"Detraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... — N. underestimation; depreciation &c. (detraction) 934; pessimism, pessimist; undervaluing &c. v.; modesty &c. 881. V. underrate, underestimate, undervalue, underreckon[obs3]; depreciate; disparage &c. (detract) 934; not do justice to; misprize, disprize; ridicule ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... proved to my own satisfaction And that of all 'Squires I've the honor of meeting That 'tis the most senseless and foul-mouthed detraction To say that poor people are fond ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... gradual improvement, the cautious unhazardous labours of the industrious though contented gardener—to prune, to strengthen, to engraft, and one by one to remove from its leaves and fresh shoots the slug and 355 the caterpillar. But far be it from us to undervalue with light and senseless detraction the conscientious hardihood of our predecessors, or even to condemn in them that vehemence, to which the blessings it won for us leave us now neither temptation nor pretext. We antedate the feelings, in order to 360 criminate the authors, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... poverty; no contracts, no succession, no dividences; no occupation, but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands; no use of wine, corn, or metal. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and pardon were never heard ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... my own scribe, and not done by myself, they will be all but lost; or perhaps (as has been too often the case already) furnish feathers for the caps of others; some for this purpose, and some to plume the arrows of detraction, to be let fly against the luckless bird from whom they had been plucked ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... quite likely that he merely meant to say that the troops hurriedly collected at Harrisburg were untried, and therefore ought not to be entrusted with any critical service. But the words, as they stand, carry with them a sweeping detraction and are nothing less than calumnious. The Brooklyn Twenty-Third—or rather the Division, taken as a whole, with which it was incorporated—has only to point to its record as given very imperfectly in the following History, and especially to the farewell orders of General Meade, ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... be strict; and there only, while young, it becomes you to be strict and severe. But there, too, spare the persons while you lash the crimes. All this relates, as you easily judge, to the vices of the heart, such as lying, fraud, envy, malice, detraction, etc., and I do not extend it to the little frailties of youth, flowing from high spirits and warm blood. It would ill become you, at your age, to declaim against them, and sententiously censure a gallantry, an accidental excess of the table, a frolic, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... boundless gratitude for the honour which you have conferred unasked. True, Carthage is so illustrious a city that it were an honour to her that a philosopher should beg to be thus rewarded, but I wished the boon you have bestowed on me to have its full value with no taint of detraction, to suffer no loss of grace by any petition on my part, in a word to be wholly disinterested. For he that begs pays so heavily, and so large is the price that he to whom the petition is addressed receives, that, where the necessaries of life are concerned, one had ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... relieved by expression, she became ashamed of her unsociability, and Major Fane's next topic was not uncongenial. He was airing his cherished grudge, and pronouncing a severe philippic on the belles of the Dominion. Cecil was incapable of detraction, or envy at another's greater success; but in the face of Bertie's abduction of Lilla before her eyes, she did not feel particularly in charity with any daughter ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... harmless and beneficent life could not be led by woman; yet the poisonous alchemy of detraction turned all her good deeds ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... success as a soldier had not enabled him to succeed as a statesman, but he displayed the same fortitude under apparent disaster and courage at unexpected crises when he found himself again passing "the wilderness," darkened, not with the smoke of battle, but with detraction and denunciation. Again, in the old spirit he exclaimed, "I will fight it out on this line if ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... probability, but which was in itself wholly impossible to be true. No man of common information ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it was of that class of falsehoods which, by continued repetition, through all the organs of detraction and abuse, are capable of misleading those who are already far misled, and of further fanning passion already kindling into flame. Doubtless it served in its day, and in greater or less degree, the end designed by it. Having done that, it has sunk into the general mass of stale ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... getting her views on the characters of her friends revised and corrected for her by competent male opinion, but it was sometimes embarrassing to be appealed to in this way, while only a very unsophisticated person would permit himself to be entirely candid, either in praise or detraction. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... down to the Well, you'll find a harvest of 'em. I just came from there. It was the high tide of Scandal. Detraction was at its height. And you may see the nymphas discentes and the aures satyrorum acutas," cries the chaplain, with a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... outran it; I entreat thee chiefly, Andrew, who wast chosen by a most wholesome and accordant vote to be successor in the same office and to headship of spiritual things, to direct and inspire my theme; that I may baulk by the defence of so great an advocate that spiteful detraction which ever reviles what is most conspicuous. For thy breast, very fruitful in knowledge, and covered with great store of worshipful doctrines, is to be deemed a kind of shrine of heavenly treasures. Thou who hast searched through Gaul and ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... all believe, singularly enough, that truth possesses some inherent vitality and power that give it an assured prevalence over falsehood; that a good name cannot be permanently defiled and irreparably ruined by detraction, but, like a star, shines all the brighter for the shadow through which it is seen; that justice cannot be stayed by injustice; that vice is powerless against virtue. I could quote from their great writers hundreds of utterances ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of the Roman Goddes Flora, or the beasly practieses of the madd Bacchinalians. Morton likewise (to shew his poetrie) composed sundry rimes & verses, some tending to lasciviousnes, and others to the detraction & scandall of some persons, which he affixed to this idle or idoll May-polle. They chainged allso the name of their place, and in stead of calling it Mounte Wollaston, they call it Merie-mounte, as if this joylity would ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... to be done is to true up the balance and bring it to poise. The practice frequently adopted to poise a plain balance is to file it with a half-round file on the inside, in order not to show any detraction when looking at the outer edge of the rim. A better and quicker plan is to place the balance in a split chuck, and with a diamond or round-pointed tool scoop out a little piece of metal as the balance revolves. In doing this, the spindle of the lathe is turned by ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... handsome, with a stretch of some forty or fifty feet between the house at the stern and the forecastle, which rose considerably higher; a low bulwark was surmounted by a heavy rail supported upon turned posts painted white. Everything, in spite of the captain's boastful detraction, was in perfect trim, at least to landfolk's eyes. "Now come into the cabin," said the captain. He gave Lydia's traps, as he called them, in charge of a boy, while he led the way below, by a narrow stairway, warning Lydia ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... familiar land. Before the coming of the Scientific Age this group of gentle and noble emotions had been a fine factor in the equipment of every worthy human being, a fine factor that had its less amiable aspect in a usually harmless hostility to strange people, and a usually harmless detraction of strange lands. But with the wild rush of change in the pace, scope, materials, scale, and possibilities of human life that then occurred, the old boundaries, the old seclusions and separations were violently broken down. All the old settled mental habits and ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... were all so anxious to shield you from every misgiving on your mother's account. Some actresses have brought opprobrium upon the profession, which certainly is rather dangerous, and subjects women to suspicion and detraction; but let me assure you, Regina, that there have been very noble, lovely, good ladies who made their bread exactly as your mother makes hers. There is no more brilliant, enviable, or stainless record ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... vicarage, after giving his usual Wednesday lecture at the neighbouring "college for young ladies;" where, blooming misses—in addition to their curriculum of "accomplishments" and "all the 'ologies"—were taught the noble art of family multiplication, domestic division, male detraction, feminine sedition, ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... perfect friendship would not have room for such grudging sympathy, but would rejoice more for the other's success than for his own. The envious, jealous man never can be a friend. His mean spirit of detraction and insinuating ill-will kills friendship at its birth. Plutarch records a witty remark about Plistarchus, who was told that a notorious railer had spoken well of him. "I'll lay my life," said he, "somebody has told him I am dead, for he can speak ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... wound? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honor? A word. What is that word, honor? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. Is it insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it." ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... his three-score years and ten, leaving behind him, in addition to a very ample estate, not only a good character, which means neither more nor less than what "the neighbours," amid their ignorance, envy, love of detraction, jealousy and other similar qualities, might think proper to say of him, but the odour of a well-spent life, in which he struggled hard to live more in favour with God, than in favour with man. It was remarked in him, for the last forty years of his life, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... been taught to admire and venerate; they may even point out spots, which we can not disprove, in that sun of glorious brightness which shed its beneficent rays over a century of darkness—but this we know, that whatever may be the force of detraction, his fame has been steadily increasing, even on the admission of his slanderers, for three centuries, and that he now shines as a fixed star in the constellation of the great lights of modern times, not only because he succeeded in crossing the ocean when once ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... kind, which had been paid to the rector; and it became a general threat to sweep the parish of moles, weazles, stoats, polecats and vermin of every species, and tenant the rectory with them, if any thing more was heard on the subject of tythes. Neither did detraction forget to remind the rector of his age, and how shameful it was for a man with one foot in the grave to quarrel with and rob the poor farmers, whom he was hired to guide, console, and love. The poor ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the newspapers, it was his name that headed the list of the junior officers mentioned for distinguished conduct. Standish had followed his career with an admiration and a joy that was without taint of envy or detraction. He gloried in Aintree, he delighted to know the army held such a man. He was grateful to Aintree for upholding the traditions of a profession to which he himself gave all the devotion of a fanatic. He made a god of him. This was the attitude of mind ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... passionate and unavailing protest. For hours she had sobbed, and when she went out into the world the next day, it was with his every word ringing in her ears, as they had rung ever since: the sceptic comment at every feast, the ironical laughter behind every door, the whispered detraction in every loud ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that you had purified her of all stains of her past—but there may be one that remains. And that in most people's eyes would be no detraction. You look puzzled, Miss Nott—but I am coming to the explanation and the end of my story. A ship of war was sent to the island to punish the mutineers and pirates, for such they were, but they could not be found. A private ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... himself "affectionately" it meant that he really loved. Enmities he had none. If ever he had suffered injuries they were forgiven, forgotten, and buried out of sight. Even in the controversies where his strongest convictions were involved, he steadily abstained from bitterness, violence, and detraction. "Fiery hatred and malice," he said, with perfect truth, "are what I detest, and would always allay or avoid ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... are a number of others, whose productive powers and actual yield also are unknown to him. Each strives, with all the means at his command—cheap prices, advertisements, long credit, drummers, also secret and crafty detraction of the quality of the goods of his competitor, the last of which is a measure that flourishes particularly at critical moments—to drive all other competitors from the field. Production is wholly left to accident and to the ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... fierce contest before the people, characterized by lavish detraction and personal abuse—one of the most bitter, prolonged, and memorable in the history of the State —and the question of making Illinois permanently a Slave State was put to rest by a majority of about two thousand votes. The census ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... Carthage and Numantia, and was, without dispute, the first of the Romans in merit, and had the greatest authority amongst them. Thus Fortune, deferring her displeasure and jealousy of such great success to some other time, let Aemilius at present enjoy this victory, without any detraction or diminution. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... companions, e'en from youth: A thousand times he's served me, and I joy That he can walk the streets without annoy: Yet 'tis a puzzle, I confess, to me How from that same affair he got off free." Here is the poison-bag of malice, here The gall of fell detraction, pure and sheer: And these, I'swear, if man such pledge may give, My pen and heart shall keep ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... demonstration of his strength in the affections and devotedness of the people, for the purpose (not of acting with violence or intimidation towards the King,[290] but) of convincing his enemies that the machinations of jealousy and detraction would (p. 304) have no power permanently to blast his reputation, and crush his influence, the alienation was soon happily terminated by the frank and filial conduct of the Prince, who as anxiously sought a full reconciliation as his father ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... moral rectitude and unimpeachable propriety of conduct—unsullied by the breath of detraction—rendered her in a great measure impervious to downright ill-nature; but still she was open to teasing and bantering; and the more she was teased, and the more she was bantered, the more impenetrable she became. We endeavoured to find out from herself—but unsuccessfully—if ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... gained to the argument by supposing two Beings, rather than one Being of a mixed nature. The facts lead to this supposition just as naturally as to the hypothesis of two principles. The existence of the evil Being is as much a detraction from the power of the good one, as if we only at once suppose the latter to be of limited power, and that he prefers making and supporting creatures who suffer much less than they enjoy, to making no creatures ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... This detraction of the Sultan's suzerainty is only a corollary of the Premier's indifference towards the Muslim idea of the Caliphate. The premier's injustice in treating the Turkish question becomes graver when he thus lightly handles the Khilafat question. There had been occasions ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... renewed within me; still they were not strong, for they were not sufficient to sustain me in justice. I never spoke ill in the slightest degree whatever of any one, and my ordinary practice was to avoid all detraction; for I used to keep most carefully in mind that I ought not to assent to, nor say of another, anything I should not like to have said of myself. I was extremely careful to keep this resolution on all occasions though not so ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... abolitionist agitation made penal. There were northerners quite ready to grant these demands. Rage against abolitionism, much of it, if possible, even more unreasoning, prevailed at the North. Garrison says that he found here "contempt more bitter, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen than among slave-owners themselves." The Church, politics, business—all interests save righteousness—seemed to bow to the false ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... translation of the Iliads (1611 ) denounces without mentioning any name 'a certain envious windsucker that hovers up and down, laboriously engrossing all the air with his luxurious ambition, and buzzing into every ear my detraction.' It is suggested that Chapman here retaliated on Shakespeare for his references to him as his rival in the sonnets; but it is out of the question that Chapman, were he the rival, should have termed those high compliments 'detraction.' There is no ground for identifying Chapman's ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... since, being naught, So stiff thou stand'st for him who is nothing now, And swear'st we came not as commanders here Of all the Achaean navy, nor of thee; But Aias sailed, thou say'st, with absolute right. Must we endure detraction from a slave? What was the man thou noisest here so proudly? Have I not set my foot as firm and far? Or stood his valour unaccompanied In all this host? High cause have we to rue That prize-encounter for Pelides' arms, Seeing Teucer's sentence stamps our knavery ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... it seems that its daughters are unfittingly assigned by Gregory (Moral. xxxi, 45), who says that from envy arise "hatred, tale-bearing, detraction, joy at our neighbor's misfortunes, and grief for his prosperity." For joy at our neighbor's misfortunes and grief for his prosperity seem to be the same as envy, as appears from what has been said above (A. 3). Therefore these should not be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... opinion had been different? But it is in truth of base extraction, and ungenerous qualities, springing from selfishness and vanity, and low ambition; by these it subsists, and thrives, and acts; and envy, and jealousy, and detraction, and hatred, and variance, are its too faithful and natural associates. It is, to say the best of it, a root which bears fruits of a poisonous as well as of a beneficial quality. If it sometimes stimulates to great and generous enterprises, if it urges to industry, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... to others; quand on sent, on reflechit rarement. Such strange vicissitudes of temper—such opposite extremes of thinking and feeling, written down at the moment, without noticing the intervening links of circumstances and impressions which led to them, would appear like detraction, if they should meet the eye of any indifferent person—but I think I have taken sufficient precautions against the possibility of such an exposure, and the only eyes which will ever glance over this blotted page, when the hand that writes it is cold, will read, not ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... "Every Man Out of His Humour," is Jonson's self-complaisant portrait of himself, the just, wholly admirable, and judicious scholar, holding his head high above the pack of the yelping curs of envy and detraction, but careless of their puny attacks on his perfections with ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... upon what he termed la politique de Longwood, spoke not unkindly of Sir Hudson Lowe, allowing he had a difficult task to execute, since an angel from Heaven, as Governor, could not have pleased them. When I more than hinted that nothing could justify detraction and departure from truth in carrying out a policy, he merely shrugged his shoulders and reiterated: 'C'etait notre politique; et que voulez-vous?' That he and the others respected Sir Hudson Lowe, I had not ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... whose couches are Spintries; whose thrift is usurie, meales gluttonie, exercise cousenage, whose valour bragardrie, Astolpheidas, or Rodomontadas, or if it come to action, crueltie; whose communication is Atheisme, contention, detraction, or Paillardise, most of lewdness, seld of vertue, never of charitie; whose spare-time is vanitie or villanie: yet will I not deale by them, as they doe by others. I like not reproofe where it pertaines not to me: But if they like to see their ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... greatness of his achievement and its enduring influence upon the progress of knowledge have won him a place beside our Harvey; but, still more, that, like Harvey, he has lived long enough to outlast detraction and opposition, and to see the stone that the builders rejected become the head-stone ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... ever considered my own military reputation as inseparably connected with that of the army; as my heart has ever expanded with joy when I have heard its praises, and my indignation has arisen when the mouth of detraction has been opened against it, it can scarcely be supposed, at this last stage of the war, that I am indifferent to its interests. But how are they to be promoted? The way is plain, says the anonymous addresser. 'If war continues, remove into the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... From the sacred, inner temple Of each soul's unseen communion, We should gather, we should garner, Many lessons full of profit, Lessons long and full of wisdom. We should see the struggling victim In the toils of the ensnarer; See the troubled spirit writhing 'Neath the lashings of detraction; See the burdened nature groaning 'Mid the polished shafts of envy; See the sinner's cunning malice, In the act of human torture; See the Christian's anxious fightings, Foes without, and fears within him. All these lessons we should garner From each spirit's veiled communion. Change is written ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... high authority, I have not a thought of detraction. None can venerate the NESTORS in science who have enriched its annals, more than I, and though we reverse their judgments, their errors are confessedly ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... often scraped, the mossified pavement, the greenish tombs of marble under the maples and firs, showed the effect of shade, solitude, and humidity upon all things of brick in this climate, where wood was already rising into favor as building material, but to the detraction of picturesqueness and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... pair of glasses which were no detraction from her very good looks, and remarked, with the serenity ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... of the most troublesome in this plot. He had served in the campaign about Philadelphia but had been blocked in his extravagant demands for promotion; so he turned for redress to Gates, the star in the north. A malignant campaign followed in detraction of Washington. He had, it was said, worn out his men by useless marches; with an army three times as numerous as that of Howe, he had gained no victory; there was high fighting quality in the American army if properly led, but Washington despised ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... in pain till they find out some extravagant expression to represent the folly on't. Only there is this difference, that as all are more forcibly inclined to ill than good, they are much apter to exceed in detraction than in praises. Have I not reason then to desire this from you; and may not my friendship have deserved it? I know not; 'tis as you think; but if I be denied it, you will teach me to consider myself. 'Tis well the side ended here. If I had not had occasion to stop there, ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... faults, very like to a young individual; and this is one in which the comparison holds good. But there are other causes for, and other incentives to this practice, besides the false idea that it is a proof of courage. Slander and detraction are the inseparable evils of a democracy; and as neither public nor private characters are spared, and the law is impotent to protect them, men have no other resource than to defend their reputations with their lives, or to deter the defamer ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... successions, no dividences; no occupation, but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands; no use of wine, corn, or metal: the very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and pardon, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... unless in the West, and in his own home circle. The fact requires to be noted for the purpose of appraising contemporary comments upon his acts. Apologists and impartial chroniclers are as distinct as enemies in intimating that he was a constant mark for 'detraction' and 'envyings.' He was unpopular on account alike of his demeanour, of the Queen's favour, and of the monopolizing energy in the public service by which to posterity he has justified it. All students recollect Aubrey's description of him as ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... This circumstance was duly reported to Father Rocco by his correspondent at Florence; but, whether he was too much occupied among the statues, or whether it was one result of his cautious resolution never to expose himself unnecessarily to so much as the breath of detraction, he made no attempt to see Nanina, or even to justify himself toward her by writing her a letter. All his mornings continued to be spent alone in the studio, and all his afternoons to be occupied by his clerical duties, until the day before ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... transactions or histories, we may believe that our ancestors transmitted orally, in lines composed by the bards, the memorable sayings and deeds which they wished to hand down to generations after them. How far they were worthy of credit, and how far they were subject to the vices of flattery or detraction we cannot tell, but we may be sure that those who were accounted great in these ancient times were anxious to have their doughty deeds immortalised, and perhaps were as sensitive to the tone of public criticism thus represented ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... principal attendants, and a few of the chief nobles of the court; being herself occasionally one of the performers, and maintaining her character as a hostess by a combined affability and dignity which made all her guests pleased with themselves as with her, and set all imitation and all detraction alike ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... fact, exhausting all that poetic vein which, properly applied, might have produced epics; these and many more traits set forth in his biography bring forth his character in its true light, dispel those clouds which malice and detraction may at times have cast over it, and leave it in the full effulgence ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the politics of England in the middle of the seventeenth century, he has suffered at the hands of his biographer, Anthony a Wood,{1} merely because he belonged to the opposite party—the crudest possible measure of merit For the odium politicum and the odium theologicum are twin agents of detraction, and the writing of history would be dull indeed were it not for the joy of digging out an approximation to the truth from opposing opinions. Where the material is so scanty it will be safer [30]to summarize what ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... the least, upbraids the most? Think not the Greeks to shameful flight to bring, Nor let those lips profane the name of king. For our return we trust the heavenly powers; Be that their care; to fight like men be ours. But grant the host with wealth the general load, Except detraction, what hast thou bestow'd? Suppose some hero should his spoils resign, Art thou that hero, could those spoils be thine? Gods! let me perish on this hateful shore, And let these eyes behold my son no more; If, on thy next offence, this hand forbear To strip those arms thou ill deserv'st ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... opposes them, on the contrary, and still more, if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest public services, can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger, arising from the insolent outrage of furious and ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... posterity the names of Swift, Steele, and Addison. Before Marvel's time, to be witty was to be strained, forced, and conceited; from him—whose memory consecrates that cottage—wit came sparkling forth, untouched by baser matter. It was worthy of him; its main feature was an open clearness. Detraction or jealousy cast no stain upon it; he turned aside, in the midst of an exalted panegyric to Oliver Cromwell, to say the finest things that ever were said of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... of Christian duty, on which hangs, not only the law and the prophets, but the very life and spirit of the Gospel too: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them." Which rule, that we may all duly observe, by throwing aside all scandal and detraction, all spite and rancour, all rudeness and contempt, all rage and violence, and whatever tends to make conversation and commerce either uneasy, or troublesome, may the God of peace grant for Jesus Christ ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... satisfaction to show the young writer, that the most celebrated ancients have been as rudely subjected to the tyranny of criticism as the moderns. Detraction has ever poured the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the wisest Dervise, with his venerable Beard, and pointed Bonnet: You are discreet, and yet not mistrustful; you are easy, but not weak; you are beneficent with Discretion; you love your Friends, and create yourself no Enemies. Your most sprightly Flights borrow no Graces from Detraction; you never speak a misbecoming Word, nor do an ill-natur'd Action, tho' 'tis always in your Power. In a Word, your Soul is as spotless as your Person. You have, moreover, a little Fund of Philosophy, which gives me just Grounds to hope that you'll relish ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands, no use of wine, corn, or metal. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and passion, were never heard of amongst them. How dissonant would he find his imaginary ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... by study, and exalted by imagination;" this is very ambitious, but not very intelligible. He speaks of Wilkie attracting the attention of admirers and detractors. It is very absurd to consider criticism that is not always favourable, detraction. The following passage is well put. "We constantly hear the ignorant advising a student to study the great book of nature, without being biassed by what has been done by other painters; it is as absurd as if they would recommend a youth to learn astronomy by lying in the fields, and looking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... Both in the comprehensiveness of their charges and in the slashing hatred which informs them (however feeble the verse), One Epistle and The Blatant Beast offer as fair a sample as any two such pamphlets can of the calumny, detraction, and critical misunderstanding Pope endured, for the most part patiently, from the publication of his Essay on Criticism to the year of his death. "Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past," (Epistle to Arbuthnot, l. 358) he exclaimed ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... idiot, but she eats in plate. The goods of fortune, which her soul possess, Are but the ground of unmade happiness; The rude material: wisdom add to this, Wisdom, the sole artificer of bliss; She from herself, if so compell'd by need, Of thin content can draw the subtle thread; But (no detraction to her sacred skill) If she can work in gold, 'tis better still. If Tullia had been blest with half her sense, None could too much admire her excellence: But since she can make error shine so bright, She thinks it vulgar to defend ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... of friendship, that I am sure he would never have left behind him an unfavorable truth, while nothing could have induced him to utter a calumny of one who had received pledges of his former regard and esteem. Haydon's detraction was the more odious because its object could not contradict the charge, and because it supplied his old critical antagonists (if any remained) with an authority for their charge against him of Cockney ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... all things else contrarious were these two: The one a man upon whose laureled brow Gray hairs were growing! glory ever new Shall circle him in after years as now; For spent detraction may not disavow The world of knowledge with the wit combined, The elastic force no burden e'er could bow, The various talents and the single mind, Which give him moral power and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... heavily upon such of us as had the means of paying anything; and I affirm that the share of the verdict which I myself had to defray, from no very abundant means, was such that if Mr. Mackenzie had made as much clear profit by his press during the whole time he has employed it in the work of detraction, he would not have found it necessary to leave the concern, and abandon it to his creditors." To which statement it may be added that a gentleman now living in Toronto distinctly remembers hearing Mr. Jarvis say that his own contribution to the fund was precisely L109; that that ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... "The Antiquary"; Madge Wildfire's songs in "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," and David Gellatley's in "Waverley"; besides the other scraps and snatches of minstrelsy too numerous for mention, sown through the novels and longer poems. For in spite of detraction, Walter Scott remains one of the foremost British lyrists. In Mr. Palgrave's "Treasury" he is represented by a larger number of selections than either Milton, Byron, Burns, Campbell, Keats, or Herrick; making an easy fourth to Wordsworth, Shakspere, and Shelley. And in marked ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... way thither Sir Artegall is beset by the hags Envy and Detraction, who are so angry with him for freeing Irena that they not only attack him themselves, but turn loose upon him the Blatant Beast (Slander). Although Talus begs to annihilate this infamous trio with his dreaded flail, Artegall decrees ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... cue and entered upon a vein of flattery, she would have been extremely voluble—for villages can vie with cities in adulation as well as in detraction—but she was interrupted by ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... as fifty eyes await the turn Of yours to forestall its yet half-formed wish, I'll proffer my assistance you'll not need— When every tongue is praising you, I'll join The praisers' chorus—when you're hemmed about With lives between you and detraction—lives To be laid down if a rude voice, rash eye, Rough hand should violate the sacred ring Their worship throws about you,—then indeed, Who'll stand up for you stout as I?" If so We said, and so we did,—not Mildred there Would be unworthy ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... why the shell could graze the inside of one of his legs without injury to the other was because the fighter was blessed with a pair of bow-legs that couldn't have stopped the proverbial pig in the proverbial alley. In addition to this decided detraction from his manly beauty, he was short, squatty, thick-necked, a nose of the variety commonly known as a stub, and a couple of little eyes that had a constant twinkle, half-shrewd and half-humorous, the whole surmounted with ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... and Persia, in good time operate extraordinary effects; for the magnetism of two souls, rightly touched, works beyond all natural limits, and it would be indeed too unequal, if good nature should not have at least as large a sphere of activity, as malice, envy, and detraction, which are, it seems, part of the returns from Gombroon and Surat. All I can say to you in that matter is, that you must, seeing it will not be better, stand upon your guard; for in this world a good cause signifys little, unless it be as well defended. A man ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... sometimes guid him into the paths of errour." This example of bad English, and worse taste, was written after twenty-five years acquaintance! In singular contrast to it, is a letter of Aubrey to Wood, charging him, it is true, with an abuse of confidence and detraction, but urging his complaint in terms which sufficiently evince the kindly and affectionate ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... matter?" returned Aloysius. "Envy and detraction in their blackness only emphasise his brightness, just as a star shines more brilliantly in a dark sky. One always recognises a great spirit by the littleness of those who strive to wound it,—if it were not great it would ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... when once these writing-masters imagined that they were artists, that they would be infected with those plague-spots of genius—envy, detraction, and all the jalousie du metier. And such to this hour we find them! An extraordinary scene of this nature has long been exhibited in my neighbourhood, where two doughty champions of the quill have been ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... I cannot help remarking, that young women do not always carefully distinguish between running into the error of detraction, and its opposite extreme of indiscriminate applause. This proceeds from the false idea they entertain, that the direct contrary to what is wrong must be right. Thus the dread of being only suspected of one fault makes ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... with Shylock, that ships are but boards, and that no man can properly be termed rich whose fortune is at the mercy of the winds. The beauty adorned only with the unambitious graces of innocence and modesty, provokes, whenever she appears, a thousand murmurs of detraction and whispers of suspicion. The genius, even when he endeavours only to entertain with pleasing; images of nature, or instruct by uncontested principles of science, yet suffers persecution from innumerable critics, whose acrimony is excited merely ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... more reason, I admire, is that being so absolute a courtier, you have not forgot either the ties of friendship, or the practice of generosity. In my little experience of a court, (which, I confess, I desire not to improve) I have found in it much of interest, and more of detraction: Few men there have that assurance of a friend, as not to be made ridiculous by him when they are absent. There are a middling sort of courtiers, who become happy by their want of wit; but they supply that want by an excess of malice to those who have it. And there is no such persecution ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... said, disgusted with his periodical, sick of his editor, tired of his mistress, and bent on any change, from China to Peru, that would give him a new theatre for display. One grows weary of the perpetual half-truths of inveterate detraction. It is granted that Byron was restless, vain, imperious, never did anything without a desire to shine in the doing of it, and was to a great degree the slave of circumstances. Had the Liberal ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... there is a criticism to make of Mr. Bruce's book, it is that it displays a lack of personal investigation and experimentation, and bears throughout the ear-marks of a literary compilation. But this is, after all, not a serious detraction from a work of this character,—which is, as I have said before, excellently ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... little to my other difficulties and distress to find, that much more is expected of me than is possible to be performed, and that upon the ground of safety and policy I am obliged to conceal the true state of the army from public view, and thereby expose myself to detraction and calumny.[1] ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... be out of place to enter into petty theological questions in a comparatively trivial work such as this—to inquire, for instance, into the question whether it may not be as possible to be damned for detraction as to be damned for adultery; but we may at least believe that Lady Purbeck spent her later years in contrition for the past ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... have no pleasure in their conversation. I have myself no gratification in uttering detraction, and therefore none in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... the Heroic Daughter, a Tragedy taken from the Cid of Corneille, by Colley Gibber. The play was not published until after Steele's pamphlet, 'The Crisis,' had exposed him to political and (as it necessarily followed in those days) personal detraction. Cibber then dedicated his play to Steele, referring to the custom of his calumniators, since they could not deny his literary services, to transfer all the merit of them to Addison, upon whom he had so generously ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and prolonged self-reproach, il gran riffiuto was made, youthful passion, worldly advantages—and plighted faith—were cast to the winds. Henceforth he would live for his palette only, defying poverty, detraction and fiercely antagonistic opinion; if failing in allegiance to others, at least remaining staunch to his first, best, highest self, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... converse with the divine order, becomes orderly and divine, as far as the nature of man allows; but like every one else, he will suffer from detraction. ...
— The Republic • Plato
... in fact, up to the present moment, there was, and is, a most fierce and bitter outcry, and detraction loud and low, against General McClellan, accusing him of sloth, imbecility, cowardice, treasonable purposes, and, in short, utterly denying his ability as a soldier, and questioning his integrity as a man. Nor was this to be wondered at; for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... right to a place, my answer was, that I would print the piece separately if desired, and the author might have as many copies as he pleased to distribute himself, but that I would not take upon me to spread his detraction; and that, having contracted with my subscribers to furnish them with what might be either useful or entertaining, I could not fill their papers with private altercation, in which they had no concern, without doing them manifest injustice. Now, many of our printers make no scruple ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... a variety of circumstances, and especially from the change in your honour's conduct towards me, that some person, as well inclined to detract, but better skilled in the art of detraction than the author of the above stupid scandal, has made free with my character. For I can not suppose, that malice so absurd, so barefaced, so diametrically opposite to truth, to common policy, and, in short, to everything but villany, as the above is, could impress you with so ill an opinion ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... touched thy lips, and every word of thine Vibrates on chords whose deep electric thrill Shall never cease till that wide wound be healed. And then He took thee home. Ay, home, great heart! Home to His home, where never envious tongue, Nor vile detraction, nor base ingratitude, Nor cold neglect, shall sting the quiv'ring heart. Thou endedst well. One step from earth to Heaven, When His voice called "Friend, come ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... Production because 'tis scandalous and malicious; others will disapprove of it for the very same Reasons; for the Tasts of Mankind being as different as their Constitutions, they must of Consequence be often as opposite as the most absolute Contraries in Nature: A Knave loves and delights in Scandal, Detraction, Infamy, in blasting, ruining his Neighbour's Character, because these are consonant to the Depravity of humane Nature, and in themselves vile: Upon the very same Account an honest Man abominates them all, with the utmost Abhorrence ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... difficulties and distress to find that much more is expected of me than it is possible to perform, the more that upon the ground of safety and policy I am obliged to conceal the true state of this army from public view, and thereby expose myself to detraction and calumny." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford |
