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Despising   /dɪspˈaɪzɪŋ/   Listen
Despising

noun
1.
A feeling of scornful hatred.  Synonym: despisal.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Despising" Quotes from Famous Books



... fellow that Dexter is!" muttered the Grammar School boy. "I've heard folks say that Dexter is mean enough, and scoundrel enough, to kill his wife one of these days. Whew! I should think it would hurt to be so all-fired mean, and to have everyone despising you, as folks seem to despise Dexter. I hope the upper court will give him six months ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock

... like,' said Robert impetuously. 'I have no fear of the great words. You can do nothing by despising the past and its products; you can also do nothing by being too much afraid of them, by letting them choke and stifle your own life. Let the new wine have its new bottles if it must, and never mind words. Be content to be a new "sect," "conventicle," or what not, so long ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of these very virtues to her. Men descried her subtle judgment in the choice of her servants, and the directing them to the services for which they were best fitted. Her high heart was seen in her despising small advantages, and in her unshaken tranquillity in danger. While the storm was coming on from Spain, no cloud was seen on her brow: by her conduct she animated nobles and people, and inspirited her councillors. Men praised her for two things, for zealous participation in deliberation ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... Sidney went out, in November, 1585, as Governor of Flushing. His wife joined him there. He fretted at inaction, and made the value of his counsels so distinct that his uncle Leicester said after his death that he began by "despising his youth for a counsellor, not without bearing a hand over him as a forward young man. Notwithstanding, in a short time he saw the sun so risen above his horizon that both he and all his stars were ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... a world which they regard as delusive and fallen. The world of German absolutism, like the Stoic world, was not fallen. On the contrary, it was divinely inspired and altogether authoritative; he alone who did not find his place and function in it was unholy and perverse. This world-worship, despising heartily every finite and rational ideal, gives to impulse and fact, whatever they may be, liberty to flourish under a divine warrant. Were the people accepting such a system corrupt, it would sanction their corruption, and thereby, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... Latin Verses." Equally ridiculous to Hughes, and more relevant to the concerns of this introduction, was the practice of another poet of his acquaintance: "I have known a Gentleman of another Turn of Humour, who, despising the Name of an Author, never printed his Works, but contracted his Talent, and by the help of a very fine Diamond which he wore on his little Finger, was a considerable Poet upon Glass. He had a very good Epigrammatick ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]

... many strange servilities mistaken for pieties one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... them did not, indeed, originate with himself. It is entirely probable that he would never have thought of despising them as he did but for Mrs. Cinch. That excellent lady, with all her many virtues, could never forgive those legs. Their degeneration, as she regarded it, had not begun when she married Mr. Cinch. He was ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... the higher ground; it seems to me that you have taken neither—and indecision in such matters is the one thing that does not succeed either in this world or the next; the one thing which the children of this world unanimously agree with the children of light in despising and censuring. ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... caught, some of us with the pole and reel, some with the hand-line. But it was active work to throw out about sixty yards of line and then troll it quickly back through the eddies off the rocks, where the bass fed and sported. The Captain was great at this; despising the pole and waving the bait round and round his head, he would throw it full a hundred ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... it to reconsider its decision. Should the parliament return the same decision, the Government can dissolve it and convoke another parliament. In so doing the Government respects the parliament instead of despising it. But what the parliament has decided should be carried out strictly by the Government, and thus we will have a real constitutional Government. It is easy to talk but difficult to act, but China like all other countries ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... the Wolf of Plinlimmon, to return to their desolate habitations. Numbers also of the loose and profligate characters which abound in a country subject to the frequent changes of war, had flocked thither in quest of spoil, or to gratify a spirit of restless curiosity. The Jew and the Lombard, despising danger where there was a chance of gain, might be already seen bartering liquors and wares with the victorious men-at-arms, for the blood-stained ornaments of gold lately worn by the defeated British. Others acted as brokers betwixt the Welsh captives and their captors; ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... was closely allied to imbecility. He was proud of assuming in his own person, and of bestowing upon others, the painted show of various orders of nobility, even now, when the rank within the prince's gift was become an additional reason for the free barbarian despising the imperial noble. That the Greek court was encumbered with unmeaning ceremonies, in order to make amends for the want of that veneration which ought to have been called forth by real worth, and the presence of actual power, was not the particular fault of that prince, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... they be a beastly sort, In sweate and labour hauing most chiefe comfort, On the holy day assoone as morne is past, When all men resteth while all the day doth last, They drinke, they banket, they reuell and they iest They leape, they daunce, despising ease and rest. If they once heare a bagpipe or a drone, Anone to the elme or oke they be gone. There vse they to daunce, to gambolde and to rage Such is the custome and vse of the village. When the ground resteth from rake, plough and wheles, ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt

... that so many of them should get themselves absolutely perfect in your words, and then live precisely as if the sole object of reading and studying them had been to reverse them in practise. All their professions of despising wealth and appearances, of admiring nothing but what is noble, of superiority to passion, of being proof against splendor, and associating with its owners only on equal terms—how fair and wise and laudable they all are! But they take pay ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various

... deprived him of self-confidence, nor, in time of need, of self-assertion. He delighted in every kind of hardihood; and, in his contempt for effeminacy, once said to his mother: "Better be a savage of some use than a gentle, amorous puppy, obnoxious to all the world." He was far from despising fame; but the controlling principles of his life were duty to his country and his profession, loyalty to the King, and fidelity to his own ideal of the perfect soldier. To the parent who was the confidant of his most intimate thoughts ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... which, to obtain its end, works ably it is true, on the passions of the people it had to govern. It is speaking to simple men, and it entertains them with miracles; they are ignorant and jealous, and it flatters their vanity by despising science; they are poor and rapacious, and it excites their cupidity by the hope of pillage; having nothing at first to give them on earth, it tells them of treasures in heaven; it teaches them to desire death as a supreme ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... before them; I say, falling early into the seafaring life, and into seafaring company, all that little sense of religion which I had entertained was laughed out of me by my messmates; by a hardened despising of dangers, and the views of death, which grew habitual to me by my long absence from all manner of opportunities to converse with anything but what was like myself, or to hear anything that was good or ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... recognize his saintship and accept his creed. To all true and loyal men, he resembles rather the veiled prophet of Khorassan, concealing behind the fair mask of a zealous regard for free speech and a free press the hideous features of Secession and civil war, despising the dupes whom he is leading to certain and swift destruction, and clinging fondly to the hope of involving in a common ruin, not only the party which he represents, but the country ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... stewards, and butlers, and cooks, and footmen, and valet de chambres, and ladies' maids of every degree, all dressed in tawdry finery, and assuming the most disgusting airs of self-importance. She went home despising in her heart both lords and menials, and dreaming, with new aspirations, of her Roman republic. One day, when Madame Roland was in power, she had just passed from her splendid dining-room, where she had ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... Pasiphaee, a king's wife, was enamoured of a bull, although they see some of their sex despising grave and sober men, and preferring to associate with men who are the slaves of intemperance and pleasure, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... manual skill to the highest degree. Without genius, works of art might as well be turned out by machinery; without manual skill, genius could have no means of expression. As a matter of fact, in our own time, it is the presence of genius, without manual skill, or foolishly despising it, that has produced a sort of school ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... dispensing coal and food to the poor. And the poor devils were so patient, so loyal. And so stupid; they thought that much flattery, much fear, would move Him. Their conception never even rose to considering God as a gentleman, despising flattery and ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... in dollars and cents, in stocks and bonds, in pearls and diamonds. Popular fancy takes kindly to rough but honest westerners who have begun life in flannel shirts, who have struck gold and come to New York with a fortune but despising effeteness; such a one, tanned by the mountain sun, embarrassed in raiment supplied by a Fifth Avenue tailor, takes a table one evening at Hawtrey's and of course falls desperately in love. He means marriage from the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... for—count for nothing. What does Mr. Hemstead care about my wealth, name, and position in New York? He looks at me; and you, or, rather, my own senseless folly, have made me appear a weak, false thing, that, from the very laws of his being, he cannot help despising. But it was cruelly hard in you and Bel, when you saw that I was trying to be a different—a better girl, to show him only what I was, and give me no chance to explain. He will never trust,—never even look at me again." And, for the first time, the unhappy girl ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... got it into her head that Little despised her. Upon this she was angry with him for not seeing what a sacrifice she had made, and for despising her, instead of admiring her a little, and pitying her ever so much. The old story in short—a girl vexed with a man for letting her throw dust in ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... of discovering error, not of finding truth; of finding reasons and counter-reasons, of exciting doubt and controversy, not of vouchsafing certitude. So long as it contents itself with controverting that which is false, it is potent and salutary; but when, despising divine assistance, it advances beyond this, it becomes dangerous, like a caustic drug which attacks the healthy flesh after it has consumed ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... bands with which he was bound, and killed all the men except one, whom he permitted to convey the tidings to the King. This defeat so enraged the monarch that he determined to go in person with all his force, and either destroy his enemy, or drive him from his dominions. He accordingly, despising ease inglorious, ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... arrived to a pitch unknown and unheard of in former times? Is not the course which you steer in life, almost entirely directed by vanity and fashion? And are there not too many of you who, throwing aside reason and good conduct, and despising the counsel of your friends and relations, seem determined to follow the mode of the world, however it may be mixed with vice? Do not the generality of you dress, and appear above your station, and are not many of you ashamed to be seen performing ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... great deal longer, adding indecorum to awkwardness, and impertinence to incivility, accumulating incongruities, despising what is respectable, respecting what is despicable; but no one ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... his faithful deer, In spite of hounds or huntsman near, Despising Death, and all his train, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... even sooner that I had been deceiving myself and blinding myself, promising myself impossible things and wilfully misunderstanding my own feelings, because I was dazzled by the idea of having more money to spend than an English girl ever dreams of. I have been despising myself for that for five years. My husband's feeling for me ... well, I cannot speak of that ... what I want to say is that along with it there had always been a belief of his that I was the sort of woman to take a great place in society, and that I should throw myself into it ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... consenting vnto sinne, and his suggestions, they are depriued of the [b]helpe and assistance of God, and so disabled to resist all violent rushing temptations: for one offence, not being truely repented of, bringeth another, and at last throweth head-long downe into hell: and by this meanes man despising God his creator & redeemer, and obeying the Diuell a professed enemy, and irreconciliable aduersary, not easie to be confronted, becommeth his seruant: for of whomsoeuer any is ouercome, euen of the same is hee brought into bondage, 2. Pet. 2. 19. And the Apostle giueth as ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts

... open the scene with a beautiful allegory. He supposes that such afflictions are sent from Heaven for the punishment of evil actions; and because the sun was the principal agent, he says it was sent to punish Agamemnon for despising that god, and ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... morning my Saviour was rising, The chains of mortality fully despising; His sufferings are over, he's done agonizing— This morning my Saviour will think ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... So far from despising the character and calling of the sailor, and regarding him with an eye of distrust, let us throw a veil over his faults, appreciate his virtues, be ready at all times to give him words of good cheer, and encourage him to keep within his bosom a clear ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... despising life's legitimate aim, Instead of butter, would become "the cheese;" A low term for distinction. Whence the name I know not: gents invented it; and these Gave not an etymology. I see no Likelier than this, which with their taste agrees; The caseine element I conceive ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... incidents augmented the heap of Lady Gorgon's anger and injuries! She was a dull phlegmatic woman for the most part, and contented herself generally with merely despising her neighbours; but oh! what a fine active hatred raged in her bosom for victorious Scully! At this moment Mr. Perkins had finished shaking hands with his Napoleon—Napoleon seemed bent upon some tremendous enterprise. He was looking at Lady ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... why I know too much to declare war on the priests. I shall have a proper wedding, and priests shall officiate, I despising them and they aware of it. That will be their first defeat. They shall come to my marriage as dogs come to their mistress when she calls— and be whipped away again if they fawn too eagerly! They will not dare refuse ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... moments when Tims gasped with the certainty that the revelation of her friend's blank ignorance of the place and people was about to be made. Then Mildred—for so, despising the soft diminutive, she now desired to be called—by some extraordinary exertion of tact and ingenuity, would evade the inevitable and appear on the other side of it, a little elated, but otherwise serene. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... attributed it, wrongly, to a feeling of pride. In reality, the habit of self-dependence was gaining, and the man was thrusting the world into the background. For hours Sommers never spoke. Always sparing of words, counting them little, despising voluble people, he was beginning to lose the power of ready speech. Thus, living in one of the most jostling of the world's taverns, they lived as in the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... noisy yapping of the night-prowling dogs, cursed the children that ran against his legs in their play, and when necessity compelled him to cross the encampment, he passed among the tepees, obviously avoiding and despising their occupants. ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx

... Children should remember that their parents have received this special grace from God to advise, direct, and warn them of sin; and if they refuse to obey their parents or despise their direction, they are despising God's grace. Remember that nothing teaches us so well as experience. Now your parents, even if God gave them no special grace, have experience. They have been children as you are; they have been young persons as you are; they ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that hath endured such gainsaying of sinners against himself, that ye wax not weary, ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... boldly in the presence of the chief men of the Republic, among whom there might perhaps be found some who would despise you, dare not, nevertheless, speak in the presence of an illiterate multitude, who know nothing of the affairs of state, and who are not capable of despising you, and you fear to be laughed at by them." "Do they not usually," said Charmidas, "laugh at those who speak best?" "So likewise," said Socrates, "do the men of quality with whom you converse every day; and I am surprised that you have eloquence and persuasive ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon

... patience and long-suffering with joyfulness." It is one thing to endure and show the strain on every muscle of your face, and seem to say with every wrinkle, "Why does not somebody sympathize with me?" It is another to endure the cross, "despising the shame" for the ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... of it! That was why I tried to love him, why I hoped he would stand fast for my sake, if not for his own, and why I found it so sad sometimes not to be able to help despising him for his want of courage. I don't know how others feel, but, to me, love isn't all. I must look up, not down, trust and honor with my whole heart, and find strength and integrity to lean on. I have had it so far, and I know I could ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... unostentatious manner does he conduct himself, despising all pomp, and seems rather more intent upon inspecting the charitable, useful, and ornamental establishments of this country, with a view, probably, of benefiting his own dominions by his observations, than of displaying his rank ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... His commandments too. Secondly, That must be done also openly, before two or three witnesses, to answer that of the law, verse 28. Thirdly, This sin cannot be committed, but with great despite done to the Spirit of Grace; despising both the dissuasions from that sin, and the persuasions to the contrary. But the Lord knows, though this my sin was devilish, yet it did not amount ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan

... Rome that the greatest monuments might be removed and yet the city's personality would remain. For Rome is greater than her monuments. He wanted to argue with those who cared for Pagan Rome alone and who spent their time despising the "oratory in stone" of the Papal city and gazing only on the Forum. "And it never once occurs to them to remember that the old Romans were Italians, or to ask what a Forum ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... he began to work himself up into the state of "not caring," into the state of despising Sneyd Hall, and everything for which it stood. As for permitting himself to be impressed or intimidated by the lonely magnificence of his environment, he laughed at the idea; or, more accurately, ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... which severeth faith and repentance, concluding, that the soul shall be saved by grace, though the man was never made sorry for his sins, nor the love of the heart turned therefrom. This is to be self-willed, as Peter has it; and this is a despising the word of the Lord, for that has put repentance and faith together; Mark i. 15. And "because he hath despised the word of the Lord, and hath broken his commandment, that soul shall utterly be cut off: his iniquity shall be upon him." Numb. ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan

... here. A strictly masculine world, proud of its own sex and despising the other, seeing nothing in the world but sex, either male or female, has "viewed with alarm" the steady and rapid growth of humanness. Here, for instance, is a boy visibly tending to be an artist, a musician, a scientific discoverer. Here ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... the hall," said Lindesay, "for half an hour's space; but in despising our words and our pledge of honour, she has touched the honour of my name—let her look herself to the course she has to pursue. If the half hour should pass away without her determining to comply with the demands of the nation, her ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... work on hers. She looked older now than her years and there were hard lines that some day would be avarice, uncharity, and other evil traits. Then this girl was an idle butterfly, frisking from one folly to another in a wicked and worldly fashion, even despising the plain faith her father had intended ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... nor earth, but men; Something that uses and despises both, That takes its earth's contentment in the pen, Then sees the world's injustice and is wroth, And flinging off youth's happy promise, flies Up to some breach, despising earthly things, And, in contempt of hell and heaven, dies Rather than bear some yoke of priests or kings. Our joys are not of heaven nor earth, but man's, A woman's beauty, or a child's delight, The trembling blood when the discoverer scans The sought-for world, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various

... experience of our Saviour, which must here first of all be considered. Patiently He had waited for Jehovah. Himself Jehovah He had taken the place of dependence under God His Father and patiently He endured. He was obedient unto death, the death of the cross. He endured the cross, despising the shame. He cried to God. "Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and fears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that he feared; though He were Son, yet learned ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein

... I am despising, now, in like senseless way, the privilege of being able to write to you and of knowing that it will please you to hear—even that I can't tell you anything! which I cannot, this morning—but only, it is a little peace and rest to me to ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin

... gained and entered in safety. Lawrence and Quashy tried to follow, but were too much pressed by numbers. Back to back they fought, and Quashy used his sword with such agility and vigour that in a few seconds he sent several Indians bleeding to the rear. Lawrence, despising the weapons of civilised warfare, held his now empty gun in his left hand, using it as a sort of shield, and brandished his favourite cudgel with such effect that he quickly strewed the ground around him with crown-cracked men. Unfortunately a stone struck him on the temple, and he fell. Thus ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... room, Rose waited, frankly jealous of her young cousin and fiercely despising herself for it. She recalled the happy hours she and Allison had spent with their music and berated herself bitterly for her selfishness, but to no avail. As the hours dragged by, every moment seemed an eternity. Worn by her unaccustomed struggle ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... O Sanjaya, when they were deprived of the mighty and god-like Bhishma who had become a Brahmacharin for the sake of his reverend sire? Even then I regarded the Kurus and all the others as slain by the Pandavas when Bhishma, despising the son of Drupada, struck him not. Wretch that I am, also, I hear today of my sire's slaughter. What can be a heavier sorrow than this? My heart assuredly, O Sanjaya, is made of adamant, since it breaketh not into a hundred fragments ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... those two men must have grown to hate each other in the evenings as they sat together; the younger one despising and loathing his father, and the father hating his son for so doing. I have often wondered how they never came to ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... this Something which she had achieved and which seemed to put her beyond and above ordinary women, nothing but the woman's satisfaction in love, whose lover is seeking her? She found herself almost despising Margaret unreasonably. Some man! That created the firmament of women's heaven, with its sun and its moon and its stars. Remembered caresses and expected joys,—the woman's bliss of yielding to ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... and upright, and in whose breast is a seat of virtue too pure to admit of a thought so base and dishonorable. I have known Boone in times of old, when poverty and distress had him fast by the hand, and in these wretched circumstances, I have ever found him of a noble and generous soul, despising everything mean, and therefore I will freely grant him a discharge for whatever sums of mine he might have been ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... very sore at heart, and, never doubting but that the new mistress of the castle would be no friend of his, he took his way homeward. In his imagination he saw this Madame Scott settled at the castle and despising his little Catholic church and all his simple services to the quiet ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... expected to burst on her. For Edda, however, she had as warm an affection as it was in her nature to feel for anybody so totally different as her sister and she were to each other. She could scarcely help despising Edda for her gentleness and her kind and affectionate disposition, as well as for the implicit obedience she yielded to their father's often ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... the multitude, and at the corners and squares an immense crowd surrounded the new conquerors. The latter—extremely fatigued, confiding in the mutual guarantees stipulated by the Ayuntamientimo and General Worth, or perhaps despising a people who easily permitted the occupation of their territory—stacked arms in the plaza while waiting for quarters, while some wandered into neighboring streets to drink pulque and embrace the leperos, with whom they seemed old acquaintances. [The leperos ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... just as much God's world and creation as the Kingdom of Heaven with all the angels. How will you make yourself most happy in it? How secure at least the greatest amount of happiness compatible with your condition? by despising to-day, and looking up cloudward? Pish. Let us turn God's to-day to its best use, as well as any other part of the time He gives us. When I am on a cloud a-singing, or a pot boiling—I will do my best, and, if you are ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... a paying proposition, to make it subservient to the God of Wealth and thus convert us into a money-making mob. Ruskin has said that 'no nation can last that has made a mob of itself.' Above all a nation cannot last as a money-making mob. It cannot with impunity—it cannot with existence—go on despising literature, despising science, despising art, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... right, Malachi; when the population is crowded, you find people divided into sects, and, what is still worse, despising, if not hating each other, because the outward forms of worship are a little different. Here in our isolated position, we feel how trifling are many of the distinctions which divide religious communities, and ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... was the cut-up. As a piece of delicate Athenian wit he got up from his chair and waltzed down the room with a waiter. That dependent, no doubt an honest, pachydermatous, worthy, tax-paying, art-despising biped, released himself from the unequal encounter, carried his professional smile back to the dumb-waiter and dropped it down the shaft to eternal oblivion. Reeves began to make Keats turn in his grave. Mrs. Pothunter told the story ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... scant diversions of this life, Lambert spent his first winter in the Bad Lands, drinking in the noisy revels at Misery, riding the long, bitter miles back to the ranch, despising himself for being so mean and low. It was a life in which a man's soul would either shrink to nothing or expand until it became too large to find contentment within the horizon of ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... approve of it," said Isabel, trying to smile and take advantage of this side-issue; despising herself too, not ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... Chancellor, Statesman, and Churchman who ruled a cruel, crafty, sensual tyrant, and successfully guided the policy of England at home and abroad. HENRY IRVING's Cardinal is a grand figure, courtly, though somewhat too cringing withal, evidently despising the various means he uses to further the end he has in view, and looking upon the Lords, Courtiers and all around him as merely puppets, whose strings he holds to work them as ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various

... Tremayne to herself. "She has mistaken a rushlight for the sun, and she thinks her horizon wider than that of any one else. She is despising Lysken, at this moment, as a shallow, prosaic character, who cannot enter into the depth of her feelings, and has not attained the height of her experience. And there are heights and depths in Lysken that Blanche ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... opinion, we shall find it conceivable that a man may think too meanly of himself; for it may happen, that a man, sorrowfully regarding his own weakness, should imagine that he is despised by all men, while the rest of the world are thinking of nothing less than of despising him. Again, a man may think too meanly of himself, if he deny of himself in the present something in relation to a future time of which he is uncertain. As, for instance, if he should say that he is unable to form any clear conceptions, or that ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... that curtain, which shrouds thy great Saaera, and look upon some pictures that should teach the son of Shem, while despising his brothers Ham and Japhet, that he is not yet ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... of the border wars, both in the ways they were begun and in the ways they were waged, make a long tale of injuries inflicted, suffered, and mercilessly revenged. It could not be otherwise when brutal, reckless, lawless borderers, despising all men not of their own color, were thrown in contact with savages who esteemed cruelty and treachery as the highest of virtues, and rapine and murder as the worthiest of pursuits. Moreover, it was sadly inevitable that the law-abiding borderer as ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... principal strength of Charles Edward's army, were an ancient and high-spirited race, peculiar in their habits of war and of peace, brave to romance, and exhibiting a character turning upon points more adapted to poetry than to the prose of real life. Their prince, young, valiant, patient of fatigue, and despising danger, heading his army on foot in the most toilsome marches, and defeating a regular force in three battles—all these were circumstances fascinating to the imagination, and might well be supposed to seduce young and enthusiastic minds to the cause in which they were found united, although ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... masters, and the whole parsonage-house, young and old, male and female, felt itself insulted. No sooner therefore were the rats discomfited than the rector, summoning all his magisterial and orthodox dignity, commanded the Squire and his troop to depart. Despising the mandate, Magog Mowbray continued his exultations and coarse sarcasms; and, Oh frailty of human nature! the man of God forgot the peaceful precepts of his divine mission, and gave the signal for a general assault. Nay he himself, so unruly are the hands and feet ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... semblance of a fair and friendly person, and asked him whither he went. Isaac answered that he was going to his father, who waited for him. To this the arch enemy replied, that he had better not go, as his father meant to sacrifice him. But Isaac despising the warnings of the devil, continued his way, that his father might execute the commandments of God respecting him. On this the devil departed from him, but met him again as he went forward, under the semblance of another friendly person, and advised him as before not to go to his father. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... have, thou gallant Trojan, seen thee oft, Labouring for destiny, make cruel way Through ranks of Greekish youth; and I have seen thee, As hot as Perseus, spur thy Phrygian steed, Despising many forfeits and subduements, When thou hast hung thy advanced sword i' th' air, Not letting it decline on the declined; That I have said to some my standers-by 'Lo, Jupiter is yonder, dealing life!' And I have ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... the smallest fault of pronunciation committed by a performer, and a thousand voices instantly corrected him. At the present day, the comedians insist that it belongs to them alone to form rules on this point, and they now and then seem to vie with each other in despising those already established. The audience being perhaps too ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... much happiness in this world, will never find its way into our heavenly home. For the soul not only sees that He who loved her from eternity will continue to do so everlastingly; she not only sees the utter impossibility of God's ever despising her; but she, at the same time, sees the impossibility of her ever proving false to Him. She not only sees God as He is, but she also sees everything else as it is. However beautiful, therefore, creatures may be in heaven, she always sees in God a beauty and perfection so vastly, so infinitely ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux

... needs must praise, Who, as down the stairs she jumps, Sings over the hills and far away, Despising doleful dumps."-E. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... wretched demon! I think I know ye now. I am interested in ye. Sit, and we shall talk," the poor old Doctor replied, despising that which nevertheless aroused his curiosity. He, like everybody else, had heard of the Devil, but he doubted if any other had had the fortune actually ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... of peace: account of Elkanah and his two wives: Peninnah reproaches Hannah: sin of despising others for their infirmities: the family at Shiloh: Elkanah endeavours to console his wife: her conduct and prayer: Eli's unjust imputation: Hannah's defence, and her accuser's retraction: return from Shiloh: ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... when he has most need of stamina? He does nothing but read, read, read,—and what, forsooth? Not anything that will teach him the genuineness of life and manhood, but those damnable spirit-exalting, body-despising emasculates of Alexandria,—Madame Guyon's meditations, too, and Isaac Taylor's giddy see-sawings,—all heresies, and bosh,—'Dead-Sea fruits that turn to ashes', and not only disgust you, but blister ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... fine woman like that marry such a man for?' I know what they say. But I'm strong if I like. I gave up drink when I wished. I can give up anything. And when I succeed they'll see—and then we'll have enough money not to need these people staying with us and despising us...." ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... when she cried that Mitya despised her for her bowing down to him! She believed it herself. She had been firmly convinced, perhaps ever since that bow, that the simple-hearted Mitya, who even then adored her, was laughing at her and despising her. She had loved him with an hysterical, "lacerated" love only from pride, from wounded pride, and that love was not like love, but more like revenge. Oh! perhaps that lacerated love would have grown into real love, perhaps Katya longed for nothing more than that, but Mitya's faithlessness ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... enables us to see him as it were in person. When the patriots had read the passports, he seized them, and, as he says, "full of disgust and rage, and not knowing at the moment, or in my passion despising the immense peril that attended us, I thrice shook my passport in my hand, and shouted at the top of my voice, 'Look! Listen! Alfieri is my name; Italian and not French; tall, lean, pale, red hair; I am he; look at me: I have my passport, and I have had it legitimately from those ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... hunting him down in a free state, and tearing him away from wife and children, thus setting its claims higher than marriage or parental claims. It has revealed the arrogant and overbearing spirit of the slave states toward the free states; despising their principles—shocking their feelings of humanity, not only by bringing before them the abominations of slavery, but by attempting to make them parties to the crime. It has called into exercise among the colored people, the hunted ones, a spirit of manly resistance ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... believe, that love of God which I think I had after I began to pray. Then, I had only light to see that all things that pass away are to be lightly esteemed, and that the good things to be gained by despising them are of great price, because they are for ever. His Majesty heard me also in this, for in less than two years I was so afflicted myself that the illness which I had, though of a different kind from that of the sister, was, I really believe, not less painful and trying for the three years ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... for his part, sits on mere wooden chairs;—sits, and also thinks and acts, after the manner of a Hyperborean Spartan, which he was. He ate heartily, but as a rough farmer and hunter eats; country messes, good roast and boiled; despising the French Cook, as an entity without meaning for him. His favorite dish at dinner was bacon and greens, rightly dressed; what could the French Cook do for such a man? He ate with rapidity, almost with indiscriminate violence: his object not quality ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... new ones into view. And your college professor, with a starched shirt and spectacles, would, if a stock of ideals were all alone by itself enough to render a life significant, be the most absolutely and deeply significant of men. Tolstoi would be completely blind in despising him for a prig, a pedant and a parody; and all our new insight into the divinity of muscular labor would be altogether ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... not, by Jupiter!" he rejoined. "Wherefore, Cebes, they who care at all for their soul, and do not spend their lives in the culture of their bodies, despising all these, proceed not in the same way with them, as being ignorant whither they are going, but, being convinced that they ought not to act contrary to philosophy, but in accordance with the freedom and purification ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato

... abolished and Hunyady established as sole governor. For all that, however, Hunyady had a good deal of trouble with the chief aristocrats, Garay, Czillei, Ujlaki, who, envying the parvenu his sudden promotion and despising his obscure origin, took up arms to resist his authority. Thus Hunyady, instead of blunting the edge of his sword upon foreign foes, had to bridle the insubordination of his own countrymen. Luckily it did not take long to force the discontented to own the weight of his arm and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... slavery, can they wish to impose upon us an evil scarcely less tolerable? We think it a mistaken philanthropy, which would liberate the slave, unfitted by education and habit for freedom, and cast him upon a merciless and despising world, where his only fortune must be poverty, his only distinction degradation, and his only comfort insensibility.' * * * 'I will look no farther when I seek for the most degraded, the most abandoned race on the earth, but rest my ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... to some common acquaintance, who had changed her name to advantage). "'What fortune,' she said with an air of contempt:—'not above twenty thousand livres a year.' I smiled, and she caught herself immediately, 'What airs I give myself in despising twenty thousand livres a year, who a year ago looked upon eight hundred as the summit ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... appeared the youthful soldier that she fell deeply in love with him at sight, her passion growing until, in disregard of honor and patriotism, she sent him a secret message, offering to deliver up to him the city on condition of becoming his wife. The khan, though doubtless despising her treachery to her people, was quick to close with the offer, and in a short time Friuli was ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... not that something like despising the birthright? Is it not a criminal thing for Christian people thus to neglect, and to put aside, and never to seek to obtain, all these great gifts of God? There they lie at our doors, and they are ours for the taking. Suppose a carrier brought you a whole waggon full of precious goods, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... dinner hour, the three generally talked together in an impregnable manner—not that they were by any means bosom-friends, for two of them had never before united in anything except despising good, soft lady Broughton. When they were altogether in their mistress's presence, they behaved to Dorothy and to each other with ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... now, by the hostility he came in contact with, condensed into individual enmities, and narrowed into personal resentments; and from the lofty, and, as it appeared to himself, philosophical luxury of hating mankind in the gross, he was now brought down to the self-humbling necessity of despising them in detail. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... to hold my mind impartially open regarding Mr. Hall, I was conscious of an inclination to despise him myself. But I was also honest enough to realize that my principal reason for despising him was because he had won the hand of ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... about, they have worn out both their health and their clothes, and are tattered, and look ghastly, men of quality will not entertain them, and poor men dare not do it; knowing that one who has been bred up in idleness and pleasure, and who was used to walk about with his sword and buckler, despising all the neighbourhood with an insolent scorn, as far below him, is not fit for the spade and mattock: nor will he serve a poor man for so small a hire, and in so low a diet as he can afford to give him.' To this he answered, 'This sort ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... Despising the opportunity offered by music or eloquence, by book or newspaper, by trade and profession, many choose sloth and self-indulgence. These needy millions, blinded with sin and ignorance, stand forth as a great opportunity for loving hearts. Sympathy is making beautiful the pathway ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... the words, which she meant in reference to herself, but which she perceived, as soon as she had uttered them, might apply to him with equal force. Despising herself for the weakness which he might have interpreted as a bid for a compliment, she was glad that he ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... barbarians, espying our standard in the distance, desist from the attack; at first they suppose that the legions, which they had learned from their prisoners had removed farther off, had returned; afterwards, despising their small number, they make an attack on ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar

... in your ancient states; but you chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you. You set up your trade without a capital. If the last generations of your country appeared without much lustre in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those ancestors, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Instead of despising such accusations, or submitting them to an impartial inquiry, the commissioners hailed the popular clamour with transport. They triumphed in the tumult; they were overflowing with happiness at the fancied success of their ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... that to your mother I owe every benefit in life? Nothing can release me from the tribute of gratitude which would be ill repaid by braving her authority and despising her will. Should I give her reason to regret the hour she received me under her roof, to repent of every benefit she has hitherto bestowed on me; should I draw down a mother's displeasure, what reasonable hopes could we entertain ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... of experience, to offset the flashy supercilious lessons which the city teaches hers; for the city is a careless nurse and teacher, who thinks more of the cut of a coat than of the habit of mind; who feeds her children on colored candy and popcorn, despising the more wholesome porridge and milk; a slatternly nurse, who would rather buy perfume than soap; who allows her children to powder their necks instead of washing them; who decks them out in imitation lace ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... forgiveness and on him for instruction? Thus, at the priest's command, the coming generations are divided and embittered in the fact of separate schools for Catholics and Protestants. These men of clay and lordly air, claim rights superior to the State, despising the State provision for education. Daniel said, "The dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure." If so, as sure as the iron part has disappeared, so ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... expostulation my present situation will allow, produce this desirable change in you, there is at least one thing I can do. I can put you upon your guard against a mischief I foresee to be imminent. Beware of Mr. Tyrrel. Do not commit the mistake of despising him as an unequal opponent. Petty causes may produce great mischiefs. Mr. Tyrrel is boisterous, rugged, and unfeeling; and you are too passionate, too acutely sensible of injury. It would be truly to be lamented, if ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... his clasp-knife and prepares for action. When his huge tin dish is piled with a miscellaneous assortment of edibles, it presents a spectacle which might make all Bath and Matlock and Royat and Homburg shudder; but the seaman, despising the miserable luxuries of fork and spoon, attacks the amazing conglomeration with enthusiasm. His Christmas pudding may resemble any geological formation that you like to name, and it may be unaccountably allied with a perplexing maze ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... Peter 3: 18), and you are condemned that you have not believed on him and confessed him as Saviour and Lord. It is the same sin in the last instance, but viewed upon its reverse side, if we may say it. In the one case it is the guilt of despising and rejecting the Son of God; in the other, it is the guilt of not believing in him who was despised and rejected of men. Yet if submissively yielded to, the Spirit will lead us from this first stage of revelation to the second, since what Andrew Fuller said of ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon

... I, working away on a new and good plan of life, living for you, and counting the weeks and days between me and the time when I might come and show you what your power over me had enabled me to do— and you were all the while despising or forgetting me, allowing me no means of defending myself, yielding me up to dishonour with a mere shake of the head, as if I had been an acquaintance of two or three ball-nights. It is clear that you knew my mind no better than I now find I ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... letter from a mayor, nor even a picture card of himself standing with his hat off in front of Pike's Peak—nothing but poetry. But, as I said, he was there with a talk about pining for the open road and despising the cramped haunts of men, and he had appealing eyes and all this flowing hair and necktie. So I says to myself: 'All right, Wilfred, you win!' and put my purse back in my bag and thought no more ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... and acknowledging one God, the sovereign of heaven, but reserving their worship for the genii, who, as they believed, followed their steps, and watched over the safety of their families. They moved from place to place, despising agriculture, and not deigning to build. Even as late as the twelfth century, they had only one city—Karrakoroum—situated on the Orgon, in the country subsequently the residence of the Grand Lama. In short, they looked upon all the world as their own, and, disliking ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar



Words linked to "Despising" :   hate, despise, hatred



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