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More "Contemn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men that are by others taken to be serious grave men, which we contemn and pitie; men of sowre complexions; mony-getting-men, that spend all their time first in getting, and next in anxious care to keep it: men that are condemn'd to be rich, and alwayes discontented, or busie. For these poor-rich-men, wee Anglers pitie them; and stand ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... rock of my last Hope is shivered,[s] And its fragments are sunk in the wave, Though I feel that my soul is delivered To Pain—it shall not be its slave. There is many a pang to pursue me: They may crush, but they shall not contemn; They may torture, but shall not subdue me; 'Tis of Thee that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... wine, as wine, men choose, but as it came From such or such a vintage: 'tis the same With life, which simply must be understood A black negation, if it be not good. But if 'tis wretched all—as men decline And loath the sour lees of corrupted wine— 'Tis so to be contemn'd. Merely TO BE Is not a boon to seek, nor ill to flee, Seeing that every vilest little Thing Has it in common, from a gnat's small wing, A creeping worm, down to the moveless stone, And crumbling bark from trees. Unless TO BE, And TO BE BLEST, be one, I do not see In bare existence, as existence, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study: and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them: for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... that are unseen, are eternal." It puts an affront upon nature. It does that for the unschooled, which philosophy does for Berkeley and Viasa. The uniform language that may be heard in the churches of the most ignorant sects, is, —"Contemn the unsubstantial shows of the world; they are vanities, dreams, shadows, unrealities; seek the realities of religion." The devotee flouts nature. Some theosophists have arrived at a certain hostility and indignation towards matter, as ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... evincing the least desire to imitate them, prefer generally the most ordinary liquids to the finest-flavoured wines, and, as guests, are much easier to please than to catch; for not only do they appear indifferent to these luxuries, but they seek to avoid them, contemn their use, and return to their log-houses and the cane-brake to seek in labour ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... of my last hope is shivered, And its fragments are sunk in the wave, Though I feel that my soul is delivered To pain—it shall not be its slave. There is many a pang to pursue me: They may crush, but they shall not contemn— They may torture, but shall not subdue me— 'Tis of thee ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... effort, Blackbird—effort, which uplifts and ennobles the lowest! For which reason, you, contemner of every sublime aspiration, I contemn! And that fragile roseate snail, struggling unaided to silver over ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... Ulysses (much less of Achilles), because his whole time was consumed in wars and voyages, yet he makes his father Laertes a gardener all that while, and seeking his consolation for the absence of his son in the pleasure of planting and even dunging his own grounds. Yet, see, he did not contemn us peasants; nay, so far was he from that insolence, that he always styles Eumaeus, who kept the hogs with wonderful respect, [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], the divine swine-herd; he could have done no more for Menelaus or Agamemnon. And Theocritus ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... dress-coat, The thrush's speckled fancy waistcoat; Or praise the robin, meek, but sly, For breast and tail and friendly eye— These have their place within my heart; The sparrow owns the larger part, And, for no virtues, rules in it, My reckless cheerful favourite! Friend sparrow, let the world contemn Your ways and make a mock of them, And dub you, if it has a mind, Low, quarrelsome, and unrefined; And let it, if it will, pursue With harsh abuse the troops of you Who through the orchard and the field Their busy bills in mischief wield; Who strip the tilth and bare the ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... world contemns; he sees that many things which the world admires are contemptible, so he despises much which the world does not; but when the world prizes what is really excellent, he does not contemn it, because the world regards it. If he learns Irish, which all the world scoffs at, he likewise learns Italian, which all the world melts at. If he learns Gypsy, the language of the tattered tent, he likewise learns Greek, the language of the college hall. If he learns ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... study of the principles of barter will make a man a great merchant. One can study painting and learn all the characteristics and methods and schools of the art and yet not be able to paint a picture. No amount of study of poetry will make a man a poet. So the crafty men of action "contemn studies," and the wise men who use them look beyond them for their value. "English literature," said a noted professor not long ago, "cannot be taught"; and certain it is that even with the most advanced analytical ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... of composition, their unformed conceptions of the Beautiful, their unsystematized experiments upon the Sublime. We scorn their velocity; for it is without direction: we reject their decision; for it is without grounds: we contemn their composition; for it is without materials: we reprobate their choice; for it is without comparison. Their duty is neither to choose, nor compose, nor imagine, nor experimentalize; but to be humble and earnest in ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... laudable actions, such as please them whose judgement they value; for of these men whom we contemn, we contemn also the Praises. Desire of Fame after death does the same. And though after death, there be no sense of the praise given us on Earth, as being joyes, that are either swallowed up in ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Have here a certain sanctuary found: Th' eternal refuge of the vagabond, Where, in but half a common age of time, Borrowing new blood and mariners from the clime, Proudly they learn all mankind to contemn; And all their race are true-born Englishmen. Dutch, Walloons, Flemings, Irishmen, and Scots, Vaudois, and Valtelins, and Huguenots, In good Queen Bess's charitable reign, Supplied us with three hundred thousand men. Religion—God, we thank thee!—sent them hither, Priests, Protestants, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... creatures. Hence, just as it is an evil for a rational creature to submit, by love, to a lower creature, so too is it an evil for it, if it submit not to God, but presumptuously revolt against Him or contemn Him. Now this evil is possible to a rational creature considered as to its nature on account of the natural flexibility of the free-will; whereas in the blessed, it becomes impossible, by reason of the perfection of glory. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... receptive of all gentle sympathies. Heroism might point him to an unending struggle with adverse conditions, but how was heroism possible without faith? Absolute faith he had none; he was essentially a negativist, guided by the mere relations of phenomena. Nothing easier than to contemn the mode of life represented by this wealthy middle class; but compare it with other existences conceivable by a thinking man, and it was emphatically good. It aimed at placidity, at benevolence, at supreme cleanliness,—things which more than compensated for the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... beg to have his ashes restored to them. Even the reasoning HUME once proposed to change his name and his country; and I believe did. The great poetical genius of our own times has openly alienated himself from the land of his brothers. He becomes immortal in the language of a people whom he would contemn.[A] Does he accept with ingratitude the fame he loves more ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... example. In the discourses which this saint made to his monks, a rigorous self-examination upon all their actions, every evening, was a practice which he strongly inculcated.[26] In an excellent sermon which he made to his disciples, recorded by St. Athanasius,[27] he pathetically exhorts them to contemn the whole world for heaven, to spend every day as if they knew it to be the last of their lives, having death always before their eyes, continually to advance in fervor, and to be always armed against the assaults of Satan, whose weakness he shows at length. He extols the efficacy of the sign ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Actions, knowing well that these Laws and Proclamations must necessarily take effect, began to grow mutinous, and rebel, and when the Judges were Landed, who were to Execute these Mandates, laying aside all manner of Love and Fear of God, were so audacious as to contemn and set at nought all the Reverence and Obedience due to their King, and so became Traytors, demeaning themselves like Blood-Thirsty Tyrants, destitute ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... great American idea of local governments for local purposes, and a general government for general purposes, still, thank God! may survive it. To be sure, we may be beaten and enslaved, The rascals, renegades, and liberticides may gain their object. This object we shall ever contemn. But if they gain it fairly, under the forms of the Constitution, it is the duty of all good citizens to submit. Our Southern opponents, we acknowledge, committed some "irregularities"; but nobody can assert, that, in dealing with them, we deviated, by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... painful impression that their political, perhaps even their military place in Europe, as the heirs of Richelieu, Louis XIV., and Napoleon, had been suddenly occupied by a power which they had taught themselves to contemn as an inferior. Until the summer of 1866 the emperor Napoleon fancied that he was strong enough to play with Bismarck a ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul on priesthood: if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good priests, and am afraid his part of the reparation will come to little. Let him to satisfied that he shall not be able to force himself upon me for an adversary. I contemn him too much to enter into competition with him. His own translations of Virgil have answer'd his criticisms on mine. If (as they say he has declar'd in print) he prefers the version of Ogleby to mine, the world has made him the same compliment: for 't is agreed on all hands, that he ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... said, "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink." But does not every man who sells or uses this liquor, as a beverage, encourage his neighbor to drink, and thus contemn God's authority? Does he not aggravate his guilt by sinning against great light? And would he not aggravate it still further, should he charge the blame on the sacred word? O, what a blot on the Bible, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... I am poor— but I'm a Gentleman, And one that scorns this Baseness which you practise. Poor as I am, I would not sell my self, No, not to gain your charming high-priz'd Person. Tho I admire you strangely for your Beauty, Yet I contemn your Mind. —And yet I wou'd at any rate enjoy you; At your own rate— but cannot— See here The only Sum I can command on Earth; I know not where to eat when this is gone: Yet such a Slave I am to Love and Beauty, This last ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... Abdera, in the suburbs, [49]under a shady bower, [50]with a book on his knees, busy at his study, sometimes writing, sometimes walking. The subject of his book was melancholy and madness; about him lay the carcases of many several beasts, newly by him cut up and anatomised; not that he did contemn God's creatures, as he told Hippocrates, but to find out the seat of this atra bilis, or melancholy, whence it proceeds, and how it was engendered in men's bodies, to the intent he might better cure it in himself, and by his writings ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... bids us be content with the approbation "of Him who seeth in secret." These commands were intended for different stations, one suited the affluent, the other the needy, and they were, beside, limitations and comments on each other, teaching us neither to contemn praise, nor to pursue it too ardently. He spoke much of the passive virtues, patience, returning good for evil (which the most indigent might do by remembering their enemies in their prayers), self-denial, self-examination, and aspirations after a better world. Few, he ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... contrary, We protest and testifie against all such so principled to have any right to rule in thir lands, because we look upon all such to be standing in a stated opposition to God and our covenanted work of reformation. Not that we contemn, deny or reject civil government and governours (as our former declared principles to the world make evident) but are willing to maintain, own, defend and subject to all such governours as shall be admitted according to our Covenants, and laws of the nation, and act in defence ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... vulgar idea of them, is it? But I believe it is what you will always strive to do, Harry." Bessie spoke with pretty eagerness. She feared that she might have seemed to contemn Harry's vocation, and she hastened to make amends. Harry understood her perfectly, and had the impudence to laugh at her quite in his old boyish way. A little confused—also in the old way—she ran on: "I have seen the judges in their scarlet robes and huge white wigs ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... lord," sighed the worthy nomarch. "The priests say that the gods are angry with Egypt because of the influx of foreigners; but I see that even the gods do not contemn gold and ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... languish in pleasures. You skirmish fiercely with any fortune, lest either affliction oppress you or prosperity corrupt you. Stay yourselves strongly in the mean! For whatsoever cometh either short, or goeth beyond, may well contemn felicity, but will never obtain any reward of labour. For it is placed in your power to frame to yourselves what fortune you please. For all that seemeth unsavoury either ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... mountains, waves, and skies a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them? Is not the love of these deep in my heart With a pure passion? Should I not contemn All objects, if ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the suggestions and temptations of Satan in particular; and told to each other by which they had been afflicted, and how they were borne up under his assaults. hey also discoursed of their own wretchedness of heart, of their unbelief; and did contemn, slight, and abhor their own righteousness, as filthy and insufficient to do them any good. And methought they spake as if joy did make them speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... deed tripartite To see each other in a tart light. 'Tis thus the bard is scorned by those Who only deal in learned prose: Whilst bards of quick imagination Are hipped by the dull prose oration. Men scoff at apes: apes scoff at them; And all—except themselves—contemn. ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... well avenged," he announced with kingly dignity, then smiled with satisfaction when they brought him the shield and helmet of Leonidas, the madman, who had dared to contemn his power. But all the generals who stood by were grim and sad. One more such victory would bring the army close ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... we carry our admiration still farther; and like the poet, while we actually contemn the man. Historians share the like fate; hence some, who have no regard to propriety or truth, are yet admired for diction, style, manner, and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... about these, as if it were children struggling among themselves about their order and rank! There is no worth in these things, but what fancy and custom impose upon them and yet poor creatures boast in these empty things. The gentlemen despise citizens, the citizens contemn the poor countrymen, and yet their bloods in a basin have no different colours, for all this hot contention about blood and birth. "Boast not of thyself." Nay, to speak properly, this is not thyself,—Qui genus laudat suum, aliena jactat.(277) Such parents, and such a ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... violation of an oath, desertion with arms in their hands, the sudden passing over from one camp to another, have always been condemned by honour as well as duty, civil or military, and denominated treason. Individuals, nations, or armies, men under the influence of a controlling passion, may contemn, at the first moment, or perhaps do not feel the moral impression which naturally attaches itself to their deeds; but it never fails to present itself, and, when seconded by the warnings of prudence or the blows of misfortune, it soon regains ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... is cowardly indeed! In that quaint book of Sir Thomas Browne's, Religio Medici there is an exact English equivalent for what is repeatedly taught in our Precepts. Let me quote it: "It is a brave act of valor to contemn death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live." A renowned priest of the seventeenth century satirically observed—"Talk as he may, a samurai who ne'er has died is apt in decisive ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... outcast face, Could she a son contemn, Had nature an Iscariot, That mushroom, — ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... of fashion we can, it rests on reality, and hates nothing so much as pretenders; to exclude and mystify pretenders and send them into everlasting 'Coventry,' is its delight. We contemn in turn every other gift of men of the world; but the habit even in little and the least matters of not appealing to any but our own sense of propriety, constitutes the foundation of all chivalry. There is almost ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... cold reasoning in the matter, that external decorum and suitable habiliments in any of the solemnities of religion and the administration of justice, have a powerful effect on the great mass of mankind, which it is not wise to cast aside or contemn. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... between selfish quacks who seek publicity 'to line the pocket,' and those 'who, prompted by some mysterious power,' come forward against their interest, and at the risk of their reputation. 'Rather than to contemn and ridicule, it were better to study the manifestations of that mysterious power.' They do not consider that the truth thus brought to light, while they fail to acknowledge it, is affording 'to selfish quackery' ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard
... of the lightest importance. He knew that by dwelling much upon the fault of a rival, you only give him dignity in the eyes of your mistress: the wisest plan is, neither loudly to hate, nor bitterly to contemn; the wisest plan is to lower him by an indifference of tone, as if you could not dream that he could be loved. Your safety is in concealing the wound to your own pride, and imperceptibly alarming that of the umpire, whose voice is fate! Such, in all times, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... was like another to me, and Dorothy would answer as well as any for my wife. I could and would be kind to her, and that alone in time would make me fond. It is true, my affection would be of a fashion more comfortable than exciting; but who, having passed his galloping youth, will contemn the joys that come from making others happy? I believe there is no person, past the age of forty, at all given to pondering the whys of life, who will gainsay that the joy we give to others is our chief source of happiness. Why, then, should not a wise man, through purely ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... void. Her heart's not mine. 'Tis now three moons that I have sued in vain; Her casement closed by night, her door by day. O woman, woman! thy mysterious power Chains the whole world, and men are nought but slaves Unto the potent talisman— If man prove false and treach'rous, he is spurn'd, Contemn'd, and punish'd with resentment just. To woman faithless still we kneel and sue, For that return our reason holds as worthless. Well! this shall be my last—for, by yon moon, So oft a witness to my fervent vows, So true an emblem of inconstant beauty, This ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... those who think that 'life is a jest,' (and a bitter, sarcastic one it must be to them,) to mock at all nobler feelings and sentiments of the heart. None do they more contemn than friendship. I would not 'sit in the seat' of these 'scornful,' however they may have found false friends. Yet every man capable of a genuine friendship himself, will in this world find at least one true friend. Oxygen, which comprises one fifth of the atmosphere, is said to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... press. "To treat a subject of such overwhelming majesty and fearful consequences," with lightness and ribaldry, was declared by worldly men to be "not merely to sport with the feelings of its propagators and advocates," but "to make a jest of the day of judgment, to scoff at the Deity Himself, and contemn the terrors of ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... descending from above may consume the offerings, but that grace falling on the sacrifice may through it inflame the souls of all and render them purer than silver purified by fire. This most dread rite then who, that is not altogether insane and out of his mind, shall be able to contemn? Art thou ignorant that no human soul could have sustained this fire of the victim, but all would have totally perished, unless the assistance of divine grace had been abundant" S. John Chrysostom, De Sacerdotio Lib. ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... true that there is some counteraction of what, at times, I should have called my natural bent. Thus, I am bold enough, and covetous of knowledge, and not deaf to vanity; and yet I have no ambition. The desire to rise seems to me wholly unalluring: I scorn and contemn it as a weakness. But what matters it? so much the happier for me if, as you predict, my life be short. But how, if so unambitious and so quiet of habit, how can I imagine that my death will be violent ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of fashion we can,—it rests on reality, and hates nothing so much as pretenders;—to exclude and mystify pretenders, and send them into everlasting "Coventry,"[410] is its delight. We contemn, in turn, every other gift of men of the world; but the habit, even in little and the least matters, of not appealing to any but our own sense of propriety, constitutes the foundation of all chivalry. There is almost no kind of self-reliance, so it be sane and proportioned, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Carmela De Sylva did not contemn the meretricious aid of dress. Iris looked fresh and cool in soft muslin, whereas the newcomer was travel-stained and disheveled. The pack-mules were lagging on the road, but a wash and general tidying of dust-covered garments would help the President's daughter to regain the assurance, ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... wind fulfilling his word." He declares, "When there are great tempests, the angels oftentimes have a hand therein,... yea, and sometimes evil angels." He gives several cases of blasphemers struck by lightning, and says, "Nothing can be more dangerous for mortals than to contemn dreadful providences, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a crag's sheer edge with them; Youth, flowery all the way, there stops— Not they; age threatens and they contemn, Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops, One inch ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... young Prince, the moral lay And in these tales mankind survey; With early virtues plant your breast, The specious arts of vice detest. Princes, like beauties, from their youth Are strangers to the voice of truth; Learn to contemn all praise betimes; For flattery's the nurse of crimes; Friendship by sweet reproof is shown, (A virtue never near a throne); 10 In courts such freedom must offend, There none presumes to be a friend. To those ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... father, entering as her song was ended, "does your musical philosopher teach you to contemn the world before you know it? That is surely something premature. Or did you but speak according to the fashion of fair maidens, who are always to hold the pleasures of life in contempt till they are pressed upon them by the address ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... well then contemn the chattering of Epicurus that pleasurable Hoggrubber, who said, that no wise man would ever give himself in to the Bands of Matrimony; because there is so much grief, trouble, and misery to be found in it. For we see to the contrary, ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... to him or his seed for ever." Addressing (specially) the interrupter, he prophesied:—"You and your posterity will be for ever contemptible among the tribes." Blessing the king he promised him prosperity here and heaven hereafter and assured him:—"If any one of your posterity contemn my successors refusing me my lawful dues he will never reign over the kingdom of Kerry." ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... which those who tell will never respect you for hearing. In times less daring in slander, the character of Mortimer would have proved to him a shield from all injurious aspersions; yet who shall wonder he could not escape, and who shall contemn the inventors of calumny, if Lady Honoria Pemberton condescends to be entertained ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... fugitives from neighb'ring lands, Have here a certain sanctuary found: The eternal refuge of the vagabond, Where in but half a common age of time, Borrowing new blood and manners from the clime, Proudly they learn all mankind to contemn, And all ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... remain for me, free from all cares, of which otherwise they might be too susceptible. But do not think," he added with warmth, "that I mean to elude the religious duties of a citizen, which so many of late affect to contemn. The good and virtuous curate of my parish is coming here under the pretext of an annual contribution, and I have even ordered my physician, on whose confidence I can rely. Here is a list of ten or twelve persons, friends beloved! who are mostly known to you. I shall write to them this evening, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... resident in Stockton Street whom we cannot regard with feelings other than those of lively disapproval. It is not that the woman-for this person is a mature female—ever did us any harm, or is likely to; that is not our grievance. What we seriously object to and actively contemn-yea, bitterly denounce-is the nose of her. So mighty a nose we have never beheld-so spacious, and open, and roomy a human snout the unaided imagination is impotent to picture. It rises from her face like a rock from a troubled sea-grand, serene, majestic! It turns ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... him. Wicked people instinctively hate him. Worldly people, sordid people, self-seekers, and promotion-hunters, contemn him as an amiable lunatic. But his friends forget all measure and restraint when they try to say what they feel about him. One whom I have already quoted writes again: "I feel Holland is little changed from what he was as a schoolboy and an undergraduate—the same joyous ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... teaches us how to contemn the terrors of death, and to look upon it as a blessing rather ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... after the hours of business, some courts and alleys, which a few hours before had been alive with hurrying feet and anxious faces, are as silent as the glades of a forest. The chiefs of the mercantile interest are no longer citizens. They avoid, they almost contemn, municipal honours and duties. Those honours and duties are abandoned to men who, though useful and highly respectable, seldom belong to the princely commercial houses of which the names are renowned ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to you to be only an old wife's tale, which you will contemn. And there might be reason in your contemning such tales, if by searching we could find out anything better or truer: but now you see that you and Polus and Gorgias, who are the three wisest of the Greeks of our day, are not able to show ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... to contemn any friend's expostulation, though unjust, but to strive to reduce him to his former disposition: freely and heartily to speak well of all my masters upon any occasion, as it is reported of Domitius, and Athenodotus: and to love my ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... and his own conscience so reproached him with his horrid, ungodly life, that he trembled at the apprehensions, that her knowledge of him should lessen the attention she should give to those things, and make her rather contemn religion than receive it: but he was assured, he said, that her mind was so disposed to receive due impressions of all those things, that, if I would but discourse with her, she would make it appear to my satisfaction that my labour would ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... six hundred pound— expect no lower price, for, by the banner of my front, I will not bate a bagatine, that I will have, only, a pledge of your loves, to carry something from amongst you, to shew I am not contemn'd by you. Therefore, now, toss your handkerchiefs, cheerfully, cheerfully; and be advertised, that the first heroic spirit that deignes to grace me with a handkerchief, I will give it a little remembrance of something, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... people cannot perceive that there is nothing permanent but change, nothing so certain as that nothing is certain; and that they therefore should regard their god as the one only god, their own doctrine as absolutely and eternally true, and that they contemn ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his own sable brethren scorn'd, And join'd the peacocks—who in scoff Stripp'd the bold thief, and drove him off. The Daw, thus roughly handled, went To his own kind in discontent: But they in turn contemn the spark, And brand with many a shameful mark. Then one he formerly disdain'd, "Had you," said he, "at home remain'd— Content with Nature's ways and will, You had not felt the peacock's bill; Nor 'mongst the birds of your own dress Had been ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... assented, "I have always had an affection for him, though we have never been able to agree. I cannot contemn him, even now; though he has hurt me sorely, and may ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... Subject ever to me the most Interesting. He also had never seen poor Mrs. Thrale since her return to England; but he joined with me very earnestly in agreeing that, since so unhappy a step was now past recall, it became the duty, however painful a one, of the daughters, to support, not cast off and contemn, one who was now as much their mother as when she still bore their own ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... future, fill the parliament, and the private interest of their patron will guide their venal votes." "What an act of oppression," rejoined the monks, "to pervert to other objects the pious designs of our holy institutions, to contemn the inviolable wishes of the dead, and to take that which a devout charity had deposited in our chests for the relief of the unfortunate and make it subservient to the luxury of the bishops, thus inflating their arrogant pomp with the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Yet 'tis no easy matter to discern The temper of a man, his mind and will, Till he be proved by exercise of power; And in my case, if one who reigns supreme Swerve from the highest policy, tongue-tied By fear of consequence, that man I hold, And ever held, the basest of the base. And I contemn the man who sets his friend Before his country. For myself, I call To witness Zeus, whose eyes are everywhere, If I perceive some mischievous design To sap the State, I will not hold my tongue; Nor would I reckon as my private friend A public foe, well ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... tendency in England to reverence, our constant appeal to classical standards, is an obstacle to our intellectual and artistic progress. We are like elderly writers who tend to repeat their own beloved mannerisms, and who contemn and decry the work of younger men, despairing of the future. A nation may reach a point, like an ancient and noble dynasty of princes, where it is overshadowed and overweighted by its own past glories, and where it learns to depend ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... both are clothed with an equal (though distinct) authority; and that subjection and obedience are under the same pains enjoined to both, and consequently say, that it is less dangerous to cast off, contemn and disregard the authority of a church, than that of the state; while yet (according to their scheme) civil authority is entirely resolved into, and depends purely upon the changeable will of civil ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... contemn the Star-Chamber, or you will incur its censure," Sir Francis replied in a low tone. "No court in England is so jealous of its prerogatives, nor so severe in punishment of its maligners. It will not have its proceedings canvassed, or ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... be a merit, and will only differ in being a greater one, as the same reason, which is valid for the forgiveness of small injuries, is equally valid for the forgiveness of the greatest.... Then let thy spirit be lifted up in pride, and let it contemn the tear, and that for which it falls, saying: "Thou art much too insignificant, thou every-day life, for the inconsolableness of an immortal,—thou tattered, misshapen, wholesale existence!" Upon this sphere, which is rounded with the ashes of thousands of years, amid ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... takes their bread, of the people whose liberty one confiscates, of society from whom one takes its support, the laws; what! when these clamours are on one side and one's own interest on the other, is it not permitted to contemn the uproar, to let all these people "vociferate" unheeded, to trample on all obstacles, and to go naturally where one sees one's fortune, one's pleasures, and the fine palace in Faubourg Saint-Honore? A pretty idea, truly! What! ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... Yet better thus, and known to be contemn'd] The meaning is, 'Tis better to be thus contemned, and known to yourself to be contemned. Or perhaps there is an error, which ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... nature usually to contemn the feeble, fastidious sympathy which shrinks from the broad life of mankind; but now, with Mirah before him as a living reality, whose experience he had to care for, he saw every common Jew and Jewess in the light of a ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... mankind. And it is remarkable that these searching inquiries are not so much forced on institutions from without, as developed from within. Consummate scholars question the value of learning; priests contemn dogma; and women turn their backs upon man's ideal of perfect womanhood, and seek satisfaction in apocalyptic visions of some, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... decline to reckon Sectaries among the enemies of the Covenant, from whom danger is to be apprehended, And (though we disallow the abusing and Idolizing of learning to the patrocinie of Errour or prejudice of piety) if any contemn literature as needlesse at best, if not also hurtfull ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... be in the grave of my ancestors, ere I learn that my son—my only son—the last hope of my ancient house—the last remnant of the name of Peveril—hath consented to receive obligations from the man on earth I am most bound to hate, were I not still more bound to contemn him!—Degenerate dog-whelp!" he repeated with great vehemence, "you colour without replying! Speak, and disown such disgrace; or, by ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Nicholas Cruger's bookkeeper at the age of twelve he wrote to an American friend: 'I contemn the groveling condition of a clerk to which my fortunes condemn me, and I would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station.... My youth excludes me from any hope of immediate preferment, but I mean to prepare the way for futurity.' You see the yeast was stirring, ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... look upon thine eyes of light, And feel that all besides is night; I press that snowy hand in mine, And but contemn my art divine. Oh Viviana! I am lost; A life's renown thy smile hath cost. A stone no ages can remove Will be my monument of love; A nation's wail shall mourn my fate, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... son of Levi, said, "every day a Divine voice (bath kol) proceeds from Mount Horeb, which proclaims and says, 'Woe be to those who contemn the law; for whoever is not engaged in the study of the law may be considered as excommunicate'; for it is said, 'as a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion';(504) ...
— Hebrew Literature
... Nehemiah that it was the violin in those alien hands which still focussed his attention as he stared gaspingly about. Leander was not here; probably had never been here; and the twanging of those strings had lured him to his fate. Well might he contemn the festive malevolence of the violin's influence! His letter had failed; no raider had intimidated these bluff, unafraid, burly law-breakers, and he had put his life in jeopardy in his persistent prosecution of his scheme. He gasped ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... me!... I am utterly conscious that no Man has so good a Right to repose in it, as yourself. Therefore, dear, good good Mr. Pope, be seated!... Whether you call me Dunce or Doctor, whether you like me, or lick me, contemn, jerk, or praise me, you will still find me the same merry Monarch I was before you did me the Honour to put yourself out ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... his slashed doublet and gown, and with his eyes bent on her beneath the high, bald forehead, just as we see him in the bust, she would have met him fearlessly and controverted his claims to the authorship of the plays, to his very face. She had taught herself to contemn "Lord Leicester's groom" (it was one of her disdainful epithets for the world's incomparable poet) so thoroughly, that even his disembodied spirit would hardly have found civil treatment at ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fast by the way (for that contentment is repentance), but knowing the circle of all courses, of all intents, of all things, to have but one centre or period, without all distraction, he hasteth thither and ends there, as his true and natural element. He doth not contemn Fortune, but not confess her. He is no gamester of the world (which only complain and praise her), but being only sensible of the honesty of actions, contemns a particular profit as the excrement of scum. Unto the society of men he is a sun, whose clearness directs ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... line which may preclude debate. "The bard who makes his century up has stood The test: we call him sterling, old, and good." Well, here's a poet now, whose dying day Fell one month later, or a twelvemonth, say: Whom does he count with? with the old, or them Whom we and future times alike contemn? "Aye, call him old, by favour of the court, Who falls a month, or e'en a twelvemonth short." Thanks for the kind permission! I go on, And pull out years, like horse-hairs, one by one, While all forlorn the baffled critic stands, Fumbling a naked stump between his hands, Who looks for worth ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... upon the subject. This psalm begins by asking: 'Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?' In enumerating the qualifications of such person, the psalmist says: 'He that contemneth the evil man, but he honoreth them that fear the Lord,' Now that word 'contemn,' for the first time, attracted my special attention. I had read it scores of times, but had never realized how strong a term was here used. No stronger is to be found in the language. It means to despise, detest, spurn, etc. I was startled, but I was at the same time glad. I could not help it, but ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... was the fire that was kindled in the soul of this fair youth also, noble in body, but most noble and kingly in soul, that led him to despise all earthly things alike, to trample on all bodily pleasures, and to contemn riches and glory and the praise of men, to lay aside diadem and purple, as of less worth than cobwebs, and to surrender himself to all the hard and irksome toils of the ascetic life, crying, "O my Christ, my soul is fixed upon thee, and thy ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... perils, for thou wilt be at the mercy of thy subjects' plots. Is glory thy aim? Thou art lured on through all manner of hardships, and there is an end to thy peace of mind. Art fain to lead a life of pleasure? Yet who does not scorn and contemn one who is the slave of the weakest and vilest of things—the body? Again, on how slight and perishable a possession do they rely who set before themselves bodily excellences! Can ye ever surpass the elephant in bulk or the bull in strength? Can ye excel the tiger in swiftness? Look upon the infinitude, ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... as to take their statements seriously, we might refuse to admit their right to find any place in French literature. For, though it would be easy to quote passages in which they contemn the cosmopolitan spirit, it would be no less easy to set against these their assertions that they are ashamed of being French; that they are no more French than the Abbe Galiani, the Prince de Ligne, or Heine; that they will ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... invites us by Scripture to confession, exhorts us to amendment, promises the life which is prepared for us by him who willeth not the death of a sinner. We neglect his call, we despise his invitation, we contemn his promise. Placed between God and the devil, as between a father and a foe, we prefer the enticement of the enemy to a father's warning. "We are not ignorant," says the Apostle, "of the devices of Satan,"—the devices, I say, by which he ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... they are made. We may not claim simply a child's service, where the ability of a giant clearly exists. Achilles would spurn the light offices of Adonis. So will that woman, who regards her sex as co-equal in every part of their nature, with the opposite sex, contemn the ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... celestial protectress thought him not sufficiently secured against rejection by his piety or bravery, but decorated him for the interview with preternatural beauty. Whoever desires, for his writings or himself, what none can reasonably contemn, the favour of mankind, must add grace to strength, and make his thoughts agreeable as well as useful. Many complain of neglect who never tried to attract regard. It cannot be expected that the patrons of science or virtue should be ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... deacon, in whose heart the sterner traditions of the Covenanters lingered. He tried hard to teach his son to contemn amusement, and to impale his youth upon the five points of Calvinism, rather than to play ball. But it was John Knox trying to curb the tricksy Ariel. Perhaps from some bright maternal ancestor the boy had derived his sweet gayety of nature which nothing could repress. His airy ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... understanding by covetousness, wrath, and fear, one knows not one's own self. Filled with joy at one's own respectability of birth, one is seen to traduce those that are not high-born. Swelled also with pride of wealth, one is seen to contemn the poor. One regards others to be ignorant fools, but seldom takes a survey of one's own self. One attributes faults to others but is never desirous to punish one's own self. Since the wise and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, the high-born and the lowborn, the honoured and the dishonoured, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... usually the custom to contemn the Middle Ages for their lack of interest in culture, in education, in literature, in a word, in intellectual accomplishment of any and every kind, but especially in science. There is no doubt about the occurrence of marked decadence in the intellectual life of the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... had rightly gauged the moral capacities of the mob. We sometimes think that the fundamental instincts of the crowd are, after all, sound; leave them to themselves and they will do the right thing. But, on the other hand, those who despise and contemn the mob will always have a sadly large amount of evidence to support their case, even in the most ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... from the printing-press in an endless web of paper, is powerless here; the indistinguishable noise echoed from the smoke-shadowed walls despises the whole. A thousand footsteps, a thousand hoofs, a thousand wheels roll over and utterly contemn them in complete annihilation. Mere illusions of heart or mind, they are tested and thrust aside by the irresistible push of ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... Loved, honour'd, fear'd me, thou alone couldst hate me, Thy husband, slight me, sell me, and forego me; How wouldst thou use me now, blind, and thereby Deceivable, in most things as a child, Helpless, thence easily contemn'd, and scorn'd, And last neglected? How wouldst thou insult, When I must live uxorious to thy will In perfect thraldom! How again betray me, Bearing my words and doings to the lords To gloss upon, and censuring, frown or smile! This jail I count the house of liberty To thine, ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... appointing state officers by ballot? (3) a principle which, he said, no one would care to apply in selecting a pilot or a flute-player or in any similar case, where a mistake would be far less disastrous than in matters political. Words like these, according to the accuser, tended to incite the young to contemn the established constitution, rendering them violent and headstrong. But for myself I think that those who cultivate wisdom and believe themselves able to instruct their fellow-citizens as to their interests are least likely to become partisans ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... sides it neuer shall be broken. And Noble Dolphin, albeit we sweare A voluntary zeale, and an vn-urg'd Faith To your proceedings: yet beleeue me Prince, I am not glad that such a sore of Time Should seeke a plaster by contemn'd reuolt, And heale the inueterate Canker of one wound, By making many: Oh it grieues my soule, That I must draw this mettle from my side To be a widdow-maker: oh, and there Where honourable rescue, and defence Cries ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Opinions: Thus a crasie Constitution, and an uneasie Mind is fretted with vexatious Passions for young Mens doing foolishly what it is Folly to do at all. Dear Sir, this is my present State of Mind; I hate those I should laugh at, and envy those I contemn. The Time of Youth and vigorous Manhood passed the Way in which I have disposed of it, is attended with these Consequences; but to those who live and pass away Life as they ought, all Parts of it are equally pleasant; only the Memory of good and worthy Actions is a Feast ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... and even as such had so little respect for it that they talked of it themselves as the cloth? How could such a man as Mr Cairns, looking down from the height of his great soberness and the dignity of possessing the oracles and the ordinances, do other than contemn the enthusiasms and excitements of ignorant repentance? How could such as he recognize in the babble of babes the slightest indication of the revealing of truths hid from the wise and prudent; especially since their rejoicing also was that of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... asking: 'Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?' In enumerating the qualifications of such person, the psalmist says: 'He that contemneth the evil man, but he honoreth them that fear the Lord,' Now that word 'contemn,' for the first time, attracted my special attention. I had read it scores of times, but had never realized how strong a term was here used. No stronger is to be found in the language. It means to despise, detest, spurn, etc. I was startled, but I was at the same time glad. I could ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... many things which the world looks down upon are valuable, so he prizes much which the world contemns; he sees that many things which the world admires are contemptible, so he despises much which the world does not; but when the world prizes what is really excellent, he does not contemn it, because the world regards it. If he learns Irish, which all the world scoffs at, he likewise learns Italian, which all the world melts at. If he learns Gypsy, the language of the tattered tent, he likewise learns Greek, the language ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... all Cithaeron will be mute, When thou perceiv'st, what bride-song in thy hall Wafted thy gallant bark with nattering gale To anchor,—where? And other store of ill Thou seest not, that shall show thee as thou art, Merged with thy children in one horror of birth. Then rail at noble Creon, and contemn My sacred utterance! No life on earth More vilely shall be rooted out, ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... whom she thus so suddenly disgrac'd. "But ask of Pallas;—she, though much enrag'd "Will yet my truth confirm. A regal maid "Was I,—of facts to all well-known I speak: "Coroneus noble, of the Phocian lands "As sire I claim. Me wealthy suitors sought— "Contemn me not,—my beauty was my bane. "While careless on the sandy shore I roam'd, "With gentle pace as wont, the ocean's god "Saw me and lov'd: persuasive words in vain "Long trying, force prepar'd, and me pursu'd. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... was Nehemiah that it was the violin in those alien hands which still focussed his attention as he stared gaspingly about. Leander was not here; probably had never been here; and the twanging of those strings had lured him to his fate. Well might he contemn the festive malevolence of the violin's influence! His letter had failed; no raider had intimidated these bluff, unafraid, burly law-breakers, and he had put his life in jeopardy in his persistent prosecution of his scheme. He gasped again at ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and those accustomed to serve this rite we forbid to enter any private house, or under the pretence of friendship to cross the threshold of another, under the penalty established against them if they contemn the law.(96) But those of you who regard this rite, approach the public altars and shrines and celebrate the solemnities of your custom; for we do not indeed prohibit the duties of the old usage to ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... my last hope is shivered, And its fragments are sunk in the wave, Though I feel that my soul is delivered To pain—it shall not be its slave. There is many a pang to pursue me: They may crush, but they shall not contemn— They may torture, but shall not subdue me— 'Tis of thee that I ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... who equal him in keenness of observation, are not behind him in verity of report, while surpassing him often in pictorial effect,—but who bring to the picture out of themselves only a noble indignation against baseness. They contemn; he uses. They cry, "Fie!" upon unclean substances; he ploughs the offence into the soil, and sows wheat over it. They see the world as it is; he sees it, and through it. They probe sores; he leads forth into the air and the sunshine. They tinge the cheek with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the strolling bands, Of banish'd fugitives from neighb'ring lands, Have here a certain sanctuary found: The eternal refuge of the vagabond, Where in but half a common age of time, Borrowing new blood and manners from the clime, Proudly they learn all mankind to contemn, And all ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... race, Humanity; poured now into one national mold, now into another; but always with the same duality: half divine, half devilish-idiotic; —and while making the utmost best of each mold as they came to inhabit it, the strong would find it their supreme business to help the weak, and not exploit or contemn them. But it will need the sound sense of Theosophy,—knowledge of Reincarnation, the conviction of Human Brotherhood,—to work this ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... over; and, as he is a thorough gentleman, he must necessarily entertain the greatest contempt for such an under-bred person as Leigh Hunt. But Lord Byron! How must the haughty spirit of Lara and Harold contemn the subaltern sneaking of our modern tuft-hunter. The insult which he offered to Lord Byron in the dedication of Rimini,—in which he, a paltry cockney newspaper scribbler, had the assurance to address one of the most nobly-born of English Patricians, and one of the first ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... and not a few from Negress mothers, of every description of Negro race found in the interior. Sometimes the men make a boast of being descended from ancestors of pure Arab blood, from immigrants of the princes of Mecca and countries thereabouts in Arabia, but in practice they contemn the principle of uncontaminated blood, cohabiting with their favourite female slaves, and from these rearing up a large family of mixed blood and colour. In the Arab suburb a considerable number ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... De Sylva did not contemn the meretricious aid of dress. Iris looked fresh and cool in soft muslin, whereas the newcomer was travel-stained and disheveled. The pack-mules were lagging on the road, but a wash and general tidying of dust-covered garments would help the President's daughter to regain the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... of their teeth, who is it that does not desire, at least, that nothing of ill may be said of them, whether justly or otherwise? I never knew any so satisfied with their own innocence as to be content that the world should think them guilty. Some out of pride have seemed to contemn ill reports when they have found they could not avoid them, but none out of strength of reason, though many have pretended to it. No, not my Lady Newcastle with all her philosophy, therefore you must not expect it from me. I shall never be ashamed to own that ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... woman of any fashion, walking alone without the town, you may join her, and enter into whatever sort of conversation you chuse, without offence; and if you pass one without doing so, she will call you ajacaos, and contemn you: this is a custom so established at Madrid, that if a footman meets a lady of quality alone, he will enter into some indecent conversation with her; for which reason, the ladies seldom walk but with their husbands, or a male friend by their side, and a foot-boy ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... well enough for those who think that 'life is a jest,' (and a bitter, sarcastic one it must be to them,) to mock at all nobler feelings and sentiments of the heart. None do they more contemn than friendship. I would not 'sit in the seat' of these 'scornful,' however they may have found false friends. Yet every man capable of a genuine friendship himself, will in this world find at ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... that made them; for we do not believe them to be a god, but a work of God. I look on the whole creation, and am led by it to the Creator. He looks on wealth, and longs for it with earnest desire; I look on wealth, and contemn it. He sees poverty, and laments; I see poverty, and rejoice. I see things in one light; he in another. Just so in regard to death. He sees a corpse, and thinks of it as a corpse; I see a corpse, and ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... uncourteous men of chivalry to enter into combat (who are often persons of honour without common honesty): these, I say, ranged and drawn up in their proper order, would give an aversion to doing anything in common with such as men laugh at and contemn. But to go through this work, you must not let your thoughts vary, or make excursions from your theme: consider at the same time, that the matter has been often treated by the ablest and greatest writers; ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... trace its origin back beyond the Reformation—is one with all good literature, and indeed with civilisation. Antiquam exquirite matrem: all three come from the Mediterranean basin or from around it, and it is only the ill-born who contemn descent." ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Gordon for the forfeiture of his lands for high treason, and meanwhile we will publish him throughout the province as a Tory and a traitor. We will teach this Charles Gordon and all Tories what it means to contemn the authority and dignity of this province ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... be the entertainment of every moment. He that hopes for it must be able to suspend the possession of it till proper periods of life or death itself. If you would not rather be commended than be praiseworthy, contemn little merits, and allow no man to be so free with you as to praise you to your face. Your vanity by this means will want its food. At the same time your passion for esteem will be more fully gratified; men will praise you in ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... The test: we call him sterling, old, and good." Well, here's a poet now, whose dying day Fell one month later, or a twelvemonth, say: Whom does he count with? with the old, or them Whom we and future times alike contemn? "Aye, call him old, by favour of the court, Who falls a month, or e'en a twelvemonth short." Thanks for the kind permission! I go on, And pull out years, like horse-hairs, one by one, While all forlorn the baffled critic stands, Fumbling a naked stump ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... after a Quiet which I wish'd you last Night. If my Prayers are heard, the Day appeared with all the Influence of a Merciful Creator upon your Person and Actions. Let others, my lovely Charmer, talk of a blind Being that disposes their Hearts, I contemn their low Images of Love. I have not a Thought which relates to you, that I cannot with Confidence beseech the All-seeing Power to bless me in. May he direct you in all your Steps, and reward your Innocence, your Sanctity of Manners, your Prudent Youth, and becoming Piety, with the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of the island have abundance of vivacity: they, contemn their husbands, and are exceedingly fond of strangers, whereof there is always a considerable number from the continent below, attending at court, either upon affairs of the several towns and corporations, or their own particular occasions, but are much ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... Mr. Bassett are for ever harbouring priests and encouraging them. It is the same in London, I hear; it is the same in Lancashire; it is the same everywhere. And all the world knows it, and thinks that we do contemn her Grace by such boldness. All the mischief came in with that old Bull, Regnans in Excelsis, in ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... immediately he came forth at one command of the Lord. The Lord every day invites us by Scripture to confession, exhorts us to amendment, promises the life which is prepared for us by him who willeth not the death of a sinner. We neglect his call, we despise his invitation, we contemn his promise. Placed between God and the devil, as between a father and a foe, we prefer the enticement of the enemy to a father's warning. "We are not ignorant," says the Apostle, "of the devices of Satan,"—the devices, I say, by which he induces us to sin, and keeps us ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... familiar fame, Doomed to exhaust the dregs of life in shame! The sole sad refuge of thy baffled art To act a stateman's dull, exploded part, Renounce the praise no longer in thy power, Display thy virtue, though without a dower, Contemn the giddy crowd, the vulgar wind, And shut thy eyes that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... poor— but I'm a Gentleman, And one that scorns this Baseness which you practise. Poor as I am, I would not sell my self, No, not to gain your charming high-priz'd Person. Tho I admire you strangely for your Beauty, Yet I contemn your Mind. —And yet I wou'd at any rate enjoy you; At your own rate— but cannot— See here The only Sum I can command on Earth; I know not where to eat when this is gone: Yet such a Slave I am to Love and Beauty, This last reserve I'll sacrifice to enjoy you. —Nay, do not frown, I know ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... which appear to lead them on to certain destruction. Superstition, leagued with tyranny, for the waste of the human species, are themselves frequently obliged to implore the assistance of a reason which they contemn; of a nature which they disdain; which they debase; which they endeavour to crush under the ponderous bulk of artificial theories. Superstition, in all times so fatal to mortals, when attacked by reason, assumes the sacred mantle ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... most true, but what will please the people? Can anything be more absurd than to despise the vulgar as mere unpolished mechanics, taken singly, and to think them of consequence when collected into a body? These wise men would contemn our ambitious pursuits, and our vanities, and would reject all the honours which the people could voluntarily offer to them: but we know not how to despise them till we begin to repent of having accepted them. There is an anecdote related ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... than a church; nor willingly deface the name of saint or martyr. At the sight of a cross, or crucifix, I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour. I cannot laugh at, but rather pity, the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition of friars; for, though misplaced in circumstances, there is something in it of devotion. I could never hear ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... in the morning until they go to bed at night. Here man and woman, sons and daughters, live, in the belief that work is the great thing, that efficiency in work is the crowning excellence of manhood and womanhood, and willingly go so far into essential self-debasement, sometimes, as to contemn beauty and those who love it, and to glory above all things in brute strength and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... found: misdeem not then, If such affront I labour to avert From thee alone, which on us both at once The Enemie, though bold, will hardly dare, Or daring, first on mee th' assault shall light. Nor thou his malice and false guile contemn; Suttle he needs must be, who could seduce Angels, nor think superfluous others aid. I from the influence of thy looks receave Access in every Vertue, in thy sight 310 More wise, more watchful, stronger, if need were Of outward ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... it neuer shall be broken. And Noble Dolphin, albeit we sweare A voluntary zeale, and an vn-urg'd Faith To your proceedings: yet beleeue me Prince, I am not glad that such a sore of Time Should seeke a plaster by contemn'd reuolt, And heale the inueterate Canker of one wound, By making many: Oh it grieues my soule, That I must draw this mettle from my side To be a widdow-maker: oh, and there Where honourable rescue, and defence Cries out vpon the name of Salisbury. But such is the infection of the time, That for ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Mrs. Thrale since her return to England; but he joined with me very earnestly in agreeing that, since so unhappy a step was now past recall, it became the duty, however painful a one, of the daughters, to support, not cast off and contemn, one who was now as much their mother as when she still bore ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... shade of immortality, And in itself a shadow; soon as caught Contemn'd, it shrinks to nothing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... proposed to change his name and his country; and I believe did. The great poetical genius of our own times has openly alienated himself from the land of his brothers. He becomes immortal in the language of a people whom he would contemn.[A] Does he accept with ingratitude the fame he ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal." It puts an affront upon nature. It does that for the unschooled, which philosophy does for Berkeley and Viasa. The uniform language that may be heard in the churches of the most ignorant sects, is, —"Contemn the unsubstantial shows of the world; they are vanities, dreams, shadows, unrealities; seek the realities of religion." The devotee flouts nature. Some theosophists have arrived at a certain hostility ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... made to his monks, a rigorous self-examination upon all their actions, every evening, was a practice which he strongly inculcated.[26] In an excellent sermon which he made to his disciples, recorded by St. Athanasius,[27] he pathetically exhorts them to contemn the whole world for heaven, to spend every day as if they knew it to be the last of their lives, having death always before their eyes, continually to advance in fervor, and to be always armed against the assaults of Satan, whose weakness he shows at length. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the water, a dozen men all told, and all had bows and good store of shafts. And as they went, Osberne spake to those about him and said: "Spread out, and make little show of force, and show not your bows to the foemen, so that they may contemn us and venture the nearer to the bank. But shoot not till they defy us, lest we smite a peaceful man." Now they were presently nigh enough to see the going of men on the further shore, and they were all riders. It was clear to see that they were aliens, men upon big horses clad in ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... are rather like owls than eagles. As of old books, so of ancient virtue, honesty, fidelity, equity, new abridgments; every day spawns new opinions: heresy in divinity, in philosophy, in humanity, in manners, grounded upon hearsay; doctors contemn'd; the devil not so hated as the pope; many invectives, but no amendment. No more ado about caps and surplices; ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... whom I have this day taken to be my Master and Governor; and I am so proud of his service, that I will always observe, and obey, and do his will; and always call him, Jesus my Master; and I will always contemn my birth, or any title or dignity that can be conferred upon me, when I shall compare them with my title of being a Priest, and serving at the Altar of ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... waistcoat; Or praise the robin, meek, but sly, For breast and tail and friendly eye— These have their place within my heart; The sparrow owns the larger part, And, for no virtues, rules in it, My reckless cheerful favourite! Friend sparrow, let the world contemn Your ways and make a mock of them, And dub you, if it has a mind, Low, quarrelsome, and unrefined; And let it, if it will, pursue With harsh abuse the troops of you Who through the orchard and the field Their busy bills in mischief wield; Who strip the tilth and bare the tree, And make the gardener's ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... part of land or sea, That gold afforded, was an enemy. Thus fate the seeds of civil fury rais'd, When great in wealth no common pleasure pleas'd. Delights more out of fashion by the town: Th' souldiers scarlet now from Spain must come; The purple of the sea contemn'd is grown. India with silks, Africk with precious stone, Arabia with its spices hither come, And with their ruin raise the pride of Rome. But other spoils, destructive to her peace, Rome's ruin bode, and future ills encrease: Through Libyan desarts are wild ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... the moral lay And in these tales mankind survey; With early virtues plant your breast, The specious arts of vice detest. Princes, like beauties, from their youth Are strangers to the voice of truth; Learn to contemn all praise betimes; For flattery's the nurse of crimes; Friendship by sweet reproof is shown, (A virtue never near a throne); 10 In courts such freedom must offend, There none presumes to be a friend. To those of your exalted station Each courtier ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... English, or any other Our Subjects, which shall sail into Hudson's Bay, or inhabit in any of the Countries, Islands or Territories hereby granted to the said Governor and Company, without their Leave and License in that Behalf first had and obtained, or that shall contemn or disobey their Orders, and send them to England; and that all and every Person or Persons, being Our Subjects, any ways employed by the said Governor and Company, within any of the Parts, Places, and Limits aforesaid, shall be liable unto and suffer ...
— Charter and supplemental charter of the Hudson's Bay Company • Hudson's Bay Company
... in his slashed doublet and gown, and with his eyes bent on her beneath the high, bald forehead, just as we see him in the bust, she would have met him fearlessly and controverted his claims to the authorship of the plays, to his very face. She had taught herself to contemn "Lord Leicester's groom" (it was one of her disdainful epithets for the world's incomparable poet) so thoroughly, that even his disembodied spirit would hardly have found civil treatment at ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... too extravagant a hope? Have you not heard how it has gone with many a cause before now? First few men heed it; next most men contemn it; lastly, all men accept it—and the ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... contemptuously defied, and they were made while wild scenes of anarchy were sweeping away all restraint of law and order. Doubtless the judge of this court made grave mistakes; but the law allows the chancellor great latitude, not only in punishing those who contemn his orders and injunctions, but in preventing the consummation of the wrong which he has judicially forbidden. Whatever may be said or thought of those matters, it was only made known to me that process ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... declares, "When there are great tempests, the angels oftentimes have a hand therein,... yea, and sometimes evil angels." He gives several cases of blasphemers struck by lightning, and says, "Nothing can be more dangerous for mortals than to contemn dreadful providences, and, in particular, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... naught; nothing I deny, Admit, reject, contemn: and what know you, Except, perhaps, that you ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... own, threw quite into the shade all the other stories they had heard. It is, indeed, really laughable to find with what cool contempt some of these natives, who have never had any intercourse with Europeans, treat our comforts, our tastes, and pursuits. We may contemn and pity them, but they seem to have very much the same feelings for us. We are horrified at the greediness with which they devour grubs, and many of them are shocked at our oyster-eating propensities! A remarkable instance of this occurred to Captain ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... those studies now, and contemn, gravely or jeeringly, the obsolete practice of "going through" the Bible yearly by reading a given number of chapters every day. We assume that those were mechanical contrivances which, at the best, filled the mind with an undigested mass ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... the real or supposed wants of mankind. And it is remarkable that these searching inquiries are not so much forced on institutions from without, as developed from within. Consummate scholars question the value of learning; priests contemn dogma; and women turn their backs upon man's ideal of perfect womanhood, and seek satisfaction in apocalyptic visions of some, as yet, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... become great and powerful no one had dared so openly to contemn its decrees. But Jugurtha knew the Romans of that day, and trusted to his gold. He bought a majority in the senate, defied the minority, and would have gained his aim but for one honest man. This was the tribune Memmius, who, seeing that the senate was hopelessly corrupt, ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... utterly confounded by the successes of the French, was now anxious to procure peace, almost on whatever terms, with the apparently irresistible Republic. Nor did it, for the moment, suit Buonaparte's views to contemn his advances. A peace with this prince would withdraw some valuable divisions from the army of Beaulieu; and the distance of the Neapolitan territory was such, that the French had no means of carrying the war thither with advantage, so long as Austria retained the power of sending new forces into ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... to fall into the Annals of Cicely or no, this must I needs say—and Jack may flout me an' he will (but that he doth never)— that I do hate, and contemn, and full utterly despise, this manner of dealing. If I love a man, maybe I shall be bashful to tell him so: but if I love him not, never will I make lout nor leg afore him for to win of him some manner of advantage. I would ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... their influence. We must do our part, by being good, and virtuous, and prudent; try to gain them by our good example, rather than by argumentative or angry discussion. 'They know not what they do' when they contemn, or attempt to stop the progress of, our faith. They are a naturally good and kind-hearted people; as witness how they assist the sick and give hospitality. Such virtues must ultimately gain for them the grace of conversion. ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... industry were equally exerted at home, we might find in the tablets of Nature and Art, within our daily reach, inexhaustible sources of inquiry and contemplation. We are on every side surrounded by interesting objects; but, in nature, as in morals, we are apt to contemn self-knowledge, to look abroad rather than at home, and to study others instead of ourselves. Like the French Encyclopaedists, we forget our own Paris; or, like editors of newspapers, we seek for novelties in every quarter of the world, losing sight of the superior ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... lost in the admiration of it. I contemn the world when I think on it, and myself ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... general change of its policy. Within the city of Yedo are now the representatives of three powerful nations, England, France, and the United States; others are seeking admission; and the period when Japan shall mingle freely with the world it has so long affected to contemn can ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... a great recommendation of the Precepts of the Gospel to find that they have an exact correspondence with, and conformity to the Nature of Things: So also those who are not influenc'd by, as not being yet thorowly perswaded of this Divine Revelation, will sooner be induced to imbrace Vertue, and contemn the allurements of Vice, when they see These to have the very same reality, in Nature as their Happiness and Misery have; than when (tho' ever so pompously set out) Vertue appears founded only upon nice, or subtle Speculations. But some Men there are so far from approving ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... than delicate satire, because it revenges us in a manner for the injury at the very time it is committed, by affording us a just reason to blame and contemn the person, who injures us. But this phaenomenon likewise depends upon the same principle. For why do we blame all gross and injurious language, unless it be, because we esteem it contrary to good breeding and humanity? And why is ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... do not think the worse of a person for having preferences or prejudices; though when one has uttered a raw preference or an unreasonable prejudice in their presence one is ashamed, as one is for hurling a stone into a sleeping pool. One comes away from them desiring to appreciate rather than to contemn, with horizons and vistas of true and beautiful things opening up on all sides, with a wish to know more and to understand more, and to believe more; with the sense of a desirable secret of which they ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... into the Abyss of Darkness, effect any thing to purpose, in Natural things, especially when his Wisdome in this natural Philosophick Study is barren and sophisticate? It is, for the most part, proper to these Fools and unapt men, presently to contemn a thing, not knowing, that more are yet to be sought by them, than they have the possession of. Therefore, rightly saith Seneca, in lib. de Moribus: Thou art not yet happy, if the Rout deride thee not. But I matter ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... their passengers are, the more cautious and careful the watermen are, and the least apt to run into danger; whereas, if their passengers appear frighted, then the watermen grow sawcy and audacious, show themselves vent'rous, and contemn the dangers which they are ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... claims and ecclesiastical rights; and even as such had so little respect for it that they talked of it themselves as the cloth? How could such a man as Mr Cairns, looking down from the height of his great soberness and the dignity of possessing the oracles and the ordinances, do other than contemn the enthusiasms and excitements of ignorant repentance? How could such as he recognize in the babble of babes the slightest indication of the revealing of truths hid from the wise and prudent; especially since their rejoicing also was that of babes, hence carnal, and accompanied by all the weaknesses ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... of mankind, though I believe in the long run it will not do so; but in adding to the labour of man has it added, so far, to his pain? There always have been people who would at once say yes to that question; so that there have been and are two sets of people who dislike and contemn art as an embarrassing folly. Besides the pious ascetics, who look upon it as a worldly entanglement which prevents men from keeping their minds fixed on the chances of their individual happiness or misery in the next world; who, in short, hate art, because they think that it adds to man's ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... a person resident in Stockton Street whom we cannot regard with feelings other than those of lively disapproval. It is not that the woman-for this person is a mature female—ever did us any harm, or is likely to; that is not our grievance. What we seriously object to and actively contemn-yea, bitterly denounce-is the nose of her. So mighty a nose we have never beheld-so spacious, and open, and roomy a human snout the unaided imagination is impotent to picture. It rises from her face like a rock from a troubled sea-grand, serene, majestic! ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... contrary, It is written (Ecclus. 19:1): "He that contemneth small things shall fall by little and little." Now he that sins venially seems to contemn small things. Therefore by little and little he is disposed to fall ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... kindly and generous affections—to show how the human soul is disciplined and perfected by suffering—to prove how much of possible good may exist in things evil and perverted—how much hope there is for those who despair—how much comfort for those whom a heartless world has taught to contemn both others and themselves, and so put barriers to the hard, cold, selfish, mocking, and levelling spirit of the day—O would I could ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... stand in the smoke, in which they by no means would do. I then took one of them, and thrust him into the smoke, and willed one of my company to tread out the fire, and to spurn it into the sea, which was done to show them that we did contemn their sorcery. These people are very simple in all their conversation, but marvellous thievish, especially for iron, which they have in great account. They began through our lenity to show their vile nature; they began ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... material for the careers of statesmen and the glory of famous soldiers. It is more unusual. We see it as often as we do comets and signs in the heavens, a John in the Wilderness again, pastors who would die for their lambs, women who contemn the ritual and splendour of man-slaying, and a politician never moved by the enticements of a successful career. It is therefore likely that when we see great prose for the first time we may not know it, and may not enjoy it. It can be so disrespectful to what we think is good. It ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... was in the first and primitive commonwealths, and is yet in the integrity and cradle of well-ordered politics: till corruption getteth ground;—ruder desires labouring after that which wiser considerations contemn;—every one having a liberty to amass and heap up riches, and they a license or faculty to ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... fall below the powers of those of whom they are made. We may not claim simply a child's service, where the ability of a giant clearly exists. Achilles would spurn the light offices of Adonis. So will that woman, who regards her sex as co-equal in every part of their nature, with the opposite sex, contemn the delicate ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... all those things, but that he was himself so wicked a creature, and his own conscience so reproached him with his horrid, ungodly life, that he trembled at the apprehensions, that her knowledge of him should lessen the attention she should give to those things, and make her rather contemn religion than receive it: but he was assured, he said, that her mind was so disposed to receive due impressions of all those things, that, if I would but discourse with her, she would make it appear ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... pulpit and the press; to raise it up with all the food of the inner man, from infancy to gray hairs; to give 'line upon line, and precept upon precept,' till it forms one of the foundation principles and parts indestructible of the public soul. Let those who contemn this plan renounce, if they have not done it already, the gospel plan of converting the world; let them renounce every plan of moral reformation, and every plan whatsoever, which does not terminate in the gratification ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... always live in fear, and in expectation of death! Strive now to live in such wise that in the hour of death thou mayest rather rejoice than fear. Learn now to die to the world, so shalt thou begin to live with Christ. Learn now to contemn all earthly things, and then mayest thou freely go unto Christ. Keep under thy body by penitence, and then shalt thou be able ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... thee to abstain from them—that would be only to lay a snare for thy folly, or to teach thee falsehood; but enjoy these vanities with moderation, and mark them as something thou must soon learn to renounce and contemn. Our chamberlain at Kinross, Luke Lundin,—Doctor, as he foolishly calleth himself,—will acquaint thee what is to be done in the matter about which thou goest. Remember thou art trusted—show ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... full, harmonious life, united, and it is found an impossibility, the two continue to live together despite the decree of God, made manifest in their nature, that it is sinful for them to do so. This all is within the province of that 'higher law' which many profess to contemn, but to which all must sooner ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... the mistaken system of sacrifice; but, since these institutions had been once established, every good citizen ought to own and follow them and do his part, that the "common man" might learn rather to set a higher value on, than to contemn, the gods. That the common man, for whose benefit the grandees thus surrendered their judgment, now despised this faith and sought his remedy elsewhere, was a matter of course and will be seen in the sequel. Thus then the Roman "high church" was ready, a sanctimonious ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... remorse and love, Bellcour imitates her, while Mirtamene "warn'd by the example of Bellcour, that Interest, Absence, or a new Passion, can make the most seeming constant Lover false, took a Resolution ever to contemn and hate that betraying Sex to which she owed her Misfortune and the Sight of such a Disaster as she had beheld ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... that on Antandros' coast His fair Creusa mourn'd, for ever lost; Yet cut the bonds of Love on Tyber's shore, And bought a bride with young Evander's gore. Here droop'd the victim of a lawless flame: The amorous frenzy of the Cretan dame He fled abhorrent, and contemn'd her tears, And to the dire suggestion closed his ears. But nought, alas! his purity avail'd— Fate in his flight the hapless youth assail'd, By interdicted Love to Vengeance fired; And by his father's curse the son ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... by night, her door by day. O woman, woman! thy mysterious power Chains the whole world, and men are nought but slaves Unto the potent talisman— If man prove false and treach'rous, he is spurn'd, Contemn'd, and punish'd with resentment just. To woman faithless still we kneel and sue, For that return our reason holds as worthless. Well! this shall be my last—for, by yon moon, So oft a witness to my fervent vows, So true an emblem of inconstant beauty, This night I woo her back, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... 1641. and 1647. last past, If any be unwilling, and decline to reckon Sectaries among the enemies of the Covenant, from whom danger is to be apprehended, And (though we disallow the abusing and Idolizing of learning to the patrocinie of Errour or prejudice of piety) if any contemn literature as needlesse at best, if not ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... general, by letter, to come to his assistance, and made a great many mournful complaints about Herod's violence, and about the injuries he did to the kingdom; and promised to give him money for such his assistance; but he complied not with his invitation to betray his trust, for he did not contemn him that sent him, especially while Herod gave him more money [than the other offered]. So he pretended friendship to Antigonus, but came as a spy to discover his affairs; although he did not herein ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... desires; some are both natural and compulsory, such as thirst; some are natural but not compulsory, as the desire for dainties; some are neither natural nor compulsory, such as the desire for crowns or statues. The last of these the wise man will contemn, the second he will admit, but so as to retain his freedom. For independence of such things is desirable, not necessarily that we may reduce our wants to a minimum, but in order that if we cannot ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... the worthy nomarch. "The priests say that the gods are angry with Egypt because of the influx of foreigners; but I see that even the gods do not contemn gold and precious ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... not the vulgar idea of them, is it? But I believe it is what you will always strive to do, Harry." Bessie spoke with pretty eagerness. She feared that she might have seemed to contemn Harry's vocation, and she hastened to make amends. Harry understood her perfectly, and had the impudence to laugh at her quite in his old boyish way. A little confused—also in the old way—she ran on: "I have seen the judges in their scarlet robes ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... never falls; Ixion chained to his wheel; the daughters of Danaus still vainly trying to fill their sieve; Tantalus, immersed in water to his chin, yet tormented with unquenchable thirst; Sisyphus despairingly labouring at his ever-descending stone. Warned by such examples, we may learn not to contemn the gods. Beyond these sad scenes, extending far to the right, are the plains of pleasure, the Elysian Fields; and Lethe, the river of oblivion, of which whoever tastes, though he should ascend to the eastern ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... should have this effect, I think I should despise thee for stupidity and hate thee for ingratitude; for whence proceed my irresolution, my vicissitudes of purpose, but from my love? and that man's heart must be made of strange stuff that can abhor or contemn a woman for loving him too much. Of such stuff the heart of my friend, thank Heaven, is not made. Though I love him far— far too much, he will not trample on ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... parliament, and the private interest of their patron will guide their venal votes." "What an act of oppression," rejoined the monks, "to pervert to other objects the pious designs of our holy institutions, to contemn the inviolable wishes of the dead, and to take that which a devout charity had deposited in our chests for the relief of the unfortunate and make it subservient to the luxury of the bishops, thus inflating their arrogant ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... be full of pain and shame to one who can find neither rest nor shelter in this world, and who must nevertheless appeal to it, exact things from it, contemn it, and still be unable to dispense with the thing contemned, —this really constitutes the wretchedness of the artist of the future, who, unlike the philosopher, cannot prosecute his work alone in the seclusion of a study, but ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... fellow founded out of Charity, And moulded to the height contemn his maker, Curb the free hand that fram'd him? This ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... contrary to the rules of Christians and of good manners, that they are not to be argued with, but to be exposed or entirely neglected. I have a receipt against all the uneasiness which it may be supposed to give me, and that is, to contemn slander, and think it not worth the least concern; neither should I think it worth while to give any answer to it, if it were not on some other accounts, of which I shall speak as I go on. If any young man ask me why I am in such ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... known the pomps of state, (For things unknown, 'tis ignorance to condemn;) And after having viewed the gaudy bait, Can boldly say, the trifle I contemn; With such a one contented could I live, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... And were it not, such baseness I disdain; I would not stoop, to purchase all above, And should contemn a power, whom prayer could move, As one unworthy ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... as if it were children struggling among themselves about their order and rank! There is no worth in these things, but what fancy and custom impose upon them and yet poor creatures boast in these empty things. The gentlemen despise citizens, the citizens contemn the poor countrymen, and yet their bloods in a basin have no different colours, for all this hot contention about blood and birth. "Boast not of thyself." Nay, to speak properly, this is not thyself,—Qui genus laudat suum, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... practice, to keep his ships and men out of danger, which had been held in former times a point of great ability and circumspection, as if the principal requisite in the captain of a ship had been to come home safe again. He was the first man who brought ships to contemn castles on shore, which had been thought ever very formidable.... He was the first that infused that proportion of courage into the seamen by making them see what mighty things they could do if they were resolved, and taught them to fight in fire as well as on water. And though he hath ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... dreadful loss which was her own—only hers, and could meet with no sympathy from others. But then she remembered that it had met with sympathy already—not much in words, but in tone and look and action—from the one unfailing friend of her whole life. Maurice knew—Maurice did not contemn her—there was a little humiliation in the thought, but more sweetness. She went over the whole scene in the chapel, and for the first time there came into her mind a sense of the inexpressible tenderness which had soothed her as she sat there ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... Catulus, not to contemn any friend's expostulation, though unjust, but to strive to reduce him to his former disposition: freely and heartily to speak well of all my masters upon any occasion, as it is reported of Domitius, and Athenodotus: and to love my children ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... thine eyes of light, And feel that all besides is night; I press that snowy hand in mine, And but contemn my art divine. Oh Viviana! I am lost; A life's renown thy smile hath cost. A stone no ages can remove Will be my monument of love; A nation's wail shall mourn my fate, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... feeling or illustrating a mood.] He who would enjoy the musical integument of this play must have cultivated a craving for dissonance in harmony and find relish in combinations of tones that sting and blister and pain and outrage the ear. He must have learned to contemn euphony and symmetry, with its benison of restfulness, and to delight in monotony of orchestral color, monotony of mood, monotony of dynamics, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... what cheer? Q. Isab. Ah, good Sir John of Hainault, Never so cheerless nor so far distrest! Sir J. I hear, sweet lady, of the king's unkindness: But droop not, madam; noble minds contemn Despair. Will your grace with me to Hainault, And there stay time's advantage with your son?— How say you, my lord! will you go with your friends, And shake off all our fortunes equally? P. Edw. So pleaseth the queen my mother, ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... world was such a reality, that it became to them a part of the life upon the earth; which accordingly they loved and adorned, in spite of the ascetic doctrines of their formal creed, which bade them contemn it. ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... be well avenged," he announced with kingly dignity, then smiled with satisfaction when they brought him the shield and helmet of Leonidas, the madman, who had dared to contemn his power. But all the generals who stood by were grim and sad. One more such victory would bring the army ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... behind it, and, exposed to the north, the snow lay in its crevices the summer through. Before dawn I led my flock to the sheep-walks, and guarded them through the day. It was a life of toil; for rain and cold were more frequent than sunshine; but it was my pride to contemn the elements. My trusty dog watched the sheep as I slipped away to the rendezvous of my comrades, and thence to the accomplishment of our schemes. At noon we met again, and we threw away in contempt our peasant fare, as we built our fire-place ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... ignominious, whereas death to avoid what Heaven has in store is cowardly indeed! In that quaint book of Sir Thomas Browne's, Religio Medici there is an exact English equivalent for what is repeatedly taught in our Precepts. Let me quote it: "It is a brave act of valor to contemn death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live." A renowned priest of the seventeenth century satirically observed—"Talk as he may, a samurai who ne'er has died is apt in decisive moments ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... She flies a barren people's cold abuse; Summons her sister, who forbears to smile, And leaves to rats the desecrated pile, Which dogs and nags already had begun, Unless by blows and hunger driv'n, to shun: For well-bred curs and steeds genteel contemn A stage which Taste had sunk too low for them; Whereon the town had seen, without remorse, A herd of bisons and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... honour'd, fear'd me, thou alone couldst hate me, Thy husband, slight me, sell me, and forego me; How wouldst thou use me now, blind, and thereby Deceivable, in most things as a child, Helpless, thence easily contemn'd, and scorn'd, And last neglected? How wouldst thou insult, When I must live uxorious to thy will In perfect thraldom! How again betray me, Bearing my words and doings to the lords To gloss upon, and censuring, frown or smile! This jail I count the house of liberty ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... lordless, wanders where his will inclines From Tuats heats to Zegzeg's stunted pines! View him, ye craven few, ye living-dead! Wrecks of a being whence the soul has fled! Ye Goths and Vandals of his plundered coast! Ye Christian Bondous, who of feeling boast,[7] Who quickly kindling to historic fire Contemn a Marius' or a Scylla's ire,[8] Or kindly lulled to sympathetic glow, Lament the martyrs of some far-off woe, And tender grown, with sorrow hugely great Weep o'er an Agis' or Jugurtha's fate![9] View him, ye hollow heartlings as he stalks ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... of Satan in particular; and told to each other by which they had been afflicted, and how they were borne up under his assaults. hey also discoursed of their own wretchedness of heart, of their unbelief; and did contemn, slight, and abhor their own righteousness, as filthy and insufficient to do them any good. And methought they spake as if joy did make them speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such appearance of grace in all they ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... avidity,—all these, in my days of health and happiness, had power to surprise, or amuse, or provoke me. I could mingle then in the conflict of minds; and hear my part with smiles in the social circle; though the next moment, perhaps, I might contemn myself and others: and the personal scandal, the characteristic tale, the amusing folly, or the malignant wit, were ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... explanation and he urges that it is the old alone who should seek to become distinguished by accumulating merit through austerity, prays that she who is so young and beautiful shall become his bride; and boasts that he is superior to Vishnu. She rejoins that no one but he would thus contemn that deity. On receiving this reply he touches the hair of her head with the tip of his finger. She is greatly incensed, and forthwith cuts off her hair and tells him that as he has so insulted her, she cannot continue to live, but will enter into the fire before ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... versed therein; this sentence shall be thus explained: this releasement shall be thus pretended: all is but seemingly to stop the mouth of conscience, that saith, they must both make and pay vows unto God. Yet the wilfully ignorant will neglect it; the wretchedly profane will contemn it; the wickedly politic will avoid it; so the heart shall be left to its own swing, open to all corruption that breaks in like a flood. For the prevention whereof, let us ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... word Club, wisely adopted by other bodies of the same kind, was abandoned, and this one called itself a Society. To that abandonment of the medio tutissimus has been attributed its early death by those who contemn the taste of those other communities, essentially Book Clubs, which have taken to the devious course ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... citizen was broken by his contending feelings. He obviously, while he professed to contemn the pedigree of his Highland kinsman, attached a secret feeling of consequence to the connection, and he spoke of his friend in his prosperity with an overflow of affection, which deepened his sympathy for his misfortunes, and his ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of mine idol a new worshipper in thee, Catharine. This scrap of parchment will tell thee how to make your way into my chapel, where I have worshipped so often in safety. I leave the images which it contains to thee as a legacy, simply because I hate and contemn thee something less than any of the absurd wretches whom I have hitherto been obliged to call fellow creatures. And now away—or remain and see if the end of ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... order. Again, the order of a rational creature is that it should be under God and above other creatures. Hence, just as it is an evil for a rational creature to submit, by love, to a lower creature, so too is it an evil for it, if it submit not to God, but presumptuously revolt against Him or contemn Him. Now this evil is possible to a rational creature considered as to its nature on account of the natural flexibility of the free-will; whereas in the blessed, it becomes impossible, by reason of the perfection of glory. Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... with all our boasted advantages of wealth, power, and knowledge, truly say that all our aims are as high, all our desires as pure, our words as true, and our deeds as noble, as those whose opinions we feel this tendency to contemn? If not, or if indeed they have anything whatsoever to teach us in these respects, let us remember that we shall never learn the lesson wholly, perhaps not learn it at all, unless, casting aside this first impulse to despise, we try to enter fully into and ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... all gentle sympathies. Heroism might point him to an unending struggle with adverse conditions, but how was heroism possible without faith? Absolute faith he had none; he was essentially a negativist, guided by the mere relations of phenomena. Nothing easier than to contemn the mode of life represented by this wealthy middle class; but compare it with other existences conceivable by a thinking man, and it was emphatically good. It aimed at placidity, at benevolence, at supreme cleanliness,—things which more than compensated for ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... for different Opinions: Thus a crasie Constitution, and an uneasie Mind is fretted with vexatious Passions for young Mens doing foolishly what it is Folly to do at all. Dear Sir, this is my present State of Mind; I hate those I should laugh at, and envy those I contemn. The Time of Youth and vigorous Manhood passed the Way in which I have disposed of it, is attended with these Consequences; but to those who live and pass away Life as they ought, all Parts of it are equally pleasant; only the Memory of good and worthy Actions is a Feast which must ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... of Defoe's in mind, and though it is the fashion of the day to jeer and to mock, to execrate and to contemn, the noble band of Covenanters—though the bitter laugh at their old-world religious views, the curl of the lip at their merits, and the chilling silence on their bravery and their determination, are but too rife through all society—be charitable to what was evil and honest to what was ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... moccinigo. Sixpence it will cost you, or six hundred pound— expect no lower price, for, by the banner of my front, I will not bate a bagatine, that I will have, only, a pledge of your loves, to carry something from amongst you, to shew I am not contemn'd by you. Therefore, now, toss your handkerchiefs, cheerfully, cheerfully; and be advertised, that the first heroic spirit that deignes to grace me with a handkerchief, I will give it a little remembrance of something, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... university learning of itself be that which (to speak the words of Verulamius) 'crafty men contemn, and simple men only admire, yet is it such as wise men have use of; for studies do not teach their own use, but that is a wisdom without and above them, won by observation. Expert men may execute, and perhaps judge, of particulars one by one; but the general councils and the plots, and ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... not make the proper distinction between selfish quacks who seek publicity 'to line the pocket,' and those 'who, prompted by some mysterious power,' come forward against their interest, and at the risk of their reputation. 'Rather than to contemn and ridicule, it were better to study the manifestations of that mysterious power.' They do not consider that the truth thus brought to light, while they fail to acknowledge it, is affording 'to selfish quackery' a capital to ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard
... Praise, disposeth to laudable actions, such as please them whose judgement they value; for of these men whom we contemn, we contemn also the Praises. Desire of Fame after death does the same. And though after death, there be no sense of the praise given us on Earth, as being joyes, that are either swallowed up in the unspeakable joyes of Heaven, or extinguished in the extreme torments of Hell: yet is not such Fame ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... mouse) On her small cot he flings his house; Without the poyson of the elf, The toad had like t' have burst himself: For sage Arachne with good heed Had stopt herself upon full speed, And, 's body now disorder'd, on She falls to execution. The passive toad now only can Contemn and suffer. Here began The wronged maids ingenious rage, Which his heart venome must asswage. One eye she hath spet out, strange smother, When one flame doth put out another, And one eye wittily spar'd, that he Might but behold his miserie. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... is heaven, This earth, these men, and all had moved alike. — Do not I know the time's condition? Yes, Mitis, and their souls; and who they be That either will or can except against me. None but a sort of fools, so sick in taste, That they contemn all physic of the mind, And like gall'd camels, kick at every touch. Good men, and virtuous spirits, that loath their vices, Will cherish my free labours, love my lines, And with the fervour of their shining grace Make my brain fruitful, to bring forth more objects, ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... swimming in tears of affection when she spoke. "And is there not, dear sister," said I, "more pleasure in the possession of such a man than in all the little impertinencies of balls, assemblies, and equipage, which it cost me so much pains to make you contemn?" ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... be set down as an axiom, without further trouble of demonstration, that a woman is a bad dinner-caterer; either too great and simple for it, or too mean—I don't know which it is; and gentlemen, according as they admire or contemn the sex, may settle that matter their own way. In brief, the mental constitution of lovely woman is such that she cannot give a great dinner. It must be done by a man. It can't be done by an ordinary man, because he does not understand ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... This contemn'd of a man, This marr'd one heedless day, This heart take thou to scan Both within and without: Refine with fire its gold, Purge Thou its dross away— Yea, hold it in Thy hold, Whence none can ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
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