"Disdain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes were watering with emotion, attempted to explain, but, becoming hysterical, thrust a huge red handkerchief to his mouth and was led away by a friend. Mr. Quince regarded his departure with mild disdain. ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... quickly around to see if any of the others had noticed the incident. None of them had been paying any attention to her and she breathed a sigh of relief. It was bad enough to be snubbed without having others see it. That would have been too humiliating. Her eyes flashed fire as she remembered the disdain in Clarke's face, and that she had not been clever enough to see ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... however, halted inside the door and glanced around her with incredulous disdain. She seemed upon the point of refusing to ride in so crude a conveyance; seemed about to complain to the conductor and to demand something better. She went forward under protest and drew her gloved fingers across the plush back of a seat, looked at her fingers and said, "Hmh!" ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... boy did. But the Araucanians had little faith in Spanish promises, and an old warrior who stood near ended the matter by raising his war-club and dashing out the captive's brains. Thus tragically ended the career of one of the least cruel of the Spanish conquerors. He paid the penalty of his disdain of ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... of his enslaved people touched Moses unto tears, and he spoke, saying: "Woe unto me for your anguish! Rather would I die than see you suffer so grievously." He did not disdain to help his unfortunate brethren at their heavy tasks as much as lay in his power. He dismissed all thought of his high station at court, shouldered a share of the burdens put upon the Israelites, and toiled in their place. The result was that he not only gave ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... only one to whom the afternoon had brought trials. Chris had not been without his share of troubles. The Seminoles treated him with marked disdain and would not even permit him to eat with ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... the unflinching gaze of her clear, scornful eyes, he shrank back through the portieres, which instantly fell into place again, and Mona, with a smile of disdain curving her red lips, went back to her seat ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... proud form up in a disdain that was only held in check by the very evident honesty of the man before him. "You are courageous at least," said he. "I regret you are not equally discriminating." And raising Mr. Gryce's hat he placed it in ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... "that, could his manner be copied, its success would be infallible over a modern audience." "It is rapid harmony exactly adjusted to the sense. It is vehement reasoning, without any appearance of art. It is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom involved in a continual stream of argument; so that, of all human productions, his orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to perfection." [Footnote: Dissertation of Lord Brougham on the Eloquence ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... what they were watching and what they were doing. The vast, cruel, fumbling clumsiness of Nature, her lack of majesty in crises that ought to be majestic, her incurable indignity, disgusted me, aroused my disdain, I wanted, as a philosopher of all the cultures, to feel that the present was indeed a majestic crisis, to be so esteemed by a superior man. I could not. Though the crisis possibly intimidated me somewhat, yet, on behalf of Jos Myatt, ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... replied Amelia, with a look of uneasiness and disdain. "Pray who told you that I was vexed? Suppose Miss Charlotte's apples had been ten times finer than mine, would that be any consideration to me? You very well know, Sir, that I am no glutton; neither should I have taken any notice of the preference ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... loveliness; the contrast of her colouring to that of her neighbours inspired the superstitious with some terror, but made the braver spirits gaze more curiously, indifferent to the half-concealed anger and affected disdain of their partners. Every moment she gained more hearts, though she let her eyes rest only on those of Jean. After the dance was over she seated herself in her former position; the women then, according to custom, retired outside the stone circle, while the men clustered round the oak to ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... the realm, might be considered a superior rival, but in this instance he was not even feared. He had come to Jamestown with exalted ideas. He dressed better, talked better and lived better, and he seemed to hold every man in the colony in disdain. Friendly, courteous even to the lowest soldier, he still gave forth the impression that he was condescending, not alone to those beneath, but to those above him. That this scion, this self-ordered perfect man, should have drifted to the colonies from the drawing-rooms of London only to ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... evildoing of its people and the barbarians will now have their way with the lands of the north. But to me it appears that Asti is not yet done with the pattern He was weaving there. To each of you He granted a second life. Do not disdain the Gifts ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... the Strand he stalks, a sable shade Of death, while, jingling like the elfin train, In silver samite knight and dame and maid Ride to the tourney on the barrier'd plain; And he must bow in humble mute disdain, And that worst woe of baffled souls endure, To see the evil that they ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... gayly answered Anstruther. "I have a long leave, and I only ran over here to oblige His Excellency." He spoke with all the easy disdain of all underlings born of an Indian official life—the habitual disregard of the Briton for his inferior surroundings. "By Jove! you may help me out yourself! You're an old Delhi man!" He gazed earnestly at Hawke, who started nervously, and ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... good humored. He came nearly naked to listen. He heard the lecture; and, as he reeled around, pretending to cover his face for shame, it was amusing to see his tricks to evade tumbling against any of the bystanders, lifting his hands with an air of dandified disdain as he staggered to one side, and repeating the mock contemptuousness when rolling towards the same peril on the other. Next morning I heard numbers of the natives, sitting all along the outside of the sacred square, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... father regarded him with a strange blending of savage affection and stern disdain, brow-beating him in public yet ready to flare into eruptive anger if any other recognized, as he did, the weaknesses of his ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... "Missionary!" Broad exclaimed, in disdain. "I don't like the word. Them birds is about useful as a hip pocket in an undershirt. Why, missionaries don't do no real, lasting good outside of Indian villages! Us sure-thing guys are the best missionaries that ever struck this country. Look at the good we done around Dyea and Skagway. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... to the peasant. His is a peasant's gospel, it seems to me, such a gospel as the peasants of Russia would take to themselves to-day if Jesus came preaching to them in the way He did to the common people of the Jews. The cultured would disdain it, until a new St. Paul interpreted it for them in terms that they could understand, so giving it a "vogue". Both the peasants and the cultured would be Christians, but with this difference, that in one case the seed ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... ladies are above it, and disdain it so much, that they choose rather to go without the prospect of a second marriage, in virtue of the trade, than to stoop to the mechanic low step of carrying on a trade; and they have their reward, for they do go without it; and whereas ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... violence of my movements, I suppose, had sprung out of my tattered garment. I felt my cheeks flush hotly, and was stricken dumb in the face of this mute evidence giving me the lie. The girl gazed at me for a moment; then, her lip curling with disdain, she turned her back and walked up the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... feeling she could not repress, "if you knew how he loved that wretched man at the moment he told me, and how he hated him, perhaps, at the same moment. And I heard his story and his tears with sneering disdain. Brute! Yes, I am a brute. I am responsible for his fever. But that man in prison is incapable of suffering," Katya concluded irritably. "Can such a man suffer? Men like ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... was an immediate cause of offence—was interpreted, rightly enough I fear, as disdain. His ignorance of the vulgar dialect, a thing upon which he had hitherto prided himself, suddenly took upon itself a new aspect. He failed to perceive at once that his reception of the coarse and stupid but genially intended remarks that greeted his appearance ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... nor yet that of any other who figures in this story, because there yet live those who might take offence thereat, though after all it might well be passed off with a laugh. High-born and married to an artificer of woollen fabrics, she could not rid her mind of the disdain with which, by reason of his occupation, she regarded her husband; for no man, however wealthy, so he were of low condition, seemed to her worthy to have a gentlewoman to wife; and seeing that for all his wealth ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... that he pitied animals like men; it was his defect that he pitied men almost too much like animals. Foulon said of the democracy, 'Let them eat grass.' Shaw said, 'Let them eat greens.' He had more benevolence but almost as much disdain." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... disdain a golden bribe, And never gripe the poor; This man shall dwell with God on earth, And ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... I would reign, And I would reign alone; My soul did evermore disdain A rival in my throne, He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, Who dares not put it to the touch To win or lose ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... nations fight; 50 A nobler quarrel for his native earth, Than what divided Greece for Homer's birth. To what perfection will our tongue arrive, How will invention and translation thrive, When authors nobly born will bear their part, And not disdain the inglorious praise of art! Great generals thus, descending from command, With their own toil provoke the soldier's hand. How will sweet Ovid's ghost be pleased to hear His fame augmented by an English peer;[14] 60 How he embellishes his Helen's loves, Outdoes his softness, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... all that go to make life a madness and a terror; twenty, thirty, forty, perhaps fifty years lie a head of him and her, but the years and their burdens are not for his eyes any more than the flowers he elects to disdain. Love is blind, but sometimes there is no love. How then shall we explain this inexplicable mystery; wonderful riddle that none shall explain and that every ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... me! that Art should suffer such disdain! But what can one expect in time of war? Mayhap our minstre'sy had given pain To some tired patriot in bed next-door— Some weary soul that all day fashions fuses, To whom his sleep is more than all the Muses— And so, for England's sake we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... warmly upheld by Farquharson and the neighboring proprietors. As it was, there was an antagonism likely to give him full employment. The Gael of the mountains regarded these Lowland "working bodies" with something of that disdain which a rich and cultivated man feels for kin, not only poor, but of contemptible nature and associations. The Gael was poor truly, but he held himself as of gentle birth. He had lived by his sword, or by the care of cattle, ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Doda and Benji! Her children! Her darling ones, her lovely ones! Love's crown; and, what was more, worn in the persons of these darling joys of hers (when they were growing up to nine and seven and five years old) in signal, almost arrogant in her disdain of precedent to the contrary, that woman might be mother and yet work freely in the markets of the world precisely as man is father but ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... was innocence once, but its snows Were sullied and trod with disdain; Here lies what was beauty, but plucked was its rose And flung like a ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the bitter pain Of stern denials, Nor with low-born disdain Augment our trials. Hearts just as pure and fair May beat in Belgrave Square As in the lowly air Of Seven Dials! Blue blood! Blue blood! Of what avail art thou To serve me now? Though dating ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the Banu Ozrah, a handsome and accomplished man, who was never a single day out of love, and it chanced that he became enamoured of a beauty of his own tribe and sent her many messages; but she ceased not to entreat him with cruelty and disdain; till, for stress of love and longing and desire and distraction, he fell sick of a sore sickness and took to his pillow and murdered sleep. His malady redoubled on him and his torments increased ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... a while, the crowd, and the rumor, and stirring of troops as they fell into position, evidently wrought on him to a remarkable degree. He began to talk loud and rather haughtily, to study his gestures; there was infinite superiority and disdain in the looks he cast on the people. He attracted the attention and, I thought, the derision of those close to us, and I became rather ashamed and impatient of those ridiculous airs. Yet I could not help feeling sorry for him. The poor creature evidently ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... quivering with a hurt the more painful because she would not acknowledge it. That she should waste a moment's resentment on the conduct of a person so unimportant as poor Westy, showed her in a flash the intrinsic falseness of her position at Lynbrook. She saw that to disdain the life about her had not kept her intact from it; and the knowledge made her feel anew the need of some strong decentralizing influence, some purifying influx of emotion ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... upon his visitors came over Ira. It resulted in his addressing the empty space before his door with, "Well, ye won't ketch much if ye go on yawpin' and dawdlin' with women-folks like this;" and he was unreasonably delighted at the pretty assent of disdain and scorn which sparkled in his wife's eyes ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... consummate disdain does she condescend to give the coup-de-grace to the unhappy lingering author of the "Epistle to Arbuthnot," and "The Rape of the Lock!" These poems of the "peevish realist," shall have no place, since Mrs Margaret Fuller so determines it, in the new literature of America. We will keep ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... head leisurely over his shoulder; his eyelids went up, in haughty incredulity, so that the whites showed all round the dark pupils. He could not turn far enough to see her without moving his feet, and appearing to disdain so much trouble he addressed the old ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... daughter, long ago Apollo loved her, and did not deny His gifts,—the things that are to be to know, The tongue of sooth-saying that cannot lie, And knowledge gave he of all birds that fly 'Neath heaven; and yet his prayer did she disdain. So he his gifts confounded utterly, And sooth she saith, but ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... acknowledged to be a pretty girl; and he still wished to marry her, if not now for these reasons, still for others which were quite as potent. He wanted to be her master, to get the better of her, to punish her for her disdain of him, and to bring her to his feet. But he was not a man so carried away by anger or by a spirit of revenge as to be altogether indifferent to his own future happiness. There had already been some among his fellow-citizens, or perhaps citizenesses, kind enough to compliment him on his good-nature. ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... Sainte-Claude, Jean de Gand, who foretold the King's approaching death; and on his death-bed he again had the stern prophet summoned.[642] It was the custom of saints to speak to kings and of kings to listen to them. How could a pious prince disdain so miraculous a source of counsel? Had he done so he would have incurred ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... your page, I believe it will surprise you to receive any thing from Sylvia but scorn and disdain: but, my lord, the interest you have by a thousand ways been so long making in my heart, cannot so soon be cancelled by a minute's offence; and every action of your life has been too generous to make me think you writ what I have received, at least you are not well in your senses: I have committed ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... should like to know, you little upstart?" cried Blackall, eyeing the new-comer with great disdain. "Get out of my way, or I ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... that they are all dying to get married; because they are not. I don't say they wouldn't take an errant knight, or a buccaneer or a Hungarian refugee, but for the ordinary marriages of ordinary people they feel nothing but a pitying disdain. So it is that each one of them in due time marries an enchanted prince and goes to live in one of the little enchanted houses in the ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... will say that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honorable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honors and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... hands with a gesture of disdain. "The lower orders, my dear Evadne, are incapable of those delicate perceptions which constitute the mental atmosphere of those of finer mould. The delft does not feel the blow which would shiver the porcelain into atoms, and Reuben's ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... Somnus; pastoral in the shepherds, Tindaro, Ruffo, Alpardo, and their loves; rustic in the clown Basso, who speaks Piedmontese in shorter measure; satirical in the wanton hermit; allegorical in the figure of Disdain; romantic in the wild man of the woods and the magic herb. Thus on the whole Braida's work represents a decided retrogression in the development of pastoral; or perhaps it may be more accurate to say that it renects the tradition ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... not an exhibition of coolness such as wins applause on the stage when the hero placidly lights a cigarette before the mob which is clamouring for his death. It was, on the contrary, an exhibition of downright classic disdain, a disdain which with the highest arrogance declared itself in every glance of his eye into the faces about him. " Very good * * attack me if you like * * there is nothing to prevent it * * you mongrels." Every step of his progress was made a renewed insult to them. The very air was ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... on, there is nothing wrong in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, rather than another.' BOSWELL. 'You would not solicit employment, Sir, if you were a lawyer.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, but not because I should think it wrong, but because I should disdain it.' This was a good distinction, which will be felt by men of just pride. He proceeded: 'However, I would not have a lawyer to be wanting to himself in using fair means. I would have him to inject a little hint now and then, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Major Clare was standing on the terrace of Claremont—a stately, solidly-built old house, bearing itself with an air of conscious pride and disdain of modern frippery, despite certain significant signs of decay—when his guests arrived in formidable procession. There was something of the "old school" in his manner of welcoming them—a grace ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... older than you, I have not thrown off all feelings of self-respect, or trodden under, my feet all reserve and propriety; in one word, if I have kept some prejudices, there are a few which in my opinion ought never to be forgotten. Do not disdain, madam, the lesson which I take the liberty to teach you, as I receive in the kindest spirit the one which you have given me, most likely only for the sake of fun, but by which I promise you to profit ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... keep other people out of the society which she has just conquered, whose thoughts are wholly upon social success (which means, with her, knowing somebody who has heretofore refused to know her), who is climbing, and throwing backward looks of disdain upon those who also climb—such a woman, unfortunately too common in America, is, when she happens to have achieved a fashionable position, one of the worst instances of bad society. She may be very prominent, powerful, and influential. She may ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Mrs. Randolph, with a slight but keen expression of disdain. The child felt it, yet felt it not at all to the moving ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... in the wall? Honor and shame the ungenerous thought recall: Shall proud Polydamas* before the gate Proclaim, his counsels are obeyed too late, Which timely follow'd but the former night What numbers had been saved by Hector's flight? That wise advice rejected with disdain, I feel my folly in my people slain. Methinks my suffering country's voice I hear, But most her worthless sons insult my ear, On my rash courage charge the chance of war, And blame those virtues which they cannot share. No—if I e'er return, return I must Glorious, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... is shown later on. Because there is nothing proportionate between the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable that he who is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed, or that the unarmed man should be secure among armed servants. Because, there being in the one disdain and in the other suspicion, it is not possible for them to work well together. And therefore a prince who does not understand the art of war, over and above the other misfortunes already mentioned, cannot be respected by his soldiers, nor can he rely on ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... he knew that she loved ease and pleasure?—that he feared her anger or disdain if he did not minister ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hypocrisy. Doth such a fellow wear a mask in his own privacy, and to his own conscience? If I choose to pass over an injury, I fear 'tis not from a Christian and forgiving spirit: 'tis because I can afford to remit the debt, and disdain to ask a settlement of it. One or two sweet souls I have known in my life (and perhaps tried) to whom forgiveness is no trouble—a plant that grows naturally, as it were, in the soil. I know how to remit, I say, not forgive. I wonder are we proud ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... endeavoured after when "copying the language of Queen Anne," and succeeded in attaining, was the spirit and tone of the time. It was not pedantic philology at which he aimed, though he did not disdain occasional picturesque archaisms, such as "yatches" for "yachts," or despise the artful aid of terminal k's, long s's, and old-cut type. Consequently, as was years ago pointed out by Fitzedward Hall (whose manifest prejudice against Thackeray as a writer should not ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... behind untouched beyond a single bite. I picked up several of these fish, which, as far as I can recollect, were all mullet." Kingsley notices this. The old otter tells Tom: "We catch them, but we disdain to eat them all; we just bite out their soft throats and suck their sweet juice—oh, so good!" (and she licked her wicked lips)—"and then throw them away, and go ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... and, without scruple, grant its favours to another. But what delight can my heart feel, if it suffers severely from other pangs; if the continual weakness of a jealous prince receives my tenderness with disdain, compels me justly to give way to anger, and thus to break off all intercourse ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... thing I should affirm as certain, the whole smell and sentiment and general ideal of Socialism they detest and disdain. No part of the community is so specially fixed in those forms and feelings which are opposite to the tone of most Socialists; the privacy of homes, the control of one's own children, the minding of one's own business. I look out of my back windows over the black stretch of Battersea, and ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... contempt, and answered energetically, "Tell the magia, your sovereign, that I would rebuke him for this expression of his sentiments, and that I detest his base insinuations; that I will never consent to his wishes, and that I reject his proposal with disdain. What! shall the white men, who have come from such distant lands to visit our country, who have spent their substance amongst us, and made us presents before we had leisure to do any good for them, shall they ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... striking picture. This Zaporozhetz had stretched himself out in the road like a lion; his scalp-lock, thrown proudly behind him, extended over upwards of a foot of ground; his trousers of rich red cloth were spotted with tar, to show his utter disdain for them. Having admired to his heart's content, Bulba passed on through the narrow street, crowded with mechanics exercising their trades, and with people of all nationalities who thronged this suburb ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... calmness of disdain to you. I see that this is not the moment, but you are not wicked, strong men are not cruel! With a bad mob at their heels, these fine men of Rouen would not have dared what they ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... gifts are treated with disdain, Which gives the would-be donors pain,— We've now a name to call that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... did she say him nay? Oh no, he won the day, Could an Elliot a Russell disdain? And he's ta'en awa' his bride Frae the bonnie Teviot-side, And has left me ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... this day begins that journey is not only unknown, but unknowable to us in our present state. And therefore is it, sir, that the learned professions live. Even the worldly man, when he comes to start upon this last journey, does not disdain the sympathy and kindness of the loving, and the expressions of hopefulness that come from the good and pure. True, you may say that the learned professions are for the man who is about to die but frail supports on which to lean. The wise man as well as the ignorant man, when he fears ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... not a result, of a high grade of civilization. To have had an operation for it is one of the insignia of modern rank and culture. Our new biologic aristocracy, the "Appendix-Free," look down with gentle disdain upon their appendiciferous fellows who still bear in their bodies this troublesome mark of their lowly origin. In short, the general impression prevails that appendicitis is a new disease, a disease which has become common, or perhaps occurred at all, only within ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... the contrary, expressed the most liberal views, refuted Kollomietzev's arguments politely, though with a certain amount of disdain, and even chaffed ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... captive count he sent, While his men haste to gather in their spoils in high content. Then for my Cid Don Roderick a banquet they prepare; But little doth Count Raymond now for feast or banquet care. They bring him meat and drink, but he repels them with disdain. "No morsel will I touch," said he, "for all the wealth of Spain. Let soul and body perish now; life why should I prolong, Conquered and captive at the hands of such an ill-breeched throng?" "Nay," said my Cid; "take bread and ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... who doth disdain Flimsy safeguards raised by man, Struck a blow more swift and sure In that I was ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... Tenderness for his Mother, express'd in so delicate a Particular; his Mother's Fondness for his Father, no less exquisitely described; the great and amiable Figure of his dead Parent, drawn by a true Filial Piety; his Disdain of so unworthy a Successor to his Bed: But above all, the Shortness of the Time between his Father's Death, and his Mother's Second Marriage, brought together with so much Disorder, make up as noble a Part as any ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... the truth? They were Arabs who owed allegiance to no one but themselves, the country was wild, the law was feeble, it was twenty miles to the railroad! And, besides, the thought of confession was abhorrent. Physical injury, no matter how severe, was infinitely preferable to Helen Blake's disdain. He cast about desperately for some saving loophole, but found himself ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... parted mutually displeased with each other. Therefore when Beatrice stopped him in the middle of his discourse with telling him nobody marked what he was saying, Benedick, affecting not to have observed before that she was present, said: 'What, my dear lady Disdain, are you yet living?' And now war broke out afresh between them, and a long jangling argument ensued, during which Beatrice, although she knew he had so well approved his velour in the late war, said that ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and vain, Who held his equals in disdain, One day some beauteous feathers found, Left by a peacock on the ground. When in the gaudy plumage dress'd, The shallow thing his fortune bless'd; With stately gesture strode along, And boldly join'd the peacock throng; Who, his impertinence to pay, First ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... proofs of a fidelity which had never wavered, and which ought never to have been questioned by that house. "And if we meet no more, or only as strangers in this world," Mr. Esmond concluded, "a sentence against the cruelty and injustice of which I disdain to appeal; hereafter she will know who was faithful to her, and whether she had any cause to suspect the love and devotion of her ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... She turned away, and was at once surrounded by a laughing throng that crowded about the train. Two brown-robed Sisters stood like sentinels, one at either side, as she stepped into the car. I was conscious of a feeling that from the depths of their hoods they regarded me with un-Christian disdain. Through the windows I could see the students fluttering to seats, and the girl in gray seemed to be marshaling them. The gray hat appeared at a window for an instant, and a smiling face gladdened, I am sure, the ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... if I loved another man, I should pretend to go on loving my husband, or be afraid to tell him or all the world? But this woman is not made that way. She governs men by cheating them; and (with disdain) they like it, and let her govern them. (She sits down again, ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... compatriots, maintenance and a place of refuge in their colonies? Had they no feeling for the advantages of Roman culture, as, for example, for the better organization of their armies, in which even an Arminius did not disdain to learn the trade of war? None of all these ignorances or negligences is to be charged against them. Their descendents even adopted the culture of the Romans as soon as they could do it without loss of their ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... commonplace mascot. Soldiers and sailors, and marines too, must have a mascot. A cat, a dog, a goat, a parrot, a monkey, a pig, a lion cub, or a bear are among the commonest and most popular of mascots. Therefore the marines would usually disdain any one of these. If any of them should happen to be accepted as a mascot, there would be some wonderful story to explain why it was the most remarkable monkey, goat, or lion cub that ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... scepticism, and their at times somewhat excessive egoism, display profound alarm at this new power which they see growing; and to combat the disorder in men's minds they are addressing despairing appeals to those moral forces of the Church for which they formerly professed so much disdain. They talk to us of the bankruptcy of science, go back in penitence to Rome, and remind us of the teachings of revealed truth. These new converts forget that it is too late. Had they been really touched by grace, a like operation could not ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... tenderness and humanity, they may come forth, without charge of presumption, or forfeiture of delicacy. Exertions here may be universal, without rivality or impropriety; the head may work, the hand may labour; the heart may suggest, indiscriminately in all, in men without disdain, in women without a blush: and however truly of the latter to withdraw from notice may be in general the first praise, in a service such as this, they may with yet more dignity come forward: for it is here that their purest principles, in union with their softest feelings, may blend immediate ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... the effect of a well-chosen motive! Perhaps the historian may be blamed for dwelling on such trivial anecdotes; yet a lady, who was accustomed to the conversation of deep philosophers and polished courtiers, listened without disdain to these simple annals. Nothing appeared to her a trifle that could tend to form the habits of temper, truth, honesty, order, and industry: habits which are to be early induced, not by solemn precepts, but by practical lessons. A few more examples of these shall be recorded, ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... arrows: accustomed to being shot at, and tolerably accustomed to protect herself without making scenes in the world, or rejecting the advantageous establishments offered to her with any loud expressions of disdain. The Honourable George, therefore, had been permitted to say soft things very much as a ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... hand impatiently across his vision. His persistent indifference, the inhibition that held him in a contemptuous isolation, again possessed him, Howat, a black Penny. A last trace of his emotion, caught in the flood of his paramount disdain, vanished like a breath of warm mist. He entered the house and mounted to his room; the stairs creaked but that was the only sound audible within. His candles burned without their protecting glasses in smooth, unwavering flames. When they were extinguished the darkness ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... common and vulgar and all-surfeiting it is, loading the air around it with its sickening imitation of sweetness, so that even the bees stagger as they pass through it and disdain to stop and shovel, for the mere asking, its ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... nourishment of its inhabitants; but it would be incapable of doing it, was it uncultivated. Every nation is then obliged by the law of nature to cultivate the ground that has fallen to its share. Those people, like the ancient Germans and modern Tartars, who, having fertile countries, disdain to cultivate the earth, and choose to live by rapine, are wanting to themselves, and deserve to be exterminated as savage and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... so. For if he were now solving decimals and square root he would be but a cog and not the great wheel itself. He has grown beyond his arithmetic as he has grown beyond his boyhood warts and freckles, for the larger life has absorbed them. Yet he feels no disdain either for freckles or arithmetic, but regards them as gracious incidents of youth and growth. He cannot read his Latin as he once could, but he does not grieve; for he knows it has not been lost but, in changed form, is enshrined ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... There is no hope to 'scape us: If that against the odds we have upon you You dare come forth, and fight, receive the honour To dye like Romans, if ye faint, resolve To starve like Wretches; I disdain to change Another syllable ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... cajole poor innocent customers into buying the kind of book I think they ought to buy. When I see the helpless pathos of most of them, who drift into a bookstore without the slightest idea of what they want or what is worth reading, I would disdain to take advantage of their frailty. They are absolutely at the mercy of the salesman. They will buy whatever he tells them to. Now the honourable man, the high-minded man (by which I mean myself) is too proud to ram some ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... confounded the books he carried with him, as he did the days of the week.' Seized with the disgust with which the young and generous usually regard the vices of advanced life, Alan, having turned the leaves of the book over in hasty disdain, flung it from him, as far as he could, into the sea. He then had recourse to the Sallust, which he had at first sought for in vain. As he opened the book, Nanty Ewart, who had been looking over his shoulder, made ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... a regular trump, it seems, and quite amazed our electricians, during her visit to the big ship, by her intelligent comprehension of all they explained to her. She is an accomplished equestrian, and dresses as a native princess, with a huge ornament in her nose, but does not disdain to mingle with English ladies in the Bombay Rotten Row, ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... a rigid silence, and went through the steps of the quadrille without so much as a look at the talker, Ratman was sober enough to be annoyed at this chilly disdain. ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... to know," rejoined Harry with disdain, "if she has not been practising them for twenty years? She flirted with Jack and Floyd here when they used to buy her a penny's worth of peppermint, before they were out of petticoats themselves. I dare say she made eyes at old Lenox when he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... writing, terse, perspicuous, full of important facts and weighty reasons, compressed into the smallest possible number of words. In those despatches he sometimes alluded, not angrily, but with calm disdain, to the censures thrown upon his conduct by shallow babblers, who, never having seen any military operation more important than the relieving of the guard at Whitehall, imagined that the easiest thing in the world was to gain great ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his lips, made his suspicions seem brutal, preposterous, ridiculous. There was much feeling in her voice; he was astonished and awed at the change in her; he had not seen her like this before. Her reserve was gone, the disdain with it; there was naked sincerity in her glowing eyes, in her words, in her manner. He watched her, ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the air is calm, the sky serene, Though wide the broad and leafy arms are spread, Yet still the scars of recent wounds are seen; Their shelter henceforth seems but insecure; The winged tribes disdain the frequent lure, Where many a songster lies benumb'd or dead; And when I would the flow'ry tendrils train, I find my late delightful ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... the suggestion. He knew very well the great difference between him and his humble friend, both as regarded worldly position and intellectual attainments. But, nevertheless, there was a strain of wisdom in Poppins' remarks which, though it appertained wholly to matters of low import, he did not disdain to use. It was true that Maryanne Brown still frequented the Hall of Harmony, and went there quite as often without her betrothed as with him. It was true that Mr. Brown had adopted a habit of using the money of the firm, without rendering a fair account of the purpose to which he applied ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... journey. At first Mrs. Lincoln wept bitterly for if Rose went to Glenwood, she, too, must of course go and the old brown house, with its oaken floor and wainscoted ceiling, had now no charms for the gay woman of fashion who turned with disdain from the humble roof which ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... Ninon! thy sweet life flies! Wasted in hours day follows day. The rose to-night to-morrow dies: Wilt thou disdain to love alway? How canst thou live unconscious of Love's fire, Immune ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... to Oxford. His life there was as lonely as it had been at school. The dirty, untidy, ink-stained, and chemical-stained little boy grew up into a tall, lank, slovenly-dressed man, who kept entirely to himself, not because he cherished any dislike or disdain for his fellow-creatures, but because he seemed to be entirely absorbed in his own thoughts and isolated from the world by a ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... France at William's death was proportionate to the grief it created in Holland; and the arrogant confidence of Louis seemed to know no bounds. "I will punish these audacious merchants," said he, with an air of disdain, when he read the manifesto of Holland; not foreseeing that those he affected to despise so much would, ere long, command in a great measure the destinies of his crown. Queen Anne entered upon the war with masculine intrepidity, and maintained ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... my blessings, half my gain, I needs must thank my trusty foe; Despite his envy and disdain, He serves ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... her red lips closed in a tight line, and her little pointed face was as the face of a wicked sprite. Eunice stood, surveying her. Tall, stately, beautiful, she towered above her guest, and looked down on her with a fine disdain. ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... Byron, when he pleases, defies competition and surpasses all his contemporaries. Whatever he does, he must do in a more decided and daring manner than any one else—he lounges with extravagance, and yawns so as to alarm the reader! Self-will, passion, the love of singularity, a disdain of himself and of others (with a conscious sense that this is among the ways and means of procuring admiration) are the proper categories of his mind: he is a lordly writer, is above his own reputation, and condescends to the Muses with ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... "I disdain vulgar interruption and idle clamour," returned the other in a similar vein. "But, to proceed. The group consists of the larger island of Tristan and two smaller islands—Inaccessible Island, some eighteen miles to the south-west, and Nightingale Island, twenty miles to the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... support of a Papal army of mercenaries. That fact, my young friend, as much as any other circumstance, has made me, as a patriotic Englishman, feel not only a repugnance for their scheme, but a hatred and disdain of principles which can so blind their eyes, and induce them thus to act. Should the plot be successful, one of the first things which Alva would do would be to make a descent on the English coast; thus, as he would hope, preventing the English from ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... the last century, and in our own land, matrimony has been so much esteemed, notably by women, that it has come to be regarded as in some sort discreditable for them to remain single. Old maids are mentioned on every hand with mingled pity and disdain, arising no doubt from the belief, conscious or unconscious, that they would not be what they are if they could help it. Few persons have a good word for them as a class. We are constantly hearing of lovely maidens, charming wives, buxom widows, but almost never of attractive ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... Adams and Trumbull; and, Trumbull not developing very strong, Bowles, Halstead and I, even White, began to be sure of Adams on the first ballot; Adams the indifferent, who had sailed away for Europe, observing that he was not a candidate for the nomination and otherwise intimating his disdain of us ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... fine dignity. The touch of disdain in his slight smile marked his sense of the difference between them. He was again his composed ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... own estimation, was highly civilised, and posed haughtily before her uncultured cousins. Looking across to the mainland beach one day, she said—"Whiteman walk about over there, longa beach." Then, gazing more fixedly, and with all possible disdain in her ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... could see that not by my young companions alone, but by every one of the four teachers, I was looked upon as a harmless little girl whose mother knew nothing about the fashionable world. I do not think that anything in my manner showed either my pique or my disdain; I believe I went out of doors just as usual; but these things were often in my thoughts, and taking by degrees more ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... distinction; and these were rendered even more emphatic by the growth of a black mustache which he had trained with care. The ends of it were waxed and drawn finely to a point. His finger nails and his skin, his hair and his mustache showed that the young chemist did not disdain the use of the cosmetics that lay so ready to ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... been described as showing a lofty independence, which makes him disdain to feed on anything that is not slain by his own strength. But Alexander Wilson, the great naturalist, says that he has seen an eagle feasting on the carcass of a horse. The eagle lives to a great age. One at Vienna ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... committed a crime," cried she in disdain, and then, catching her skirts up, she broke into a step dance, ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... he saw that the flame of liberty was in his heart, her sword in his hand, and the disdain of death stamped on his brow. He felt that Belton was the morning star which told by its presence that ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... face had not much variety of expression. A look of thoughtfulness was given by the compression of the mouth and the indentations of the brow (suggesting an habitual conflict with, and mastery over, passion), which did not seem so much to disdain a sympathy with trivialities as to be incapable of denoting them. Nor had his voice, so far as I could discover in our quiet talk, much change or richness of intonation, but he always spoke with earnestness, ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... in which the Bourse-countess did not fail to hear the ring of the real aristocrat's disdain, touched her in her tenderest point. She tried to smile, but turned livid under her paint, and determined to return the stab on ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... I did not disdain to avail myself of the extra "shaft" which the kind-hearted Garey had sunk for my accommodation; and having placed myself by its side, and drawn the ample robe over my shoulders, I felt as warm as if seated in ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... that mounting," he said, gently. "It's what we call a man's ring. This is the kind women usually wear." He held up a thin platinum band of delicate workmanship which Allegheny examined with frank disdain. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... ways of peace and justice the footsteps of those who looked towards them. He did more: he caused the lives of those his servants whom he sanctified and almost glorified in this world, to be recorded by their followers; and his own Spirit did not disdain to inspire the men who executed a work so salutary to mankind. From Adam to Noe, from Noe to Abraham, from Abraham to the days of Christ, what period is not marked by the life of some eminent saint; and what portion of the Old Testament ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... dupe. All the treaties he makes are forced from him by violence or cunning. Feeble women throw him down: Margaret crushes his head with her feet, and Juliana beats him with her chain. From all this a serenity disengages itself, a disdain of evil, since it is powerless, and a certainty of good, since virtue triumphs. It is only necessary to cross one's self, and the Devil can do no harm, but yells and disappears, while the ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... the land behind the church for their cemetery, and it joined the wall of the Cure's garden. When the women went out into the fields to plant the crops, Marie Louise used to slip away from the others and meet her Bavarian in the forest. The girls were sure of it now; and they treated her with disdain. But nobody was brave enough to say anything to the Cure. One day, when she was with her Bavarian in the wood, she snatched up his revolver from the ground and shot herself. She was a Frenchwoman ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... was feeble from extreme age. The two peacocks, magnificent, proud, cold-hearted, resenting all familiarity, he served with the timorous, apologetic affection of a queen's lady-in-waiting, resigned to their disdain, happy if only they condescended to enjoy the grain ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... on earnest business bent Their murmuring labours ply 'Gainst graver hours, that bring constraint To sweeten liberty: Some bold adventurers disdain The limits of their little reign, And unknown regions dare descry: Still as they run they look behind, They hear a voice in every wind, And snatch a ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... of all the lovely creature was saying, I was truly in a most deplorable situation. Again and again she begged me, if there was a spark of French chivalry left in my nature, not to respond to her appeals by such a look of unutterable disdain. She was thrillingly beautiful; and beauty in tears is enough to melt the hardest heart that ever was put in the breast of man. I could feel her balmy breath upon my face, and the warmth of her delicate hand in mine, as she struggled to arouse me; and I declare it is ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Have seen her seated by his side,— Have seen the infant, which she bore, Wear the sweet smile the mother wore, When she and I in youth have smiled, As fond and faultless as her child;— Have seen her eyes, in cold disdain, Ask if I felt no secret pain; And I have acted well my part, And made my cheek belie my heart, Returned the freezing glance she gave, Yet felt the while that woman's slave;— Have kissed, as if without design, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... mores is needed. The modern historians turn with some disdain away from the wars, intrigues, and royal marriages which the old-fashioned historians considered their chief interest, and many of them have undertaken to write the history of the "people." Evidently they have perceived that what is wanted is a history of the mores. If they ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... She wrinkled her nose. Then she flushed, conscious that he was a bit surprised at her tone of disdain. "Why, he will wear a frock-coat and a flower in the buttonhole and will bow in my customers. You didn't think my young man was a ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... girl had come to "seven times" in the tables. She had studied an hour, when Betty said they had better go and get back by dark. Jamie boy gave a little "snicker" as she shut her book. The disdain of her young compeer was quite hard to bear, but she meekly accepted the fact that she "wasn't smart." If she had known how he longed to go with them, she would have felt quite even, but ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... pleasure, amusement, and delight. We accordingly sat off the next day for Martorel, and went to the Three Kings, where our Italian host, whose extortions I had complained of before, received us with a face of the utmost disdain; and though he had no company in his house, put us into much worse apartments than those we had been in before. I ordered something for supper, and left it to him, as he had given us a very good one before; but he was not only determined to punish us in lodging, but in eating also, and sent only ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... irritated and piqued the engineer. The relative inferiority which it proved was of a nature to wound a haughty spirit. A generosity evinced in such a manner as to elude all tokens of gratitude, implied a sort of disdain for those on whom the obligation was conferred, which in Cyrus Harding's eyes marred, in some degree, ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... to a man who, in traversing Greece and Italy, should think of nothing but contradicting Homer and Virgil? Such, however, is the course adopted by too many modern travellers; evidently the effect of our vanity, which would excite a high idea of our own abilities, and at the same time fill us with disdain for those of ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... specifications, and blue-prints that have been devised and designed by others; the artist imbues his work with imagination. The artisan works by the day—so much money for so many hours' work with pay day as his large objective; the artist does not disdain pay day, but he has an objective beyond this and has other sources of pleasure besides the pay envelope. The artisan thinks and talks of pay day; the artist thinks and talks of his work. The artisan drops his ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson |
