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More "Despicable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... behold a neat small town, composed entirely of wooden houses variously and not inelegantly painted; and receding gradually from the river's edge to the slowly disappearing forest, on which its latest rude edifice reposed. Between the town and the fort, was to be seen a dockyard of no despicable dimensions, in which the hum of human voices mingled with the sound of active labour—there too might be seen, in the deep harbour of the narrow channel that separated the town from the island we have just described, some half-dozen gallant ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... to be the curse of women and, through women, of the world. Despicable in themselves they inherit a dreadful secret before which, as in a fortress betrayed to a false password, the proudest virtue hauls down its flag, and kneeling, proffers its keys. Doubtless they move under fate to an end ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the background; out at elbows, down at the elbows, down in the world. inglorious; nameless, renownless[obs3]; obscure; unknown to fame; unnoticed, unnoted[obs3], unhonored, unglorified[obs3]. shameful; disgraceful, discreditable, disreputable; despicable; questionable; unbecoming, unworthy; derogatory; degrading, humiliating, infra dignitatem[Lat], dedecorous[obs3]; scandalous, infamous, too bad, unmentionable; ribald, opprobrious; errant, shocking, outrageous, notorious. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... minority which has for its sole end the subversion of the existing state of things. He would probably succeed in getting back the money he had spent, and more also, by illicit means. If he failed, the money would be lost, and he would go from bad to worse, intriguing and mixing himself up with the despicable radical press, in the hope of getting a hearing ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Alexandrie—n'importe ou, travailler j'irai a l'Isthme de Suez." At last we arrived in Malta. It is a pity for officers and others there is no regular communication by steam between Malta and Tunis; for the desagremens of a sailing-vessel are by no means despicable. Witness a friend of mine's ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... not necessary for me to explain, Haskers. You have been found out. You are a despicable villain, and you ought to be in jail. I trusted you, and you have deceived me. More than that, you have tried to get these young gentlemen into serious trouble. Don't deny it, for it will do no good. We have the ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... clearest possible idea of the beauty of the school-but if the intention had been merely to show the school's character, the attempt might have been considered successful in the highest degree. There are long passages now before us of the most despicable trash, with no merit whatever beyond that of their antiquity.. The criticisms of the editor do not particularly please us. His enthusiasm is too general and too vivid not to be false. His opinion, for example, of Sir Henry Wotton's "Verses on the Queen of Bohemia"-that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... curse of his environment press too heavily upon him, and he is crushed to debauchery and madness. He does not drink because liquor tastes good in his mouth. In the vile companions who purvey to his baser appetites he finds no charm. It is all utterly despicable and sordid, but thither his quest leads him and he follows the quest. He knows that everything is wrong, but he cannot right it, cannot tell why. He can only attack and demolish. "What justification have ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... of the Refugee Concentrated Camps, and when he left he had a camp of about six thousand women and children under his care. All charges of cruelty and inhumanity were vile and calumnious falsehoods. Nay, worse, they were miserable, despicable concoctions. Both women and children were better off, the great bulk of them, than ever they were in their lives. The only thing approaching cruelty to them was at the authorities insisted upon cleanliness and proper ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... much more influence in the economy of Nature than the incurious are aware of, and are mighty in their effect, from their minuteness, which renders them less an object of attention, and from their numbers and fecundity. Earth-worms, though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of Nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm. For, to say nothing of half the birds, and some quadrupeds, which are almost entirely supported by them, worms seem to be the great promoters ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... true patriot; and all those who profess outrageous zeal for the liberty and prosperity of their country, and, at the same time, infringe her laws, affront her religion, and debauch her people, are but despicable quacks, by fraud or ignorance increasing the disorders they pretend ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... we think he will, why in the name of common sense did he afford his enemies so much occasion to brand him with disloyalty?" Said The Free Press, of Hamilton, "It is not the domination of the mother country that Reformers complain of; it is only the tyrannical conduct of a small and despicable faction in the colony. The domination of the mother country is as necessary to our present happiness and future greatness as the mother's breast is to the infant." "There can be but one opinion," ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... cried the indignant countess. "She dies through the covetousness and greed of her neighbors. It is they who have sown dissension in Poland, while forcing upon her unhappy people a king who is nothing but the despicable tool of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... would lose his revenge, and it would be all to no purpose that he had gone and nursed his hatred until he himself had become evil through it. Since he had forever lost his friend, he would at least expose his enemy, so that all should see what a miserable, despicable being ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... officer, whose decorative exterior awed friend and foe, and helped to win many a battle. His reign lasted from 1808 until 1815, and was no less distinguished than that of Joseph's. The fall of the Napoleonic regime was followed by the fall of Murat, and the despicable and treacherous Ferdinand became again the king, and brought back with him the same tyrannical habits that had made his previous rule so disastrous to the kingdom and to himself. No whitewasher, however ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... seems, upon a heart by a middle-aged gentleman with the manners of a bear and the composure of a prig. Furthermore, it is through women's novels that we have had brought home to us most adequately what women who have tasted it, or seen it, can best relate, the despicable egotism of a weak man. Anzoleto in Consuelo, ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... prefixed to her name the epithet scornful; and among her school-girl friends there were some who always passed by on the other side. Poor girl! She wept bitter tears over these sneers and slights, for she had not studied the world enough to learn and despise its despicable things. Even then, dear girl! too, she tried to love all the world, that is, all her native village. And she succeeded, at least far enough to forgive them all, and thus to feel her own mind at peace and resigned. But there was a tinge of sadness left on her Grecian face ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... any phraseology come from the humanity behind it. We are well reminded that divergences from the common use of language, never held to degrade the meaning in Milton or Shakespeare, need not render thought despicable when the negro uses identical forms. If he calls a leopard a "libbard," he only imitates the most sublime of English poets; and the first word of his petition, "Gib us this day our daily bread," is pronounced as it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Tarquin, though a tyrannical prince in peace, a despicable general in war; nay, he would have equalled his predecessors in that art, had not his [62]degeneracy in other respects likewise detracted from his merit here. He began the war against the Volsci, which lasted two hundred years after his time, and took from them Suessa Pometia ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... disrespect, inspection, speculate, special, especial, species, specify, specimen, spice, suspicion, conspicuous, despise, despite, spite; (2) specter, spectrum, spectroscope, prospector, prospectus, introspection, retrospect, circumspectly, conspectus, perspective, specie, specification, specious, despicable, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... that time the United States had been immensely popular in Rumania. But Mr. Hoover's action made us about as popular with the Rumanians as the smallpox. He and we were charged with being actuated by the most despicable and sordid motives. The King himself told me that he was convinced that Mr. Hoover was in league with certain great commercial interests which wished to take their revenge for their failure to obtain commercial concessions of great value in Rumania. ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... desires on this point, as upon others, are not noble, but the human is very despicable vermin and only tolerable when it tends to the brute, and away from the evangelical. I will tell you an anecdote which is in itself an admirable illustration of my craving for notoriety; and my anecdote will serve a double purpose,—it will bring me some of the notoriety of which I am so desirous, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... well-dressed person, but must have a universal care and regard of all his parish. And as he must think himself bound, not only to visit down beds and silken curtains, but also flocks and straw [mattresses], if there be need: so ought his care to be as large to instruct the poor, the weak, and despicable part of his parish, as those that sit in the best pews. He that does otherwise, thinks not at all of a man's soul: but only accommodates himself to fine clothes, an abundance of ribbons, and the highest seat in the church; ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... yet so equally thereon poised up by Nature only, as a little child could instantly move it, but no one man or many remove it. This natural monument all travellers that came that way desired to behold; but in the time of Oliver's usurpation, when all monumental things became despicable, one Shrubsall, one of Oliver's heroes, then Governor of Pendennis, by labor and much ado, caused to be undermined and thrown down, to the great grief of the country; but to his own great glory, as he thought, doing it, as he said, with a small cane ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... had run back, driven by panic into audacity, to fall at Sophia's feet, lest Sophia might not have yielded and the furniture have been seized. From, beginning to end the conduct of Madame Foucault had been fatuous and despicable and wicked. Sophia coldly condemned Madame Foucault for having allowed herself to be brought into the world with such a weak and maudlin character, and for having allowed herself to grow old and ugly. As a sight ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... rascally, cowardly hare! a miserable chafferer! If I wanted to sell him this old handkerchief, he could not help buying; it is his nature; he is a despicable creature. And he tries to defy me, and put me in prison; and he is to sit, forsooth, on this sofa, with the rum-bottle at his side—the scoundrel!" Then taking up the empty bottle, he dashed it against the woodwork of the sofa and ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... that whatever circumstances could possibly contribute to make a country poor and despicable, are all united with respect to Ireland. The nation controlled by laws to which they do not consent, disowned by their brethren and countrymen, refused the liberty not only of trading with their own manufactures, but even their native commodities, forced to seek for justice many hundred miles ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... acquaintances, some of whom he cherished. An extreme simplicity marked his tastes, and the same characteristic appeared in his conversation; an easy man to deceive, easy to make fun of, yet impossible to dislike, or despise—unless by the despicable. He delighted in stories of adventure, of bravery by flood or field, and might have posed—had he ever posed at all—as something of an authority on North Pole expeditions and the geography ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... and despicable; she was not the woman to marry where she did not love! But then she really did love Richie in a way. And Richie loved her—no question of that! Loved her more than Warren did for all his letters ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... and undermine that of the Temporal Princes in Christendom. The Authority of the Church has made the greatest Princes and most haughty Sovereigns fall prostrate before, and pay Adoration to the vilest Trumpery, and accept of, as Presents of inestimable Worth, despicable Trifles, that had no Value at all but what was set upon them by the Gigantick Impudence of the donors, and the childish Credulity of the Receivers. the Church misled the Vulgar, and then made Money of their ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... for naught, that a bucket is as good a casus belli as Helen, the moral which Southey pointed in his ballad of the Battle of Blenheim, emerges, not from the poet's design, but from the inevitable logic of his humor. Pique inspired the Secchia Rapita, and in the despicable character of Count Culagna he fully revenged the slight which had been put upon him. The revenge is savage, certainly; for the Count remains 'immortally immerded' in the long-drawn episode which brought to view the shame of his domestic life. Yet while ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... from the opposite direction. In a second she saw that it carried Harding and Mortlake. They both looked angry and blank. Peggy guessed at once that they had discovered their loss. But she resolved not to stop unless they did and asked questions. She felt that such a despicable act as they had attempted to perpetrate deserved ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... unfeelingness which he applied yesterday to our Master, characterises much more the Minister. Charles aims sometimes at humour; he has not an atom of it, or rather it is wit, which is better, but that is not his talent neither, and they are indeed but despicable ones in my mind, et de tous les dons de la nature celui qui est le plus dangereux et le mains utile; but Charles's poignancy and misapplication of truth, making the most known falsehoods serve his person (purpose?) better, in all that ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... soon as he discovered that every trace was vanished, he raised his hands against himself in the wildest despair, and tore his hair. But this newly-acquired treasure gave me the means and the disposition to mingle again among my fellow-men. No pretext was wanting for palliating to my own mind this despicable robbery; or, rather, it wanted no such pretext. With a view of ridding myself of any internal reproaches, I hurried away, not even looking back on the unfortunate victim, whose agonized tones I heard long repeated ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... have for the salvation of our souls; and our terms are, salvation or no salvation, to keep all that we have and to seek every day for more. God absolutely demands that we shall stoop to the very dust every day, till we become the poorest, the meanest, the most despicable, and the most hopeless of men; whereas we meet that divine demand with the proud reply—Is Thy servant a dog? It was with this offended mind that stiff old Loth-to-stoop at last left off from Emmanuel's presence; ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... the attitude of Mrs. Crocker's sister, Nesta Pett. She entirely disapproved of the proposed match. At least, the fact that in her final interview with her sister she described the bridegroom-to-be as a wretched mummer, a despicable fortune-hunter, a broken-down tramp, and a sneaking, grafting confidence-trickster lends colour to the supposition that she was not a warm supporter of it. She agreed wholeheartedly with Mrs. Crocker's suggestion that they should never speak to each other again as long as they ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... had finished speaking Emma was standing in the doorway, peering owlishly at her. "Most Gracious Grace," she salaamed, "what is your majesty's magnificent pleasure with your worthless and most despicable dog of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... Despicable Spirit of Death! You will be rejoicing that glory is at its height when hateful death will come once again, and with eyes wide with horror, you will discard all things, and dimly and softly the fragrant spirit will waste and dissolve! You will yearn for native home, but distant ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... thousand perils and dangers that Nature has set before it, with disease as Nature's agent, crouching and ready to destroy the child's life, not in open combat, but invisibly concealed by the limitation of our senses. This is one of Nature's unspeakable crimes; one of God's despicable impositions. ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... his own larder; and on the morrow morning, the miserable old man lies dead. This is the end of Prime Minister, Cardinal Archbishop Lomenie de Brienne. Flimsier mortal was seldom fated to do as weighty a mischief; to have a life as despicable-envied, an exit as frightful. Fired, as the phrase is, with ambition: blown, like a kindled rag, the sport of winds, not this way, not that way, but of all ways, straight towards such a powder-mine,—which he kindled! Let ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... school-fellow had secretly brought with him from home after the holidays, the novel of Peregrine Pickle, which he carefully concealed in his trunk. He at first lent it to some of the elder boys, who read it, and enlarging on some of the most despicable incidents to be found, disgusted my meek spirit of it, by their report. It seemed to violate all my cherished ideas of beauty and soft luxury. I was then about fourteen years of age, and my companions persuaded me to a perusal. I took it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... one is so infested by mosquitoes during the season when picnics seem most natural, that those of my visitors who have been taken there for a treat have invariably lost their tempers, and made the quiet shores ring with their wailing and lamentations. These despicable but irritating insects don't seem to have anything to do but to sit in multitudes on the sand, waiting for any prey Providence may send them; and as soon as the carriage appears they rise up in a cloud, ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... reason because a few others have led the way, and they end by believing that the man whom they are acclaiming is almost divine; yet it is certain that they elected this man on the whole because of the two he had more points in common with them, this poor despicable and very unheroic thing was the person whom they delighted to honour because they themselves were very unheroic and somewhat despicable. We cannot see the greatness of a truly great man unless there is just a bit of greatness in ourselves; Christ was too big and ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... him; he might well babble of spiritual things, but till now he understood nothing of the beauty and excellency of God and his ways; nay, he knew not what he knew, he was ignorant as a beast of the life and lustre of those things which he knew in the letter; nothing seemed more despicable to him in the world, than true godliness; but now he judgeth otherwise, because he hath the mind of Christ. The things which in his darkness he did undervalue as trifles to be mocked at, he now can only mind and admire, since he became a child of light; now being delivered ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... them, O thou of sweet smiles, become thy slaves. And I also, O fair damsel, will stay by thee as thy slave, ever obedient to thee, O thou of the most handsome face.' Hearing these words of his, Draupadi replied, 'In desiring me, a female servant of low extraction, employed in the despicable office of dressing hair, O Suta's son, thou desirest one that deserves not that honour. Then, again, I am the wife of others. Therefore, good betide thee, this conduct of thine is not proper. Do thou remember the precept of morality, viz., that persons should ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Morgan could have escaped by a running dash, for those high-heeled horseback men were not much on foot. But he could not pay that much for safety before the public of Ascalon, despicable as those of it gathered there might be. He made a pretense of watching the faro game while the Texans put down their glasses to rush after him and make him prisoner, threatening him with ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... naturally examined the works of the Russian arch anti-Semite, Ippolit Lutostansky, who first accused the Jews of the most despicable crimes, and then, in 1882, after the occurrence of the pogroms in the south of Russia, wrote a volume retracting all his previous anti-Jewish accusations, and declaring anti-Semitism to be nothing but an outgrowth of ignorance and malice. Several years later he resumed his anti-Semitic agitation ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... Rowland's Kalydor, all the placard-bearers of Dr. Eady, all the wall- chalkers of Day and Martin, seem to have taken service with the poets and novelists of this generation. Devices which in the lowest trades are considered as disreputable are adopted without scruple, and improved upon with a despicable ingenuity, by people engaged in a pursuit which never was and never will be considered as a mere trade by any man of honour and virtue. A butcher of the higher class disdains to ticket his meat. A mercer of the higher class would be ashamed to hang up papers in his window inviting the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... each one of the rebel provinces, but in the name of the States-General, instead of the king. His influence indeed was so great as to over-shadow that of the States-General, but great as it was, it had to be exerted to the utmost before that body could be induced to accept a man of Anjou's despicable and untrustworthy character as their new ruler. William however had committed himself to the candidature of the duke, through lack of any fitter choice; and at last both the States-General and the several provincial ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... Nothing can be more serious, as I have already remarked, than this diary of Alfieri's struggles, where he notes, day by day, the laziness, the meanness, the want of frankness to himself and others, the despicable vanity, the attempt to appear what he is not, the indulged unfounded suspiciousness towards his friends, all the little base defects which must have pained a nature like his more than any real sinfulness, as ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Oxon. 1616, in apologizing for the defects of this work, he plays upon the word translate: To have committed no faults in this translation, says he, would have been to translate myself, and put off man. Wood calls this despicable pun, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... a useless despicable fellow as his uncle Alfred, and will be the same burden to me that that accomplished ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... that is; she looked so superb and so determined. Then all that was mean and despicable in his thinly veneered nature came to the surface, and, springing forward with an oath, he was about to push her aside, when, without the moving of a finger on her part, he reeled back, recovered himself, caught at a chair, missed it and fell ...
— The Gray Madam - 1899 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... match this in shame. There is no guilt so despicable as dozing in it without a blush or an effort, or even a dream for independence. When all else are alive to indignity, and working in the way of honour and liberty, they alone, whom it would best become to be earliest and most earnest in the strife, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... brows! Alas for them and us! God's precious gift Of gracious dispensation got by theft - The damning form of false unholy vows! The thief of God and man must have his fee: And thou, John Lackland, despicable prince - Basest of England's banes before or since! Thrice traitor, coward, thief! O thou shalt be The historic warning, trampled and abhorr'd Who dared to steal and stain ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... actors, and light women, and produced by conventional grimacing and the wan reflection of gaslight. He was reputed to be the paid lover of an exiled and profligate queen. The rumour was whispered around him, and, in his own world, secured him an envied and despicable position. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... story of folly and selfishness wrecking a nation, and, in another, a solemn instance of divine retribution working its designs by men's sins. The greater part of this account deals with it in the former aspect, and shows the despicable motives of the men in whose hands was the nation's fate; but one sentence (verse 15) draws back the curtain for a moment, and shows us the true cause. There is something very striking in that one flash, which reveals the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is a conspiracy," exclaimed Hygeia, deeply interested and ready to declare her loyalty to the lovers. "How can you account for the base treachery of that man?" (pointing toward my room, the quarters of the despicable villain in the case.) "What a miserable ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... letter in her hand, with a quick, angry gesture, as if crushing some hateful, despicable thing, and her clear hazel ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... saddlebow of the deceased chieftain, and wielding it with remorseless dexterity, he soon slew or wounded, or compelled to flight, the objects of his resentment; nor was there any of them who abode an instant to support the boast which they had made. "The despicable churls!" said the Countess to Agelastes; "it irks me that a drop of such coward blood should stain the hands of a noble knight. They call their exercise a tournament, although in their whole exertions every blow is aimed behind the back, and not one ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... science could alone supply. All this is not denied. Your order stands before Europe the most gorgeous of existing spectacles; though you have of late years dexterously thrown some of the odium of your polity upon that middle class which you despise, and who are despicable only because they imitate you, your tenure of power is not in reality impaired. You govern us still with absolute authority—and you govern the most miserable people on ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... Such a despicable being does us an infinity of harm: he encourages us to display all the worst points of the female character; he cheats us of our due amount of homage from many a noble heart, and perhaps robs us of our own dignity and self-respect. Yet such is the creature we encourage in our blind vanity, and whilst ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... what grace was manifest in thy condescension! Grace brought thee down from heaven; grace stripped thee of thy glory; grace made thee poor and despicable; grace made thee bear such burdens of sin, such burdens of sorrow, such burdens of God's curse as ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... moment. There was something despicable, to his thinking, in profiting by the loss of a wretched ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... to do this,—if lighting street lamps on a moral slum will end some of the more despicable acts committed by men who hold other men's property in trust,—sound economics will depend in part on this measure, but it depends in ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... illness, and the accursed passion of the agent of all this misery. I devote my remaining days to tracking and extinguishing a monster. I am told I may hope to accomplish my righteous and merciful purpose. At present there is scarcely a gleam of light to guide me. I curse my conceited incredulity, my despicable affectation of superiority, my blindness, my obstinacy—all—too late. I cannot write or talk collectedly now. I am distracted. So soon as I shall have a little recovered, I mean to devote myself for a time to enquiry, which may possibly lead me as far as Vienna. Some time in the autumn, ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... go carefully. You've got a fence or two to clear before you get home." He paused a moment, then gave him a kindly hand-grip. "Say, Bunny," he said, "there's nothing despicable about making a mistake. It's only when things go wrong and we don't play the game that there's anything to be ashamed of. I've always been ready to stake my last dollar that you'd never ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... his whole band know your son to be entirely innocent so far as the flower-girl is concerned and will so express themselves. Even old Solara himself, hardened and despicable wretch as he is, will not seek to inculpate him. Rest assured that the proof of ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... credited, however, that I had, even here, so utterly fallen from the gentlemanly estate, as to seek acquaintance with the vilest arts of the gambler by profession, and, having become an adept in his despicable science, to practise it habitually as a means of increasing my already enormous income at the expense of the weak-minded among my fellow-collegians. Such, nevertheless, was the fact. And the very enormity of this offence against all manly and honourable sentiment proved, beyond doubt, the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... intimated that its gratification ought to be one of the principal objects of a dramatic author. They were foolish enough to think, that to pander to the tastes of an audience, if corrupt and vitiated, is paltry, is despicable; that to consult its inclinations when at war with sound taste or proper decorum, is to do the work of those who are influenced only by a love of sordid gain, reckless of every pure and elevated feeling—that "the end of all writing is to instruct, the end of all poetry, to instruct by pleasing." ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... inside!—heavens! what taste, what decoration—what ruin of a beautiful thing! Half the old mantelpieces gone, the ceilings spoiled, the decorations "busy," pretentious, overdone, and nothing left to console her but an ugly row of bad Lelys and worse Highmores—the most despicable collection of family portraits she had ever ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... inspiration, it seems hardly possible to be both rich and honest; and the millionaire is under a far more continuous temptation to thieve than the labourer who gets his shilling daily for despicable toils. Are you surprised? It is even so. And you repeat it every Sunday in your churches. 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.' I have heard this and similar texts ingeniously explained away and brushed ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... number of the spectators had seen the despicable act and roared their disapproval. Some shook their fists at the monster dwarf, and cried for speedy punishment for his vile trick. This outburst of indignation made him fear again to molest the ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... (with such a humanising taste, she could not, in spite of her cantankerous temper, be all bad) loved flowers: and Cicely, a rover of the woods and fields from early childhood, and no despicable practical gardener, took care to keep her beaupots constantly supplied from the first snowdrop to the last china rose. Nothing was too large for Cicely's good-will, nothing too small. Huge chimney jars of lilacs, laburnums, horse-chestnuts, peonies, and the golden ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... against an attack by the ape-man. His one hope lay in eluding him, and making for the far distant camp of Achmet Zek as rapidly as he could; but armed only with the sacrificial knife, Werper shrank from attempting the journey through the jungle. Tarzan constituted a protection that was by no means despicable, even in the face of the larger carnivora, as Werper had reason to acknowledge from the evidence he had witnessed in ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... given more space and prominence to these two editors than they merit, but the influence of a local newspaper is not to be despised, however despicable the editor and his paper may be; and it takes no small degree of courage to face such an influence as that exerted in this county by the one in question, which, I am happy to say, has gradually dwindled, until to-day it is ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... attached to it, as a direct agent in producing social reforms, in no other European country. The journalist lays every day a mass of facts before all people capable of thought; the adult, who has learnt only to write and read, acquires his remaining education—often not despicable in amount—from his weekly paper. Jeremy Bentham, speaking of those old superstitious rites by which it was intended to exorcise evil spirits, says very truly, "In our days, and in our country, the same object ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... weak woman is called vanity, in a man of sense is termed pride. Make one a degree stranger, or the other a degree weaker, and the dean and his wife were infected with the self-same folly. Yet, let not the reader suppose that this failing (however despicable) had erased from either bosom all traces of humanity. They are human creatures who are meant to be portrayed in this little book: and where is the human creature who has not some good qualities to soften, if not to counterbalance, his ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... gazed at the singer, not seeing in him the indolent, sickly youth, despicable on account of his uselessness for work. In their primitive minds stirred a vague something which impelled them to respect the words and complaints of the weakling. It was something extraordinary, which seemed to sweep, with rude beating of wings, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Those four years go for nothing. Your confidence won't stand the least strain. You do not accuse me straight out, but show me the suspicion with which you are contaminated in a manner unworthy of an honest man. I tell you it's rotten. It's—it's despicable. Do you think I'm going to sit down under this suspicion? It will be all over the countryside by to-morrow, and I—I shall be a branded man. I tell you I'm going to sift this matter to the bottom. But make no mistake. Not for your sake—nor ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... celebrated in the night with Drums and Pipes and dancing until almost day, and then they take these Images and cast them out into the high ways to be trampled under foot: and the Victuals taken away and eaten by the attendants, and despicable people that wait ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... by the bunk, after she had given Maigan a big feed of oats, with a small remnant of the bacon grease. She felt humbled now, as if her accusations constituted some unforgivable, despicable sin. This man had never intended to do her the slightest harm. He really never knew that she was coming. And through her stupid clumsiness his life was now ebbing. The doctor's long words sounded dreadfully in her ears: general sepsis, blood poisoning, a system ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... not a despicable people," answered Andrea, who was obliged to take the stranger literally, since he knew nothing of his provincial use of terms; "for a nation of the north, they have done marvellous things of late ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Elder King has consented to just such arrangements as Mrs. King and Hibbard and some of the heartless, officious aristocrats of the village saw fit to propose. It cannot be helped. Mary will doubtless be used well, corporally—but oh, the torment of being confined with such despicable companions. I trust she will be brave; though I did hear yesterday morning that she was somewhat indisposed and was abed. Her eyes ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... all Christians, he took heart and labored to do what they desired. Theodora duly found herself in becoming quarters, and a sentry was mounted at her residence. The troopers, who had been quite content to wrap themselves in their cloaks and pass the night in the air, were pleased to find no despicable accommodation in the out-buildings of the farm, and still more with the proffered vintage of their host. As for Lothair, he enveloped himself in his mantle and threw himself on a bed of sacks, with a truss of Indian corn for his pillow, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... is again changed, not by the Royall party, the Common Enemy, or a forreign power; but by the despicable Rumpe of a Parliament, which that Mountebanke had formerly serv'd himself of, and had rais'd him to that pitch, and investiture: But see withall, how soon these triflers and puppets of policy are blown away, with all their pack of modells and childish Chimaeras, nothing remaining ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... criminality of pride, nor of those viler forms of it, founded on false estimation of things beneath us and irrational contemning of them: but taken at its best, it is still base to that degree that there is no grandeur of feature which it cannot destroy and make despicable, so that the first step towards the ennobling of any face is the ridding it of its vanity; to which aim there cannot be anything more contrary than that principle of portraiture which prevails with us in these days, whose end seems to be the expression of vanity throughout, in ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... They ought to be largely advertised; but it is very good in me to say so, for I threw down Number 4 with this reflection, "What is the good of my writing a thundering big book, when everything is in this green little book so despicable for its size?" In the name of all that is good and bad I may as ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... can really be mean, nothing despicable; nothing, however perverted, irredeemable. The blasphemous other-worldliness of the false mystic who conceives of matter as an evil thing and flies from its "deceits," is corrected by this loving sight. Hence, the more beautiful and noble a ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... his countenance, and at the thought a smile rose to her lips which, if fleeting, lent such an ethereal aspect to her beauty that he forgave Oliver then and there for a love which never could be crowned, but which henceforth could no longer be regarded by him as despicable. ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... And if I did, 'twere better for my peace. But to see him despised and despicable,— The ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was entrusted, by Lord Altham, to the charge of a woman of indifferent character, named Joan or Juggy Landy. Juggy was a dependent of the family, and lived in a cabin on the estate, about a quarter of a mile from the house of Dunmain. This hut is described as a 'despicable place, without any furniture except a pot, two or three trenchers, a couple of straw {p.304} beds on the floor,' and 'with only a bush to draw in and out for a door.' Thus humbly and inauspiciously was the boy reared under the care of a nurse, who, however unfortunate or guilty, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... heard you tell Gernois so. But that would not influence me, Rokoff. I would not care who knew that I had killed you; the pleasure of killing you would more than compensate for any punishment they might inflict upon me. You are the most despicable cur of a coward, Rokoff, I have ever heard of. You should be killed. I should love to kill you," and Tarzan approached closer to ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... military command was uncertain. From the first some of the volunteers had elected their officers. The result was that intriguing demagogues were sometimes chosen. The Massachusetts troops, wrote a Connecticut captain, not free, perhaps, from local jealousy, were "commanded by a most despicable set of officers." At Bunker Hill officers of this type shirked the fight and their men, left without leaders, joined in the panicky retreat of that day. Other officers sent away soldiers to work on their farms while at the same time they drew for ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... "but you must promise me to control yourself. Naturally, my first impulse, when this scamp began on me, was to cut him off short and tell him what I thought of the despicable business to which he was lending himself. But the second thought was craftier, and I hope I may be forgiven for yielding to it. By leading him on I got the entire brutal story. It seems that the two old men upon whose complaint you were indicted ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... of wooden decoys, a wounded tern fluttering in agony at his feet. Withal, be it said, he was a man of gentlemanly bearing, courteous, and a Christian. He did not shoot on Sunday,—not he. Such sport is to me despicable. Yet it is affirmed by those who ought to know—by those, that is, who engage in it—that it tends to ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... impossible for him. No citizen of whatever integrity and standing, if so pursued, maligned and undermined, would have any choice left him but either to perish or to break the laws. The spies of the government, with the prestige and power of the government behind them (however despicable and vicious they may be in themselves), can ruin any man; but ex-convicts are their ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... harmless! Myriads of millions don't express their numbers more than ten expresses the number of the stars. They are the most persevering brutes you ever saw. They creep into your eyes, run up your nose, and plunge into your mouth. Nothing will shake them off, and the mean despicable creatures take special advantage of us when our hands are occupied in carrying buckets of gold-dust, or what, alas! ought to be gold-dust, but isn't! On such occasions we shake our heads, wink our eyes, and snort and blow at them, but all to no purpose—there ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... Madoc, "I am indeed interested for thee. Thy heart is ingenuous and sincere; thy misfortune is poignant and affecting. Listen then to my directions. Receive and treasure up this small and sordid root. In its external appearance, it is worthless and despicable; but, Edwin, we must not judge by appearances; that which is most valuable often delights to shroud itself under a coarse and unattractive outside. In a richer climate, and under a more genial sun, it bears a beauteous flower, whose broad leaves ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... this was to Robert. Because, if the baker's boy had had any right and chivalrous instincts, and had yielded to Anthea's pleading and accepted her despicable apology, Robert could not, in honour, have done anything to him at a future time. But Robert's fears, if he had any, were soon dispelled. Chivalry was a stranger to the breast of the baker's boy. He ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... of those sold in this interval. Well may the good John Wesley speak of slavery as the sum of all villanies; for no resort is too despicable, no subterfuge too vile, for its supporters. Is a slave intractable, the most wicked punishment is not too severe; is he timid, obedient, attached to his birthplace and kindred, no lie is so base that it may not be used to entrap him into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... watched, his eyes losing their hard glare, and some of his old expression returned to his face. It was as if his resurging emotions were bringing back to him the shame and remorse of a gentleman inveigled into performing a despicable action. He, too, saw Dolores approaching; saw the tensity of her expression; sensed some of the tremendous hopes that actuated her, now that she saw the rapid culmination of all her ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... day deserting her. Finally, when love himself departed, her features gave pleasure to none. Then she had recourse to those hundred little ruses and tricks of the toilet to repair the ravages of time; but nothing that she could do arrested the depredations of that despicable thief. One may repair a house gone to ruin: but the same thing is not possible ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... and Belgium is no exception. But to attempt to belittle the glorious heroism of the Belgian nation because of a few young slackers or the ingratitude and ill-manners of some ignorant peasants, is an unworthy and despicable thing. The assertion that the Belgians are lacking in courage is as untruthful as it is cruel. Ask the Germans who charged up the fire-swept slopes of Liege—those of them left alive—if the Belgians ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... Fortune, two comedies now forgotten; and, in 1685[79] his last and greatest dramatick work, Venice Preserved, a tragedy, which still continues to be one of the favourites of the publick, notwithstanding the want of morality in the original design, and the despicable scenes of vile comedy with which he has diversified his tragick action[80]. By comparing this with his Orphan, it will appear that his images were by time become stronger, and his language more energetick. The striking passages are in every mouth; and the publick seems to judge rightly of the ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... wills; but this much I can say for us, we were not in a laughing mood, but altogether dismal. A cadet a rascal—to us that was something incomprehensible. All faces were pale, all speaking was but half aloud. Ordinarily it was considered the most despicable piece of meanness if one cadet reported another to the authorities—but when a cadet had done such a thing as to steal, then he was for us no longer a cadet, and it was for this reason that the consultation was being held, ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... imbued with religion,—Rousseau, who in his youth allowed an innocent girl to be ruined by accusing her of a theft which he himself had committed, and in his ripened manhood sent to a foundling hospital the children he had had by his mistress,—whose life was despicable and whose moral creed seemed to be summed up in the doctrine that every natural impulse is to be indulged. Rousseau was an enthusiast and a sentimentalist; he was a man of the exquisite organization of genius, and there are many passages in his writings ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... that suffer, your farm rents, your commerces, your mill revenues—loud as ye lament over these things. No, it is not these alone, but a far deeper than these. It is your souls that lie dead, crushed down under despicable nightmares, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... P.M., we cut some of the water and musk-melons presented by Dr. Wharton, and found them delicious. About 6 o'clock, P.M., my cook informed me that he had prepared a supper, agreeably to my directions, and we found his skill in this way by no means despicable. Such are the trifles which must fill up my journal, for did I only write what was fit for grave divines, or the scrutinizing eye of philosophy to read, I fear I should have but a few meagre sheets to present you on my return, and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... were so immensely eager to pay their despicable court to the Spade-Guinea Man, not one of them stopped away; the old, the young, the lame, the paralytic, all found means to creep in to Grandfather Iden's annual dinner. His only son and natural heir was alone absent. How eagerly poor Amaryllis glanced from time to time at that ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... here, and who I believe, from what they saw that night, will not write to their court to dissuade their armaments, on its not being worth their while to attack so beggarly a nation. Our fleet is as little despicable; but though the preparations on both sides are so great, I believe the storm will blow over. They insist on our immediately sending an ambassador to Paris; and to my great satisfaction, my cousin and friend Lord ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... separates from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud disposition displays itself he despises them. Let it at once be noted that in this first kind of morality the antithesis "good" and "bad" means practically the same as "noble" and "despicable",—the antithesis "good" and "EVIL" is of a different origin. The cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, the distrustful, with their constrained glances, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... these general observations an instance, which Mr. Locke has given us of providence, even in the imperfections of a creature which seems the meanest and most despicable in the whole animal world. We may, says he, from the make of an oyster, or cockle, conclude, that it has not so many nor so quick senses as a man, or several other animals: Nor if it had, would it, in that state and incapacity of transferring ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... birth, by rank in profession, and by age; very little, if any, being to be allowed to fortune, though so much is generally exacted by it and commonly paid to it. Mankind never appear to me in a more despicable light than when I see them, by a simple as well as mean servility, voluntarily concurring in the adoration of riches, without the least benefit or prospect from them. Respect and deference are perhaps justly ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... into the hands of the Romans. While the insurrection spread among the Bosporan towns, and Chersonesus (not far from Sebastopol), Theudosia (Kaffa), and others joined the Phanagorites, the king allowed his suspicion and his cruelty to have free course. On the information of despicable eunuchs his most confidential adherents were nailed to the cross; the king's own sons were the least sure of their lives. The son who was his father's favourite and was probably destined by him as his successor, Pharnaces, took ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... an original, a very pretty thing. Moore's version is not quite so pretty, and is bolstered out with paraphrase and amplification to a rather intolerable extent. But there was considerable fellow-feeling between the author, whoever he was, and the translator, and the result is not despicable. Still there is no doubt that work as good or better might appear now, and the author would be lucky if he cleared a hundred pounds and a favourable review or two by the transaction. Moore was made for life. These things happen at one time and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... him, locked in a vise-like grip. It was well he had, for the fellow had burst into a frantic rage, yet was bound so utterly helpless as to appear almost pitiful. The knowledge of what he had planned, of his despicable treachery, left us merciless. In spite of his struggles we bore him to the floor, and pinned him there, cursing and ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... as much and as purulently as he likes, that is, as he can;—in short, a mule,—quarrelsome by the original discord of his nature,—a slave by tenure of his own baseness,—made to bray and be brayed at, to despise and be despicable. 'Aye, Sir, but say what you will, he is a very clever fellow, though the best friends will fall out. There was a time when Ajax thought he deserved to have a statue of gold erected to him, and handsome Achilles, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... to explain, why the same qualities, in all cases, produce both pride and love, humility and hatred; and the same man is always virtuous or vicious, accomplished or despicable to others, who is so to himself. A person, in whom we discover any passion or habit, which originally is only incommodious to himself, becomes always disagreeable to us, merely on its account; as on the other ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... his peculiar characteristics, Pope was no despicable foe. The Federal cavalry were employed with a boldness which had not hitherto been seen. Their outposts were maintained twenty miles in advance of the army. Frequent reconnaissances were made. A regiment of Jackson's cavalry was defeated at Orange Court House, with a loss of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... one wish to converse with the meanest of the Lacedaemonians, he will at first find him, for the most part, apparently despicable in conversation; but afterwards, when a proper opportunity presents itself, this same mean person, like a skilful jaculator, will hurl a sentence, worthy of attention, short and contorted; so that he who converses with him will appear ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... had the full assurance of life. It is precisely because we are despicable and worthless that we are accepted. Till we throw over that idea that we are better than others, we ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... ludicrous than that in which he pictures the monk Panurge in a storm at sea. The oily ecclesiastic is terrified as only a combination of hypocrite and coward can be; and, in the extremity of his craven distress, he fancies that any situation on shore, no matter how despicable, would be paradise. So at length he whines, "Oh that I were on dry land, and somebody kicking me!" In a similar manner—similar, save that farce deepens to tragedy—many a man in America of opulent mental ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... evidence against Danny at all, because Brown was an accomplice and his testimony was not corroborated; at any rate he was a procurer and instigator of crime, an agent provocateur, a despicable liar, hypocrite and violator of the very law he was paid to uphold; and as he had held himself out as a physician to Danny Lowry everything that passed between them was privileged as a confidential communication and must be disregarded as if it ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... cared little or nothing for any risk he might incur; and though he might, undoubtedly, have some presentiment of the probable termination of his career, he never suffered it to militate against his present enjoyment, which proved that he was no despicable philosopher. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... understand. English history was certainly an old story to Mr. Randolph; but to discuss it with Daisy was a very new thing. He found her eager, patient, intelligent, and wise with an odd sort of child-wisdom which yet was not despicable for older years. Daisy's views of the feudal system, and of the wittenagemot, and of trial by jury, and of representative legislation, were intensely amusing to Mr. Randolph; he said it was going back to a primitive ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... irreparable loss which exalts to enthusiasm the sentiment of veneration and the principle of gratitude; and almost in the same proportion as the sanguinary bigotry of her predecessor had occasioned her accession to be desired, the despicable weakness of her successor caused her decease to be ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... ignoble even in the season of her weakness, to another personage of the poem. In itself the character of Pandarus is one of the most revolting which imagination can devise; so much so that the name has become proverbial for the most despicable of human types. With Boccaccio Pandarus is Cressid's cousin and Troilus' youthful friend, and there is no intention of making him more offensive than are half the confidants of amorous heroes. But Chaucer sees his dramatic ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... gallantry devoting himself to that noble profession! The more spirit there is in it, the better for mankind and the worse for those mercenary task-masters and low tricksters who delight in putting that illustrious art at a disadvantage in the world. By all that is base and despicable," cried Mr. Boythorn, "the treatment of surgeons aboard ship is such that I would submit the legs—both legs—of every member of the Admiralty Board to a compound fracture and render it a transportable offence in any qualified practitioner ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... after nineteen centuries of fortification! Oh, the despicable degradation of a race conceived in an Eternal Mind, created by an Infinite Hand, redeemed by the voluntary sacrifice of a God, and sanctified by the Spirit that ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... and even women—all, in short, whom the last necessity urges to take up arms; and it added a shade of bitter shame to the defection which clouded Thornton's manly countenance, when he found that the numbers and position of a foe, otherwise so despicable, had enabled them to conquer his brave veterans. But the thirty or forty Highlanders who now joined the others, were all men in the prime of youth or manhood, active clean-made fellows, whose short ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... up suddenly, with an odd, fierce smile, and she said bitterly enough—'and yet, if I were a man, and capable of loving, I could love no other way; because I suppose love to be a madness, and the sublimest and the most despicable of states. And I admire Moore for that flash of the fallen angelic—it is the sentiment of a hero and a madman—too base and too noble for ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... only anticipated in some cases, as in 'facundity', 'implete', 'attemptat' ('attentat'), the decision of a later day; other words which he condemned no less, as 'audacious', 'compatible', 'egregious', have maintained their ground. These too have done the same; 'despicable', 'destruction', 'homicide', 'obsequious', 'ponderous', 'portentous', 'prodigious', all of them by another writer a little earlier condemned as "inkhorn terms, smelling ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... to desire horse-exercise was a visit from Captain Lydgate, the baronet's third son, who, I am sorry to say, was detested by our Tertius of that name as a vapid fop "parting his hair from brow to nape in a despicable fashion" (not followed by Tertius himself), and showing an ignorant security that he knew the proper thing to say on every topic. Lydgate inwardly cursed his own folly that he had drawn down this visit by consenting to go to his ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of tolerance. Yes, the worst of them all, the immortal Becky (who was so plainly liked by her maker) awakens sympathy in the reader when routed in her fortunes, black-leg though she be. She cared for her husband, after her fashion, and she plays the game of Bad Luck in a way far from despicable. Nor is that easy-going, commonplace scoundrel, Rawdon, with his dog-like devotion to the same Becky, denied his touch of higher humanity. Behind all these is a large tolerance, an intellectual breadth, a spiritual comprehension ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... think of him was this: That he had become that which he had affected to consider the most despicable thing on earth—a hypocrite. Remember, she had no personal knowledge of the power of the Spirit of God over a human soul. She had no conception of how so mighty a change could be wrought in the space of a few hours, so her only solution of the mystery was that to serve ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... myself—and I couldn't. If the man Somers hadn't returned, I think I should have waited until they sent to arrest me. But he did come back and the instinct of self-preservation was too strong. I know my story about the men's desertion and my forcing him to back me up was vile and despicable. But I clung to life and it was my only chance. Afterwards, with the horror of the thing hanging over me, I didn't care so much about life. In the little fighting that was left for me I deliberately tried to throw it away. I ask you ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... from attending suffrage meetings; once he had me spirited away and imprisoned for a week when it fell to my lot to burn a railroad station for the good of the cause. He strove to ruin me with my leaders in this despicable manner. ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... I answered you so sharply. But all this worry and fuss over me is getting on my nerves. You've written down Cunningham as a despicable rogue, when he is only an interesting one. If only you would give banter for banter, you might take some of the wind out of his sails. But instead you go about as if the next hour was to be ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... consummation of those projects he had so long cherished: but, although bold and impatient, he was compelled to proceed with caution to the extinction of a race of kings to whom obedience had become a habit, and who were at that moment represented by a prince who, though weak and despicable, was endeared to many of his subjects by his misfortunes. His first step was to issue a proclamation, in which he inveighed with bitterness against a treaty which bounded the great empire of Persia by the river Araxes, and left many of the inhabitants ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... say; he dared not again mention the matter to the Emperor, and yet it was absolutely necessary to have the house. Napoleon learned what was passing, and was angry, but allowed the offer of the forty thousand. Again the dealer retracted, and demanded fifty thousand. "He is a despicable creature," said the Emperor. "I will have none of his paltry hut: it shall remain where it is, as a testimony of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... girl's fortune was ready to fall into his hands? Fool, to risk his health, his character, his beauty, the little money which at this moment of time might be so indispensable to his great project, for the chance of winning something which in comparison with Marie Melmotte's money must be despicable! But at last he came! She waited patiently till he had thrown aside his hat and coat, and then she appeared at the dining-room door. She had studied her part for the occasion. She would not say a harsh word, and now she ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... other element, a most undesirable one—the Boer who is continually stirring up ill-feeling. You will find him everywhere, and he is always at it. If his own brother happened to be an educated man, he could not get on with him; his nature is despicable. President Kruger thinks that race hatred will gradually disappear, for 'wherever love dwells, prosperity must follow.' Can anyone imagine love existing in the nature of the man I have cited? President Kruger himself ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... light in the room in which it is delivered. I remember once I went down to assist a friend of mine in an electioneering campaign in a small borough. His opponent was a most worthy and estimable squire, who resided in the neighbourhood. It was, of course, my business to prove that he was a despicable knave and a drivelling idiot. This I was engaged in doing at a public meeting in the town-hall. The Philippics of Demosthenes were milk and water in comparison with my denunciations—when just at the critical moment—as I was carrying conviction into the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... we prized so charily, for which we prayed the winds to be gentle, which we lapped from the cold in our arms, from whose footstep we would have removed a stone, should be suddenly thrust out of sight—an abomination that the earth must not look upon—a despicable loathsomeness, to be concealed and to be forgotten! And this same composition of bone and muscle that was yesterday so strong—which men respected, and women loved, and children clung to—to-day so lamentably ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the smoke of his cigar before him with a certain skill, so that his progress was a form of fumigation. The fear of infection is the only fear to which men will own, and it is hard to understand why this form of cowardice should be less despicable than others. Von Holzen was a German, and that nation combines courage with so deep a caution that mistaken persons sometimes think the former adjunct lacking. The mark of a wound across his cheek told that in his student days this man had, after due deliberation, ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... horses with cloths or mats, and their own clothing is confined to a single vesture somewhat like a petticoat. Their weapons are long lances or darts made of reeds, ten or twelve cubits long, pointed with iron and fringed with silk. The men are despicable looking people, of small stature, of a colour between black and yellow, which we call olive, having voices like women, and long black hair flowing on their shoulders. They are more numerous than can well be believed, and are continually at war among themselves. They inhabit ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... its origin. About twelve years before it broke out, Major Waldron treacherously seized a band of Indians at Dover in New Hampshire and sent them to Boston, where several of them were hanged for alleged complicity in Philip's war[5] and others sold into slavery. This despicable act the Indians never forgot ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... rather die in the gutter than live on money that was obtained by a vulgar fraud. She acted a lie—a damned despicable lie. That sort of thing is done every day, but the man usually knows what he is doing, and hasn't any scruples, and the girl sometimes learns to love him.... So we're living on the benevolence and innocence of a man ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... withhold anything. To enter military service of one's own free will, I consider either a stupid, insensate action, suitable for a savage if the man does not understand the evil of his action, or despicable if he does it ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... spider and drinks its heart's blood. That was how this woman fastened upon me and sucks the blood of my heart. She hates and despises me for being so stupid; that is, for marrying a woman like her. My chivalry seems to her despicable. 'A wise man cast me off,' she says, 'and a fool picked me up.' To her thinking no one but a pitiful idiot could have behaved as I did. And that is insufferably bitter to me, brother. Altogether, I may say in parenthesis, fate has been hard upon me, ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... southward by the Chesapeake of the capital of "the rebels." This was in accordance with the plan, as we now know, of General Charles Lee, second in command to Washington, while he was a prisoner in New York. He thus proved himself a traitor more despicable even than Arnold. His infamy did not become known until of late years. Moving northward from the head of the Chesapeake Bay, the British encountered Washington at Brandywine and, defeating him, secured an entrance to Philadelphia when it pleased General Howe to enter, which ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... them and looked upon them as dirt. They WERE despicable. They WERE dirt. They admitted ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... slander is, imputing to our neighbor's practice, judgment, or profession, evil consequences (apt to render him odious, or despicable) which have no dependence on them, or connection with them. There do in every age occur disorders and mishaps, springing from various complications of causes, working some of them in a more open and discernible, others in a more secret and subtle way (especially from Divine ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Satires and Fescenine verses so long the admiration of the Romans, into regular form and dialogue, and though the character of a player, so long valued and applauded in Greece, was reckoned vile and despicable among the Romans, Andronicus himself acted a part in his dramatic compositions. At the time of Cicero the works of this poet were obsolete; yet some passages of them are preserved ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... since I know how good you were to Grace, but I can't help you in this matter. I hated Kara living, I hate him dead," he cried, and there was a passion in his voice which was unmistakable; "he was the vilest thing that ever drew the breath of life. There was no villainy too despicable, no cruelty so horrid but that he gloried in it. If ever the devil were incarnate on earth he took the shape and the form of Remington Kara. He died too merciful a death by all accounts. But if there is a God, ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... tower of the ABBAYE ST. OUEN—with hanging gardens, and white houses, to the left—covering a richly cultivated ridge of hills, which sink as it were into the Boulevards, and which is called the Faubourg Cauchoise. To the right, through the trees, you see the river SEINE (here of no despicable depth or breadth) covered with boats and vessels in motion: the voice of commerce, and the stir of industry, cheering and animating you as you approach the town. I was told that almost every vessel which I saw (some of them of two hundred, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to be immediately perceived, and I trust, from the principles I have always endeavoured to instil into your young mind, that you will ever prefer the fair and open path she points out, to the intricate labyrinths of despicable falshood. ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... quick to take note of this, and it suited his plans exactly. At first he thought he would speak to Tom Martin about his despicable purpose, and get his assistance. But he knew Dave Farrington would not listen to it, for he had already shown a preference for Fred; so he finally concluded to keep his own counsel, for should the facts at any time ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... being able to hear it physically (he not being allowed to hit us too hard) to outface the dishonor we should have been taught to die rather than endure. And so idleness and worthlessness on the one hand and a pretence of coercion on the other became a despicable routine. If my schoolmasters had been really engaged in educating me instead of painfully earning their bread by keeping me from annoying my elders they would have turned me out of the school, telling me that I was thoroughly ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... afterward, in averring that the break had been planned by Winwood? The Prison Board of Directors believed, to a man, that the forty lied in an effort to save themselves. The Board of Pardons likewise believed, for, ere three months were up, Cecil Winwood, forger and poet, most despicable of men, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... but the worst, the cruellest, the lowest of all is yourself! I had hoped to have found rest and refuge here for a little time, but you have driven me out. Oh, I did not believe that anything so despicable, so unmanly as you could exist. I do not know why you have done this, perhaps it ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... necessary to fall upon some expedient, without delay, which might serve our purpose: accordingly the gunner, carpenter, and some more, turning the cutter keel upwards, and fixing it upon props, made no despicable habitation. Having thus established some sort of settlement, we had the more leisure to look about us, and to make our researches with greater accuracy than we had before, after such supplies as the most desolate coasts ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... were noticeably curved. For a moment the thought in her mind was simply, "Could I live with those nails?" She hated herself for that thought; she despised herself for it; she considered herself almost inhuman and certainly despicable, and she recalled swiftly what Seymour was, the essential beauty and fineness of his character, his truth, his touching faithfulness. And almost simultaneously she thought, "Why do old men get those terribly bushy ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... continuance of the war, he so broke the very heart of the Spanish monarchy, so absolutely and irrecoverably impoverished them, that they have ever since languished of the disease, till they are fallen from the most powerful, to be the most despicable nation in the world. ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... away from your gun," he said quietly. "I'm covering you with mine, and I'm quicker than you. Listen! You see, I know about that affair. I was hoping that you'd be able to tell me you'd no hand in it. But now I know by your behaviour that you're guilty, that you were the ringleader of the despicable gang. I'm not accusin' you. I repeat that I'm not in the vigilance service; I'm not a policeman. I may tell you, however, that I knew your evil reputation before I engaged you to take charge of my ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... me at all," said he, as she threw her arms about his neck and laid her head on his shoulder. "Don't you know that I have roamed the high sea, smelled powder, and helped capture a Yankee vessel? It's the most despicable business in the world," he added, as he led his mother into the house out of earshot of all the servants. And then he told her how the capture had been effected, and explained why Beardsley would not immediately put to sea to try his luck again. He said, with a long-drawn sigh, ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... cordiality of Sir Lucius, and the unobtrusive devotion of Lady Afy, melted his soul. These agreeable circumstances graciously whispered to him each hour that he could scarcely be the desolate and despicable personage which lately, in a moment of madness, he had fancied himself. He began to indulge the satisfactory idea, that a certain person, however unparalleled in form and mind, had perhaps acted with ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... But despicable as his conduct had been, he underwent no hasty condemnation. The defection was discussed in all its bearings, but it seemed sadly clear at last that this uncle must possess some innate badness of character and fondness for low ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... religious Thought. Decency of Behaviour, all outward Show of Virtue, and Abhorrence of Vice, are carefully avoided by this Set of Shame-faced People, as what would disparage their Gayety of Temper, and infallibly bring them to Dishonour. This is such a Poorness of Spirit, such a despicable Cowardice, such a degenerate abject State of Mind, as one would think Human Nature incapable of, did we not meet with frequent Instances of it in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... that history was a thoroughly despicable exercise of rhetoric. According to him, the only true history was the natural history of man. Michelet was in the right path when he came in contact with the fistula of Louis XIV., but he fell back into the old rut almost ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... the Huguenots were despicable, that Charles I. was a saint, that the Old Pretender was James III., that the Revolution of 1688 was a crime, and that the Non-jurors were the true confessors of the English Church, it did not seem to square with his reading, or his reflections. Perhaps, after all, the infallible ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... the whole morning in keeping William's right wing in check, covered the flight of the beaten army. They were indeed in some danger of being broken and swept away by the torrent of runaways, all pressing to get first to the pass of Duleek, and were forced to fire repeatedly on these despicable allies, [700] The retreat was, however, effected with less loss than might have been expected. For even the admirers of William owned that he did not show in the pursuit the energy which even his detractors ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... more than her beauty, for he did not like to feel himself unpossessed of the entree to such a house. Also he was a writer of society verses—not so good as they might have been, but in their way not altogether despicable—and had already begun to turn it over in his mind whether something might not be made of—what ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... students, "He is a devil," and repudiated the idea of casting out devils through Beelzebub. Erring human mind is by no means a de- [10] sirable or efficacious healer. Such suppositional healing I deprecate. It is in no way allied to divine power. All human control is animal magnetism, more despicable than all other ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... the resolution and self-control to resist the little impulses by which they creep on surely toward a fatal end. Does anybody set out meaning to ruin himself, or to drink himself to death, or to waste his life so that he becomes a despicable old man, a superannuated nuisance, like a fly in winter. Yet there are plenty, of whose lot this is the pitiable story. Well now, supposing us all to have the best intentions, we working men, as a body, run some ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... a crafty political move. The enormity of the despicable acts was advertised as never before, while the endorsement of them by federalist legislators went upon record. Petitions for repeal came in so numerous and numerously signed that the VIth Congress could not but raise a committee to consider ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... to be ratified; when I was upholding the resolution of the allies and working for a Peace on just and equitable terms; when you in your desire for such a Peace would not even listen to the voice of the despicable Philocrates; then, I say, Aeschines rose and spoke in support of him, using language for which he deserves, God knows, to die many deaths, {16} saying that you must not remember your forefathers, nor tolerate speakers who recalled your trophies and your victories by sea; ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... cloths, had followed up the Signoria, and been duly consecrated to San Giovanni, and every one was moving from the window—Nello, whose Florentine curiosity was of that lively canine sort which thinks no trifle too despicable for investigation, put his hand on ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... by mosquitoes during the season when picnics seem most natural, that those of my visitors who have been taken there for a treat have invariably lost their tempers, and made the quiet shores ring with their wailing and lamentations. These despicable but irritating insects don't seem to have anything to do but to sit in multitudes on the sand, waiting for any prey Providence may send them; and as soon as the carriage appears they rise up in a cloud, and rush to meet us, almost dragging us out bodily, ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... of England needed a great deal of education in war saving. We had to fight the strongly held conviction that of all sins the most despicable is "meanness," and that too much ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... the doctrine by your consistent living. To profess one thing and practise another is a blot on the profession, and a despicable thing. What I may call mere Meeting piety, platform or parlour Holiness, will not stand the weather. It is too much like the painted sparrows sold as canaries—the paint comes off and the real nature of the bird is revealed. For instance, ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... as Nature's agent, crouching and ready to destroy the child's life, not in open combat, but invisibly concealed by the limitation of our senses. This is one of Nature's unspeakable crimes; one of God's despicable impositions. ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... their house I met him. He behaved shamefully ill; he repaid their hospitality with gross ingratitude; other details and facts regarding his conduct also became known to me. Altogether I believe him to be a base and despicable man, both by nature and inclination, and that he will remain such to the end ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... has always been a sentiment of mine—that to propagate a malicious Truth wantonly—is more despicable than to falsify from Revenge, but can you Maria feel thus [f]or others and be unkind to me alone—nay is hope to be denied ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... said Mr Warner, "I answered, that I heartily wished it might prove so, and that nothing would be wanting on my part to make it so; and I added, the presbyterians in Scotland, Great Sir, are looked upon as a very despicable party; but those who do so measure them by the appearance at Pentland and Bothwell, as if the whole power of the presbyterians had been drawn out there; but I can assure your Highness that such are greatly mistaken; for many firm presbyterians were not satisfied as to the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... greater part begin shouting for no particular reason because a few others have led the way, and they end by believing that the man whom they are acclaiming is almost divine; yet it is certain that they elected this man on the whole because of the two he had more points in common with them, this poor despicable and very unheroic thing was the person whom they delighted to honour because they themselves were very unheroic and somewhat despicable. We cannot see the greatness of a truly great man unless there is just a bit of greatness in ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... kept that oath. If the man had not been dead, I might have ended by breaking it—who knows? What I have to tell you is that, some two months after the Relief, when your engagement to the lady who is now your wife was first made public, I, impelled and prompted by a despicable envy of the great good-fortune that had fallen—deservedly fallen—to your lot, sought out Miss Mildare, and told her—something I had learned to your detriment, from a man called Brooker, a babbling, worthless creature, a Gueldersdorp tradesman who, on the strength of a seat ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... by no means despicable men; for one of them clubbed his musket and therewith hit Ben such a blow on the head that he fell flat on the deck. Seeing this, Bill Bowls bestrode his prostrate comrade, and defended him for a few seconds with ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... is, in one aspect, a wretched story of folly and selfishness wrecking a nation, and, in another, a solemn instance of divine retribution working its designs by men's sins. The greater part of this account deals with it in the former aspect, and shows the despicable motives of the men in whose hands was the nation's fate; but one sentence (verse 15) draws back the curtain for a moment, and shows us the true cause. There is something very striking in that one flash, which reveals the enthroned God, working through the ignoble strife which makes ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... women who had nowhere else to pass an hour. At the arrival of our Sovereigns, they were astonished at the unusual vacancy, and indignantly regarded each other. After vespers were over, one of Bonaparte's spies informed him of the cause, when, instead of punishing the despicable and hypocritical courtiers, or showing them any signs of his displeasure, he ordered Salmatoris under arrest, who would have experienced a complete disgrace had not his friend Duroc interfered and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... believed the worst of her, and had withdrawn from her altogether his support, when the slightest support from him would have been invaluable to her. Could she forgive this? Never! never! She was not a woman to wish to forgive such an offence. It was an offence which it would be despicable in her to forgive. Many had offended her, some had injured her, one or two had insulted her; but, to her thinking, no one had so offended her, had so injured her, had so grossly insulted her as he had done. In what way, then, would it become her ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... both instituted and was in charge of the investigation that now threatened New York with an upheaval that promised to shake many a social structure to its foundations. Yes, they would play their last card, a vile, despicable and hellish card—but how little they knew David Archman! They would break his life; it would, indeed, as the Tocsin had said, be murder—but they would never break David Archman's unswerving loyalty to principle and duty! They had tried that—by threats of personal violence, by the offer of ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... evident that lodging-searching was quite out of the question for the time being, it was agreed that we should all spend the night in the office, where heaps of old papers and sacking made up into not altogether despicable couches. Moreover, publication date was approaching, and at such times we were in the habit of getting later and later in the office, the necessity for Short's assistance rendering it impossible to get the work done in an ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... [261] 'The despicable wretchedness of teaching,' wrote Carlyle, in his twenty-fourth year, when he was himself a teacher, 'can be known only to those who have tried it, and to Him who made the heart and knows it all. One meets with few spectacles more afflicting ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... a new light. He still sneered, but behind the mask she got for the first time a glimpse of another man. Only dimly she divined him; but what she visioned was half devil and half hero, capable of things great as well as of deeds despicable. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... is, in a sense, true, but it is the fault of nothing in heaven or earth except the attitude and the phrases quoted at the beginning of this article. We have no doubt in the world that, if the other forms of art had been equally despised, they would have been equally despicable. If people had spoken of 'sonnets' with the same accent with which they speak of 'music-hall songs,' a sonnet would have been a thing so fearful and wonderful that we almost regret we cannot have a specimen; a rowdy sonnet is a thing to dream about. If people ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... venture on the encounter. The war had not been formally committed to him; and if he did not prosper in it, he dreaded the accusations of his enemies at Rome. He had seen, moreover, with his own eyes; that the Parthians were an enemy far from despicable, and his knowledge of campaigning told him that success against them was not certain. He feared to risk the loss of all the glory which he had obtained by grasping greedily at more, and preferred enjoying the fruits of the good luck which had hitherto attended him to tempting fortune ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... acted in open hostility to the existing government. With his usual promptitude and decision, he attacked Panos Kolokotroni, the son of the old Klepht, and Staikos, a Moreote captain of some reputation, in the plain of Tripolitza, where they were posted for the despicable purpose of intercepting the trains of mules laden with merchandise for the supply of the shops of Tripolitza, then the great market of all the central ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... for this attack? There were other men and women in this court, some very near me if I remember rightly. In what are their characters superior, or their claims to respect greater, that you should thus single me out as the fool or knave who could not only commit so wild and despicable an act, but go so far in folly—let alone ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated "masher." The refined and elegant appearance of his victim and the contiguity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would insure his winter quarters on the ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... little hope of victory until this man could be placed hors de combat. He therefore pressed in toward him, plying his cutlass vigorously with one hand, and laying manfully about him with the butt of his empty pistol with the other, and calling upon the fellow by every despicable epithet he could think of to turn and meet him. He had very nearly reached him—there were only some half-a-dozen people between the two—when another voice, that of Bowen, was heard, and the next ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... not to be despicable; the measures she recommended relieved the little one, and by the time Percy and the apothecary made their appearance, it was asleep on Theodora's lap, and Mr. Legh pronounced that it was in a fair way to do well. She wished she could have watched it all night, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... before him, Laurence Vanderlyn, for the first time in his life, learned what so many men and women learn very early in their lives,—what it is to be afraid of a person, who, however despicable, is, or ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... poor boy, born on the edge of the wilderness,—"at a despicable plantation on the river of Kennebec, and almost the farthest village of the eastern settlement of New England,"—yet who ended his life as governor and nobleman, is what we have to tell. It is one of the most romantic stories in history. He was born in 1651, being a scion of the early days of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... God—even to sinners, Mr. Wilson. We don't always deserve all the goodness we get, you know," Cleek went on. "The notes are found you see; the notes, you murderer, you despicable thief, the notes which were entrusted to your care by the innocent people who pinned ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... come of the warm exhilaration of this first breath of sweet, outdoor air, or perhaps it needed neither of these things, for the girl was very beautiful—enchantment breathed from her, and, though he knew what she was, in what despicable plot she was engaged, he was too much Ste. Marie to be quite indifferent to her. Though he looked upon her sorrowfully and with pain and vicarious shame, he could not have denied the spell she wielded. After all, he was ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... I am going to fulfill your wishes in perhaps a little different way from what you desire. To lie, to act a degrading comedy, to bribe women of the streets for evidence—the ugliness of it all disgusts me. I am a bad man, but this despicable thing I am utterly unable to do. My solution is after all the simplest. You must marry to be happy. I am the obstacle, consequently that obstacle ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... afloat again, however, and Frobisher breathed a sigh of thanksgiving. He had set his heart on commanding her, and he would have been bitterly disappointed if so fine a ship had been lost to him and the Navy through the despicable cupidity of a mandarin and the incompetence ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... love of overcoming obstacles is deeply rooted in the heart of every true man. What is the meaning of our English love of field sports? What the explanation of the mania for Alpine climbing? It is no despicable craving for distinction, it is the innate love ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Why should not things go in these matters as they do in life, where it is not necessarily the best men that get on best? Well, it is due to the pitiless severity of the critics that calculations of this kind would be as disastrous as they are despicable. ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... 'Anyhow, whatever the issue, the blood of the country is up. We must fight the thing through. It is splendid the way the upper classes are stepping into the breach on the railways. I honour them. I only hope they won't all be murdered by these despicable brutes.' ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... obtrude their ugly heads here and there from under Branwell's finest phrases. And since there is no single vulgar, trite, or Micawber-like effusion throughout 'Wuthering Heights;' and since Heathcliff's passion is never once treated in the despicable would-be worldly fashion in which Branwell describes his own sensations, and since at the time that 'Wuthering Heights' was written he was manifestly, and by his own confession, too physically prostrate for any literary effort, we may conclude that Branwell ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... minute acts, alterations of alterations in the cash entries, and constant ingenuity in a hundred ways. But it ought to have been done, and might have been done. It might have been done. He admitted that candidly, fully, with despicable tremblings.... ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... he afford his enemies so much occasion to brand him with disloyalty?" Said The Free Press, of Hamilton, "It is not the domination of the mother country that Reformers complain of; it is only the tyrannical conduct of a small and despicable faction in the colony. The domination of the mother country is as necessary to our present happiness and future greatness as the mother's breast is to the infant." "There can be but one opinion," said The British American Journal, of St. Catharines, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... statement of a theory of literary art. Scott did not pose as the leader of a school, or compose prefaces and lectures like Hugo and Schlegel.[26] As a contributor to the reviews on his favourite topics, he was no despicable critic; shrewd, good-natured, full of special knowledge, anecdote, and illustration. But his criticism was never polemic, and he had no quarrel with the classics. He cherished an unfeigned admiration for Dryden, whose life he wrote and whose works he edited. Doubtless he would ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... camp to-day. Result of visit, about a dozen have joined forces of the English. Wonder if a worm wouldn't have more self-respect! Such characters make themselves despicable and contemptible in eyes of the English themselves. To us it brings deep-down humiliation. Can a man ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... he raised his hands against himself in the wildest despair, and tore his hair. But this newly-acquired treasure gave me the means and the disposition to mingle again among my fellow-men. No pretext was wanting for palliating to my own mind this despicable robbery; or, rather, it wanted no such pretext. With a view of ridding myself of any internal reproaches, I hurried away, not even looking back on the unfortunate victim, whose agonized tones I heard long repeated after me. So, at least, at that time I ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... their prefaces how little time their works have cost them, and what other business of more importance interfered; but the reader will be as apt to ask the question, why they allowed not a longer time to make their works more perfect? and why they had so despicable an opinion of their judges, as to thrust their indigested stuff upon them, as if they ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... all; I am in your eyes an abject and most despicable creature; and I am sometimes the same in my own eyes, though not often: I more frequently congratulate myself on my vices than blame myself for them; you are more constant in ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... understood, was not needed to win his regard. Browning's eye was an instrument made for exact and minute records of natural phenomena. "I have heard him say," Mr Sharp writes, "that at that time"—speaking of his earlier years—"his faculty of observation would not have appeared despicable to a Seminole or an Iroquois." Such activity of the visual nerve differs widely from the wise passiveness or brooding power of the Wordsworthian mode of contemplation. Browning's life was never that of a recluse who finds in ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... obstinately. Not since the days when Dick had offered his blind loyalty had any one tried to understand her as Austin Selwyn had done. She was grateful for that. She might even have valued his friendship if he had not been so despicable that awful night. To insult her with his talk of pacifism, and then, heedless of her intensity, to propose to her! She could not forgive him for that. She was glad her ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... capaciousness and the moral aim jars upon the sense of fitness, and the name of Bacon, "wisest, meanest," has passed into a proverb. Milton's fall is far worse. It is not here a union of grasp of mind with an ignoble ambition, but the plunge of the moral nature itself from the highest heights to that despicable region of vulgar scurrility and libel, which is below the level of average gentility and education. The name of Milton is a synonym for sublimity. He has endowed our language with the loftiest and noblest ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... to be his son. Imogine re- appears at the convent, and dies of her own accord. Bertram stabs himself, and dies by her side, and that the play may conclude as it began, to wit, in a superfetation of blasphemy upon nonsense, because he had snatched a sword from a despicable coward, who retreats in terror when it is pointed towards him in sport; this felo de se, and thief-captain—this loathsome and leprous confluence of robbery, adultery, murder, and cowardly assassination,—this ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sole end the subversion of the existing state of things. He would probably succeed in getting back the money he had spent, and more also, by illicit means. If he failed, the money would be lost, and he would go from bad to worse, intriguing and mixing himself up with the despicable radical press, in the hope of getting a ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... to which laudable determination the handsome mansion in Albert Gate opened wide its portals, and all London—a far from despicable company in numbers, since Parliament was still sitting and the session promised to be rather indefinitely prolonged—crowded its fine stairways and suites of lofty rooms, resplendent in silks and satins, jewels and laces, in orders and titles, and manifold ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... was calculating and despicable; she was not the woman to marry where she did not love! But then she really did love Richie in a way. And Richie loved her—no question of that! Loved her more than Warren did for all his letters and gifts, she ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... That is, a great many retailers are. They do not seem to care anything about the quality, if they can only give the largest prize. Quality is not considered at all. They buy the thing for the great prize offered. When the retail merchants of this country shut down on this despicable way of doing business and sell goods on their merits, without a prize package attached, just so soon will a blow have been struck at the root of the whole matter.' These pretty fairly represent the growing sentiment among large and small traders of brains. They see that the moment an article ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... convenience and enjoyment which modern science could alone supply. All this is not denied. Your order stands before Europe the most gorgeous of existing spectacles; though you have of late years dexterously thrown some of the odium of your polity upon that middle class which you despise, and who are despicable only because they imitate you, your tenure of power is not in reality impaired. You govern us still with absolute authority—and you govern the most miserable people on the face of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... "seen through him"; others had "never liked him"; others had wondered how it was he kept his place so long in Lehfeldt's shop. Poor fellow! his life and actions, like those of every one else when illuminated by a light thrown back upon them, seemed so conspicuously despicable, although when illuminated in their own light they had seemed innocent enough. His mother's frantic protestations of her son's innocence—her assertions that Franz loved Lieschen more than his own soul—only served to envelop her in the silent accusation ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the money to me (whenever it shall be issued) that I have employed it in the maintenance and the education of those whom I do not myself know, nor can tell in any regular and authorised manner from whom I received them, I should make a very despicable, not to say a criminal figure. I cannot take your Lordship's pleasure from the Bishop of Leon; though he tells me he is (not your Lordship's friend and adviser) but your clerk, as you have never informed me of this his relation to you. I therefore, for my voucher ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... went up to the sofa slowly and held out her hand. "You are welcome," she said gravely to Josephine, but the contempt which she had always had for her father, though she had tried so hard of late to wear it down, surged up afresh, and she could not turn her eyes his way. What a despicable thing that must be, she thought—that thing he called his heart—to shift from one to the other so easily! To her, the keynote of whose character was single-hearted devotion, this facile, fluid love, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... of seizing Abellino. If justice required him to be delivered up, it was necessary that he should be delivered up by himself! Or do ye take Abellino for an ordinary ruffian, who passes his time in skulking from the sbirri, and who murders for the sake of despicable plunder? No, by heaven, no! Abellino was no such common villain. It's true I was a bravo; but the motives which induced me to become one ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... known him, to give the right meed of love and worship. Because the outward man lacked perfection and strength equal to his, he had taken the love and worship of that great pure heart as his due; he, so unworthy in the inner reality, so mean, so despicable, callous, and contemptuous towards the brother who had laid down his life to save him. He longed for utter annihilation, that so he might lose the agony of knowing himself so unworthy such perfect love. The frozen calm of death on ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... complaints, prescribing for them as such, and receiving the wages of imposition, instead of the honorable reward of science. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the faculty has always possessed members of a spirit to condemn and regret such despicable practices. There cannot be juster objects of satire than such empirics, nor is there a foible more deserving of ridicule than the selfish timidity of the hypochondriac, who, ungrateful for the store of good health with which nature has endowed him, assumes the habitual precautions ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... man who had made a shipwreck of his life, that in a moment of folly—a moment of funk she knew now to be the veridical description!—he had flung away the whole chances of his life. The man whom she had loved, and, in her love, idealized, had proved himself, when the test came, that most despicable of things, a coward! The pain ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... in robbing him of his labor, his self-respect, his franchise, his liberty, and life itself. Many of the officials of Southern States, including numerous judges and not a few Christian ministers, helped or sanctioned these Negro-hating editors and reporters in their despicable onslaught upon the Negro, while tens of thousands of white business men of the South fattened upon Negro convict labor and the proceeds ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Man's wisdom may not vaunt itself. God's moral system is no well-lit room in which all furnishings are visible; rather a twilight gloom, where men and women grope. We know enough. Virtue is made very evident, and vice very despicable, and God very apparent—and these be the sufficient data for the monograph of life. "All things work together for good to them that love God," is the far-away response to Job's troubled cry. God converses with Satan ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... very badly treated. Captain Swales and his officers are as nasty as they come. There is a fire on board, and the people are rescued by the MARY, Captain Dean, who is a very different kind of man than the despicable Captain Swales. At Quebec Peter joins the FOAM, Captain Hawk. There then follows a series of events, some good, and some ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... chieftain, and wielding it with remorseless dexterity, he soon slew or wounded, or compelled to flight, the objects of his resentment; nor was there any of them who abode an instant to support the boast which they had made. "The despicable churls!" said the Countess to Agelastes; "it irks me that a drop of such coward blood should stain the hands of a noble knight. They call their exercise a tournament, although in their whole exertions every blow is aimed behind the back, and not one has the courage to throw his windlestraw ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... and denied the chance of obtaining a footing for myself in society. Yes; I had not even the chance of being considered as a fellow-creature—yet all the people with whom I lived, brutalized as they were by the low cunning of trade, and the despicable shifts of poverty, were not without bowels, though they never yearned for me. I was, in fact, born a slave, and chained by infamy to slavery during the whole of existence, without having any companions ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... his duty. We were aware that the true strength of a nation is moral and not material; that dominion which rests on mere military force is destined quickly to decay, that the tyrant, however admired and prosperous, is in reality despicable, and miserable, and alone; that the true man should face death itself rather than parley with dishonour. These truths are admitted in all ages; yet it is scarcely stretching language to say that they are known to but few men. ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... absorbing and so intense that it left him no rest until, by hook or by crook, by supplication, or by trickery, or by paying down hard cash, he had obtained the close and constant proximity of—what?—of a man whom he himself described as a 'singe' and a 'scelerat,' a man of base soul and despicable character. And Frederick appears to see nothing surprising in this. He takes it quite as a matter of course that he should be, not merely willing, but delighted to run all the risks involved by Voltaire's undoubted roguery, so long as he can be ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... "single campaign" is over, and America not conquered. The whole work is yet to do, and the force much less to do it with. Their condition is both despicable and deplorable: out of cash—out of heart, and out of hope. A country furnished with arms and ammunition as America now is, with three millions of inhabitants, and three thousand miles distant from the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... grieved by the despicable trick that he retired to his former home, the cave in the hillside, and there remained without food ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... forthwith began to make arrangements for proceeding on to Unyoro, governed by a chief named Kamrasi, of despicable character and considered merciless and cruel, even among African potentates, scattering death and torture around at the mere whim of the moment; while he was inhospitable, covetous, and grasping, yet too cowardly to declare war against the King of the Waganda, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... The Oxford historian, who had little reverence for new lights, and never loses an opportunity of girding at those whose weights and measures were not according to the current and only authentic standard, has left no very flattering account of his person. "He was a little crooked man, and of a despicable presence. He was laughed at by the boys of this University, because, as they said, he himself looked like a little wizard." Small as might be his stature, and questionable the shape in which he appeared, he might still have taken up the boast of the author of the ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... wrought and suffered in vain, when the privileges they so dearly bought were so soon set aside. And I was sad, that one endeavouring to follow our dear Master should be so generally regarded as a despicable ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... part these women lodge in pairs in their own flats, where they pay about 35s. a week for three unfurnished rooms. The Officer told me that often some despicable man, who is called a 'bully,' lives on them, following them round the streets, and watching them. Even the smartest girls are not infrequently the victims of such a man, who knocks them about and takes money from them. Occasionally he may be a husband or a relative. She added that ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... feel contempt for the study of the lower animals, since in all nature's work there is something wonderful. And if any one thinks the study of other animals despicable, he must despise the study of ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... Wolf was carrying out his scheme to rob his accomplices in smuggling, he was planning a still more despicable act, and that was to take his hoard of money, stow all valuables on the sloop, sail to a Nova Scotia port, and when near it, to kill the Indian, sell the Sea Fox and ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... tribute which a lover lays at the feet of his lady is, in ordinary, the stamped-upon and abused summary of his personal attributes, which, in his own mind, he has taken remarkable pains to render as despicable as possible, and which, in hers, her imagination contrives not only to rehabilitate, but to imbue ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... so ashamed, Mike, but for days my shame has been drowned in anger. I followed you and trapped you and spied upon you." She looked up pleadingly. "And I'd do it all over again, even worse, Mike, I know I would, even though I am despicable ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... stronger than love, or faith, or honor. God knows I never thought myself weak; at school I was the least impetuous of the two. Everything went, and they cheated me from the start. Roulette and faro. Then I put my hand in the safe. To this day I can not tell why. I owed nothing to those despicable thieves, Craig least ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... have confined himself to grumbling and to calling for slow-arriving thunderbolts to crash the oppressors who were despoiling him had he felt certain that the plunder would be confined to them, that his property would be safe, at least, from the attacks of those insignificant, despicable but eminently dangerous plunderers who became known to the police as common criminals. This, however, was not so. After being flayed by iniquitous taxes, which he knew were destined to add to the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... make too much haste to despise our neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence, and we are in danger of doing that deliberately, which the Scots did not do but in the unsettled ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
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