"Narrow-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it. She rejected the offer with contempt. He went his way, mortified and embittered. A month later she had buried herself in a secluded and squalid village, as wife of the old, poor, overworked, and hopelessly narrow-minded clergyman, whose cure it was. She abstained, however, for his own sake, from making any painful disclosures to her husband; and the daily and hourly expiation brought no peace with it; for she remained ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... constitution made by Bucareli at the Escorial was similarly but a blind to keep the Indians quiet till the Government had time to exploit them at its ease. Still, Bucareli in all his actions seems to have been an honest man; one of those honest, narrow-minded men who have sown more misery in the world than all the rogues and scoundrels since the flood. Be all that as it may, his constitution in a thousand ways recalled the Jesuits' polity in their days of rule. In ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... its ancient name of Lvoff, and proceeded to introduce the Russian system of administration there with all its traditional characteristics. But in lieu of conferring full powers on the Governor of the conquered province, a man of broad views and conciliatory methods, the Government dispatched a narrow-minded official, devoid of natural ability, of administrative training, and of the sobering consciousness of his own defects, and listened to his recommendations. For Russia, like France and Britain, still contemplated ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... no narrow-minded sectarian, he still loved to foster in the minds of his own children a preference for the people that had, under God, saved his soul, and made him what he was, and he tried to bind his family to the Church of his choice. Spending a Sunday in the town of Dewsbury, in company with a devoted brother ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... innocent as some hundreds of other narrow-minded, short-sighted old men whom chance, or the duplicity of the real rascals, puts at the head ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... shown the realization of his fears to be inevitable, and when he himself had so far bent as to study the literature he despised, the long and active public life of Cato is in complete harmony. He is the perfect type of an old Roman. Hard, shrewd, niggardly, and narrow-minded, he was honest to the core, unsparing of himself as of others, scorning every kind of luxury, and of inflexible moral rectitude. He had no respect for birth, rank, fortune, or talent; his praise was bestowed solely on personal ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... debtor is to be imprisoned, but the creditor shall find him bread and water." A foreigner coming to England to recover a debt may also recover the expenses of his trip; and the statute is further liberal in that it does away with the Droit d'Aubaine, that narrow-minded custom by which the goods or personal property of any person who died passing through the kingdom were seized by the authorities and could not be recovered by his heirs. This mediaeval injustice continued for some centuries in Germany and France, and we can hardly say that the notion is ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... and I think Mr. Shine is a well intentioned man whose faith, such as it is, is honest; but he is ignorant, coarse-fibred, and narrow-minded. He is doing right according to his own poor, dim light, and could not be convinced otherwise by any word or act of ours; but his preachings can do me no injury. They do not irritate me in the least—indeed, I am not sure that they do ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... no battle about words. The stakes were high. The controversialists championed far-reaching principles with a decisive influence on the course of thought and conduct. Unfriendly critics usually portray the Christologians as narrow-minded and audacious. So, no doubt, they were, but they were not wrong-headed. If the matters in dispute between theist, deist, and pantheist are trivialities, then and then only can we regard the enterprise of the Christologians as chimerical and their achievements as futile. The different formulae ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... at the moment of its utmost peril. "The men who oppose a strong and energetic government," wrote Washington to Hamilton on July 10, 1787, the day of Yates' and Lansing's retirement from the Philadelphia convention, "are, in my opinion, narrow-minded politicians, or are under the influence of local views." This reference to "local views" meant George Clinton, upon whose advice Yates and Lansing acted, and who declared unreservedly that only confusion could come to the country from a convention ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... world was at fault, Protestant as well as Catholic. It was not the fault of religion; it was the fault of that short-sighted linking of theological dogmas to scriptural texts which, in utter defiance of the words and works of the Blessed Founder of Christianity, narrow-minded, loud-voiced men are ever prone to substitute for religion. Justly is it said by one of the most eminent among contemporary Anglican divines, that "it is because they have mistaken the dawn for a conflagration that theologians have so often been ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... with the sunny curls, who was to be raised a gentleman and to be "shielded from the vulgar surroundings and coarse associations of her husband's youth," and he was proud popper's pet, whose good times weren't going to be spoiled by a narrow-minded old brute of a father, or whose talents weren't going to be smothered in poverty, the way the old man's had been. No, sir-ee, Percy was going to have all the money he wanted, with the whisky bottle always in sight on the sideboard and ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... towards this celebrated statesman, this eminent orator, this mediocre writer, this narrow-minded man, an indefinable sentiment ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... great self-applause. People in general seem to like to show that they are well-born, and come of good stock; but the young New-Englanders, many of them, appear to take pleasure in insisting that they came of a race of narrow-minded, persecuting bigots. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... pride and his revengeful spirit went hand in hand together. The former quality had nothing in it of that lofty character which raises it almost to a virtue, in the stern Scottish character: it was the narrow-minded love of power which is ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... curious to see Mr. Cumberland, who, it seems, has given evident marks of displeasure at his name whenever Mrs. Thrale has mentioned it. That poor man is so wonderfully narrow-minded in his authorship capacity, though otherwise good, humane and generous, that he changes countenance at either seeing or hearing of any writer whatsoever. Mrs. Thrale, with whom, this foible excepted, he is a great ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... There is no country in the world so much in need of unpractical people as this country of ours. With us, Thought is degraded by its constant association with practice. Who that moves in the stress and turmoil of actual existence, noisy politician, or brawling social reformer, or poor narrow-minded priest blinded by the sufferings of that unimportant section of the community among whom he has cast his lot, can seriously claim to be able to form a disinterested intellectual judgment about any one thing? Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... dead weight of ignorance, poverty, crime, and disease. Every such society has, in the great central section of the masses, a great body which is neutral in all the policy of society. It lives by routine and tradition. It is not brutal, but it is shallow, narrow-minded, and prejudiced. Nevertheless it is harmless. It lacks initiative and cannot give an impulse for good or bad. It produces few criminals. It can sometimes be moved by appeals to its fixed ideas and prejudices. It is affected in its mores by contagion ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... men; at least we need not blame them overmuch. To say that they acted as they did is to say that they were human, were narrow-minded, and were the apostles of a lost cause. But they could not know this; they had no experience of the past to guide them; the conditions under which they found themselves were novel, and had to be met for the first time. Conduct which was excusable then would be unpardonable now, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... and made it hard for a poor man to seek the best price for his only saleable commodity, was, so far, opposed to the fundamental principles common to Smith and Eden. The law, too, might be used oppressively by the niggardly and narrow-minded. The overseer, as Burn complained,[80] was often a petty tyrant: his aim was to depopulate his parish; to prevent the poor from obtaining a settlement; to make the workhouse a terror by placing it under the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... was a gentlemen and a man of honour. There was something about him, something dignified, reserved, a little sad, which won Anstice's usually jealously-withheld sympathy at once; and although he had hitherto pictured Major Carstairs as harsh, unforgiving, narrow-minded, inasmuch as he could not bring himself to believe his wife innocent of a degrading charge, now that he saw the man himself, traced the lines in his face which spoke of tragedy, noted the sadness ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... disagreeable statements about the exploitation of children in certain factories in Brooklyn, about Puritan hypocrisy, about drinking water in public and wine in secret. He was told he was a member of that narrow-minded caste hating art, culture, and life itself, and seeing devils with cloven hoofs and long tails in authors like Shakespeare, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... no reason why they should. Their lords have kicked and cuffed and spat upon them, and treated them worse than dogs. You have but to cast a burning fagot into the mass of discontent, and it will flame up at once. Even the wisest among them who do know something about it, are the most narrow-minded. If there be two versions of a matter they always believe the most absurd one. I told them to be on their guard against danger. I told them to look after their wells and their granaries, as their masters wanted to poison them. When they asked why? I told them that the whole kingdom was surrounded ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... must forget what I said about Eliza Lynn. She may be the best of human beings, and I am but a narrow-minded fool to express prejudice against a person ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... read these utterances that the seeds of prudery and pruriency are already alive in the popular mind, but yet we see also that some of the most distinguished thinkers of the early Christian Church, in striking contrast to the more morbid and narrow-minded mediaeval ascetics, clearly stood aside from the popular movement. On the whole, they were submerged because Christianity, like Buddhism, had in it from the first a germ that lent itself to ascetic renunciation, and the sexual life is always the first impulse to be sacrificed to the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... associated with Arnold's work and influence. The term "Barbarian" refers to the aristocratic classes, whom Arnold thought to be essentially crude in soul, notwithstanding their good clothes and superficial graces. "Philistine" refers to the middle classes,—narrow-minded and self-satisfied people, according to Arnold, whom he satirizes with the idea of opening their minds to new ideas. "Hebraism" is Arnold's term for moral education. Carlyle had emphasized the Hebraic or moral element in life, and Arnold undertook to preach the Hellenic or intellectual ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... customary gorgeous ritual the accession of a new Doge, seemed to Odo like the richly-inlaid frame of some Renaissance "triumph." But the splendid houses with their marble peristyles, and the painted villas in their orange-groves along the shore, housed a dull and narrow-minded society, content to amass wealth and play biribi under the eyes of their ancestral Vandykes, without any concern as to the questions agitating the world. A kind of fat commercial dulness, a lack of that personal distinction which justifies ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... it was a good stunt? After all, some of these fellows are so darn cautious and narrow-minded that they're prejudiced against a fellow that talks right out ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... objection to it. Much as I sympathised with Lady Glyde in other respects, I could not sympathise with her in her unjust prejudices against Count Fosco. I never before met with any lady of her rank and station who was so lamentably narrow-minded on the subject of foreigners. Neither her uncle's note nor Sir Percival's increasing impatience seemed to have the least effect on her. She still objected to staying a night in London, she still implored her husband not to write to ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... translation of my novels into the Italian language—has long since informed you, that there are certain important social topics which are held to be forbidden to the English novelist (no matter how seriously and how delicately he may treat them), by a narrow-minded minority of readers, and by the critics who flatter their prejudices. You also know, having done me the honor to read my books, that I respect my art far too sincerely to permit limits to be wantonly assigned to it, which are imposed in no other civilized country on the face of the earth. When ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... always played cards, in select circles, being careful, of course, with whom I played; just as I am careful with whom I associate, and, contrary to your supposition, I have always supposed those people who frowned on such amusements to be a set of narrow-minded fanatics. And I didn't know that Christian people did frown on such amusements; though, to be sure, now that I think of it, there are certain ones who never come to card-parties nor dancing-parties. I guess the difficulty is that I have ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... all alike—all," said he, bitterly, "and the great artiste is even as narrow-minded and pitiful as the unknown and humble; you are all weak, vain, envious, and swayed by small passions; and to think that you, Barbarina, are not an exception; that the Barbarina weeps because Marianna Cochois is to play the principal role in ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... not much of him to begin with, as he was only a little pinch of a baby when he was born, so puny and weak the nurses said he wouldn't stay here long. He sat in their laps, and was coddled till six years old, when he was put under that scheming, narrow-minded bigot, Reverend Doctor Ayscough. And what do you suppose the reverend donkey set him to doing? Why, learning hymns, written by another reverend gentleman, Doctor Philip Doddridge. Very good religious hymns, no doubt, but not quite so attractive as Mother ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... knew nothing of foreign affairs, a fact of which Michael had become fully aware on entering the narrow-minded, characteristic room. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... land than there were people to work it. The first lease, therefore, was granted on highly advantageous terms to that Jason Newcome, whom I can just remember. He had two characters; the one, and the true, which set him down as a covetous, envious, narrow-minded provincial, who was full of cant and roguery. Some traditions exist among us of his having been detected in stealing timber, and in various other frauds. In public he is one of those virtuous and hard-working pioneers who ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... Francesca virtuously, as she plaited her hair, "and there is no spectacle so abhorrent to every sense as a narrow-minded man who cannot see anything outside of his own country. But he is awfully good-looking,—I will say that for him: and if you don't explain me to Lady Baird, I will write to Mr. Beresford about the earl. There was no bickering there; it was looking at you ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... especially true of the hand. No one who was fortunate enough to observe the slender, tapering fingers and singular grace of the hand of the deceased Poet Laureate could possibly believe it the extremity of a coarse or narrow-minded person. In the accompanying photographs, the hand of a cool, yet enthusiastic, ratiocinative spirit will be found to bear a palpable affinity to others whose possessors come under this head, and yet be utterly antagonistic to Carlyle's, or ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... handsome person and pleasing manners, and was a general favorite in the factory. Nevertheless, as this young man was in the eye of the law not a man, but a thing, all these superior qualifications were subject to the control of a vulgar, narrow-minded, tyrannical master. This same gentleman, having heard of the fame of George's invention, took a ride over to the factory, to see what this intelligent chattel had been about. He was received with great enthusiasm by the employer, who congratulated him on possessing so valuable ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... so narrow-minded, Artie!" his sister exclaimed impatiently. "Mother was brought up very differently from the way she and ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... injuries from the saddle. It is not within the province of this book to deal with such subjects, and few ladies would go through the bother of studying them. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions, as we may see by the comparatively large number of lady doctors, and by the fact that only the narrow-minded policy of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons prevented Miss Custance, who had studied at the Edinburgh New Veterinary College, from obtaining her diploma, to which she was fully entitled by her scientific attainments ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... confidant of his wife, who, deeply troubled, told Panine the fears his friends entertained on his account. The Prince smiled disdainfully, saying these fears were the effect of plebeian timidity. The mistress understood nothing of great speculations, and Cayrol was a narrow-minded banker! He knew what he was doing. The results of his speculations were mathematical. So far they had not disappointed his hopes. The great Universal Credit Company, of which he was going to be a director, would ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... rewarded by the quickness with which he championed her against her own depreciation. "I've always noticed," he said meditatively, slowly taking a sip from his wine-glass, "that nobody can be single-minded who isn't narrow-minded; and I think it likely that people who aren't so cocksure what they want to do with themselves, hesitate because they have a great deal more to do with. A nature rich in fine and complex possibilities takes more time to dispose ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... but the majority of them were, at starting, men of generous instincts, a quick sense of that which is pure and true, and a genuine love of mankind. They dwelt upon their idea—they lived upon it for a few years—and then they "showed their keeping." If I should wish to find a narrow-minded, uncharitable, bigoted soul, in the smallest possible space of time, I would look among those who have made temperance the specialty of their lives—not because temperance is bad, but because one ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... one type of fool, exclusively American, whose stupidity arises from love and tenderness. Very often she is a woman. She has been responsible for the arrival in France of a number of narrow-minded and well-intentioned persons; their errand is to investigate vice-conditions in the U.S. Army. This suspicion of the women at home concerning the conduct of their men in the field, is directly traceable to reports of the debasing influences of war set in circulation ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... Government had offered for Franklin's rescue; we, I am sorry to say, had acted differently. America had plucked a rose from our brows; but in such generous enterprise, we for the most part felt that no narrow-minded national prejudices could enter, and I gloried in the thought that the men who had so nobly borne themselves, as well as he, the princely merchant who had done his best to assist the widow and orphan to recover those for whom they had so long hoped and wept, were men who spoke our ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... the justification and purification of God Himself. Plato's dream brushed by the gate of this doctrine when it walked highest, and won for him the title of 'Divine.' That it is vulgarised sometimes by narrow-minded teachers in theory, and by hypocrites in action, might be an argument (if admitted at all) against all truth, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... and Marie Antoinette are among the historical personages who have most influenced the destinies of the world. His dulness, torpidity and indecision, and her frivolity, narrow-minded prejudices and suspiciousness, are among the causes of our present calamities. They are among the causes of a state of things which has inflicted on us, and threatens to inflict on all Europe, the worst of all Governments—democratic ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... not send Giordano Bruno to the stake or persecute Galileo. We have no right to be very fastidious. In the past we were never more than tolerated. This tolerance, if nothing more, we are assured of in the future. A narrow-minded, democratic regime is often, as we know, very troublesome. But for all that men of intelligence find that they can live in America, as long as they are not too exacting. Noli me tangere is the most one can ask for from democracy. We shall pass through several alternatives of anarchy ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... just touch upon two other persons whom I have mentioned, and then bring this long letter to a close. These are Mrs. Wilson and her daughter. The former was the widow of a substantial farmer, a narrow-minded, tattling old gossip, whose character is not worth describing. She had two sons, Robert, a rough countrified farmer, and Richard, a retiring, studious young man, who was studying the classics with the vicar's assistance, preparing for college, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... The eagle's wings are nothing without his pectoral muscles. It is not Swedenborg and his disciples that legislate for the scientific world; they may suggest truth, but they rarely prove it, and never bring it into such systematic forms as narrow-minded Nature will insist ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... I speak of, Liberal principles had been making rapid progress in the country among persons of all ranks. For years the colony had groaned under the tyranny and narrow-minded policy of the mother country. As she produced wine, oil, and silk, the inhabitants of New Granada and Venezuela were not allowed to cultivate either the vine, the olive, or the mulberry, under the idea that they would thus be ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... Halleck, with the effect of having also given that theory consideration. "She's not magnanimous, poor soul. I fancy she is rather a narrow-minded person, with strict limitations in regard to people who think ill—or ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... that way, found her harsh judgment insensibly relaxing, as she stepped to the counter where Pease stood, and asked quite amiably to see some of the best calicoes, just in from New-York. Pease, the narrow-minded idiot, thought this a good time to play off a smart trick on one of Smith's regular customers. So he paraded a large variety of goods before her, and took occasion to recommend a very pretty article, for which he charged a monstrous price, because ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... back! Something had snapped. I was in it, but not of it. I saw the young men walking in the streets, with their high collars and nice clothes, their newspapers and walking-sticks and gloves. What did they know? I'd been like that, just as ignorant, just as conceited and narrow-minded. And I thought of the Corydon ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... with his scientific analysis, formed on a particular aspect, such a Professor as I have imagined was betraying a want of philosophical depth, and an ignorance of what an University Teaching ought to be. He was no longer a teacher of liberal knowledge, but a narrow-minded bigot. While his doctrines professed to be conclusions formed upon an hypothesis or partial truth, they were undeniable; not so if they professed to give results in facts which he could grasp and take possession of. Granting, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... State, and the question of the State in general. His pamphlet may be divided into two parts: one, historico-literary, containing valuable material for the history of the ideas of Stirner, Proudhon, and others; the second, ignorant and narrow-minded, containing a clumsy disquisition on the theme 'that an anarchist cannot be distinguished from a bandit,' an amusing combination of subjects and most characteristic of the entire activity of Plechanoff on the eve of revolution and during the revolutionary ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... 153) thoughtful, and upright Mr. Effingham can speedily be dismissed as merely a mild type of bore. Not so with his daughter Eve, and his cousin John Effingham. The latter plays the part of critic of his country and countrymen. It seems hardly possible that in this narrow-minded, disagreeable, and essentially vulgar character, Cooper could have fancied he was creating anything but a contemptible boor. The contrast between what is said of him, and what is said by him, almost reaches the comic. We read constantly of his caustic satire; ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... the debate on the naval appropriations to be frightened by Senator Maine's threat of a deficit of a few dollars in our budget, should the sums that were absolutely needed in case our fleet was to fulfill the most immediate national tasks be voted. This was the short-sighted policy of a narrow-minded politician who, when a country's fate is hanging in the balance, complains only of the costs. It was most assuredly a short-sighted policy, and we were compelled to pay ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... only natural that such a society should act as a powerful stimulus upon the vivid temperament of Voltaire, who had come to it with the bitter knowledge fresh in his mind of the medieval futility, the narrow-minded cynicism of his own country. Yet the book which was the result is in many ways a surprising one. It is almost as remarkable for what it does not say as for what it does. In the first place, Voltaire makes no attempt to give his readers ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... rather than the essential fact from the broadly social point of view. We should recognize it only to the extent that is necessary to give us control over it—not allow it to hold us helplessly in its grip because we cannot separate it from the idea of sexual indiscretion. There is a form of narrow-minded self-righteousness about these things that sets the stamp of vice on innocent and guilty alike simply on the strength of the sexual transmission of syphilis. In the effort to avoid so mistaken and ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... that Cavour once said, that no great change would be accomplished in Italy till the Italians introduced the public-school system of England. So long as the youth of the country were given up for education to the priests—the most illiterate, narrow-minded, and bigoted class in Europe—so long would they carry with them through life the petty prejudices of their early days; or, in emancipating themselves from these, fall into a scepticism whose baneful distrust would damp the ardour of all patriotism, and sap the strength of ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... he is narrow-minded, or, perhaps it would be more correct to say, being narrow-minded he is Low Church. He is an indifferent scholar, and occupies himself with his religious fancies and those of his flock. He can reign supreme ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... Aurelius Cotta, a senator, and the judices, from spite against him, had refused to convict. So he turned to the Italian land-owners, and became the mouthpiece of their selfishness, for a selfish or at best a narrow-minded end. The nobles must have, at heart, disliked his allies; but they cheered him in the Senate, and he succeeded in practically strangling the commission by procuring the transfer of its jurisdiction to the consuls. The consul for the time being immediately ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... is the most revolting mistake of the spirit and meaning of Bacchus. It looks drunken, brutal, and narrow-minded, and has an expression of dissoluteness the most revolting. The lower part of the figure is stiff, and the manner in which the shoulders are united to the breast, and the neck to the head, abundantly inharmonious. It is altogether without unity, as was the idea of the ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... you are as generous and noble as most people are narrow-minded," said Severne, enthusiastically; "and I have determined to tell you ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... sir, we can't sit quietly under the assault of these narrow-minded bigots. You must give the lie ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... visited Quebec in 1617 and 1618. During the years spent at Quebec, which followed his explorations of 1616, he was greatly impeded in his work of consolidating Canada as a French colony by the religious strife between the Catholics and Huguenots, and the narrow-minded greed of the Chartered company of fur-trading merchants for whom he worked. But in 1620 he came back to Canada as Lieutenant-Governor (bringing his wife with him), and after attending to the settlement of a violent commercial dispute between fur-trading companies he tried to compose the quarrel ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... narrow-minded man, painfully conscientious in his statements lest he should be unjust to somebody; a slow thinker, unable to let a subject drop when once he had started upon it. He had no sooner uttered his remark about hard times than he ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... emancipation, but it was purely a question of policy with him. He cared nothing about human rights. His dark and cruel nature was unsusceptible of a noble or generous impulse. While he preached liberal generalities, he ruled his subjects with an iron rod. He was bigoted, narrow-minded, and brutal. The sense of right was not in his nature. His ambition was to be an object of heathenish idolatry to his subjects—whether as a god or devil it mattered nothing; fear was the only incense he was capable of craving; and if such a nature can be susceptible of enjoyment, his consisted ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... circumstances with great minuteness and glee. It is as follows: Once in 1768, Elwert and he had to repeat their catechism together on a certain day publicly in the church. Their teacher, an ill-conditioned, narrow-minded pietist, had previously threatened them with a thorough flogging if they missed even a single word. To make the matter worse, this very teacher chanced to be the person whose turn it was to catechise on the appointed day. Both the boys began their answers ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... not betray her; but his knowledge was a menace, and his surprise that she should have David, an insult! Of course, her way of living was considered "wrong" by people who cannot understand such situations— old-fashioned, narrow-minded people. But the idea of any harm coming to David by it was ridiculous! As for Sam Wright, all that sort of thing was impossible, because it was repugnant. No married woman, "respectable," as such women call themselves, could have found the ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... man alive has points of interest, but a rich man dead is only interesting to his heirs. Also, this Brant was one of these narrow-minded, fanatical, New Religion fellows who were so wearisome to men of intellect and refinement. True, he, Adrian, was himself of that community, for circumstances had driven him into the herd, but oh! he found them ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Old Maid, "you are narrow-minded. Civilisation has given us music. Surely you will admit that has been of ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... eyes glared straight in front of him. Had it been Adiron—Adiron, as true a man, would have feigned agreement and blown the plot afterwards. But never Colendorp! He was narrow-minded, poor, embittered, scenting insult in every careless word, proud, loyal, desperate. Mentally his vision was limited; he could see but one thing at a time, but he saw ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... of education. They had seen the evil of their ways. As the exiles banished by Ferdinand I. came into contact with Lutherans in Prussia they heard, rather to their disgust, that they were commonly regarded by the German Protestants as a narrow-minded and benighted set of men; and, therefore, at the special invitation of the Lutheran Bishop Speratus, they began the practice of sending some of their students to foreign universities. It is pathetic to read how the first ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... The widow always trusted me, and I know she'll take my word now. She is not so narrow-minded as the very folks who look down ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... Capt. James St. Claire Morton, would all be promoted entirely regardless of what the fortunes of war might have in store for them. This I did without the slightest feeling of unkindness or jealousy towards these officers, but simply on account of my belief that the Commanding General was such a narrow-minded bigot in regard to Catholicism, that it was impossible for him not to allow considerations of this kind to control his estimate of men. We shall see how nearly correct I was in this estimate further on. At the time this campaign was entered upon the National Forces ...
— Personal recollections and experiences concerning the Battle of Stone River • Milo S. Hascall
... times—invariably maintains whatever axioms it has laid down; it is arrogant, as is everything that is narrow-minded; while true physical philosophy, founded on science, doubts because it seeks to investigate thoroughly—distinguishes between that which is certain and that which is simply probable—and labours incessantly to bring ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... would imagine that the kind of paternal affection which is ascribed to God would have induced him to intervene at an earlier stage. The kind of father who co-operates with the more gifted and ambitious of his children, and does nothing for the less gifted and sluggish, is a narrow-minded and narrow-hearted man. Affection turns rather to those who cannot help themselves, or who need judicious and constant inspiration. This view we are considering is even less flattering to God, because the aspiring children of the nineteenth and twentieth ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... betrayed or disgraced the whole party, and which brought into suspicion, if not into actual contempt, the name, nay, even the principles of the Republicans. And thus the patriots have the dead weight to support, and are wholly unsupported. The narrow-minded and shallow Republican press, has no comprehension of the difficulty of the position in which the patriots are placed; and that press, being in various ways connected with the administration, rarely, if ever, supports the patriots, and even ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... George III, obstinate, narrow-minded, and determined to make his own will felt in the choice of Ministers and the direction of affairs, had succeeded his grandfather in 1760. Too {35} astute to violate the fast-bound tradition of the British constitution that he must govern only through Ministers, he saw that to have his ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... two hundred years ago, I don't care a pin what she would say, especially as she looks like a very narrow-minded, haughty woman. But I do care very much what Miss Plenty Campbell says, for she is a very sensible, generous, discreet, and dear old lady who wouldn't hurt a fly, much less a good and faithful girl who has been a sister to me. Would she?" entreated Rose, knowing well that the elder aunt led ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... strategic points as our relations with Germany developed and came to a climax. At the beginning of the war I was sympathetic with Germany, but my sympathy changed to disgust as I watched developments in Berlin change the German people from world citizens to narrow-minded, deceitful tools of a ruthless government. I saw Germany outlaw herself. I saw the effects of President Wilson's notes. I saw the anti-American propaganda begin. I saw the Germany of 1915 disappear. I saw the birth ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... weak girls to grow strong, and timid girls to grow brave, and helpless girls to become useful, and lonely girls to find friends and social opportunities—it is for all these things, but for more—much more besides. It is to show selfish, narrow-minded girls—like that poor little Sadie—the beauty of unselfishness and generosity and thoughtful kindness to others. Don't you see that we have no right to refuse to give Sadie her chance just because she doesn't know any ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... for a bridegroom, and one which many regarded at the time as ominous for the future. In truth, no two persons could have been more thoroughly mismated—Byron, the human volcano, and his wife, a prim, narrow-minded, and peevish woman. Their incompatibility was evident enough from the very first, so that when they returned from their wedding-journey, and some one asked Byron about his ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... would like to pay a visit to the Duke of Nassau. He was my neighbour, and I had so often met him on my lonely walks in the park, that I considered it polite to call on him. Unfortunately there was not much to be got out of the interview which took place. He was a very narrow-minded but amiable man, who excused himself for continuing to smoke his cigar in my presence because he could not get on without it, and he thereupon proceeded to describe to me his preference for Italian opera, which I was quite content he should ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... choose us out another text, O man morose and narrow-minded! Come turn the page—I read the next, And then the next, and still I ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "have fallen below the level of progressive capitalistic governments. No 'Socialistic' minister has done near so much for democracy as honorable but narrow-minded democrats like Combes. 'Socialistic' ministers have before anything else sought the means of keeping themselves in office. In order to make people forget their past, they are compelled to give continuously new proofs of their zeal for ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... been liberal, progressive and patriotic; whereas that of the landed interest has been retrograde and selfish. There cannot be a greater delusion. English manufacturers have been just as self-seeking and narrow-minded as other people—no more and no less; they have been quite as ready to sacrifice the interests of others when they believed them to be opposed to their own, as the much-abused landowners. At this time every nation in Europe ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... the misery, which many unfortunate beings, whose minds and bodies are equally weak, suffer in such situations—unable to work and ashamed to beg? The wife, a cold-hearted, narrow-minded woman, and this is not an unfair supposition; for the present mode of education does not tend to enlarge the heart any more than the understanding, is jealous of the little kindness which her husband shows to his relations; and her sensibility ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... obscene din of all these carmagnoles and corobberies was not the only burden that lay on sane people during the war. There was also the emotional strain, complicated by the offended economic sense, produced by the casualty lists. The stupid, the selfish, the narrow-minded, the callous and unimaginative were spared a great deal. "Blood and destruction shall be so in use that mothers shall but smile when they behold their infantes quartered by the hands of war," was a Shakespearean prophecy that very nearly ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... only she could take a few lessons in music and fancy work she might get "a place as governess in some family where the want of a knowledge of French would be no objection." But, unhappily, good dame Herschel, like many other uneducated and narrow-minded persons, had a strange dread of too much knowledge. She thought that "nothing further was needed," says Carolina, "than to send me two or three months to a sempstress to be taught to make household linen; so all that my father could do ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... nation can commit crimes like this without suffering more than its victims. Spain has never to this day recovered from the blow to her own prosperity, to her commerce, her manufactures, and her civilisation dealt by the narrow-minded and ignorant King, led by a despicable favourite, and the fanatical bigot, Ribera. With the Moors went almost all their arts and industries; immense tracts of country became arid wastes: Castile and La Mancha barely raise crops every second year where the Moriscos reaped their teeming harvest, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... right," replied Rolfe viciously. "He's the most pig-headed, obstinate, vain, narrow-minded man you could come across." It occurred to Rolfe that it was not exactly good form on his part to condemn his superior officer so vigorously in the presence of a rival, so he broke off abruptly and asked Crewe ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... strong Churchman, sir," said the Major. "And even if I were not, one must set an example, you know. I may be narrow-minded, but I'm particular about all that sort of thing. I shall ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... moral and intellectual apathy that prevailed outside a few places like York or other centres of intelligence; but they forgot to make allowance for the difficulties that surrounded these settlers. The isolation of their lives had naturally the effect of making even the better class narrow-minded, selfish, and at last careless of anything like refinement. Men who lived for years without the means of frequent communication with their fellow-men, without opportunities for social, instructive intercourse, except what they might enjoy ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... cannot leave one wholly uninfluenced for or against the liver of the life. If I see a man beating a dog because it has licked his hand, I draw the inference that he is cruel. Would you say that I am narrow-minded in doing so? If one does not judge men and women by their actions, by what is one to judge them? Perhaps you will say, 'Don't judge them at all.' But it is impossible not to form opinions on people, and every time one forms an ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... causes which it is not the place to investigate here, lost their power on the ocean; the temporary maritime supremacy of Holland having passed away, because the people of that flat country were too close and narrow-minded to grasp the world for any length of time; France, the only modern rival of England as a naval power, having been compelled, owing to the revolutions of the last and the present centuries, to concentrate her whole strength on the Continent of Europe; the young giant of the West, America, being ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... came into conflict with the man whom he regarded as the greatest opponent to the progress of Grey Town. This was Councillor Garnett, and he was not above the suspicion that he made use of his privileges to further his own ends. Apart from this, he was at once narrow-minded and obstinate. For such men as he Denis Quirk had ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... sneak! If you see first-class work by anyone, go boldly and say, "Sir, I am an amateur," or, "I am a young professional," as the case may be. "Your work interests and delights me. May I look around?" Doubtless, the person addressed will be flattered by your appreciation, and, unless narrow-minded, will exchange views with you ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Such oppressive acts by narrow-minded good men were supplemented by the knavery of unscrupulous bad men. The Indian trader, in accordance with the teachings of the times, not only looked upon the savages as the offspring of Satan, but also as fair objects of spoil; consequently, the simplicity, moral honesty, ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... troublously to his mind. Arguing inwardly with himself, he presently began to think that notwithstanding all his attempts to live a Christian life, after the manner Christianly, he was surely becoming a very selfish and extremely narrow-minded man! He was unreasonably, illogically vexed at the return of the heiress of Abbot's Manor; and why? Why, chiefly because he would no longer be able to walk at liberty in Abbot's Manor gardens and woods,—because there would ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... reflection, it seemed to me that that would do no good, and that I at least knew how to spend the money well. I told him I would give him ten shillings out of it for the missionary society. He seemed quite shocked. How narrow-minded some clergymen are! But there, Flo, don't forget that the next paper is to be on spring flowers or the sad sea waves. It ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... accustomed to work independently of her brain's inherited impressions. She stamped her foot and anathematized herself for a narrow-minded creature whose will was weaker than her prejudices. The girl was blameless, helpless. She might have a mind as good as her own, be as well fitted to enjoy the higher pleasures of life. And she might have a beauty and a temperament which would be ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... of elderly widows who have given up the annual visit to London in the season, was a trifle behind the times. More charming an old lady could not be, but, in common with all who vegetate in the depths of rural England, she was just a trifle narrow-minded. In religion, she found fault constantly with the village parson, who, she declared, was guilty of ritualistic practices, and on the subject of her daughters she bemoaned the latter-day emancipation ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... extraordinary understanding, and yet with Mr. Mitchett he now found himself quite pleasantly at his ease. Their host, however, was a person sui generis, whom he had accepted, once for all, the inconsequence of liking in conformity with the need he occasionally felt to put it on record that he was not narrow-minded. Perhaps at bottom he most liked Mitchy because Mitchy most liked Nanda; there hung about him still moreover the faded fragrance of the superstition that hospitality not declined is one of the things that "oblige." It obliged the thoughts, for Mr. Longdon, as well as ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the backwardness displayed from the commencement by Prussia to act as the bulwark of Germany on the Lower Rhine is explained by Stein in his letters: "Hanoverian jealousy, by which the narrow-minded Castlereagh was guided, and, generally speaking, jealousy of the German ministerial clauses, as if the existence of a Mecklenburg were of greater importance to Germany than that of a powerful warlike population, alike famous in ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... had subsided, picking his teeth. At length, when silence was obtained, he told them that he was surprised that the most polished and liberal nation in the world should behave themselves in such a brutal and narrow-minded manner. He threatened them that he would throw up his engagement immediately, and announce to all foreign parts that they were a horde of barbarians; then, abusing them for a few seconds in round terms, be retired, amidst the cheerings of the whole ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... journalistic; practically everything that it printed was related to the thought and the action of the time. So insistent was Page on this programme that his pages were not "closed" until a week before the day of issue. Though the Forum dealt constantly in controversial subjects it never did so in a narrow-minded spirit; it was always ready to hear both sides of a question and the magazine "debate," in which opposing writers handled vigorously the same theme, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... looking into the history of Luther, and Calvin, and John Knox, and the rest, find them falling far short of the philosophic ideal—wanting sadly in many qualities which the liberal mind cannot dispense with. They are discovered to be intolerant, dogmatic, narrow-minded, inclined to persecute Catholics as Catholics had persecuted them; to be, in fact, little if at all better than the popes and cardinals ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... have influence with my fellow mortals—Heaven grant that I use it well. I first touch their hearts, then I have gained their minds. This is especially necessary with the good Breton folk. They are fervently religious, but not intellectual. They are sterling, but narrow-minded and superstitious. Nor did I choose my sphere of action; it was placed before me and I accepted it. I would rather have preached to Parisian congregations, the refined and cultivated of the earth; but I should probably not have done more good—if I have done good at all—and ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... earth. Lichtenberg of Gottingen is quite right when he says that this empty-headed Lavater has made himself ridiculous throughout Germany with his wonderful physiognomy of dogs' tails and his profiles of unknown pigtails. If Lavater is really so narrow-minded as not to be able to distinguish a crow from an eagle, it is his own affair; but he shall never presume to look at this portrait, and you, too, are not worthy, you scorner, that I should get angry ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... gained great ascendency over the royal conscience. Louis began to realize his responsibilities; the love of glory waned; the welfare of the people was now considered. Whether he was ennuied with pleasure, or saw things in a different light, or felt the influence of the narrow-minded but accomplished and virtuous woman whom he made his wife, or was disturbed by the storm which was gathering in the political horizon, he became more thoughtful and grave, though not ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... of, bringing him up with a jerk, galling his tender limbs and irretrievably ruining his temper,—it is all the same; there is no help for it. And really, to look around the world and see the people that are its fathers and mothers is appalling,—the narrow-minded, prejudiced, ignorant, ill-tempered, fretful, peevish, passionate, careworn, harassed men and women. Even we grown people, independent of them and capable of self-defence, have as much as we can do to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that "God permitted the act, to show the morality of kings;" and it is twenty-four years since down-trodden Poland made the greatest—not the last—manifestation of her imperishable vitality, which the cabinets of Europe were either too narrow-minded to understand, or too corrupt to appreciate. Eighty-one years of still unretributed crime, and twenty-four years of misery and exile! It is a long time to suffer, and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the tone of the place was set by the mediocrities. We need not suppose that vice was rampant among them, to shock the young and enthusiastic scholar. There was quite enough to daunt him in the prospect of a life spent among the narrow-minded. Sinners who feel waves of repentance may be better house-mates than those who have worldly credit enough ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... calamities, your true Rebel could never know adversity. The fire which consumes his dwelling is a personal boon, as he can readily explain. So is a devastating flood, or a widespread pestilence. The events which narrow-minded mudsills are apt to look upon as calamitous, are only "blessings in disguise" to every supporter and friend ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... "Magyar State" set itself to Magyarize education and every feature of public life. Any protest was treated as "incitement against the Magyar State Idea" and was made punishable by two years' imprisonment. It was as though a narrow-minded English Administration should set itself to obliterate all traces of Scottish, Welsh, and Irish national feeling; or as though the Government of India should ignore the existence of all save one race and language in our ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Princess of Saxony suffered much in her youth by a narrow-minded, bigoted mother, a Sadist like the monstrous Torquemada; marriage, she imagined, spelled a rich husband, more lover than master; freedom from tyranny, paltry surroundings, interference. To her untutored mind, life at the Saxon Court meant right royal splendor, liberty ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... a minute. "It is true I did not love her," she said, "in the past, but I have changed my views. I have been narrow-minded, and small, and silly. She herself has opened my eyes. I cannot tell you more now. Maggie will come down, and will be able to go on with her lessons just as usual this afternoon; but I want a day off, and I want ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... heart much as Madame Olenska had won it thirty years earlier; only instead of being distrustful and afraid of her, society took her joyfully for granted. She was pretty, amusing and accomplished: what more did any one want? Nobody was narrow-minded enough to rake up against her the half-forgotten facts of her father's past and her own origin. Only the older people remembered so obscure an incident in the business life of New York as Beaufort's failure, or the fact that after his wife's death he had been quietly ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... part with him again." This incident shows that, if Sunderland had lived, he would have plotted against Walpole to the end, and would have stood in Walpole's way to the best of his power, and with all the unforgiving hostility of the narrow-minded and selfish man who has had services rendered him for which he ought ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... With narrow-minded covetousness, he replied that nowadays he had enough to do to keep himself, and that it would be more reasonable to get ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... would do her good, and he as if he would be the better for abstinence; and so, in accordance with the usual lopsidedness of life, he drank freely, and she took nothing but lime-juice and water. You cannot imagine a more ignorant, intolerant, narrow-minded woman than she. If she had only been content to be silent and hidden that small brain of hers, it would not have mattered; but there was no end to her bitter and exasperating clacking. What was she after all but a thin pipe for conveying disease from one generation to another? ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro |
