"Meanness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but of meanness—was in the gesture with which she gathered up the notes and pressed them into his shrinking hands. And yet Cyrus Treadwell was a rich man—the richest man living in Dinwiddie! Oliver understood now why she was crushed—why ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... insurrection, was captured three days afterward, and conveyed a prisoner to General Duff's headquarters at Tullow. Here he was put on his trial before a Military Commission composed of Sir James Duff, Lord Roden, Colonels Eden and Foster, and Major Hall. Hall had the meanness to put to him, prisoner as he was, several insulting questions, which at length the high-spirited rebel answered with a blow. The Commission thought him highly dangerous, and instantly ordered him to execution. His body was burned, his head spiked on the market-house of Tullow, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... force pump, and nearly drowned him. Only for the respect that the crew had for his wife, I really believe they would have killed him, for they were wrought up to a pitch of fury by his tyranny and meanness. The boatswain carried him below, locked him up in one of the state-rooms, and there he was kept in confinement till the barque reached Honolulu, twenty days later, the mate acting as skipper. At Honolulu, the mate and all the crew were tried for mutiny, but ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... the luxurious abundance, the tesselated pavement, and the tapestry Brussels, the lofty studding, and the black walnut mouldings of the St. Albans; and Lemuel felt the difference with a curious mixture of pride and remorse in his own escape from the meanness of his home. He felt the self-reproach to which the man who rises without raising with him all those dear to him is destined in some measure all his life. His interests and associations are separated from theirs, but if he is not an ignoble spirit, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... was pale and slender. He was very quiet and studious, and had such a love of honesty and truth, and such detestation of meanness and wrong, that we boys had ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... the march the boys bought something to eat or drink. There had been a barrel of cider brought from Mr. Chase's for their especial use, and Fred sold it out to the boys for four cents a glass. This was a piece of extraordinary meanness in him, for his father had intended the cider as a present to the company. The boys did not know this, however, and paid their ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... homesick, for out of the mountain's very womb brayed a music-box, such as the old-time carousels made use of before the days of electricity and steam. It was being worked by inexpert hands, for the time was something jerky; but it was robbed of its tinny meanness and even majesty by the hugeness of a cavern's roof, as well as by the crashing, swinging march it played— wild -wonderful—invented for lawless hours and ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... has now become the fashion to denigrate them to an equal excess. The traditional figure of the Grand Conde, Olympian and sublime, has been exposed by pitiless documentary evidence. La Bruyere's latest and most learned editor, M. Emile Magne, gives a terrible picture of the Prince's meanness and dirtiness; Harpagon in an ostler's jacket, he calls him, en souquenille. But to dwell on all this is to forget that the great Conde, even in his ugly old age, was haloed by the glory of having been the ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... cheeks were pale with indignation, and asked whether she recognized the tablets as her property; Paula, after convincing herself, replied with a flaming glance of scorn and aversion at Horapollo: "Yes, my lord. It is mine. That base old man has taken it with atrocious meanness from among my things." For an instant her voice failed her; then, turning to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hand, had no real interest whatever in anybody's affairs but her own, and combined in the highest degree those qualities of personal extravagance and general meanness which not unfrequently ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that economy consists in saving cheese parings and candle ends, in cutting off two pence from the laundress' bill, and doing all sorts of little, mean, dirty things. Economy is not meanness. The misfortune is also that this class of persons let their economy apply only in one direction. They fancy they are so wonderfully economical in saving a half-penny, where they ought to spend two-pence, that they think they can afford to squander ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... flows from him, and though she is a responsible, she is not a discretional, agent. The table is to correspond with the moderation of the master, and the matron will be scolded or reproved as it varies from the proper medium between meanness and profusion. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the whole charge of the books now, I did not see how I could avoid any complicity with the fraud. In fact, I had already discovered it. I felt that I had a duty to perform, and that, if I exposed the junior partner, he, and not I, would be guilty of his fall. Was it meanness, ingratitude, or treachery in me to put Mr. Collingsby on his guard? If I could save Mr. Whippleton, I wished to do so. It was plain that he had come to a realizing sense of his danger, and was persecuting his mother to obtain the ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... sprung up from the Stall, and have, by patching and heel-piecing Religion and the State, made their Names famous to After-Ages? I can name many, but I shall mention only John of Leyden. Now, I see no Reason, why Meanness of Birth should be an Obstacle to Merit, and I am resolved, as I find a great many Things which ought to be redress'd both in Church and State, if you my Friends will stand by me, to aim at the setting both upright: For you must own, they ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... or a confirmation to the contrary, all discipline is destroyed by contempt, and the ship's company mutiny, either directly or indirectly. There is an old saying, that all tyrants are cowards; that tyranny is in itself a species of meanness, I acknowledge: but still the saying ought to be modified. If it is asserted that all mean tyrants are cowards, I agree; but I have known in the service most special tyrants, who were not cowards: their tyranny was excessive, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... of the very flames)—Ver. 491. This was a proverb expressive of the lowest degree of meanness and infamy. When they burned the bodies of the dead, it was the custom of the ancients to throw meat and various articles of food upon the funeral pile, and it was considered the greatest possible affront to tell ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... when a quarrel was likely to end fatally, men rather hesitated about embarking upon it. The moral tone of the round-up camp seemed to Roosevelt rather high. There was a real regard for truthfulness, a firm insistence on the sanctity of promises, and utter contempt for meanness and cowardice and dishonesty and hypocrisy and the disposition to shirk. The cowpuncher was a potential cattle-owner and good citizen, and if he went wild on occasion it was largely because he was so exuberantly ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... lie. I remember in 1896 I went to church—that was about the fourth time I had been to church. The preacher began preachin' and I went outdoors and cut the harness off of his mule and broke one of his buggy wheels. I went down in the woods and cut a cow just for meanness. I stole a gun, and I would shoot anytime and anywhere, and nobody bothered me because they was scared to. I stole ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... extrusion, at Charlestown, at Cambridge, of a few chimneys and steeples, straight, sordid tubes of factories and engine-shops, or spare, heavenward finger of the New England meeting-house. There was something inexorable in the poverty of the scene, shameful in the meanness of its details, which gave a collective impression of boards and tin and frozen earth, sheds and rotting piles, railway-lines striding flat across a thoroughfare of puddles, and tracks of the humbler, the universal horse-car, traversing obliquely this path of danger; loose fences, vacant lots, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... place, and late at night the man comes to his prosaic home, whistling and hilarious, and wonders that the wife is jealous. There are thousands of men who, while not positively immoral, need radical correction of their habits in this direction. It is meanness immeasurable for a man by his behavior to seem to say to his wife: "You can't help yourself, and I will go where I please, and admire whom I please, and I ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... "Run away from him; we'll stake you; skip out for the coast some night." But all these suggestions failed; he said Flint would hunt him down and fetch him back, just for meanness. ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... brought to book, was nettled at his own meanness; so he sent Sir Charles's letter to ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... accommodation in his temper, he would have been still more interesting; but he had been accustomed to give law in the circle of his ordinary acquaintance, and his dread of anything approaching to meanness or servility, rendered his manner somewhat decided and hard. Nothing perhaps was more remarkable among his various attainments, than the fluency and precision and originality of language, when he spoke in company; more particularly as he aimed at purity in his turn of expression, and avoided ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... wife, his helpmate and friend, for the unfortunate woman takes to drink. The faith of the priest holds in this terrible trial. But his misery increases immeasurably. The vice of his wife, his own sick weakness, excite the meanness of the people. Insults have to be borne in silence, tears hidden. At home, the priest's wife has no rest. She has the idea that she can have another son who will take the place of the dead one and be a balm to her broken heart. In her ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... assortment of grammatical facts to which he was incapable of giving life. If the Rector of Wych-on-the-Wold was not a great scholar, he was at least able to repair the neglect of, more than the neglect of, the positive damage done to Mark's education by the meanness of Haverton House; moreover, after Mark had been reading with him six months he did find a really first-class scholar in Mr. Ford, the Vicar of Little Fairfield. Mark worked steadily, and existence in Oxfordshire went by without ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Areopagite, that is, one of the senators, there followed neither any hurt to him, nor loss of honor to Dionysius. And for Rome, if Cicero, in his most excellent book "De Natura Deorum," overthrew the national religion of that commonwealth, he was never the further from being consul. But there is a meanness and poorness in modern prudence, not only to the damage of civil government, but of religion itself; for to make a man in matter of religion, which admits not of sensible demonstration (jurare in verba magistri), engage to believe no otherwise than is believed by my lord bishop, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... and she seemed to see him more clearly than she had ever seen him before,—his foppery, his meanness, his cowardice. ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the mischievous intelligence characteristic of children, in whom observation begins with naughtiness. Once she had let them loose upon their aunt, she allowed them to laugh at all her absurdities, her figure, her nose, her dresses, whose meanness, nevertheless, provided their own elegant attire. Thus incited and upheld, the little ones soon arrived at insolence. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had the quick temper that accompanies kindness of heart. With her the hand, as well as the heart, had a part in the first impulse. And then she shared the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Eden. Girding up His soul's loins with a resolute hand, he thrust The base thought from him: "Nauhaught, be a man Starve, if need be; but, while you live, look out From honest eyes on all men, unashamed. God help me! I am deacon of the church, A baptized, praying Indian! Should I do This secret meanness, even the barken knots Of the old trees would turn to eyes to see it, The birds would tell of it, and all the leaves Whisper above me: 'Nauhaught is a thief!' The sun would know it, and the stars that hide Behind his light would watch me, and at night Follow me with ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... despised. However, charity bindeth us to stifle contemptuous motions of heart, and not to vent them in vilifying expression. Particularly, it is a barbarous practice, out of contempt to reproach persons for natural imperfections, for meanness of condition, for unlucky disasters, for any involuntary defects; this being indeed to reproach mankind, unto which such things are incident; to reproach Providence, from the disposal whereof they do proceed. "Whoso mocketh the poor, despiseth his Maker," saith the wise ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... always contrives to spend as much money as those who live in a whirl of gaiety. Her bills, therefore, mount up, and, in a moment of unguarded pecuniary prudence, her husband will remonstrate mildly with her upon her extravagance. She will, thereupon, accuse him to her friends of meanness, and avow her determination never again to ask him for money. For a short time she will pay portions of her own bills, but, finding her pin-money insufficient for the purpose, she will sell some jewels, and spend the proceeds ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... the other, bitterly, "for here are letters addressed to him. I may even take the privilege of reading them tomorrow, for in that way I can perhaps discover some evidence that will force him to stop this ugly business. Oh! the meanness of Robert to strike this cowardly blow at me, his own cousin! He's a ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the poet a grateful look, snatched up his satchel and ran off to No. 1 Royal Street. Pinchas followed him soon, inwardly upbraiding Reb Shemuel for meanness. He had only as yet had his breakfast for his book. Perhaps it was Simcha's presence that was to blame. She was the Reb's right hand and he did not care to let her know what his left ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the experiment of riding slow; but his companion, determined not to drop him, slackened his pace, so as to keep close by him. Julian then spurred his horse to a full trot; and was soon satisfied, that the stranger, notwithstanding the meanness of his appearance, was so much better mounted than himself, as to render vain any thought of outriding him. He pulled up his horse to a more reasonable pace, therefore, in a sort of despair. Upon his doing so, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... uncompromising despotism of Prince Schwarzenberg in Austria. Manteuffel, in whom the Prussian epoch of reaction was symbolised, was not a cruel or a violent Minister; but his rule was stamped with a peculiar and degrading meanness, more irritating to those who suffered under it than harsher wrong. In his hands government was a thing of eavesdropping and espionage, a system of petty persecution, a school of subservience and hypocrisy. He had been the instrument at Olmuetz of such a surrender ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... was jest beautiful about Andy. You've saw me wicked to Andy. I am, and often, for I rile turruble quick, and God forgive me! But when that boy gits at his meanness—yu've seen jest a touch of it—there's scarcely livin' with him. It seems like he got reg'lar inspired. Some days he'll lie—make up big lies to the fust man comes in at the door. They ain't harmless, his lies ain't. Then he'll trick my woman, that's ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... to talk about this in private, but Demi has spoilt that plan, so I may as well have it out now," said Mr. Bhaer, looking a little stern, as he always did when any meanness or deceit came up ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... is their meanness; but my aunt, Lady Northmoor, did say perhaps it would be livelier another year, and then we should have had some dancing and deportment lessons. I up and told her I could dance fast enough now, but she said it would not ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... world," said he, "through many changes of fortune and varieties of humor, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?—five years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward lies your way; nor can anything but death ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... known that the Fairy People cannot abide meanness. They like to be liberally dealt with when they beg or borrow of the human race; and, on the other hand, to those who come to them in need, they are ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... of summer warms to life the prairie flowers—when the long grass shall wave under the scaffold where repose the mortal remains of the chief's sister—how often will the Dahcotah maidens draw near to contrast the meanness, the treachery, the falsehood of Red Cloud, with the constancy, ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... truth. Haven't I marched and starved and shared my plans with you? If there had been any meanness in you, wouldn't I have found it out? What's more, Benson knows what really happened, and so does Colonel Challoner. How else could Clarke have ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... rest, and so subdued the minds of the rulers in every nation, that hardly any resource presents itself to them, except that of entitling themselves to a contemptuous mercy by a display of their imbecility and meanness. Even in their greatest military efforts, and the greatest display of their fortitude, they seem not to hope, they do not even appear to wish, the extinction of what subsists to their certain ruin. Their ambition is only to be admitted to a more favored ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... disposed for my poor wants. I have come up to the castle at your order, and to do you pleasure, but not in the hope to get money. I am poor; that it would be useless to deny, for appearances are against me—" here he laughed, his auditors thought in a manner that was forced—"but poverty and meanness are not always inseparable. You have more than suspected to-day that my life is free, and I admit it; but it is a mistake to believe that, because men quit the high-road which some call honesty, in any particular practice, they are without human feeling. I have been useful in saving ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... possibly perfection may consist in a certain medium which we have already stepped beyond; but certainly all this refinement is utterly incomprehensible to an uncivilized mind which cannot discriminate the ideas of humility and meanness. We appear to the Sumatrans to have degenerated from the more splendid virtues of our predecessors. Even the richness of their laced suits and the gravity of their perukes attracted a degree of admiration; and I have heard the disuse of the large hoops worn by the ladies pathetically ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... enough to be compelled to hear that her father had been guilty of such meanness as to keep silent, in order that he might profit by the downfall of an innocent man; but when, in addition to this, she was expected to tell that man of how her father had acted, and, as it were, ask pardon for it, the ordeal appeared beyond her strength to ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... young nations, and the ethical value of moral institutions, more visible, than in denying the literary and monumental value of the Bible, and the moral influence of Christianity.(535) Infidels who have hated revealed religion as bitterly as Voltaire, have at least not had the meanness or the want of taste to depreciate the literary and moral ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... it a certain amount of weakness—jealousy and uneasiness exist in direct proportion to the amount of the happiness and its extent. Strong souls are neither jealous nor fearful; jealousy is doubt, fear is meanness. Unlimited belief is the principal attribute of a great man. If he is deceived (for strength as well as weakness may make a man a dupe) his contempt will serve him as an axe with which to cut through all. This greatness, however, is the ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... enthusiasm. I remember once being thus carried away, and mingled my voice with the rude throats that cheered the passing cortege of royalty. The moment it was past, however, my heart fell, abashed at its own meanness and wickedness. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... moulding the character hourly and daily, growing with a force that operates every moment. Without this dominating influence, character has no protection, but is constantly liable to fall away before temptation; and every such temptation succumbed to, every act of meanness or dishonesty, however slight, causes self-degradation. It matters not whether the act be successful or not, discovered or concealed; the culprit is no longer the same, but another person; and he is pursued by a secret uneasiness, by self-reproach, or the workings of what we call conscience, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... consequences, to the happiness of mankind. In common, what was in itself evil and vicious was permitted to carry along with it some circumstances of palliation. The Arab was hospitable; the robber brave. We did not necessarily find cruelty associated with fraud, or meanness with injustice. But here the case was far otherwise. It was the prerogative of this detested traffic to separate from evil its concomitant good, and to reconcile discordant mischiefs. It robbed war of its generosity; it deprived peace ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... truth I take to have been this. Marlborough and Godolphin both knew the meanness and credulity of James's character. They knew that he must be ever dealing for partisans; and they might be sure, that if he could hope for support from the General and the Lord-treasurer he must be less solicitous for more impotent supporters. "Is it impossible," said I to the Doctor, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... proud contempt of her aunt, whose regret at seeing the hoarded treasures of her industry, and the idols of her cleanly notability, exposed to the hands and eyes of the profane vulgar, was subdued by her detestation of the meanness and baseness of those from whom her revered brother ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... which looked at a distance like marble is found to be stucco and plaster. Behind Chowringhee are a number of wide streets with similar, but generally smaller houses, each apart, with offices and servants' houses in the enclosure. When entering the city one sees that strange combination of meanness and dirt with grandeur with which travellers in Eastern lands are so familiar. In the neighbourhood of Government House there are a number of shops in the European fashion, but a very large proportion of the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... him whip 'em heaps of times, and it was 'most allus in the mornin's 'fore they went to wuk. Thar warn't no jailhouse nigh whar us lived and Marse Robert never had no place to lock slaves up when they got too bad, so he just beat the meanness out of 'em. Thar was one slave he never tetched; that was his foreman and his name was Robert too, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... public money, And without bribeworthy service, He acquired, or more properly created, A Ministerial Estate: He was the only person of his time Who could cheat without the mask of honesty, Retain his primeval meanness When possessed of ten thousand a year: And having daily deserved the gibbet for what he did, Was at last condemned for what he could not do. Oh! indignant reader! Think not his life useless to mankind! Providence connived at his execrable designs, To give to ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... his off-hand decrees beyond the reach of contemptuous question. He composed differences among friends and equals with good-natured raillery, but he was as rough as need be when his wrath was roused by meanness and cruelty. We hardly know whether to credit some of the stories, apparently well-attested by living witnesses, of his prodigious muscular powers. He is said to have lifted, at Rutledge's mill, a box of stones weighing over half a ton! It is also related that he could raise ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... burdened myself with an animal, possessing no social or political influence whatever. I knew already that the world was governed without wisdom, and I now felt that it was also ruled with extreme meanness. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... in all ages, on the cessation of civil war, to grant a general amnesty. No other motive but that of the basest and most barbarous revenge could induce men to express an averseness to so humane and necessary a measure. Next to the cruelty of such a refusal was the meanness of those ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... carried good-temper about with him, and yet he could rebuke with a sharpness which surprised me, if there was need. He was curiously tolerant, I used to think, of sensual sins, but in the presence of cruelty or meanness or deliberate deceit he used to explode into the most violent language. I remember a scene which it is almost a terror to me now to recollect, when I was walking with him, and we met a tipsy farmer of a neighbouring village ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... e'en walk then," said Dymock, "nay, I would gladly carry you on my back, rather than descend to the meanness of driving a bargain with a testy old fellow like that; by the bye, Shanty, ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... I forgot it for the moment too," Steele said bitterly. "When I could have had it at once I must go off ranting about his meanness. It was thought of what he had done to you that made me overlook the paper; that set me boiling. Lost ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... woman's love perform?—My house is managed with a propriety and decorum, unknown in other schools; my boys are well fed, look healthy, and have every proper accommodation; and all this performed with a careful economy, that never descends to meanness. But I have lost my gentle, helpless Anna!—When we sit down to enjoy an hour of repose after the fatigue of the day, I am compelled to listen to what have been her useful (and they are really useful) employments through the day, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... dry and somewhat scornful inuendo, which lay at the bottom of Mr. Edgerton's seemingly innocent assumption; and the latter took his leave, vexed with himself at having made the unsuccessful application—but still more angry with the meanness of character which he had ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Andrew to get ready for the coming of the Master, not three weeks off at the farthest, and she warned him that the archangel might blow his trumpet at any moment. Then where would he be? she asked in exultation. Human meanness is never so pitiful as when it tries to seize on God's judgments as weapons with which to gratify its own spites. I trust this remark will not be considered as applying only ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... snatched, forbidden thing.' But she suddenly stopped speaking. She had spoiled the remembrance of Frederick's visit to herself by her own cowardice. Of all faults the one she most despised in others was the want of bravery; the meanness of heart which leads to untruth. And here had she been guilty of it! Then came the thought of Mr. Thornton's cognisance of her falsehood. She wondered if she should have minded detection half so much from any one ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... it surprises me that such proud people as you Americans should condescend to the meanness of borrowing from those whom you affect to despise. Besides, as you never repay us for what you pretend to borrow, I look upon it as a system of robbery. If strangers unfortunately settle among you, their good-nature is taxed to supply your ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... circumstances calculated to give this negative comfort. His maternal uncle enjoyed, indeed, his newly acquired property only a few years after it came into his possession. Partly on account of his cruelty to his relations, partly from a meanness and vulgarity of character, which soon displayed itself in his novel situation, and which, it was believed, had previously kept him in the lowest walks of his profession as a Dublin attorney, he found himself neglected and shunned by ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... sloping their rifles rightly. We are not on parade, but about business a great deal more serious than that. We are doing our fighting with the Captain looking at us, and that should be a stimulus, a joy and not a terror. Realise God's eye watching you, and sin, and meanness, and negligence, and selfishness, and sensuality, and lust, and passion, and all the other devils that are in you will vanish like ghosts at cockcrow. 'Walk before Me,' and if you feel that I am beside you, you cannot sin. 'Walk before Me, and be ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wooden machine to that effect erected in some convenient part of the proscenium, which an unsuccessful author should be required to mount, and stand his hour, exposed to the apples and oranges of the pit. This amende honorable would well suit with the meanness of some authors, who in their prologues fairly prostrate their skulls to the audience, and seem to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... awareness that the world of The Dunciad does in one sense sully epic beauties, at the same time, I think, Harte knew that the epic poems to which The Dunciad continually alludes remain fixed, unsullied polestars; otherwise the reader of the poem would lack a way of measuring the meanness of its characters and principles. The "charms of Parody" in The Dunciad provide a contrast between its dark, fallen world and the undimmed luster of epic realms (p. 10). By using the ambiguous word parody, which in the eighteenth century could mean either ridicule or straight imitation,[23] ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... clear into the first part of October; then the fresher weather renewed my life and strength. All this time there were reports drifting about that the King was going to ransom Joan. I believed these, for I was young and had not yet found out the littleness and meanness of our poor human race, which brags about itself so much, and thinks it is better and higher ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... of doing or saying anything to her that had the remotest approach to love-making while in circumstances where the poor girl could not get out of his way, however much she might wish to do so, and the meanness, not to say absurdity, of showing anything like a lover's affection for a spirit which could only make itself known through the medium of a brown visage. Hence Lawrence, who was the soul of honour and gallantry, got out of the dilemma by ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... order, I came safely past them and turned up the less-frequented street that held my inn, when at the corner, under the big lamp, a young man with something of a swagger about him, in spite of the meanness of his dress, came out from the shadow of the wall and looked me hard ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... for your guests in as good style as your means and the circumstances of the case will permit, and make no fuss about it. To be unnecessarily sparing shows meanness, and to be extravagantly profuse is absurd as well an ruinous. Probably your visitors know whether your income is large or small and if they do not they will soon learn, on that point, all that it is necessary for them to know. But if any circumstance out of the ordinary course of things should render ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... fur removed from our institutions and constitutions as if they wuz settin' in Jupiter with their legs hangin' off. It wuz galdin' to Uncle Sam and finally he had to stop it. But he didn't do it out of meanness. He jest had to, for of course you know your own ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... curiosity and awaken feeling without the aid of improbable fiction or extravagant adventure. The language is varied in its degree of simplicity, to suit the pieces to different ages, but is throughout neat and correct; and, without the least approach towards vulgarity or meanness, it is adapted with peculiar felicity to the understandings of children. The author's taste, in this class of writing, appears to have been formed on the best models; and the work will not discredit a place on the same shelf with Berquin's Child's Friend, Mrs. Barbauld's Lessons ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... carried out by base persons, of whom the queen is the basest, to ruin Strafford; the futility of Strafford's sentimental love of the king, whom he despises while he loves him; Strafford's blustering weakness and blindness when he forces his way into the Parliament House, and the contemptible meanness of Charles. The low intrigues of the Court leave the strongest impression on the mind, not the mighty struggle, not the fate of the Monarchy ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... cheated. She had come to the shop and expressed herself to this effect, in no moderate terms; and Mrs. Bundlecombe, whilst returning the twopence, had made some disparaging remarks on the other lady's manners, meanness, dress, age, and general inferiority. The affront had never been quite forgotten on either side, and it was not without much ruffling of their mental plumage that the two old bodies found themselves established within a few yards of ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... goes about with a dark lantern peering into out-of-the-way places, ever looking for meanness and things ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... the worship of relics, Eunapius says: "Whoever wore a black dress was invested with tyrannical power; philosophy and piety to the gods were compelled to retire into secret places, and to dwell in contented poverty and dignified meanness of appearance. The temples were turned into tombs for the adoration of the bones of the basest and most depraved of men, who had suffered the penalty of the law, and whom they made ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... neighbours might have shaken hands with each other from the different sides, and occasionally the space between was traversed by wooden galleries, and thus entirely closed up. The stair, the scale-stair, was not well cleaned; and on entering the house Mannering was struck with the narrowness and meanness of the wainscotted passage. But the library, into which he was shown by an elderly, respectable-looking man-servant, was a complete contrast to these unpromising appearances. It was a well-proportioned room, hung with a portrait or two of Scottish characters of eminence, by Jamieson, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Bud laughed furiously. "That bull I imported last fall for three thousand dollars," he went on, turning back to the foreman. "They shot him up and drove off his twenty-five cows from the Coyote Bluff pastures. Dirty spite an' meanness. The white-livered scum!" Then with a fierce oath the usually even-tempered Bud hurled his wrath upon the waiting man. "Gorl darn it, you're standin' around like a barbed wire fence post. What in hell's brought you around now? What they ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... well-known how someone had the cunning and meanness to put a man's suit beside her to tempt her to wear this suit again, and with what absurd barbarism this transgression was claimed as a pretext for condemning her to the flames, as if in a warrior girl it was a crime worthy of the fire, to put on breeches instead of a ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... dear sister S.: "When I sometimes offer up supplications with strong crying to God to bring down my spirit into the dust I endeavor calmly to contemplate the infinite majesty of the most high God and my own meanness and wickedness, or else I quietly tell the Lord, who knows the heart, I would give Him all the glory of everything if I could. But the most effectual way I have ever found is to lead away my thoughts from myself and my ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... her place of refuge with the petty question, "Good folks, can you tell when the ravishing is going to begin?" I am sure I shall neither hide myself to avoid applause, which probably no one will think of conferring, nor have the meanness to do anything which can indicate any desire of ravishment. I have seen, when the late Lord Erskine entered the Edinburgh theatre, papers distributed in the boxes to mendicate a round of applause—the natural reward of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... of that wedding-morning when the air was literally burthened with like fragrance. She was about to see her husband for the first time since that agitating day, to see him thus, crouching as a spy among those delicate plants, her heart beat heavily, she loathed herself for the seeming meanness that had been forced upon her. Yet there was misgiving at her heart—a vague, sickening apprehension that chained ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... aloud. Ray went down the back stairs, swinging an empty millet-bag in his hand. For another five minutes Clara remained standing, to show that she was anxious to get away, while Ada abused her husband, giving detailed accounts of his meanness and neglect. Suddenly ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... the other. There are types of Christian men to whom it is more natural to abhor the evil than to cleave to the good; and there are types of character of which the converse is true. We often see men very earnest and entirely sincere in their detestation of meanness and wickedness, but very tepid in their appreciation of goodness. To hate is, unfortunately, more congenial with ordinary characters than to love; and it is more facile to look down on badness than ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... de War de old overseer tried himself in meanness over de slaves as seemingly he tried to be important. One day de slaves caught him and one held him whilst another knocked him in de head and ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... making difficulties about spending that grieved Peter greatly; not because he ever wanted her money now that Estcourt had been restored to its old splendour and set going again for their boy, but because meanness about money in a woman was something he could not comprehend—something repulsive, unfeminine, contrary to her nature as he had always understood it. He left off making the least suggestion about Anna's education or the household arrangements; everything that was done was done of ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... most deeply loved men of his time. He was of an eminently social temper, although averse to large companies and shy and silent in their presence. "There is no such thing," he once said, "as real conversation but between two persons." He was free from malice, meanness, or jealousy, Pope to the contrary notwithstanding. He was absolutely loyal to his principles and to his friends, in a time when many men changed both with as little compunction as they changed wigs and swords. His personality was singularly winning; his features regular, and full ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... it would be a sorry sight, a friend deserted, with his mouth open, and sus. per aures.—Well, a very short survey of life had convinced me of the absurdity and meanness and insecurity that pervade all human objects, such as wealth, office, power. I was filled with contempt for them, realized that to care for them was to lose all chance of what deserved care, and determined to grovel no more, but fix my gaze upon the ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... New Zealanders have done, and to claim their ancient rights with tears now unheeded. I can see along the vista of the future, truth and righteousness in Britain's hands, and the inhabitants of New Guinea yet unborn blessing her for her rule; if otherwise, God help the British meanness, for they will rise to pronounce a curse on ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... not be maintained. They were followed by a meanness and a descent of the mind into lower levels; the loss of wings; no high speculation. Locke, to whom the meaning of ideas was unknown, became the type of philosophy, and his "understanding" the measure, in all nations, of the English ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... pathetic, human little person, who did what she could to save the poor strayed boys; but rather of ogre kind herself, kissing him as if she would like to put a tooth in him, with loud laughter at his shrinking and indisposition to be caressed. Geoff also felt keenly the meanness of forsaking Theo, and even the pony, who by this time, no doubt, must be very sorry for having thrown him, and very much puzzled how to get home. Would the groom (left behind for the purpose) be able to catch him? All these things much disturbed Geoff's thoughts. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... earnest that his English is badly wrenched in the effort to convey his views, but I give his words very nearly as he wrote them. "What I think and what often I observed is that the Chinese very meanness and sordidness, just exactly what were the Jews. Scatter all round the world, and still they feel very proud of their country, despise the foreigners, close all their sea-ports, would not allow the poor ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... with all my heart; and even then they would expect you should have some little estate, or be of some trade. When such poor folks as we are wish to marry, the first thing they ought to think of, is how to live. But without reflecting on the meanness of your birth, and the little fortune you have to recommend you, you aim at the highest pitch of exaltation; and your pretensions are no less than to demand in marriage the daughter of your sovereign, who with one single word ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... words:—'Endure, my soul, thou hast endured worse.' Nor must we allow our citizens to receive bribes, or to say, 'Gifts persuade the gods, gifts reverend kings;' or to applaud the ignoble advice of Phoenix to Achilles that he should get money out of the Greeks before he assisted them; or the meanness of Achilles himself in taking gifts from Agamemnon; or his requiring a ransom for the body of Hector; or his cursing of Apollo; or his insolence to the river-god Scamander; or his dedication to the dead Patroclus of ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Frank had not found much satisfaction in the company of his cousin, who inherited the combined meanness of both parents, and appeared to grudge poor Frank every mouthful he ate; but in the sunshine of his present prosperity he was ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... York" represents a class of publications which has, of late, in many ways, been set before the public with too great liberality. The sole object seems to be to exhibit the "Yankee" character in its traditional deformities of stupidity and meanness,—otherwise denominated simplicity and shrewdness. Mr. Jonathan Slick is in no respect different from the ordinary fabulous Yankee. An illiterate clown he is, who, visiting New York, contrives by vice of impudence, to interfere very seriously ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... should be to gratify some particular by livings and revenues here that will also fail, where nothing is to be had, the King himself will be loser, and so will the case be formed here; for such is the poverty and meanness of the people (by reason of the length and coldness of the winters, the difficulty of subduing a wilderness, defect of staple commodity, the want of money, etc.), that if with hard labour men get a subsistence for their families, 'tis as much as the generality are able ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Bud, "I wanted to git out of this low-lived, Flat Crick way of livin'. We're a hard set down here, Mr. Hartsook. And I'm gittin' to be one of the hardest of 'em. But I never could git no good out of Bosaw with his whisky and meanness. And I went to the Mount Tabor church concert. I heard a man discussin' baptism, and regeneration, and so on. That didn't seem no cure for me, I went to a revival over at Clifty. Well, 'twarn't no use. First night they was a man that spoke about Jesus Christ ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... bitterness: "some friends would have only judged from what I said, that I chose to give no particular explanation of a circumstance which calls for none—at least to a stranger. You have judged better, and have made me feel, not only the meanness of duplicity, but my own inadequacy to sustain the task of a dissembler. I now tell you distinctly, that that glove is not the fellow, as you have acutely discerned, to the one which I just now produced;—it belongs to a friend yet dearer to me than the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... attitudes and actions of imaginative young persons are exalted every moment by the invisible presence of lovers, poets, inspired and inspiring companions. Such as they are we also shall be; when we walk among them and with them, we shall wash our hands of all injustice, meanness, and pretension. Women are as tired as men of our silly civilization, its compliments, restraints, and compromises. They feel the burden of routine as heavily, and keep their elasticity under it as long as we. What they cannot hope to do, a great-hearted man, some lover of theirs, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... was interested in him and in his story. He swore roundly at the meanness of Jacob Wire and Squire Walker, and ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... affirmative reply to this question, she was doomed to disappointment. Disgusted with such paltry meanness, Clemence, who had pushed her plate away, unable to partake of the stale food, replied quietly, "I should say they ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... Democratic majority into a minority, "deserves," says von Holst, "to be counted among the most meritorious proofs of the sound and honorable feeling of the American nation."[57] But while the administration had thus smirched the inception and the whole character of the war with meanness and dishonor, the generals and the army were winning abundant glory for the national arms. Good strategy achieved a series of brilliant victories, and fortunately for the Whigs General Taylor and General Scott, together with a large proportion of the most distinguished regimental officers, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... London,—a Portuguese by birth, but came to London when a boy. He had few of the moral or external qualities of Jews; for I suppose there is some justice in the obloquy that follows them so closely. He was frugal without meanness, and cautious in his dealings, without extortion. I need not fear to say this, for it ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Amphipolis and the Cardian territory, and is even turning Euboea into a hostile post, and advancing to attack Byzantium, it is safe to speak on Philip's behalf. Yea, among these men, some have risen rapidly from poverty to wealth, from meanness and obscurity to repute and honor, while you, on the contrary, have fallen from honor to obscurity, from wealth to indigence. For the riches of a state I consider to be allies, confidence, good-will; of all which you are ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... to the restaurant opposite the play-house, where Lemaitre was indulging in monstrous dinners and was usually hilarious with wine. Harel, it must be mentioned, was a very penurious man, who never paid his people when he could postpone it, and whose meanness of soul Lemaitre delighted to excoriate. Often when dining bountifully at his restaurant, the actor being sent for in hot haste with the intelligence that the curtain was just going up, would cry, "Diable! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... Germany? But, on the other hand, the ropes and myths and knots and hindrances; the thundering waves of the white world beyond beating us back; the scalding breakers of this inner world,—its currents and back eddies—its meanness and smallness—its ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... schools or for criminals. It brings out of boys all that is evil in their nature and nothing that is good, developing bullying and cruelty, while it is eminently productive of cowardice, lying, and meanness—as I have frequently found when I came to hear the private life of those who defend it as creating "manliness." It was found during the American war that the soldiers who had been most accustomed to beating and to being ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... their ranks. To my eye, they are all wretchedly ill dressed, for they wear the same dark and dirty-looking calicoes which our Scotch maid-servants wear only on week days. This gives to their dress an air of meanness; but here the English ought to consider, that these cotton goods are in France highly valued, and very dear, from their scarcity. Over these dresses they wear (at present) small imitation shawls, of wool, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... after, occurred the death of the ex-King of France, at Claremont. McCarthy sums up his character very tersely, thus: "The clever, unwise, grand, mean old man." Louis Philippe's meanness was in his mercenary and plotting spirit, when a rich man and a king—his grand qualities were his courage and cheerfulness, when ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... child! Beyond all understanding! And, do you know, the calumnies that were spread about us, especially the miserable anonymous letters, all kinds of meanness, it all helped. For each time we found in each other a perfect refuge. He was not so thin-skinned in such matters as I. It was through me that he first came to understand them—how to manage the petty incidents of social ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson |
