"Narrow-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tavern,—sometimes good, often a "scandalous hog-sty," where travellers were devoured by fleas, and every one slept and ate in one room,[18]—a small log school-house, and a little church, presided over by a hard-featured Presbyterian preacher, gloomy, earnest, and zealous, probably bigoted and narrow-minded, but nevertheless a great power ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... times, and the low state of the royal treasury, rendered any new expedition highly inexpedient. They intimated also that Columbus ought not to be employed, until his good conduct in Hispaniola was satisfactorily established by letters from Ovando. These narrow-minded suggestions failed in their aim: Isabella had implicit confidence in the integrity of Columbus. As to the expense, she felt that while furnishing so powerful a fleet and splendid retinue to Ovando, to take possession of his government, it would be ungenerous ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... France, but visited Quebec in 1617 and 1618. During the years spent at Quebec, which followed his explorations of 1616, he was greatly impeded in his work of consolidating Canada as a French colony by the religious strife between the Catholics and Huguenots, and the narrow-minded greed of the Chartered company of fur-trading merchants for whom he worked. But in 1620 he came back to Canada as Lieutenant-Governor (bringing his wife with him), and after attending to the settlement of a violent commercial dispute between fur-trading ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... State" set itself to Magyarize education and every feature of public life. Any protest was treated as "incitement against the Magyar State Idea" and was made punishable by two years' imprisonment. It was as though a narrow-minded English Administration should set itself to obliterate all traces of Scottish, Welsh, and Irish national feeling; or as though the Government of India should ignore the existence of all save one race and language in our ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... I like that! It's against the law of this narrow-minded country for a woman to have two husbands. You're a magistrate and ought to know. Don't call names, and do keep your temper—violent language is unbecoming a gentleman and a baronet. Inez, what does he mean by ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... country at the moment of its utmost peril. "The men who oppose a strong and energetic government," wrote Washington to Hamilton on July 10, 1787, the day of Yates' and Lansing's retirement from the Philadelphia convention, "are, in my opinion, narrow-minded politicians, or are under the influence of local views." This reference to "local views" meant George Clinton, upon whose advice Yates and Lansing acted, and who declared unreservedly that only confusion could come to the country from a convention and a measure wholly unnecessary, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... more aspiring, less sensuous art which belongs to Western civilisation may bear many a change and not die utterly; nay, may feed on its intellect alone for a season, and enduring the martyrdom of a grim time of ugliness, may live on, rebuking at once the narrow-minded pedant of science, and the luxurious tyrant of plutocracy, till change bring back the spring again, and it blossoms once more into pleasure. May it ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... These were the philosophical party; they denied the doctrine of the resurrection, because it was absurd to suppose that the scattered atoms of the dead body could ever be united again. The third party took the name of Peter, or Cephas, as in their Hebrew purism they preferred to call him. These were narrow-minded Jews, who objected to the liberality of Paul's views. The fourth party affected to be above all parties and called themselves simply Christians. Like many despisers of the sects since then, who have used the name of Christian in the same way, these were the most bitterly ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... pleasure," but "as a spouse for generation, fruit and comfort," and—leaving entirely out of view his isolated acknowledgments of the inherent value of knowledge—he conceives its utility wholly in the comprehensive and noble sense that the pursuit of science, from which as such all narrow-minded regard for direct practical application must keep aloof, is the most important lever for the advancement of ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... provision for the welfare of the human family through slavery in our land, and, in doing it, had shown mercy and salvation to so many hundreds of thousands of Africans, she thought it both ungrateful and narrow-minded in people anywhere to confine all their thoughts to the incidental evils of the slaves. She said that in the North she was not an abolitionist, but on coming to the South and finding things so different from ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... din of all these carmagnoles and corobberies was not the only burden that lay on sane people during the war. There was also the emotional strain, complicated by the offended economic sense, produced by the casualty lists. The stupid, the selfish, the narrow-minded, the callous and unimaginative were spared a great deal. "Blood and destruction shall be so in use that mothers shall but smile when they behold their infantes quartered by the hands of war," was a Shakespearean prophecy that very nearly came true; for when nearly every house had a slaughtered ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... in several scattered scores of public-houses, had most unaccountably knocked the bottom out of the Putney system of practical philosophy. Putney posters were now merely disgusting, Putney trade gross and futile, the tobacconist a narrow-minded and stupid bourgeois; ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... For you are starving her soul, Rudolph, just as Anne has starved mine. And now, at last, when Patricia and I have seen our single chance of happiness, we cannot—no! we cannot and we will not—defer to any outworn tradition or to fear of Mrs. Grundy's narrow-minded prattle!" ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... makes a target of his grandfather's gravestone, and fires away, with great self-applause. People in general seem to like to show that they are well-born, and come of good stock; but the young New-Englanders, many of them, appear to take pleasure in insisting that they came of a race of narrow-minded, persecuting bigots. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... a cover gives the narrow-minded non-Science Fiction reader an idea that "our" mag contains trash. I refer to such covers as those on the August, September, October, 1930, issues, and the March, April, and especially May, 1931, issues. These people's opinions reflect rather harshly on the faithful A. S. Readers. Can't ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... creature had heard enough of nursery strains to render it deaf to the beauties of softer melody. The language with which he concludes his remarks is as unjust as it is uncalled for, and such as none but an illiberal and narrow-minded observer would, choose to apply to so beautiful a creature.[4] Even the cat[5] (the most ravenous domestic animal we have,) has been known, when confined, to permit mice to pass unmolested through the cage in which it was imprisoned; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... are here two attributive clauses: "which men call Earth" and "(in which) men strive," etc. low-thoughted care; narrow-minded anxiety, care about earthly things. Comp. the form of the adjective 'low-browed,' L'Alleg. 8: both epithets are borrowed by Pope in ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... themselves, and need a scientific monitor of unquestionable authority, has long been recognized. The Catholic confessional is a recognition and application of the principles of great value. But the confessional of the narrow-minded and miseducated priest should be superseded by the confessional and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... member of the City Council. She remembered that some time ago, three or four years back at least, some disagreeable person had expressed indignation that an ex-German, one only just naturalised, should be elected to such a body. She had thought the speaker narrow-minded and ill-natured. An infusion of German thoroughness and thrift would do the City Council good, and perhaps ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... on the subject of the White House and its precincts, because we took occasion, in a former work, to berate the narrow-minded parsimony which left the grounds of the White House in a condition that was discreditable to the republic. How far our philippic may have hastened the improvements which have been made, is more than we shall pretend to say, but having made the former strictures, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... subject must be introduced which will be distasteful to a large number of archaeologists. I refer to the narrow-minded policy of the curators of certain European and American museums, whose desire it is at all costs to place Egyptian and other eastern antiquities actually before the eyes of western students, in order that they ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... as showing that, strict Conservative though he was, he was not in religious matters narrow-minded; he held his own opinions strongly, but he would never condemn those of other people. He saw "good in everything," and there was but little exaggeration, be it said in all reverence, in the phrase which an old friend of his used in speaking ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... was arranged, when the bridegroom and the bride were actually waiting in the chapel, when every minute was of importance and might bring some fatal interruption—now, here was the excellent old Cure full of curious questions and narrow-minded objections. ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... in diameter. Says that communications between Planets of our Solar System and our Earth will soon be realized, and that the initial Message will be from Mars. It will herald a New Era for the people of Earth, and will break down our narrow-minded Theology. ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... boy with the sunny curls, who was to be raised a gentleman and to be "shielded from the vulgar surroundings and coarse associations of her husband's youth," and he was proud popper's pet, whose good times weren't going to be spoiled by a narrow-minded old brute of a father, or whose talents weren't going to be smothered in poverty, the way the old man's had been. No, sir-ee, Percy was going to have all the money he wanted, with the whisky bottle always in sight on the sideboard ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... that the art that he preferred was a kind of brilliant impressionism. He did not care much about the truth of it to life; the desirable quality seemed to him to be a sort of arresting daring of statement. He was not a narrow-minded man at all; he had read a great many books, both old and new, but he valued specious qualities above everything, and books which seemed to me to be like the crackling of thorns under a pot seemed to him to be the glowing ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... obtain the like again. Her doubtful character, her capacious mind, her unmethodical manners, were still badly suited to the nice precision of a country housewife; and as the prudent mistress of a family sneered at her pretensions, she, in her turn, scorned the narrow-minded ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... his boys with talk of animals, birds, and flowers, implanting in their minds a love of the open and a study of field geology which has since stood them in excellent stead. I like to picture this learned professor, who was attacked by the narrow-minded Hebraists of his day for showing, as one obituary notice remarked, that the progress of modern scientific discovery, although necessitating modifications in many of the still prevailing ideas with which the Christian religion ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... yet had been the fool of a narrow-minded, disgruntled superior, and showed it by losing his temper? None. The name of McTavish rang down the hall of the Hudson Bay Company's history like a bugle. Three generations of them had served this fearful master—he was the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... of transubstantiation. This Act was, of course, regarded as a serious grievance by the Dissenters of all denominations. Some few eminent Churchmen, like Dr. Hoadley, Bishop of Winchester, had always been opposed to the narrow-minded policy of the Act. Hoadley, indeed, had made himself a sort of leader of the dissenting communities on this subject. For that and other reasons he had been described as the greatest Dissenter who ever wore a mitre. When the report ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... men of generous instincts, a quick sense of that which is pure and true, and a genuine love of mankind. They dwelt upon their idea—they lived upon it for a few years—and then they "showed their keeping." If I should wish to find a narrow-minded, uncharitable, bigoted soul, in the smallest possible space of time, I would look among those who have made temperance the specialty of their lives—not because temperance is bad, but because one idea ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... The cruel preachers of such a creed have much to answer for. The murderer who destroys human life for wicked passion and wantonness is less criminal than the proudly learned, yet egotistical, and therefore densely ignorant scientist, who, seeking to crush the soul by his feeble, narrow-minded arguments, and deny its imperishable nature, dares to spread his poisonous and corroding doctrines of despair through the world, draining existence of all its brightness, and striving to erect barriers of distrust between the creature and the Creator. ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... conduct did not square with his conventional shibboleths. Martin Luther was a child of his time also as a boon companion. The freedom of his living in the years following his rupture with Rome was the subject of severe animadversions on the part of the noble, but in this respect narrow-minded, Thomas Muenzer, who, in his open letter addressed to the "Soft-living flesh of Wittenberg," scathingly denounces ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... fine!" continued Miss Day, "but if five pounds are lost out of your purse, some one has taken them! Some one, therefore, whether servant or student, is a thief. I am not narrow-minded or prudish, but I confess I draw the ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... and exhausted veins, To demons, by his holiness ordain'd To propagate the gospel—penn'd at Rome; Hawk'd through the world by consecrated bulls; And how illustrated?—by Smithfleld flames: Who plunge (but not like Curtius) down the gulf, Down narrow-minded self's voracious gulf, Which gapes and swallows all they swore to save: Hate all that lifted heroes into gods, And hug the horrors of a victor's chain: Of bodies politic that destin'd hell, Inflicted here, since here their beings end; And fall ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... alone, that conduct which can never be palliated may at least be comprehended. It was Philip's enthusiasm to embody the wrath of God against heretics. It was Alva's enthusiasm to embody the wrath of Philip. Narrow-minded, isolated, seeing only that section of the world which was visible through the loop-hole of the fortress in which Nature had imprisoned him for life, placing his glory in unconditional obedience to his superior, questioning nothing, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... music and fancy work she might get "a place as governess in some family where the want of a knowledge of French would be no objection." But, unhappily, good dame Herschel, like many other uneducated and narrow-minded persons, had a strange dread of too much knowledge. She thought that "nothing further was needed," says Carolina, "than to send me two or three months to a sempstress to be taught to make household linen; so all that my father could do was to indulge me sometimes ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... necessarily obliged, in my own interests, to keep my experiments secret, and to impose similar discretion on the workmen whom I employ. This unavoidable appearance of mystery, and the strictly retired life which my studies compel me to lead, offend the narrow-minded people in my part of the county, close to Barkingham; and the unpopularity of my pursuits has followed me here. The general opinion, I believe, is, that I am seeking by unholy arts for the philosopher's stone. Plain man, as you see me, I find myself getting quite the reputation of a Doctor ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... worst American vulgarity would not send Giordano Bruno to the stake or persecute Galileo. We have no right to be very fastidious. In the past we were never more than tolerated. This tolerance, if nothing more, we are assured of in the future. A narrow-minded, democratic regime is often, as we know, very troublesome. But for all that men of intelligence find that they can live in America, as long as they are not too exacting. Noli me tangere is the most one can ask for from democracy. We shall pass through several alternatives ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... two dissipated ideals. One, named "Liddy," "a narrow-minded soul, a simple maiden from innocent Eutopia; she cannot grasp an idea." And yet she was very beautiful, and if she were "petrified," every critic would pronounce her perfection. The boy sighs with that well-known ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... other leading geologists, have been accused of overturning revelation with regard to the constitution and history of the earth. Indeed, there has scarcely been a discovery in astronomy, in natural history, or in physical science, that has not been attacked by the bigoted and narrow-minded as leading ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... not the Americans he represented as a people at once honest and narrow-minded. If they are still far from our level—and this must necessarily be true, in an artistic and literary point of view—we are not, however, at liberty to despise a country which counts such names as Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emerson, Cooper, Poe, ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... subject is a very good one. I would not lose the point that narrow-minded fanatics, who decry the theatre and defame its artists, are absolutely the advocates of depraved and barbarous amusements. For wherever a good drama and a well-regulated theatre decline, some distorted form of theatrical entertainment will ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... rankle in the spirit unless they be brushed away by the quick, firm touch of the great world. Kleinstaedtisches Leben, despite its many advantages, fails to develop the burgher in every direction. It leaves him one-sided, if not exactly narrow-minded. Professor C.K. Adams, in his admirable essay upon "State Universities,"[1] has touched upon this point with reference to studies. His words should be carefully weighed: "If the best education consisted simply of making perfect recitations and keeping out of mischief, the smallest college would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... fond of her. It was no secret that even her uncle's wife, worthy Neforis, did not care for her haughty niece and only suffered her to please the invalid. And what business had a Melchite at Memphis, under the roof of a good Jacobite? Every word the dragoman spoke breathed the scorn which a mean and narrow-minded man is always ready to heap on those who share the kindness of his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the cause of emancipation, but it was purely a question of policy with him. He cared nothing about human rights. His dark and cruel nature was unsusceptible of a noble or generous impulse. While he preached liberal generalities, he ruled his subjects with an iron rod. He was bigoted, narrow-minded, and brutal. The sense of right was not in his nature. His ambition was to be an object of heathenish idolatry to his subjects—whether as a god or devil it mattered nothing; fear was the only incense ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Lukewarm, or against Public Schools. Men considered as: 1. Belonging to the old aristocratic class. 2. The conservatives of society. 3. Politicians of small vision. 4. Residents of rural districts. 5. The ignorant, narrow-minded, and penurious. 6. Taxpayers. 7. Lutherans, Reformed-Church, Mennonites, and Quakers. 8. Southern men. 9. Proprietors of private schools. 10. The ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... has points of interest, but a rich man dead is only interesting to his heirs. Also, this Brant was one of these narrow-minded, fanatical, New Religion fellows who were so wearisome to men of intellect and refinement. True, he, Adrian, was himself of that community, for circumstances had driven him into the herd, but oh! he found them a dreary set. ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... that you should go to these Exmoor people, or that you should take a mastership, get rooms somewhere, and let him live with you? He's not very happy with your mother, you say. Wouldn't he be happier with you? What think you? Charity begins at home, you know: a good proverb—a good, sound, sensible, narrow-minded, practical English proverb!' ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... Crofts bores them and won't get them through. This place rather gets on my nerves now. The Dons don't confide in me, and I don't see things from their angle, as my father says. I think you somehow managed to keep them reasonable; they are narrow-minded men, ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... my academical career. He who does not allow that it passed creditably to my teachers, profitably to myself, and beneficially to the world, is a narrow-minded and illiterate man, who knows nothing of the advantages ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... word, they were not sincere people whom it would be safe to trust. The entirely local patriotism of the classical Greek authors further annoyed this Roman citizen who was used to regard the world as his country: he thought them very narrow-minded to take so much interest in the history of some little town. As for him, he looked higher and farther. It must be remembered that in the second half of the fourth century the Greek attitude, broadened and fully conscious of itself, set itself more ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... me anxious to discover the owner of the ruby ring! The friendly but narrow-minded imp I have spoken of composed speeches, with which I might assail her, should she be found. I looked in vain at every women present; there was not a sorrowful or guilty face among them. Another feeling took the place of my curiosity. I forgot the woman I was seeking, to remember ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... heard all, and I think Mr. Shine is a well intentioned man whose faith, such as it is, is honest; but he is ignorant, coarse-fibred, and narrow-minded. He is doing right according to his own poor, dim light, and could not be convinced otherwise by any word or act of ours; but his preachings can do me no injury. They do not irritate me in the least—indeed, I am not sure that ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... time when experience had shown the realization of his fears to be inevitable, and when he himself had so far bent as to study the literature he despised, the long and active public life of Cato is in complete harmony. He is the perfect type of an old Roman. Hard, shrewd, niggardly, and narrow-minded, he was honest to the core, unsparing of himself as of others, scorning every kind of luxury, and of inflexible moral rectitude. He had no respect for birth, rank, fortune, or talent; his praise was bestowed solely on personal merit. He himself belonged to an ancient and ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... and made a confidant of his wife, who, deeply troubled, told Panine the fears his friends entertained on his account. The Prince smiled disdainfully, saying these fears were the effect of plebeian timidity. The mistress understood nothing of great speculations, and Cayrol was a narrow-minded banker! He knew what he was doing. The results of his speculations were mathematical. So far they had not disappointed his hopes. The great Universal Credit Company, of which he was going to be a director, would bring him in such an immense fortune ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... the fallacy of some of his theories and the inconsistency of his practice. But whilst keenly observant of some of the failings of his friends, he reproduces others in even an exaggerated type. He shows to the full their narrow-minded hatred of the preceding century, of all forms of excellence which did not correspond to their favourite types, and of all speculation which did not lead to, or start from their characteristic doctrines. The error is fully pardonable. We must not look to men who are leading a revolt against established ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... wanderings, she would have been instantly tripped up by her audience. But Queen Mab was too skilful a story-teller to leave out the minutest detail in describing the perilous voyage of the paper boat, or to spare the duckling a single snub from the narrow-minded hen or the bumptious tom-cat. The "Tin Soldier" she generally gave in answer to the special request of her small nephew, but she herself seemed to prefer the other story. There, the duckling's sorrowful wanderings finished ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... this figure is the most revolting mistake of the spirit and meaning of Bacchus. It looks drunken, brutal, and narrow-minded, and has an expression of dissoluteness the most revolting. The lower part of the figure is stiff, and the manner in which the shoulders are united to the breast, and the neck to the head, abundantly inharmonious. It is altogether without unity, as was the ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... greatest of human qualities in friendship. It is the least dispensable quality. We come back to it with relief from more brilliant qualities. And it has the great advantage of always going with a broad mind. Narrow-minded people are never kind-hearted. You may be inclined to dispute this statement: please think it over; I am inclined ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... narrow-minded and penuriously pretentious, which was the main factor of Cullerne life, he possessed considerable influence and authority. Among his immediate surroundings a word from Churchwarden Joliffe carried more weight than an outsider would have imagined, and long usage had credited him with the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... than any one legislative act, sanctioned by the Home Government, since the acquisition (if so it can he called) of the country. It is an indelible disgrace to England, that such a manifestly bigoted and narrow-minded policy should have been allowed to continue so long; and I am fully persuaded that this enactment, which, there is little doubt, originated in sectarianism, perpetuates a degree of rancorous feeling in the minds of people there, that is sufficient to account for the disaffection ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... agreed Eva; but on the way home she observed to her friend Amy, 'Those two Wharton girls are as narrow-minded as possible, and I am going to have a proper suite in my room, whatever they say; I should never feel comfortable unless I had looked at myself in a long glass before ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... remarked in reference to the Tower close by, that it was the dower of the Lady Blanche, the daughter of John O'Gaunt, who, although occupying so eminently marked a place in history, was a man so narrow-minded that he would not allow any of his vassals to receive the least education as he held that it unfitted them for the duties of their station, and gave them ideas far above their lot in life. A curious speculation was hazarded by one of my friend's that as Water-street ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... at length arrived. Clerval spent the last evening with us. He had endeavoured to persuade his father to permit him to accompany me and to become my fellow student, but in vain. His father was a narrow-minded trader and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son. Henry deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education. He said little, but when he spoke I read in his kindling eye and in his animated glance a restrained but firm resolve not to be ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... grandmother's interest regularly, but were not pleasant people to speak to. They had been part owners with her father in the Dolphin, the ship in which he had been wrecked. Having neglected to insure her they had lost a good deal of money by the circumstance, and being especially narrow-minded entertained an ill feeling even for poor Jessie herself, which they exhibited whenever she went to their office. She had been to a good school in Exeter, but the lady who kept it, and who would have been of great assistance, was dead, and the school ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston
... author of the plays commonly attributed to one William Shakespeare. This rival was good-looking, had a charming manner, and was brilliant in conversation, while his range of subjects was almost unlimited, whereas, the wooer in whom we take such an affectionate interest, was wrinkled, dull, narrow-minded, unimaginative, selfish, over-bearing, arrogant, illiterate, ignorant in almost everything except jurisprudence, of which he was the greatest oracle then living, and uninterested in everything except law, his own personal ambition, ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... sort of people who will tell you, 'I don't like Germans,' or 'I don't like Irish!' We trust that this war will drive all such dislikes among us out of existence. Those who indulge in them are generally narrow-minded, un-cosmopolite sort of people. The principles of our day and of our war—the Republican principles—are opposed to all such illiberality. The Southerner, indeed, proposes to exclude all foreigners—it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... years (it is nearly certain that he must have been twenty already) weakened by fever, but nevertheless resolute and sensible in refusing. He has persuaded his brother to fly with him and to go to a university. The one guardian is a narrow-minded tyrant, the other, Winckel's brother, a merchant, a frivolous coaxer. Peter, the elder of the youths, yields first and enters the monastery of Sion, near Delft (of the order of the regular Augustinian canons), where the guardian had found a place for him. Erasmus resisted ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... but I was, and why? I hated him. Once he suggested to me that he would like to have you take lunch with him. I told him that you didn't go out with any one, and with coldbloodedness he replied, 'Ah, she hasn't been here long.' I hated him from that moment. Don't you see what a narrow-minded fellow I am?" ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... this case, "Better overshoot than fall short." Louise was graceful and self-possessed as usual; and it must be confessed did not appear very much disconcerted when Col. M. showed her husband in some ridiculous light, or mercilessly uncurtained his crude, narrow-minded opinions ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... voice.] Yes ... people keep on dying at all sorts of ages, in all sorts of ways. But we seem never to get used to it ... narrow-minded as ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... on any measure, consulted a Mr. H.—, one of the most uninfluential, and even narrow-minded members of the House of Commons. Some astonishment being expressed at this, he replied that he regarded Mr. H.—-as a perfect type of the faculties and prejudices of a country gentleman, and he used him as a ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... backward town, due mostly to the short-sightedness of Squire Paget, Mr. Hooker, the postmaster, and other narrow-minded leading men, who never saw fit to offer any inducements to manufacturers and others to locate there. The village consisted of half-a-dozen stores, a blacksmith shop, a tavern, and less than seventy-five ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... inwardly with himself, he presently began to think that notwithstanding all his attempts to live a Christian life, after the manner Christianly, he was surely becoming a very selfish and extremely narrow-minded man! He was unreasonably, illogically vexed at the return of the heiress of Abbot's Manor; and why? Why, chiefly because he would no longer be able to walk at liberty in Abbot's Manor gardens and woods,—because there would be another ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of, Liberal principles had been making rapid progress in the country among persons of all ranks. For years the colony had groaned under the tyranny and narrow-minded policy of the mother country. As she produced wine, oil, and silk, the inhabitants of New Granada and Venezuela were not allowed to cultivate either the vine, the olive, or the mulberry, under the idea that they ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... Madame Olenska had won it thirty years earlier; only instead of being distrustful and afraid of her, society took her joyfully for granted. She was pretty, amusing and accomplished: what more did any one want? Nobody was narrow-minded enough to rake up against her the half-forgotten facts of her father's past and her own origin. Only the older people remembered so obscure an incident in the business life of New York as Beaufort's failure, or the fact that after his wife's death he had been quietly married ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... best schools the soldier, teaches us that we are men Born to bear the rough and tumble, wield the sword and not the pen. Some there are who dub hard riders worthless and a draghunt crew— Tailors who do all the damage, mounted on a spavined screw. Well, I grant you, hunting men are sometimes narrow-minded fools; Ignorant of all worth knowing, save what's learnt in riding-schools; Careless of the rights of others, scampering over growing crops, Smashing gates and making gaps and scattering wide the turnip tops;— But I hold that out ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... talk nonsense! They all say it is only imagination, you know. Well, let it go at that! Let them have their own way about it! Haven't the ignorant, narrow-minded curs reviled me as an enemy of the people?—and haven't they been ready to tear the clothes off my ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... he stood some moments, until the uproar had subsided, picking his teeth. At length, when silence was obtained, he told them that he was surprised that the most polished and liberal nation in the world should behave themselves in such a brutal and narrow-minded manner. He threatened them that he would throw up his engagement immediately, and announce to all foreign parts that they were a horde of barbarians; then, abusing them for a few seconds in round terms, be retired, amidst the cheerings ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... mere superstition. Thy grandsire was a good and excellent man, but narrow-minded, like other priests; and, deceived by their example, he wished but to open a small wicket in the gate of truth, and admit the world only on that limited scale. Seest thou, Hereward, thy grandsire and most men of religion would fain narrow our intellect ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... silence. Once more he could not keep from his face a look that seemed to apologise for his opinions. And all the heroic and passionate grandeur of Parnell's furious career shrivelled up to mere sordidness before the inability of one narrow-minded and ignorant but vigorous woman to appreciate its quality. Not only did Edwin feel apologetic for himself, but also for Parnell. He wished he had not tried to be funny about Parnell; he wished he had not mentioned him. The brightness of the birthday ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... you were mistaken in me. I am narrow-minded, mean-spirited, a thorough Philistine; you have said so repeatedly. What do you see in me to care ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... his wife as soon as they were seated in their carriage, "Dr. Fairfax is a narrow-minded extremist, a fanatic. What right had he to bring those street wanderers into the church this morning? The place for them is down at the mission. Do I not give liberally toward its support? To be sure, such as they need the Gospel, ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... How narrow-minded to see nothing in the rising desires of a young heart but obstacles to the teaching of reason. In my eyes, these are the right means to make him obedient to that very teaching. Only through passion ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... and, in spite of me, he so successfully inculcated into me his own aversion, that I cannot yet unexpectedly behold a priestly robe without a sensation of shuddering as at the sight of a snake. Secondly, the bourgeois, whom he called philistines, - the humbly living, contented, narrow-minded, timid, - whom he did not hate as much as he despised them with fervid scorn. And finally women, whom he neither hated nor despised, but whom he ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... sectarianism?—did He leave her bigotry unrebuked? Hear His reply—"If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee!" He would have allowed no such narrow-minded exclusiveness to have interfered with the interchange of kindly civilities with a stranger. Nay, He would have given thee, better than all, the "living water" which ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... did not like to hear such things; and to me they appeared to be insolent, as well as narrow-minded. For if you came to that, why might not men, as well as women, be divided into the same three classes, and be pronounced upon by women, as beings even more devoid than their gentle judges of reason? Moreover, I knew, both from my own sense, and from the greatest of all great poets, that ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... it into his head that he wished to learn the English language, he set about it, and was able to understand, read, and speak a little, in a very short time—in fact, in a few days. Not only is he talented, but also endowed with a wonderful courage and independence, which superiority over the narrow-minded officials and intriguers who, for the most part, surround the King, has often led him into scrapes with His Majesty of Cho-sen. As he jocosely said to me, it was a marvel to him that his head was still on his shoulders. It was too good, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... that Cavour once said, that no great change would be accomplished in Italy till the Italians introduced the public-school system of England. So long as the youth of the country were given up for education to the priests—the most illiterate, narrow-minded, and bigoted class in Europe—so long would they carry with them through life the petty prejudices of their early days; or, in emancipating themselves from these, fall into a scepticism whose baneful distrust would damp the ardour of all patriotism, and sap ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... looking into the history of Luther, and Calvin, and John Knox, and the rest, find them falling far short of the philosophic ideal—wanting sadly in many qualities which the liberal mind cannot dispense with. They are discovered to be intolerant, dogmatic, narrow-minded, inclined to persecute Catholics as Catholics had persecuted them; to be, in fact, little if at all better than the popes and cardinals whom they ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... conclusions you draw are simply preposterous. There are narrow-minded women everywhere, but the women who were at Leila's knew perfectly well that their going there would give her a sort of social sanction, and if they were willing that she should have it, why on earth should they want ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... dentist's assistant from Deposit, and staring miserably at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. Of what use were youth and grace and good looks, if one drop of poison distilled from the envy of a narrow-minded woman was enough to paralyze them? Of course Madame de Trezac knew and remembered, and, secure in her own impregnable position, would never rest till she had ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... right to stay at home. But when the names of petitioners come to be weighed as well as counted, the character, the purity, the intelligence, the social and domestic value of the petitioners is seldom denied. The women who wish to vote are not the idle, the ignorant, the narrow-minded, or the vicious; they are not "the dangerous classes:" they represent the best class in the community, when tried by the highest standard. They are the natural leaders. What they now see to be right will also be perceived even by the foolish and ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... charitably of them. It is hard for him to keep Forefathers' Day, or to subscribe to the Plymouth Monument; hard to look fairly at what they did, with the memory of what they destroyed rising up to choke thankfulness; for they were as one-sided and narrow-minded a set of men as ever lived, and saw one of Truth's faces only—the hard, stern, practical face, without loveliness, without beauty, and only half dear to God. The Puritan flew in the face of facts, not because he saw them and disliked them, but because he did not see them. He saw foolishness, lying, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... entertained towards this celebrated statesman, this eminent orator, this mediocre writer, this narrow-minded man, an indefinable sentiment of ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... individualist but not, as in the popular conception of that word, an eccentric. His individualism resided in his strong personality, whole and complete rather than partial. He had an immense scorn of the petty narrow-minded points of view. He said, "There is no one so narrow as the broad-minded liberal! Look out! Be sure that you do not develop a closed mind toward the other man's point of view!" Frank Nelson stood in the stream of the best traditions of historic Anglicanism. He had, ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... Church he is narrow-minded, or, perhaps it would be more correct to say, being narrow-minded he is Low Church. He is an indifferent scholar, and occupies himself with his religious fancies and those of his flock. He can ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... corrugated iron shanties set in the middle of a grayish sandy plain as barren of vegetation as the shores of the Dead Sea, sweltering hot an hour after sunrise, chilly cold an hour after sunset, populated by about four hundred Boers of the old narrow-minded ultra Dutch type with as much imagination as a grasshopper—that ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... unaccustomed until they die of consumption. Under your little tin-steepled imitation of civilization, for which they are not fitted, they learn to beg, to steal, to lie. I have travelled far, but I have yet to discover what your kind are allowed on earth for. You are narrow-minded, bigoted, intolerant, and without a scrap of real humanity to ornament your mock religion. When you find you can't meddle with other people's affairs enough at home you get sent where you can get right in the business—and earn salvation ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... as he could be!" exclaimed Nannie. "He was so little and so narrow-minded, and he had no excuse for it either, for he had a good education and he'd ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... longer. The last thing I want to tell you is this: in a real revolution—not a simple dynastic change or a mere reform of institutions—in a real revolution the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left out the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad |
