"Contemptuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Russia, Peter treated it with contemptuous indifference. The office of patriarch becoming vacant, he left it unfilled for twenty-one years, and finally, on being implored by a delegation from the clergy to appoint a patriarch, he started up in a furious passion, struck his breast with his fist and the table with his ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... compounds of the Legation area—a new nickname salutes our ears. No longer are we mere yang kuei-tzu, foreign devils; we have risen to the proud estate of ta mao-tzu, or long-haired ones of the first class. Mao-tzu is a term of some contemptuous strength, since mao is the hair of animals, and our barbarian heads are not even shaved. The ta—great or first class—is also significant, because behind our own detested class press two others deserving of almost equal contempt at the hands of all ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... be deliberate of action. And, above all, whatever the circumstances, there must be no exhibition of vulgar curiosity, no eagerness, no enthusiasm, no astonishment while one of ocean's countless mysteries is unfolding itself before his eyes; he must exhibit an air of semi-contemptuous indifference, as who should say, "I am a seasoned hand—a shell-back, and none of your beach-combers. I have long been familiar with all the strange sights and sounds and vicissitudes to be met with upon the ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... near him. Dumiger would not open the letters in his presence. At last the officer, after some minutes' delay, and having sung sundry snatches of martial airs, gave Dumiger a contemptuous, indignant glance, and stalked out of the cell, taking care to rattle the bolts and bars as a punishment to Dumiger for not gratifying his curiosity. Poor devil, it was his only amusement to ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... else—just human, and happy in her prosperities and not averse from showing them off a little; and she was humanly grateful to have the warm shoulder turned to her and he smiled upon by her friends and the village again; for of all the hard things to bear, to be cut by your neighbors and left in contemptuous solitude ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and made a contemptuous gesture toward the canvas with his outstretched brush. "A mere daub," said he. "One step higher than painting a barn or a board ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... I entered a few moments later; but his Excellency had forbidden his valet de chambre to introduce me, saying that he had nothing to say to me, nor to hear from me, all of which was repeated to me in a very harsh and contemptuous manner. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... yacht, of course," she said. "What other gentlemen are there?" This with a contemptuous up-and-down sort of look at the Lutheran minister's portly form. "Sir Philip Errington was here with his friend yesterday evening and stayed a long time—and today a fine boat with four oars came to fetch the master and Froeken Thelma, and they are all gone for a sail to the Kaa Fjord or ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... canny and impassive Scot, content, like the Rohans, to be neither prince nor king, and, prouder than they, satisfied honestly to discharge the office of a flunkey without the very smallest trace of the flunkey spirit. He too has lived down envy and all uncharitableness. Contemptuous and serene amid the hootings of the mob and the squibs of the newspapers, he carries, as he has done for years, Her Majesty's shawl and capacious India-rubbers, attends her tramps through the Highlands and the Home Park, engineers her special trains and looks after her personal comfort even ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... ventured to read his daughter a severe lecture on her conduct, she retaliated by snapping her fingers at him and telling him in so many words to mind his own business. And to the tongue of scandal that found voice everywhere, she turned a contemptuous ear. She even locked and barred her palace gates to keep prying ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... simply contemptuous, given in a pause in which he turned his eyes from Mrs. Harker to me, instantly turning them back ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... apathy, had made a stride from the door, as if to interfere. The rude Baron then quitted his hold, disguising the confusion which he really felt at having indulged his passion to such extent, under a sullen and contemptuous smile. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... in a dream, looking upon himself with a stranger's admiration, he saw the little boat led dexterously beside the vessel in spite of the tumbling waves, and Black Duncan, out upon her bowsprit, board her, lift his master's daughter in, and row laboriously ashore. Then Gilian turned and made a poor, contemptuous retreat. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... look she had read on Philip's face, and was angry with herself, yet she could not help thinking of it and its meaning. Suddenly she remembered the same expression on her husband's face, and she shuddered. She had thought it beautiful then, why not now? And why should she be so contemptuous when probably the same look had been in her own eyes when she had raged at Lawrence because he had not taken her in his arms. Philip was sitting out there beyond the curtain dreaming ecstatically of the days when they would be alone in the cabin, ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... who was vain and set great value on his opinions, was deeply offended at the way Astrardente spoke of him and his friends. In his eyes he was risking much for what he considered a good object, and he resented any contemptuous mention of Liberal principles, whenever he dared. No one cared much for Astrardente, and certainly no one feared him; nevertheless in those times men hesitated to defend anything which came under the general head of Liberalism, when they were likely to ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... never for long. Some gadfly stings him: he seizes his tomahawk and is off on the trail. It must sorrowfully be admitted that a long life of opposition and indigestion, of fierce warfare with cooks and Philistines, spoilt his temper, never of the best, and made him too often contemptuous, savage, unjust. His language then becomes unreasonable, unbearable, bad. Literature takes care of herself. You disobey her rules: well and good, she shuts her door in your face; you plead your genius: she replies, 'Your temper,' ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... grounds lay well to the northeast, some below and some above the boundary line in the country of the Saskatchewan. Thither the Shawanoe would go, though knowing absolutely nothing of the region or the people. In his contemptuous scorn of Amokeat, Deerfoot did not so much as look behind him until the afternoon was nearly gone and night was closing in. Then, when he turned his gaze to the rear, he saw nothing of men ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... buttercups, which, from association, I prefer to the tuberoses and pomegranate blossom, which now adorn the gardens. The Senor ——- gave us an excellent dinner a l'Espagnole; after which I made an attempt to fire at some birds which shook their tails, and flew away in the most contemptuous manner.... ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... one," he cried, with a contemptuous laugh. "Why, Mayne, my lad, that last will often be the extent ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... placing of an invisible finger upon our lips when we would speak, the heart-throb of warning where we would love, that we grow contemptuous of the prizes of life, does not mean that the spirit has ceased from its labors, that the high-built beauty of the spheres is to topple mistily into chaos, as a mighty temple in the desert sinks into the sand, watched only by a few barbarians too feeble ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... comfort depends on the character of the newsboy. He has it in his power indefinitely to better and brighten the emigrant's lot. The newsboy with whom we started from the Transfer was a dark, bullying, contemptuous, insolent scoundrel, who treated us like dogs. Indeed, in his case, matters came nearly to a fight. It happened thus: he was going his rounds through the cars with some commodities for sale, and coming ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... irregular education, strange acquaintances and habits, the constant presence of her mother, the poverty and disorder in their house, everything, from the very liberty the young girl enjoyed, with the consciousness of her superiority to the people around her, had developed in her a sort of half-contemptuous carelessness and lack of fastidiousness. At any time anything might happen; Vonifaty might announce that there was no sugar, or some revolting scandal would come to her ears, or her guests would fall to quarrelling among ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... the cook flirting with policeman X, or Mary the nursemaid as she listens to the fascinating guardsman. He used rather to laugh at guardsmen, "plungers," and other military men; and was until latter days very contemptuous in his behavior towards Frenchmen. He has a natural antipathy to pomp, and swagger, and fierce demeanor. But now that the guardsmen are gone to war, and the dandies of "The Rag"—dandies no more—are battling like heroes at Balaklava and Inkermann* ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... answer, and Calista said, "Oh—!" with the peculiar German inflection of contemptuous patience. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... stream, admiring everything which it is "correct taste" to admire, despising everything which has not yet received that Hall-mark, sneering at the thoughts of a great thinker not yet accepted as such, and slavishly repeating the small phrases of a thinker who has gained renown, flippant and contemptuous towards opinions which he has not taken the trouble to understand, and never venturing to oppose even the errors of men in authority, such an author may indeed by dint of a certain dexterity in assorting the mere ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... earshot a perspiring young pressman was informing his friends that to come there comfortably you should commit the murder yourself, then they gave you the Royal Box; but his teeth could be heard chattering through the feeble felicity. The white-headed listener curled a contemptuous nostril. They could joke, and yet they could feel! He himself betrayed neither weakness, but sat waiting patiently and idly listening, with the same grim jaw and the same inscrutable eye with which he had watched the prisoner ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... soon as you leave the yard together. Come, take yourselves both off; there's nothing to be made here.' Indeed, his lordship seemed to be of the same opinion, for after a further glance at the horse, a contemptuous look at me, and a scowl at the jockey, he turned on his heel, muttering something which sounded like fellows, and stalked out of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... he was detected gave the soldier desperate boldness and scorn of all further caution. He stood erect and lifted his face. Though the folds of the cowl fell around it, the governor caught his contemptuous eye. ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... dancing with a solemn dignity that aroused the baron's mirth, afforded them an opportunity to look around them, and they eagerly availed themselves of it; nay, they almost all glanced at Barbara, and then, with evident intention, away from her, after Elspet Zohrer, with a contemptuous elevation of her dainty little snub nose, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... nerves. At the present writing, I am robust and splendidly healthy, looking twenty years younger than I did at the period previously described. The Christian Scientist saw my condition but appeared unconcerned and unafraid, I being absolutely hopeless, skeptical, and deeply contemptuous meanwhile. On the third day of her treatment I was desperate for sleep, she having forbidden drugs, and I deliberately took an overdose of chloral, thinking to die at once and end it. My condition justified the act. ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... eccentricities in no way mattered to Mary Ellen. The wisdom of the ages was hers. The Irish have it. So have eastern peoples. They will survive when the fussy races have worn themselves out. She gave the stranger one glance of half contemptuous pity and then looked at ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... bag; she steps as those must do who wear tight dresses and high heels to their boots. Up goes her parasol instantly to shade her delicate complexion from the glaring sun. Master Jack does not even take her hand, or kiss her; he looks her up and down with a kind of contemptuous admiration, nods, and asks how much luggage? He has, you see, been repulsed for 'gush' on previous occasions. Mademoiselle points to her luggage, which the porter, indeed, has already taken out. He worked in his boyhood on her father's farm, and attends upon ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... been conquered subjects of the Hungarians, and who should be punished rather with rods and blows than with the sword.' Thus, and much more in the same strain, spake Andreas. Michael, on the other hand, spoke of his enemy with contemptuous jocularity, as a mounted and perjured priest who had allied himself with the Turks, the enemies of Christendom, whilst he himself claimed to represent fidelity to Christianity and the Empire. Moreover, he held ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... did not endeavor to check the contemptuous note that crept into his voice, he certainly ought not to have uttered those two concluding words. Had he ransacked his ample vocabulary of the French language he could scarcely have hit upon another set of syllables offering similar difficulties to the foreigner. It was quite evident that his ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... former are generally too fast and the latter too slow. Besides which, your efforts to get a glimpse of the public house clock from the outside are attended with great difficulties. If you gently push the swing-door ajar and peer in you draw upon yourself the contemptuous looks of the barmaid, who at once puts you down in the same category with area sneaks and cadgers. You also create a certain amount of agitation among the married portion of the customers. You don't see the clock because it is behind the door; and in trying ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... person, Master Eglantine," replied the Captain, with a smile of contemptuous superiority; "you little know the real man of fashion, my good fellow. Simplicity, sir—simplicity's the characteristic of the real gentleman, and so I'll tell you what we ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had decorated both nostrils and replaced the princess in his waistcoat pocket,—always on his left side. A gentleman of the "good" century (in distinction from the "grand" century) could alone have invented that compromise between contemptuous silence and a sarcasm which might not have been understood. He accepted poor players and knew how to make the best of them. His delightful equability of temper ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... probably not laughing at Mona's annoyance, it is very likely that she was amused at something she and Philippa were talking about, but Mona thought otherwise, and only glared back at her with angry, contemptuous eyes. She saw Millie's face change, and saw her whisper in Philippa's ear, then she heard them both laugh, and her heart was fuller than ever of hatred, and mortification. Mortification with herself partly, for allowing Millie to ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... saw that he must shift for himself. The wheel helped him to rise to his feet; he found he could stand. In a quick turn of feeling, he called, "Courage!" Dieppe looked over at him with a rather contemptuous smile. ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... The other was of simple marguerites. She picked up the violets. There was a card without a name; but the phrase scribbled across the face of it was sufficient. She flung the violets far down into the grape-vines below. The action was without anger, excited rather by a contemptuous indifference. As for the simple marguerites, she took them up gingerly. The arc these described through the air was even greater than that performed by ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... disappointments, which Montoni had lately sustained. Meanwhile, the latter, whose pride at least enabled him to despise such vanity as this, and whose discernment at once detected under this assumed pity, the frivolous malignity of Quesnel's mind, listened to him in contemptuous silence, till he named his niece, and then they left the portico, and walked away into ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... in his eyes changed to relief and contemptuous approval. There was a murmur of derision from my fellow members. Then I remembered that a negative was, at that stage of the bill, a vote for it,—I had done just the reverse of what I intended. The roll-call went on, and I sat debating ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... the financial condition of the contending sections is of itself enough to settle the question of ultimate success. The Federal Government stands this day stronger than ever in the plenitude of her boundless resources, and proudly contemptuous of all the false prophecies of failure and bankruptcy. She is fully prepared for new campaigns, and cannot be dismayed by any possible disaster. She has men and money in abundance sufficient for any emergency. She can ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... tulip-trees, then through the little low kitchen window, let it be seen that Mr. Pawket had lapsed into slumber. His wife looked at him with an expressionless face. Wringing her hands out of the dish-water, she carried the pan to the door; with contemptuous words of warning to some chickens near by, she flung the contents on the grass. Going further into the door-yard she dragged up some bleached clothing and stuffed it into a clothes-basket. Choking the range full of coal, wrenching into place a refractory ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... though. Like hawks, leaping for prey, the fleet of the green men sprang through the air. Norman, clutching the force-gun between his knees, had time only to see that the Rala craft were a few hundred in number and that, contemptuous of the greater odds that favored these humans they had so long oppressed, they were flying straight to meet them. Then the two fleets met—and were spinning side by side above ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... saved him. Philip was tired of knocking him down, and jerking him to his feet, and knocking him down again. He let him lie this time, turned him over with a contemptuous foot, and put on ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... attendant. He invoked, however, the name of Christ, and lay down again in bed. There were other more curious and more doubtful recipes for driving away Satan and his emissaries. Luther is never tired of urging that contemptuous treatment and rude chaff are among ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... women at length delivered their reports in a quiet and orderly manner; and as they did not presume to be as contemptuous and offhandish as they had been before, T'an Ch'un ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... written for the German by a gentleman who had had some experience in Forty Rod Gulch, Nevada. The action elicited a contemptuous laugh from one or two of the new hands, but the oldsters began shifting sundry articles which depended from their belts into positions from which they might be handled at the shortest notice; and the black cat, more wise than any ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... late for that," said Licorice, with a short, contemptuous laugh. "Thou shouldst have said that a year ago, and have kept the ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... That hotel's run decent, an' it's goin' to stay decent or Hank can get someone else fer help. They's some several of the boys has tried it sence I be'n there but they never tried it but onct. An' that goes!" The girl turned away with a contemptuous sniff. ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... something of the contemptuous to show in the random glances with which he swept the dancers? He could not look at them steadily, not when they were close, as they often were. Also, he loathed the cigarette he was smoking. The tolerant scorn for the Gashwilers and his feeling for the cigarette brought him again into ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... you uncle," Polly was bidden; whereupon the little man began such attempts at kindliness as to draw out a contemptuous, "Huh!" from over the griddle. After that he fastened his eyes on his plate, and ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... brilliant and rapid, and yet perfectly neat and accurate; but by no means agreeable to men of riper years. I have often seen it received by Philippus with the utmost derision, and, upon some occasions, with a contemptuous indignation: but the younger part of the audience admired it, and the populace were highly pleased with it. In his youth, therefore, he met the warmest approbation of the public, and maintained his post with ease as the first Orator in the Forum. For the style he chose to speak in, though ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Solomon. You'd gone down to the steamboat landing," said the judge plaintively. By way of answer, Mahaffy shot him a contemptuous glance. "Take a chair—do, Solomon!" entreated ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... blessings, amid which human life is passed. But his poetry was for a long time only for himself and his intimate friends; his indulgence in poetical composition was partly playful, and it was not till after much hesitation on his own part and also on theirs, and with a contemptuous undervaluing of his work, which continued to the end of his life, that the anonymous little book of poems was published which has since become familiar wherever English is read, as the Christian year. His serious interests were public ones. Though living in the ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... The contemptuous, utterly indifferent manner in which he voiced his villainous purpose, would have crazed any man. Perhaps he intended that it should, although it was my belief that he merely expressed himself naturally, and with no thought of consequences. ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... far more common, especially in the speech of women and children, than our linguistic text-books would lead one to suppose. In a class by themselves are the really enormous number of words, many of them sound-imitative or contemptuous in psychological tone, that consist of duplications with either change of the vowel or change of the initial consonant—words of the type sing-song, riff-raff, wishy-washy, harum-skarum, roly-poly. ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... she was unequal to further conversation. Deeply it pained her that this girl, whom she wished so to love, should evidently turn from her, not in dislike, but in a sort of contemptuous indifference. Still she made one effort more. As she was retiring, she went up, bade her good-night, and kissed her ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... for a moment imagine that Bunyan was afraid of temporal consequences, which prevents his enlarging upon this part of his subject. His contemptuous answer to Fowler for attacking the doctrine of justification, although a great man with the state, and soon afterwards made a bishop, is a proof that he was a stranger to the fear of man. He had said enough, and therefore there was ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... one to foster, nor to interpret for her these feverish visions, so inexplicable to herself, poor child! To the good-natured, careless, jovial American, she would not have even hinted at them for worlds, and not less carefully did she shun appealing to her father for sympathy. That contemptuous "vraiment" dwelt in her memory, not as a matter of resentment, but as something to be avoided henceforth at the cost of any amount of self- repression. She would sit leaning her languid little head on his shoulder; but when he anxiously asked ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... to a feeling of sympathy with the men we so indiscriminately brand with the contemptuous epithet, "hobo." In the first place, the road itself, with its accompanying humors and adventures, forms a mutual and efficacious bond. How little we know of the "Knights of the Road," or the compelling circumstances that turned them adrift upon the world! "All ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... gale. To nature dead, he must adopt vile art, And wear a smile, with anguish in his heart. A sense of honour would destroy his schemes, And conscience ne'er must speak unless in dreams. When he hath tamely borne, for many years, Cold looks, forbidding frowns, contemptuous sneers, 170 When he at last expects, good easy man! To reap the profits of his labour'd plan, Some cringing lackey, or rapacious whore, To favours of the great the surest door, Some catamite, or pimp, in credit grown, Who tempts another's wife, or sells his own, Steps 'cross his hopes, the promised ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... taken. It is a point of honor, meeting death so, even when, as often befalls, their death is a slow and hard one. Among themselves, in their wars, it is either death or quick adoption into the victor's tribe. They have no gaols nor herds of slaves. Caonabo expected death. He stood, a strong, contemptuous figure. But the Viceroy meant to send him to Spain—trophy and show, and to be made, if it could ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... deliberately preferred and had enjoyed her triumph hardened Diane's heart against her. Nay, the open violence and abandonment of her grief seemed to the more restrained and concentrated nature of her elder a sign of shallowness and want of durability; and in a certain contemptuous envy at her professing a right to mourn, Diane never even reconsidered her own resolution to play out her father's game, consign Eustacie to her husband's murdered, and leave her to console herself with bridal splendours and a choice of ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... glanced at the letter, and put it down with a smile that was somewhat contemptuous. "I have no need to read the letter," says she—(indeed, 'twas as well she did not; for the Chelsey missive, in the poor Dowager's usual French jargon, permitted him a longer holiday than he said. "Je vous donne," quoth her ladyship, "oui jour, pour vous fatigay parfaictement de vos ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... designed, beyond doubt, as an argument in disfavour of all merely sentimental ties between men and women, and as a frank confession of his own inability to sustain any relation of the kind? How often had he maintained an opposite opinion—seeming contemptuous, indolent, invulnerable, unconscious of her beauty, amused rather than attracted by her brilliant spirit. Every instinct of the coquette, jealous of her own power and wretched from the sterile suffering of ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... change in the manners of his friend; he sometimes took the liberty of remonstrating with him upon the subject, but was only answered with a contemptuous sneer; and Master Mash, who happened once to be present, told him that he ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... unfathomable. Their natures were so dissimilar that they never clashed. There were things about Henry, his nervousness, his sudden accessions of fright, which puzzled Mr. Quinn, and might, had he been a smaller man than he was, have made him angry with the boy, contemptuous of him; but when Mr. Quinn came across some part of Henry's nature which was incomprehensible to him, he tried first, to understand and then, failing that, to be tolerant. "We all have our natures," he used to say to himself, "an' it's no ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... (from Gr. [Greek: dialektos], discourse, debate; [Greek: e dialektike], sc. [Greek: techne], the art of debate), a logical term, generally used in common parlance in a contemptuous sense for verbal or purely abstract disputation devoid of practical value. According to Aristotle, Zeno of Elea "invented" dialectic, the art of disputation by question and answer, while Plato developed it metaphysically ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... prevented from extending her territory, but actually reduced in extent and in means. From no part of Europe have come more decided condemnations of the course of Austria than from the Russian capital. The language of the St. Petersburg journals touching the Treaties of Vienna has been absolutely contemptuous; and that language is all the more oracular and significant because we know that the editors of those journals must have been inspired by the government. It has been justly regarded as expressing the views of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... continued, "How very dictatorial and disagreeable Lawless has grown of late, and what absurd nonsense he does talk when he is in the society of ladies! I wonder your sister can tolerate it." "She not only tolerates it," returned I, slightly piqued at the contemptuous tone in which he spoke of Lawless, "but is excessively amused by it; why, she said last night he ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the last three days my faith in Fred's tales had more than once been rather rudely shaken; but the contemptuous tone in which he disposed of our model, the Great Sea Captain, startled me so severely that I do not think I felt any additional shock of astonishment when strong hands lifted the tarpaulin from our heads, and—grave amid several ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... present generation seen her capital in the hands of allied invaders, because she in very fact realizes the ideals of the persons who wish the United States to disarm, and then trust that our helplessness will secure us a contemptuous immunity from ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... as though some wondrous good-fortune had befallen him, he bounded along the road to meet the coming foe, and in contemptuous tones ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... straight toward the three on the steps. They stopped forty feet away at a word of command from the officer and Gerns and Ragnarok men exchanged silent stares; the faces of the Ragnarok men bearded and expressionless, the faces of the Gerns hairless and reflecting a contemptuous curiosity. ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... imposed upon me, especially that of sewing on my buttons—how every few seconds the needle would slip through my fingers, till the thread was tangled up in a veritable spider's web, while the button hung as loose as ever, to the derision of my companions and the disgust of the drill-sergeant, whose contemptuous—"You may be a great hand at rhyming, but when it comes to sewing on buttons you're a hundred years behind the times," seemed to exile me to the depths of the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... The contemptuous tone in which he mentioned "these people" amused me infinitely, and I believed that his resolute, indomitable manner would have made him popular in any society. He was shrewd, withal, and walked beside me to his gate. When the regiments halted to rest, by the wayside, he invited the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... but these whisperings of old may serve as lessons for ages yet to come. For if we look back upon those dark days with such feelings of superiority, may not the wiser generations of the future regard us with a still more contemptuous, yet curious eye? And when they look back at our Franklins, and our Johnsons, in astonishment at such fine instances of what perseverance could do, and what energy and plodding industry could accomplish, even when surrounded with the difficulties of ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... honoured, the magnificent, the envied, the idolized lord of thousands, but would sink at once into a younger brother, dependent on the man he most hated for his very subsistence,—since his debts would greatly exceed his portion,—and an object through life of contemptuous pity or of covert suspicion; that all this change could happen at a word of Montreuil's, what wonder that he should be staggered,—should hesitate and yield? Montreuil obtained, then, whatever sums he required; ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Hardwick gave Hal a contemptuous look, and then going to a large safe in the forward part of the main office, brought out the ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield
... vile contingent on her actions pulled heavily another Fred was frankly enjoying himself, which influenced her strongly toward the Armenian side, she being young and, doubtless the idol of a hundred heart-sick Americans, contemptuous of forty-year-old bachelors. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... was—He did not know what I could mean! He had nothing to say to me. I gave him a contemptuous glance, he followed the grooms, and I went to ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the rise in his temper. It was enough that the United States was made the dumping-ground of the criminal courts of Europe, without having it forced upon him in this semi-contemptuous fashion. The carabinieri saw ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... out his powerful arm, pushing Charley backwards. Gazing at him in a humorously contemptuous manner ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... witnesses; but at the same time I had no intention to cast any reflection on the learned counsel who I am sure is known to you all as a most able—" but before his lordship could proceed any further James interposed, and in a contemptuous voice exclaimed: "My lord, I have borne your lordship's censure, spare me your ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... began to negotiate through Tissaphernes, the Greeks maintaining a bold and even contemptuous front, warranted by the king's obvious fear of risking ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... spirit with which the king of Prussia exerted himself on this occasion, gave infinite umbrage to the czarina, who, indeed, expressed her resentment, by treating the minister of Brandenburgh with contemptuous neglect, and even refused to favour him with an audience till he should be vested with the character of ambassador. Thus were sewn the seeds of misunderstanding between those two powers, which, in the sequel, grew up to the most bitter animosity, and served to inflame those ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... we can ignore. The consistent, systematic lying of the German press, or the grotesque blasphemies of the Kaiser, can be met by us with contemptuous tolerance. After all, what is is, and neither falsehood nor bombast will alter it. But this policy of murder deeply affects not only ourselves but the whole framework of civilization, so slowly and painfully built upward ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... find in any telephone directory plenty of distant cousins of humble station. As for Tom Clark himself, she did not feel that he would be disagreeable after he had learned his relationship to his employer. He might whistle and laugh and get off one of those ironical and contemptuous utterances about society ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... Nicholas Carew, and before the end of the seventeenth century the Carews pass it on to the Orbys, and the Orbys pass it on to the Waytes. The Waytes sell it to a brewer of London, one Hinde. So far, contemptuous as has been the treatment of this great national centre, it had at least remained intact. With Hinde's son even that dignity deserted it. He found it advisable to distribute the land in parcels as a speculation; ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... the bitter spring air, but she wears her short broadcloth jacket as jauntily as though it were Persian lamb! On her face and in her eyes, remorseless type-seeker, is the typical shop-girl expression. It is a look of silent but contemptuous revolt against cheated womanhood; of sad prophecy of the vengeance to come. When she laughs her loudest the look is still there. The same look can be seen in the eyes of Russian peasants; and those of us left will see it some day on Gabriel's face when he comes to blow us up. It is a look ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... gall'ries and that. Art, you know. She goes in for it, Rhoder does. I don't, now. I'm a stupid old thing, as they'll all tell you." She nodded cheerfully and inclusively at Mr. Vyvian and Rhoda and Miss Barnett. They did not notice. Vyvian, toying disgustedly with his burnt minestra, was saying in his contemptuous voice, "Of course, if you like that, you may as well like the Frari monuments at once ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... his favor. He seemed also to avoid the various advances which Mr. Nott appeared impelled to make, whenever they met in the passage, but did so without seemingly avoiding her, and marked his half contemptuous indifference to the elder Nott by an increase of respect to the young girl. She would have liked to ask him something about ships, and was sure his conversation would have been more interesting than that of old Captain Bower, to whose cabin he had succeeded, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... sternly decried every infringement of caste custom and etiquette. Nature and education had combined to deprive her of any adaptability to the new order of things; and she rejected the idea that "a lady should transact business", with the same contemptuous indignation that would have greeted a proposition to wear "machine-sewed garments", that last resort of impecunious plebeianism. However unwelcome Leo had found this assumption of the grave duties of mature womanhood, she met the responsibility unflinchingly, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... is contemptuous. "Nothing new can be said of what is an admitted folly." He then outlined the Athenian ambition; it was to subdue Carthage and Sicily, bring over hosts of warlike barbarians, surround and reduce the Peloponnese and then rule the whole Greek-speaking ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... behind the scenes. Private Burke, of D Company, a cheery soul, who possesses the entirely Hibernian faculty of being able to combine a most fanatical and seditious brand of Nationalism with a genuine and ardent enthusiasm for the British Empire, one day made a contemptuous and ribald reference to the Ulster Volunteers and their leader. M'Ostrich, who was sitting on his bedding at the other side of the hut, promptly rose to his feet, crossed the floor in three strides, and silently felled the humorist to the earth. Plainly, if M'Ostrich comes safe through the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... in contemptuous disapproval of all Frenchmen, and all French institutions. The Englishman seized his first opportunity of addressing himself to Mercy ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... every courtesy, and had him incarcerated in his old quarters at the convent of La Cruz. Here he was visited by some Liberal officers, among others by Colonel Jose Rincon Gallardo and his brother Don Pedro, the former of whom spoke to him in contemptuous terms of the treason of Colonel Lopez. "Such men are used, and ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... Counsel for the said district, for an alleged libel and contempt against the provincial Court, in which Mr. Bedard was the judge; for having illegally fined Pierre Vezina, Esquire, an advocate practicing in Court, ten shillings, for pretended contemptuous conduct; and for having grossly and unjustifiably attacked the character of Joseph de Tonnancour, a barrister. The articles of impeachment were referred to a committee which reported in favor of the judge, and the House did not, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... treated after so scurrilous a Manner? I can't for my Life, says I, imagine who they are the SPECTATOR means? No! says he,—Your humble Servant, Sir! Upon which he flung himself back in his Chair after a contemptuous Manner, and smiled upon the old lethargick Gentleman on his left Hand, who I found was his great Admirer. The Whig however had begun to conceive a Good-will towards me, and seeing my Pipe out, very generously offered me the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... declared the horse, with a contemptuous neigh. "Still, I don't care to drag any passengers. You'll all ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... that time was not only suspicious of everyone's patriotism but a deadly foe of golf. He even went so far as to call it Scotch croquet and other contemptuous names. I saw him watching the clubs and the paper and speculating on the age of the man, whose legs were, I admit, noticeably young, and he drew my attention to him too—by nudges and whispers. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... noble officers performed their routine duties, found such amusement as they could in neighboring villages and towns, drank deep at night, and taxed their ingenuity to invent small ways of annoying their hosts, for whom they felt the contemptuous dislike of the injurer for the injured. They were careful, however, to keep their malice within certain bounds, for they knew that the baron was in favor with the ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... and walked towards his horse. The contemptuous movement stung Iskender like a lash in the face. He clutched at his patron's raiment, sobbing and blubbering, imploring forgiveness for his one mistake. The Emir beat him off with his whip, and, springing into the saddle, rode off slowly. Leading his own horse by the bridle, ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... in the Vision-of-Mirza style, that all the angry, contemptuous, haughty expressions of good and zealous men, gallant staff-officers in the army of Christ, formed a rick of straw and stubble, which at the last day is to be divided into more or fewer haycocks, according to the number of kind and unfeignedly humble and charitable thoughts ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... no other answer, than an artificial, assenting smile, followed by a contemptuous glance, as he turned away, which Anne perfectly knew ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... turning to Pigasov; 'what further proof do you want? You attack philosophy; speaking of it, you cannot find words contemptuous enough. I myself am not excessively devoted to it, and I know little enough about it; but our principal misfortunes do not come from philosophy! The Russian will never be infected with philosophical hair-splittings ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... too disdainful hear How long their feasts, how long their dinners last; Nor let the fair with a contemptuous sneer, On ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... destination the previous day if I had not been delayed by fever. Out of curiosity to see what the chief would say, I told Vic to tell him that I would help him with my gun, but the chief was ungrateful and contemptuous, saying that they would shoot me before I could see to shoot them. Vic thought I was serious, and said he would not go with me, and begged me not to go, saying, in a mixture of English and Spanish, "What will your father, your sister, and your brother say ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... duties are different from yours, I am your fellow-servant. I come to advise with you, And you hear me with contemptuous indifference, My words are about the (present urgent) affairs;—Do not think them matter for laughter. The ancients had a saying:—'Consult the gatherers of ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... of paraffin and lamp- glasses, stood the house and the godowns of Abdulla bin Selim, the great trader of Sambir. To Almayer the sight was very distasteful, and he shook his fist towards the buildings that in their evident prosperity looked to him cold and insolent, and contemptuous of ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad |
