"Belittling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... injudiciously was interpolated into the program the effect of the heroic environment was hopelessly belittling. M. Arene's "L'Ilote" and M. Ferrier's "Revanche d'Iris" are charming of their kind, and to see them in an ordinary theatre—with those intimate accessories of house life which such sparkling trifles ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... than Homer (I mean the author of the Iliad); but the very people who are most angry with me for (as they incorrectly suppose) sneering at Homer are generally the ones who never miss an opportunity of cheapening and belittling Handel, and, which is very painful to myself, they say I was laughing at him in Narcissus. Perhaps—but surely one can laugh at a person and adore him at the ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... qualified to arrange, sort, fix, and command the lives of women. If a woman thinks the abdication justifies the gains, that's all right. If I had sold myself, honourably, to John Morrell I would have kept to the agreement; I hate and loathe women who don't! I'm not belittling the romance and sentiment, Uncle William, but when all's told the usual marriage is a bargain and half the women whine about holding to it—the others play up and, if there is love enough, it pans out pretty well—but I couldn't! You see I had lived with ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... that irony, which consists in belittling oneself, is not a sin. For no sin arises from one's being strengthened by God: and yet this leads one to belittle oneself, according to Prov. 30:1, 2: "The vision which the man spoke, with whom is God, and who being ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... gorgeous spectacle of neatness and cleanliness, and many of the younger ones, fresh from country homes in Normandy and Brittany, with their rosy cheeks, are pictures of health. Wherever you see a nurse, you will see a "piou-piou" not far away, which is a very belittling word for the red-trousered infantryman of the ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... nature can have no interest in belittling or in exaggerating the intelligence of animals. What he wants is the truth about them, and this he will not get from our natural history romancers, nor from the casual, untrained observers, who are sure to interpret the lives of the wood-folk ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... shrugged his shoulders in belittling fashion. "As our houses are to that house, so that house was to the houses ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... of a poll-parrot praising its own personal pulchritude. The editor of Puck should avoid political economy as a subject a trifle too large for the knot on the end of his neck, and confine himself to his threadbare specialty, that of belittling the Jews with his watery wit and atribilarious art. The only funny thing I find in his paper is its solemn "notice to publishers" that all its raccous rot is copyrighted, that infringement will be "promptly and vigorously prosecuted." The editor who would steal from Puck ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... you arrive at that conclusion, Doctor? You seem very fond of belittling our abilities. Personally, I think that we shall be able to attain our objectives within a few weeks—certainly long before you can possibly return from such an extended trip as you have in mind. And since you are so fond of frankness, I will say that I think ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... great deal of hesitation and timidity. "Really? The others have, all except the man who died at Tamai. And you will too!" He spoke as though he could hardly believe some piece of great good fortune which had befallen him. Then his voice changed to that of a man belittling his misfortunes. "Oh, it hasn't been the best of times, of course. But then one didn't expect the best of times. And at the worst, one had always the afterwards to look forward to ... supposing one didn't run.... I'm not sure that when the whole thing's ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... exquisitely curved, whose bellies would have satisfied the inspired author of The Song of Songs, and yet the women who owned such physical graces have not conspicuously possessed the finer spiritual graces. But we do not enhance one half of human perfection by belittling the other half. And we rarely conceive of any high perfection on one side without some approach to it on the other. Even Jesus—though the whole of his story demands that his visage should be more marred than any man's—is always pictured ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... with all a man's love: but, before answering, he honestly needed more assurance. As for another world and a continuing life there, should he happen to fall to-morrow, John searched his heart and decided that he asked for nothing of the sort. Such promises struck him as unworthy bribes, belittling the sacrifice he came prepared to make. He despised men who bargained with them. Here was he, young, abounding in life, ready to risk extinction. Why? For a cause (some might say), and that cause his country's. Maybe: he had never thought this out. To ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... extremely difficult to assign Mozart a definite place in the musical Pantheon without praising him too highly on the one hand, or going to the other extreme and belittling his genius by pointing out the evident fact that noble, beautiful, sprightly, sweet and charming as were his compositions, he has not left so large an influence upon the later course of music as quite a number of artists ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... better...But no! Life was not like that. Her adventure was a hideous accident. She dreaded above all the temptation to generalise from her own case, to doubt the high things she had lived by and seek a cheap solace in belittling what fate had refused her. There was such love as she had dreamed, and she meant to go on believing in it, and cherishing the thought that she was worthy of it. What had happened to her was grotesque and mean and miserable; but she herself was none ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... determine what society she had entered. "Like seeks like," and each "goes to his own place." Her motive, the day-star of her life, was the Mother-Love for an only son. In spite of poverty and pain, she must reward him for love and loyalty, by being bright and cheerful and by belittling her own discomfort ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... whose receptivity is not equal to its power to contribute to the world with which its destiny is bound up. It is only at its best when it is a part of the vital current of movement, of sympathy, of hope, of enthusiasm of the world at large. There is no doctrine so belittling, so withering to our national life, as that which conceives our destiny to be a life of exclusion of the affairs and interests of the whole globe, hemmed in to the selfish development of our material wealth and strength, surrounded by a Chinese wall ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... biographies for the sake of belittling their subject, John Gait's "Life of Byron" occupies a conspicuous position. But for books written for the double purpose of downing the subject and elevating the author, Philip Thicknesse's "Life of Gainsborough" must stand first. The book is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... the indignation with which I read these belittling and weakening alterations and interpolations; they are so unjust and so degrading to the reputation of Sternhold. It seems worse than forgery—worse than piracy; for instead of stealing from the defenceless dead poet, it foists upon him a spurious and degrading progeny; there ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... but he did not inform his valued client that he was well acquainted with the agent of the Cuban insurgents, who had come West to meet the Senor da Cordova, for he had no intention of belittling the difficulty ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... might not, like the "Peacock," merit the title of "the yacht;" but for active service she was always prepared. James, an English naval historian, turns from his usual occupation of explaining the American naval victories by belittling the British ships, and enormously magnifying the power of the victors, to speak as follows of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... innuendoes which belittled David Rossi were belittling herself as well, and she wanted to ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... the whole story of the assault and the escape, interrupted by Edgar, who protested that Albert was always belittling his own doings, and giving him credit when everything had been done ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... the wide gulf that separated the two classes was clearly seen, when on her Sabbath the missionary could speak to the Nestorian of her Saviour out of her Bible, while the Moslem knows nothing beyond her kohl and her henna,[1] her dresses and her follies, and other topics at once belittling, debasing, and corrupting. [Footnote 1: Kohl is a black powder used to paint the eyebrows and eyelashes. Henna is a plant employed to stain the nails, and sometimes the entire hand and part of the foot, ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... Maugant, La Vocation du Comte Ghislain, La Bete, Une Gageure, which closes the list of my acquaintance with them, will disappoint the reader who does not raise his expectation too high. Olivier Maugant is perhaps the strongest. But the expression just used must not be taken as belittling. In both France and England such novel-writing had become almost a trade—certainly a profession: and the turning out of workmanlike and fairly satisfying articles for daily consumption is, if not a noble ambition, a quite respectable ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... are talking to a man who is a member of a traditionally reticent and unexpansive race; who says about one third of what he feels; who is obsessed by a mania for understating his country's case, exaggerating its weaknesses, and belittling its efforts; who is secretly shy, so covers up his shyness with a cloak of aggressiveness which is offensive to those who are not prepared for it. Remember that this attitude is not specially assumed for you: ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... did that than disgrace me. Mary never had even one child, although her husband must have wanted an heir. I have lived a life of duty—duty to my family traditions, my husband, my children, my country, and to Society: she one of self-indulgence and pleasure and excitement, although I'm not belittling the work she did during the war. But noblesse oblige. What else could she do? And now, she'll be at it again. She'll have the pick of our young men—I don't know whether it's all tragic or grotesque. She'll waste no ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... comment. It is a satire on modern man and his belittling virtues. In verses 23 and 24 of the second part of the discourse we are reminded of Nietzsche's powerful indictment of the great of to-day, in the Antichrist (Aphorism 43):—"At present nobody has any longer the courage for separate rights, for rights of domination, for a feeling of reverence ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... tired!" she said crossly. "Why will you insist on belittling yourself? Who on earth is this wonderful man that he sets himself up for such a model of superiority? He can't be anybody if he's ashamed of you. You don't like Micky, I know, but, with all his money and position, if he loved you he'd be only too proud to shout it ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... depths below him, than sticks to his own ribs. The celestial and the terrestrial forces unite and work together in him, as in all other creatures. We cannot magnify man without magnifying the universe of which he is a part; and we cannot belittle it without belittling him. ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... ever finalize their status with women," Kennon murmured. "It does no good. It doesn't convince the woman. She's still fearful, jealous, and suspicious—always belittling her ability to hold what she has, always alert for competition, clinging, holding, absorbing—when she should be working as ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... That isn't so high here, though. People do plunge for as much as eight or ten thousand. It all depends." McKibben was in a belittling, depreciating mood. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... goodness of the common people, their instinctive politeness, and the absence among them of any tendencies to indulge in criticism, ridicule, irony, or sarcasm. No one endeavours to expand his own individuality by belittling his fellow; no one tries to make himself appear a superior being: any such attempt would be vain in a community where the weaknesses of each are known to all, where nothing can be concealed or disguised, and where affectation could only be regarded ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... final chase of Moby Dick; I question whether he is as good in sea narrative as Cooper in the famous passage of Paul Jones's ship through the shoals. Such comparisons are, of course, rather futile. They differentiate among excellences, where taste is a factor. Nevertheless, it is belittling to a man who, above almost all others in our language, has brooded upon the mysteries of the mind's action, to say that he is great because he ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... have consulted neither the good Brother Pasquerel nor the good Friar Richard nor indeed any of the churchmen of her company. They would have told her that the true pope was the Pope of Rome, Martin V. They might also have represented to her that she was belittling the authority of the Church by appealing to a revelation from God concerning popes and anti-popes. Sometimes, they would have told her, God confides the secrets of his Church to holy persons. But it would be rash to count upon ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... all, but interesting! I asked him for supper, Sunday night. You'll be crazy about him—all the bunch will!" Thus Jimsy King on the day Carter Van Meter limped into his life; thus Jimsy King through the years which followed, worshiping humbly the things he did not have in himself, belittling his own gifts, enlarging his own lacks, glorifying his friend. He had never had a deeply intimate boy friend before; the team was his friend, the squad; Honor had sufficed for a nearer tie. It was to be different, now; a sharing. She was to resent a little in the beginning, ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... but it was a belittling laugh, half sneering, which brought the blood to the face of the captive while Rathburn watched ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... he believed the term "knocker" came originally from baseball; that in general it typified the player who strengthened his own standing by belittling the ability of his team-mates, and by enlarging upon his own superior qualities. But there were many phases of this peculiar type. Some players were natural born knockers; others acquired the name in their ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... to be found of his. Concerning some of them, there have been published—"Lectures and Criticisms by Varchi." But he wrote these sonnets more for his pleasure than because he made a profession of it, always belittling them himself, accusing himself ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... but there's not much chance of you realising your hope. Your book isn't a very good one!..." Eleanor glanced up at this. She had not felt very certain about John's book herself, but now that Hinde was belittling it, ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... which cover fallen leaves and dead twigs with their blackish fructifications; a remarkable piece of work, full of the most valuable documentation, as were the theses whose subjects I have just detailed; but without belittling the fame of their author, one may say that another, in his place, might have acquitted himself ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... supposed, however, that all English colonial journalists regretted the operation of this atrocious law. The 'Cape Times', for instance, vied with the Hertzog press in congratulating the minister on having successfully passed it, and in belittling the hardships of the victims of the Act. One English farmer wrote to the 'Farmer's Weekly' that the evictions were effective, but at the same time he regretted that "as long as the Native kept to the public road he still had a resting place for the hollow of his foot." The Native had been ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... who have not been accustomed to the society of well-bred people think it is very smart to find fault with things which are different from those with which they have been familiar. Now, I don't want my Polly to be that way, and I must ask her not to be so rude as to abuse hospitality by belittling the customs of a house or the town, state or locality in which it is. I want my Polly to be considered a true lady, even if she is from the ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... respect and honor as normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes a hero in comparison; and ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw |
