oppressed, and often unjustly treated. Their covetousness induces them to submit to all this; and as they are entirely ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... O. system the most common kind of wealth is represented by Bonds. Consequently we wrote again to Mr. Burbank, and expressed our regret that a man of his genius should care more for his own selfish interests than for the public weal, and as a sort of sarcasm on his meanness I enclosed five of our 2963 Guaranteed Extension four per cents to pay for the two-cent stamp he had put upon ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... plant a blister there!' What chance is there of the success of real passion? What certainty of its continuance? Seeing all this as I do, and unravelling the web of human life into its various threads of meanness, spite, cowardice, want of feeling, and want of understanding, of indifference towards others and ignorance of ourselves—seeing custom prevail over all excellence, itself giving way to infamy—mistaken as I have been in my public and private hopes, calculating others from myself, and calculating ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Erostratus has made numerous disciples. How many men of to-day have become notorious for having destroyed something of mark; pulled down—or tried to pull down—some man's high reputation; signalled their passage, in short, by a scandal, a meanness, or an atrocity! ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... occupants to think of him as they would; even as, ten years ago, he had fled from the shame impending over him at Kingsmill. A cowardly instinct, this; having once acted upon it gave to his whole life a taint of craven meanness. Mere bluster, all his talk of mental dignity and uncompromising scorn of superstitions. A weak and idle man, whose ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... threatened rising of the Alexandrians, to make her elder son king. Before, however, she would do this she made a treaty with him, which would strongly prove, if anything were still wanting, the vice and meanness of the Egyptian court. It was, that, although married to his sister Cleopatra, of whom he was very fond, he should put her away, and marry his younger sister Selene; because the mother hoped that Selene would be false to her husband's ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... too. And the success of the nations which possess these martial virtues has been the great means by which their continuance has been secured in the world, and the destruction of the opposite vices insured also. Conquest is the missionary of valour, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... Virginia, "but it was all my fault and I don't want Mr. Blount blamed for it. I did it out of meanness, but I was sorry for it afterwards and—oh, I wonder if I've got any mail." She broke away and dashed into the house and the ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... ears of Jove himself, seated aloft on his remote Olympian throne. He may be, and for the most part really is—if he belongs to the old stock of aristocratic divinities—generous and gracious, incapable of meanness, baseness, or cruelty. But the tenant has to do, not with the absentee divinity, but with his priest—not with the good spirit, but his medium; and this go-between is not always noble, or disinterested, or unexacting. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... expression in the doubling up of his body and the shaking of his hand. His hands were small, with sensitive, tapering fingers, and when playing the fingers acted as if endowed with separate life and intelligence. There was no effeminacy connected with his lovable nature; he was quick to resent meanness or deceit, or wrong-doing of any kind. His anger was exceedingly sharp, and his manner of expressing contempt an astonishing revelation to those who had failed to grasp ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... peppermints, and Father cut his smoking down to one cigarette after each meal—though occasionally, being but a mortal man, he would fall into sinful ways and smoke up three or four cigarettes while engaged in an enthralling conversation regarding Mr. Pilkings's meanness with fellow-clerks at lunch at the Automat. Afterward he would be very repentant; he would have a severe case of conviction of sin, and Mother would have to comfort him ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... ever thought or spoke of her as a prig, but all her influence was brought to bear in the right direction. The girl who could do or think meanly avoided the expression of Annabel's beautiful eyes. It was impossible for her to think badly of her fellow-creatures, but meanness and sin made her sorrowful. There was not a girl in Heath Hall who would ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... her faults, upright, honest, truthtelling, and fearless; and she was long before she could suspect the treachery and meanness of a dependent; and still longer in believing that the woman who had for so many years been her pupil, and had been accustomed to her frankness, could condescend to a low cabal, and, displacing her from her ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... had become caressingly persuasive, and Florent was penetrated by all the surrounding plenteousness, all the aroma filling the kitchen, where he fed, as it were, on the nourishment floating in the atmosphere. He sank into blissful meanness, born of all the copious feeding that went on in the sphere of plenty in which he had been living during the last fortnight. He felt, as it were, the titillation of forming fat which spread slowly all over ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... table lie letters from two old friends of mine who have had a quarrel over a small piece of business, involving a few pounds. One complains that the other claims the money unjustly; the other resents being accused of meanness; the result, a rupture of familiar relations. One cannot, it seems, prevent sorrows and pains and tragedies; but what is the ironical power which gives us such rich materials for happiness, and then infects us with the devilish power of misusing them, and worrying over ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not be maintained. They were followed by a meanness and a descent of the mind into lower levels; the loss of wings; no high speculation. Locke, to whom the meaning of ideas was unknown, became the type of philosophy, and his "understanding" the measure, in all nations, of the English intellect. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... heart could not throw open its portals to it, the generous man could not adopt it—it could not mix with his blood. It looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing fathers and brothers overboard to lighten the boat for our security, that the noble-minded shrank from the manifest meanness of the thing. And besides this, the benefits of a reformation to be effected by such a system were too remote in point of time to warmly engage many in its behalf. Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity, and none will do it enthusiastically. —Posterity has done ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... a place for humour in the pulpit, if it be natural to the preacher and flow spontaneously, but a humorous illustration requires to be very carefully chosen, lest, instead of the healthy and holy laughter often so fatal to anger and meanness and pride, you have the guffaw in which blessing is lost in excess. Other reflections as to illustrations are the following:—First, the illustration, if a story, ought at least to contain the element of probability. No preacher can always satisfy himself as to the literal truth of a story ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were dining in the mess-room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored. He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the manager's boy put his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... convinced of it, sire. From the little that I have seen of my cousin I am sure that no one could have a greater contempt for cowardice or for meanness.' ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to declare itself as the expansive flow of confidence is slow in gathering way. The creditor who has once turned into the narrow path of commercial fears and precautions speedily takes a course of malignant meanness which puts him below the level of his debtor. He passes from specious civility to impatient rage, to the surly clamor of importunity, to bursts of disappointment, to the livid coldness of a mind made up to vengeance, and the scowling insolence of a summons before the courts. Braschon, the rich ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... government approve of, and no others. It is now just twenty-six years since I first well understood how this matter was managed; and, from that moment to this, I have never been in an English play-house. Besides this, the meanness, the abject servility, of the players, and the slavish conduct of the audience, are sufficient to corrupt and debase the heart of any young man who is a frequent beholder of them. Homage is here paid to every one clothed with power, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... one unfitted to match with her, either in rank or age. Besides, Fanny thought that Lord Kilcullen had behaved generously to her when she so violently repudiated his love: she believed that it had been sincere; she had not even to herself accused him of meanness or treachery; and she spoke of him as one to be pitied, liked, and regarded; not as one to ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... very dull fools and men of strange manners and usances, hold themselves to be in everything both better worth and wiser than others, whereas they are of far less account than the rest of mankind, being men who, lacking, of the meanness of their spirit, the ability to provide themselves, take refuge, like swine, whereas they may have what to eat. And this story, charming ladies, I shall tell you, not only for the ensuing of the order imposed, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the less that which submitteth to a greater than itself." Q "What are the four things wherein concur all creatures?"—"Men concur in meat and drink, the sweet of sleep, the lust of women and the agonies of death." Q "What are the three things whose foulness none can do away?"—"Folly, meanness of nature, and lying." Q "What is the best kind of lie,[FN138] though all kinds are foul?"—"That which averteth harm from its utterer and bringeth gain." Q "What kind of truthfulness is foul, though all kinds are fair?"—"That of a man glorying in that which he hath and vaunting himself thereof." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... of the responsibility of my task disheartened me, the novel facilities of my new way of life contributed to relax the tension of my will. During my school days, the sufferings I underwent from jealousy of my stepfather, the disappointment of my repressed affections, the meanness and penury of my surroundings, many grievous influences, had maintained the restless ardor of my feelings; but this also had undergone a change. No doubt I still continued to love my mother deeply and painfully, but I now no longer asked her for what I ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... rank is unquestionably due to moral greatness, or magnanimity; to that sublime energy by which the soul, smitten with the love of virtue, binds itself indissolubly, for life and for death, to truth and duty; espouses as its own the interests of human nature; scorns all meanness and defies all peril; hears in its own conscience a voice louder than threatenings and thunders; withstands all the powers of the universe which would sever it from the cause of freedom and religion; reposes an unfaltering trust in God in the darkest hour, and is ever "ready to be offered up" ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... to Mackenzie's imagination to fix his identity, not bending to reveal his name. Hector Hall, Mackenzie knew him to be, on account of his pistols, on account of the cold meanness of his eyes which Dad Frazer had described as holding such a throat-cutting look. But armed as he was, severe and flash-tempered as he seemed, Mackenzie was not in any sort of a flurry to give ground before him. He looked up at him coolly, felt in his pocket ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... elevation comes upon us as we view the mountain. We are uplifted. The entire scale of being is raised. Our outlook on life seems all at once to have been heightened. And not only is there this sense of elevation: we seem purified also. Meanness, pettiness, paltriness seem to shrink away abashed at the sight of that ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... essays on friendship, love, generosity, jealousy, integrity, laziness, hope, charity, punctuality, scholarship, meanness. On youth, old age, marriage, courtship, engagement, housekeeping, housework, the happiness of childhood, the sorrows of childhood, truth, falsehood, religion, missionary work, the poor, the duties of the rich, ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... of prudence is unimpeachable, there is a hiatus between this level of morality and those above. To drink one's self to death is a species of folly that the poorest intelligence can understand; but the folly in meanness, injustice, or impiety is a harder matter. Believing as I do that the folly is equally demonstrable in all of these cases, I propose not to accept your ready assent in the simpler case until its grounds have been made as clear and definite ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... for your guests in as good style as your means and the circumstances of the case will permit, and make no fuss about it. To be unnecessarily sparing shows meanness, and to be extravagantly profuse is absurd as well an ruinous. Probably your visitors know whether your income is large or small and if they do not they will soon learn, on that point, all that it is necessary for them to know. ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... flows from him, and though she is a responsible, she is not a discretional, agent. The table is to correspond with the moderation of the master, and the matron will be scolded or reproved as it varies from the proper medium between meanness and profusion. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... forsooth, is that miserly old wretch, who stoops from manhood to indulge the dirty promptings of a petty avarice. But is he happy? NO; how can such a thing be happy, even tho' he possess thousands accumulated by his detestable meanness—when men spit on him with contempt; decency kicks him, dishonorable care will kill him, infamy will rear his monument, and the devil will roast him on the hottest gridiron ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Lady Martin paused, inherent meanness struggling with a snobbish desire to emulate the Duchess; and finally she gave in with a ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... in appearance that he suggested comparison rather with some fact of nature—a rock, a vigorous forest tree —than with another man. He was one of those rare men who, like mountains in a landscape, suffice in themselves to relieve their environments, whatever these may be, from all taint of meanness. He stood out from among his guests the centre of conversation, of feeling, and of interest. He was almost invariably engaged in eager conversation, pitched in a loud tone of voice, broken at intervals when ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... Honor maintaining, Meanness disdaining, Still entertaining, Engaging and new. Neat, but not finical; Sage, but not cynical; ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Marquis, she supposed his preferring another girl could not be quite pleasant! I could have screamed with laughter, if I had not been so angry; I felt dreadfully tempted to tell her of the Marquis's proposal to me, and why he was marrying her—only that would have been playing down to her level of meanness. So I said that the English idea of flirting and the French were different; that the Marquis seemed to me to be quite an agreeable Frenchman, and no doubt she would be very happy; and far from it grieving me, I was delighted to think she would be settled at last, as ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... handled, and by the numerous epic or merely mythical poets. The tragedians had only, therefore, to engraft one species of poetry on another. Certain postulates, and those invariably serviceable to the air of dignity and grandeur, and the removing of all meanness of idea, were conceded to them at the very outset. Everything, down to the very errors and weaknesses of that departed race of heroes who claimed their descent from the gods, was ennobled by the sanctity of legend. Those heroes were painted ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... impetuous in all his feelings, whether of approval or dislike. I never knew one more uncompromising in what he believed either to be right, or wrong; thereby marking the integrity of his mind, which ever shrunk from the most distant approximation to duplicity or meanness. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... to hold fast this single clue to the crooked and amazing entanglements of the policy of James. The insolence, the meanness, and the prevarications of this royal toad-eater are ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... did find, as he talked on, a sense of shame from another side creep towards him and begin to enclose him. Shame at the smallness, meanness, emptiness of the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... so grateful to you, Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters, for what you have done for me. After reading your book, "Diet and Health, with Key to the Calories" my chronic case of meanness—I mean leanness—was absolutely cured. My weight, which was ... now is ... and I am on my way to normal. I ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... ordinary respect which a servant has for his master,—had heard it all, but showed no particular anxiety to hear more. He accompanied the men down to the Causeway, hardly opening his mouth to them, while they were loud in denouncing the meanness of the man who had deserted a wife in Australia, and had then betrayed a young lady here ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... in the march the boys bought something to eat or drink. There had been a barrel of cider brought from Mr. Chase's for their especial use, and Fred sold it out to the boys for four cents a glass. This was a piece of extraordinary meanness in him, for his father had intended the cider as a present to the company. The boys did not know this, however, and paid their money in ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... there? You might have been playing and brought me some more money," said the padrone, who, with characteristic meanness, grudged the young fiddler time to eat the ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the original meaning of low, and low as the earth; and this is also the sense which humilis always bears in classical Latin, though Christianity (which first recognised humility as a virtue, instead of stigmatising it as a meanness) attached to it the sense which its derivatives in all modern Romance languages, with the exception of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... relatively seldom. But among psychic characters one finds that practically all are inheritable. For example, stupidity, credulity, avarice, pecksniffery, lack of imagination, hatred of beauty, meanness, poltroonry, petty brutality, smallness of soul.... I here present, of course, the Puritan complex; there flashes up the image of the "good man," that libel on God and the devil. Consider him well. If you had to choose a sire for a first-rate ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... Arabs, had inspired the martial peasant with a hatred of images; and it was held to be the duty of a prince to impose on his subjects the dictates of his own conscience. But in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years of toil and danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed before the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman pontiff with the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the reformation of religion, his first steps were moderate and cautious: he assembled a great council of senators and bishops, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... not often good subjects; there is a peculiar meanness about most of them and awkwardness of line. Old manor-houses are often pretty. Ruins are usually, with us, too prim, and cathedrals too orderly. I do not think there is a single cathedral in England from which it is possible to obtain one ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... satirical efforts, which has no forerunner in Ibn Khallikan's recollection, is this, levelled at another mean acquaintance; meanness, indeed, being one of the unpardonable offences—especially in the eyes of poets who lived on patronage: Be careful not to lose the friendship of Abu 'l-Mukatil when you approach to partake of his meal. Breaking his crumpet is for him as bad as breaking ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... runs, in the same manner, through all the minor matters of morals, so that we cannot imagine courage existing except in conjunction with fear, or magnanimity existing except in conjunction with some temptation to meanness. If Pope and his followers caught this echo of natural irrationality, they were not any the more artificial. Their antitheses were fully in harmony with existence, which is ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... not as a man born under Sol, that loveth honour; nor under Jupiter, that loveth business (for the contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly); but as a man born under an excellent sovereign, that deserveth the dedication of all men's abilities.... Again the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move me; for though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get. Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... improve, as I should, that his good dispensation to me. But when I lived in full and fat pasture, I did there lift up the heel (Deut 32:15). Therefore he will now turn me into hard commons, that with leanness, and hunger, and meanness, and want, I may spend the rest of my days. But let him do this without murmuring and repining; let him do it in a godly manner, submitting himself to the judgment of God. 'Let the rich rejoice in that he is made low' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... typical joke about Scots' meanness appeals to Englishmen because Englishmen are mean themselves. No joke appeals to a man unless it releases some repressed wish of his own. No one expects a devout Roman Catholic to see the point of ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... conduct had led us to put in their way. Some we have come across in this journey seemed born essentially mean and base—a great misfortune to them and all who have to deal with them, but they cannot be so blamable as those who have no natural tendency to meanness, and whose education has taught them to abhor it. True; yet this loss of the medicine-box gnaws at the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... summed up thus: "If you can find any method to improve the state of affairs which will not subject us to the smallest cost, risk, or responsibility, you can employ it; if not, let them fight it out." Perhaps Lord Kimberley may live (officially) long enough to find out that meanness and selfishness do not always pay, and that it is not always desirable, thus to sacrifice the respect, and crush the legitimate aspirations of ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... no counterfeit. Do not pass for current coin what is base alloy. Let transparent honor and sincerity regulate all your dealings; despise all meanness; avoid the sinister motive, the underhand dealing; aim at that unswerving love of truth that would scorn to stoop to base compliances and unworthy equivocations; live more under the power of the purifying and ennobling influences ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... a Fishmonger who had attained to Cabinet rank was married to the daughter of a Levantine and London was in consequence illuminated. Paul said to Peter in his jovial way, "It is imperative that we should show no meanness upon this occasion. We are known for the most flourishing and well-to-do pair of bachelors in the neighbourhood, and I have not hesitated (for I know I had your consent beforehand) to go to Messrs. Brock and order an immense quantity of fireworks for the balcony on this auspicious occasion. ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... changes of fortune and varieties of humor, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?—five years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death avail to ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... In the close-curtained court Those causes are deferred Which most import; These wait man's leisure. These daily matters elbow; Merely because His panic meanness Jibs blindly ere it hear What wisdom has prepared, Bolts headlong ere it see Her face unfold its smile. Man after man, race after race Drops jaded by the iterancy Of petty fear. Even as horses on the green steppes grazing, Hundreds scattered through lonely peacefulness, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... such as might indeed bring him to beggary, but could never allow him to gather riches like those of Mr. Pennycuik. Like his father he had a holy weakness for the purity that gives arms of the things within us. If there is one thing a Christian soul recoils from, it is meanness—of action, of thought, of judgment. What a heaven some must think to be saved into! At the same time Cosmo would not have left his father to make a fortune the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... into that extreme by his abhorrence of the present licentious factions; and such intrepidity, as well as disinterestedness of behavior, proves that, whatever his speculative principles were his heart was elevated far above the meanness and abject submission of a slave. He represented to the parliament, that all the abuses of government which could justly be imputed to Richard, instead of amounting to tyranny, were merely the result of error, youth, or misguided ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... faculties narrower still, for all their keenness and intensity. The largeness of brain with which Shakespeare endows his human devil, and the largeness of heart of which he does not seem to wish us to imagine him as in certain circumstances incapable, contrast sharply enough with the peasant meanness of Lisbeth. Indeed, Balzac, whose seldom erring instinct in fixing on the viler parts of human nature may have been somewhat too much dwelt on, but is undeniable, has here and elsewhere hit the fault of the lower class generally ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... an almost boundless toleration and placability, because if he is capricious enough to refuse to forgive a single individual for the meanness or evil that lies at his door, it is doing the rest of the world a ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... amiss to speak somewhat of the two former. The derogations therefore which grow to learning from the fortune or condition of learned men, are either in respect of scarcity of means, or in respect of privateness of life and meanness ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... will permit us to accept. "Francis," says Robertson, "notwithstanding the many errors conspicuous in his foreign policy and domestic administration, was nevertheless humane, beneficent, generous. He possessed dignity without pride, affability free from meanness, and courtesy exempt from deceit. All who had access to him, and no man of merit was ever denied that privilege, respected and loved him. Captivated with his personal qualities, his subjects forgot his defects as a monarch, and, admiring ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... this that my own acquaintance with Falconer commenced. I had just come out of one of the theatres in the neighbourhood of the Strand, unable to endure any longer the dreary combination of false magnanimity and real meanness, imported from Paris in the shape of a melodrama, for the delectation of the London public. I had turned northwards, and was walking up one of the streets near Covent Garden, when my attention was attracted to a woman who came out of a gin-shop, carrying a baby. She went to the kennel, and bent ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... meanness of our politics but congratulates Washington that he is long already wrapped in his shroud and forever safe." The following is his description of the social world of his day: "If any man consider the present aspects ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... dissimulation; a heterogeneous mass of contradictory qualities; with nothing great but his crimes; and even those contrasted by the littleness of his motives, which at once denoted both his baseness and his meanness, and marked him for a traitor and a trickster. Nay, in his style and writing there was the same mixture of vicious contrarieties;— the most grovelling ideas were conveyed in the most inflated language, giving mock consequence ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... I'se seed him whip 'em heaps of times, and it was 'most allus in the mornin's 'fore they went to wuk. Thar warn't no jailhouse nigh whar us lived and Marse Robert never had no place to lock slaves up when they got too bad, so he just beat the meanness out of 'em. Thar was one slave he never tetched; that was his foreman and his name was Robert too, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... was essential that Paris should become the unique capital, not to be compared with other capitals. The masterpieces of science and of art, the museums, all that had illustrated past centuries, were to be collected there. Napoleon regretted that he could not transport St. Peter's to Paris; the meanness ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... it to the proprietor. Sometimes they cart off the furniture. Pianos they are very fond of. When they see one, they first sit down and play a few sentimental ditties, then they go away, requisition a cart, and minstrel and instrument disappear together. They are a singular mixture of bravery and meanness. No one can deny that they possess the former quality, but they are courageous without one spark of heroism. After fighting all day, they will rifle the corpses of their fallen foes of every article they can lay their hands on, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... with anger, was a look, too, of porcine hate and fury. The cynical and patronizing manner he usually affected had dropped off, leaving revealed his actual coarse, spiteful, greedy, craven spirit—a creature of infinite meanness. At length, however, Gretzinger's torrent of abuse diminished until it ended in a last muddy dripping of threats and curses. With an effort he strove to pull himself together and assume a composure his eyes belied, while he lighted another of ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... as to everything else it is the difference between shabbiness and greatness. Skimpole's sunny talk might be expected to please as much as Micawber's gorgeous speech, the design of both being to take the edge off poverty. But in the one we have no relief from attendant meanness or distress, and we drop down from the airiest fancies into sordidness and pain; whereas in the other nothing pitiful or merely selfish ever touches us. At its lowest depth of what is worst, we never doubt that something better must turn up; and of a man who sells ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... woman was reminded of her holiday in town. She brightened, and the little that it was, and the meanness of the satisfaction, darkened her. Envy of the lucky adventurer Mr. Woodseer, on her husband's behalf, grew horridly conscious for being reproved. So she plucked resolution to enjoy her holiday and forget the contrasts ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sonnets is good in its way. The egotism, which was a constant reproach urged by The Edinburgh critics and by the "Cockney Poets" against the poets of the Lake School, is splendidly hit off in the first sonnet; the low and creeping meanness, or say, simpleness, as contrasted with simplicity, of thought and expression, which was stealing into Wordsworth's work at that period, is equally cleverly ridiculed in the second sonnet. In reproducing the sonnets, Coleridge claims only to have satirised ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... by the electric current to join in the enthusiasm. I remember once being thus carried away, and mingled my voice with the rude throats that cheered the passing cortege of royalty. The moment it was past, however, my heart fell, abashed at its own meanness and wickedness. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... no desire to look at my goods and didn't crave a thrashing, and guessed he would rather apologize, which he did, and I went on my way rejoicing, and I dare say in much better shape than I might have been in, had he shown as much fight as he did meanness the day before. ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... we can appreciate the sincerity of conviction which no doubt controlled most of them. But they were dangerous then, and Washington, with his honest hatred of all that seemed to him to partake of meanness or treason, proposed to put them down and render them harmless, being well convinced, after his clear-sighted fashion, that war was not peace, and that mildness to domestic ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... affection or some great self-sacrifice, and I respect and admire them, and think they are like that all through. And the day comes when they are not quite straightforward, or are guilty of some petty meanness, which a man who is not fit to black their ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... also the one consolation which we have when our sense of 'all the ills that flesh is heir to' becomes deep nearly to despair. When one thinks of the real facts of human life, and tries to conceive of the frightful meanness and passion and hate and wretchedness that have been howling and shrieking and gibbering and groaning through dreary millenniums, one's brain reels, and hope seems to be absurdity, and joy a sin against our fellows, as a feast would be in a house next door to where was a funeral. I do not wonder ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Dramatick Poetry the Dignity and meanness of the Persons represented make two different Species of imitation the one Tragick, which agrees to none but great and Illustrious persons, the other Comick, which suits with common and gentile humors: so in Epick too, there may be reckoned two sorts of ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... do," said Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders. "My former marshal, who acquired in my service a name and some fame, whom I permitted to accept the dignity of crown prince of Sweden that was offered him, a Frenchman, had the meanness to turn his arms against his country, and ally himself with the enemies of France. But still it seems that his courage is failing him. A month ago he disembarked in Germany, and is idle with his troops in Mecklenburg. He allowed Hamburg to fall; ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... servitude. It is a hateful and accursed institution, which God can not look upon but with abhorrence, and which no one of his children should for a moment tolerate. It is opposed to every thing Christian and humane, and full of all meanness and cruelty. It treats a fellow-being, only because his skin is not so fair as our own, as though he were a dumb animal or a piece of furniture. It allows him no expression of choice about any thing, and no liberty of action. It recognizes and employs all the ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... which it is necessary to point out to feeble-minded folk is this: that, in asserting the breadth and depth of that significance which gives to fashion and fortune their tremendous power, we do not indorse the extravagances which often disgrace the one, nor the meanness which often degrades ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... possible to put any sense of moral beauty into lives bounded forever by the low horizon of the factory. There is a fortuitous ugliness that has life and hope in it: the ugliness of overcrowded city streets, of the rush and drive of packed activities; but this out-spread meanness of the suburban working colony, uncircumscribed by any pressure of surrounding life, and sunk into blank acceptance of its isolation, its banishment from beauty and variety and surprise, seemed to Amherst the very negation of ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... years afterwards, he was registered again by himself as of Middlesex. The last record ought to be preferred, because it was made upon oath. It is observable, that, as a native of Winborne, he is styled filius Georgii Prior, generosi; not consistently with the common account of the meanness ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... my nature underwent a final change. I was still at an age when tears are shed. During those last days, while the precious life yet lingered, my tears, my words, and everything I did bore witness to my heartstricken repentance. The meanness and pettiness of the society in which I had moved, the emptiness and selfishness of women of fashion, had taught me to wish for and to seek an elect soul, and now I had found it—too late. I was weary of ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... was so fired by the prospect of those splendid additions to his toilet, that Reuben was compelled to promise them from his own stores. Joseph became at once amenable to reason, and promised to overlook his lordship's meanness. ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... relating to illustrious persons, and antient and noble families; several occurrences in which the Public is interested, and other matters of a more private nature, can only be found in works of this kind. History cannot stoop to the meanness of examining the materials of which Memoirs are ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... well known that the Good People cannot abide meanness. They like to be liberally dealt with when they beg or borrow of the human race; and, on the other hand, to those who come to them in need, they are ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... you this, Elsie; pretty gin'rally a mean dog 'll bite if he sees you're afraid of him. The only way to handle that kind is to run straight at him and kick the meanness out of him. The more he barks the harder you ought to kick. If you run away once it 'll be mighty uncomf'table every time you go past that house. But never mind; I cal'late this p'tic'lar pup won't bite; I've pulled his teeth, I guess. What's your plans, now? Goin' ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... class of men whose corruption will be the least injury to the state; and in the third place, they must devise some way whereby the followers of these occupations themselves will not readily fall into habits of unbridled shamelessness and meanness. ...
— Laws • Plato
... our system," said Rafael, marking the evident bewilderment of his friend. "Confess you would call it meanness—my huckstering with yonder young fool. I call it simplicity. Why throw away a shilling without need? Our race never did. A shilling is four men's bread: shall I disdain to defile my fingers by holding them out relief in their necessity? It is you who are mean—you Normans—not ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and where he saw his brother last. The recollection gave him fresh cause of regret. He remembered they had parted on his refusing to suffer Lady Clementina to admit the acquaintance of Henry's wife. Both Henry and his wife he now contemplated beyond the reach of his pride; and he felt the meanness of his former and the imbecility of his future haughtiness ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... whispered to him by the fiend that ever whispers to the heart of man, 'Dread men's opinions more than God's law!' Oh, my dear brother! what minds like yours should guard against the most is not the meanness of evil,—it is the evil that takes false nobility, by garbing itself in the royal magnificence of good." My uncle walked to the window, opened it, looked out a moment, as if to draw in fresh air, closed it ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... group, with the two subdivisions of urolagnia and Coprolagnia.[24] Inter faeces et urinam nascimur is an ancient text which has served the ascetic preachers of old for many discourses on the littleness of man and the meanness of that reproductive power which plays so large a part in man's life. "The stupid bungle of Nature," a correspondent writes, "whereby the generative organs serve as a means of relieving the bladder, is doubtless responsible for much ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... his house beset with spies, his conversation with his family listened to, and the most trifling actions of his life recorded, it would be deemed unfair and illiberal, and he who should practice such meanness would be thought worthy of no punishment more respectful than what might be inflicted by an oaken censor, or an admonitory heel.—But it will be said, a King is not an individual, and that such a habit, or such an amusement, is beneath the dignity of his character. Yet would it ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady |
