"Misanthropic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mixes his fierce wrath against the hapless General Brereton with the generalizing of essentials, and transparently holds back the crushing thoughts of misadventure for which he may be held responsible by the misanthropic, scurrilous, self-assertive experts. His impassive periods were always associated with whimsical sensitiveness of being censured if his adventures should miscarry. No one knew better than he that a man in his position could only be popular if he continued to succeed. He ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... harmony with his face; they were neither languid like the mouth, nor pensive like the brow. All the fire and all the bold and wanton passion of youth shot from those dark, flashing eyes. When he looked down, he might have been taken for a completely worn-out, misanthropic aristocrat; but when he raised those ever-flashing and sparkling eyes, then was seen the young man full of dashing courage and ambitious desires, of ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... reminding the reader a little of the Parlement of Foules. The Man in the Moone (1606) is partly a recension of Endimion and Phoebe, but is a heterogeneous mass of weakly satire, of no particular merit. The Moon-Calfe (1627) is Drayton's most savage and misanthropic excursion into the region of Satire; in which, though occasionally nobly ironic, he is more usually coarse and blustering, in the style of Marston.[22] In 1605 Drayton brought out his first 'collected ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... stinginess of fate. Indeed, perhaps, no man had ever prepared for him an easier existence; no man had ever less misfortune sent to him by Providence, or less unkindness shown towards him by mankind, than this constantly struggling, this pessimistic and misanthropic man. The only son of Count Alfieri of Cortemiglia, of one of the richest and noblest families of Asti in Piedmont, his early childhood was spent under the care of his mother, a woman of almost saintly simplicity and kindness, unworldly, charitable, devoted to her children, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... exactions. To them there is nothing more unendurable than the monotonous round of general hospitalities and ceremonials, ludicrously misnamed pleasure. A detestation of wearisome formalities does not imply any clownish or misanthropic reluctance to remember that those who feel it live in a world with other people, and that a thoroughly social life is the only just ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... house had wainscots, behind which the mice were always scampering and squeaking and rattling down the plaster, and enacting family scenes and parlor theatricals. It had a cellar where the cold slug clung to the walls, and the misanthropic spider withdrew from the garish day; where the green mould loved to grow, and the long white potato-shoots went feeling along the floor, if haply they might find the daylight; it had great brick pillars, always in a cold sweat with holding up the burden they had been aching under ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... development of the woods had any charm for him. In vain did the fields display their golden treasures of ripening corn; in vain did the pale barley and the silvery oats wave their luxuriant growth against the dark background of the woods; all these fairylike effects of summer suggested only prosaic and misanthropic reflections in Julien's mind. He thought of the tricks, the envy and hatred that the possession of these little squares of ground brought forth among their rapacious owners. The prolific exuberance of ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... dizzy waves. It was well that Lady Rosamond was thus occupied. She gave grand and sumptuous dinner parties, and entertained her guests with balls on a scale of princely magnificence. Her luncheons were indeed sufficient to cheer the most despondent and misanthropic. Gaiety in its varied forms ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... three children, when I entered my office, shut the door, and immersed myself in books and my own thoughts. That those thoughts were not of the most joyous nature, I need hardly say. Still, looking back to that period, from where I stand now, I cannot say they were misanthropic. If I did not love all my species, it was because I saw nothing lovely in any body; but I did not hate them. I felt that I was an insignificant, an unnoticeable drop in the great world; that it was my misfortune ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... unconscious and slow degrees of affection fallen into that kind of intimacy with another man which justifies and renders necessary mutual freedom of intercourse in all the affairs of life. And yet he was possessed of warm affections, was by no means misanthropic in his nature, and would, in truth, have given much to be able to be free and jocund as are other men. He lacked the power that way, rather than the will. To himself it seemed to be a weakness in him rather than a strength that he should always be silent, always ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... every interval between their holy meditations and their monkish duties, images of the earth would crowd back upon their minds, and wring from their ascetic hearts tributes of anguish and despair; and so we find the writings and letters of the old monks full of vain regrets and misanthropic thoughts, but sometimes overflowing with the most touching pathos of human misery. Yet the monk knew full well what his duty was, and knew how sinful it was to repine or rebel against the will of God. If he vowed obedience to his abbot, he did not forget that obedience was ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... passing through his bedroom. In this apartment he spent most of his time, though he went out to walk every day, while I was at school; but, if he saw me coming, he always retreated to the house. He was gloomy and misanthropic; he never went to church himself, though he always compelled me to go, and also to attend the Sunday school. He did not go into society, and had little or nothing to do with, or to say to, the people of Parkville. He never troubled them, and ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... commenced thinking on this point, when the luxuriant nature of the Pacific Islands arrested his attention. In fact, he had made up his mind for a voyage to the South Seas, when a night's reflection induced him to abandon the idea. "Were I misanthropic," he said, "such a locale would suit me. The thoroughness of its insulation and seclusion, and the difficulty of ingress and egress, would in such case be the charm of charms; but as yet I am not Timon. I wish the composure but not the depression of solitude. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... mother; but then I looked upon the whole address as a mystification, intended especially for myself. I made up my mind, of course, that the box and contents would never get farther north than the studio of my misanthropic friend in ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... not even so great in men as it is declared to be. It[265] is only people of a malicious disposition or those who have become somewhat misanthropic through misfortunes, like Lucian's Timon, who find wickedness everywhere, and who poison the best actions by the interpretations they give to them. I speak of those who do it in all seriousness, to draw thence evil conclusions, by which their conduct is ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... of the story describe the struggles and anguish of the two, who pass through a volume of distresses, he growing more cold, proud, severe, and misanthropic than ever, all of which is supposed to be the fault of naughty Miss Nathalie, who might have made a saint of him, could she only have found her highest pleasure in letting him have his own way. Her conscience distresses her; it is all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... confidence by doubt, faith by despair. We must chill our demonstrativeness, restrain our affections, blunt our sensibilities. We must cultivate conscience until we have too much of it, and become monkish, savage and misanthropic. The asceticism of manhood is apparent from the studied air with which everybody is on his guard against his neighbor. In a crowded car, men instinctively clutch their pockets, and fancy a pickpocket in a benevolent-looking ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... these are only the blossoms which have fallen upon him from the Tree of Life, the fruit is yet untasted. He has looked at the evil of the world alone, and seeing how much "the time is out of joint" has become misanthropic, and turns his back alike on the evil ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... some persons supposed him misanthropic. Let me give one instance of his good-nature. One of the elder professors of Yale had fallen into a temporary misappreciation with the students, who received his instructions, to say the least, with an ill-concealed indifference. They whispered during his lectures, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... also a great difference between individuals in this respect. Some are naturally bright and jocund, and others are misanthropic and manufacture out of very trite materials a sort of snap-dragon wit, which flares up in an instant, is as soon out, and generally burns somebody's fingers. It may be urged on the contrary that many celebrated wits as Mathews, Leech, and others, have been melancholy men. But despondency ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... said of the negro's. It may be "traced like a wounded man through a crowd, by the blood." Yet the negroes have marvellously survived all the exterminating forces of slavery, and have emerged at the end of two hundred and fifty years of bondage, not morose, misanthropic, and revengeful, but cheerful, hopeful, and forgiving. They now stand before Congress and the country, not complaining of the past, but simply asking for a better future. The spectacle of these dusky millions thus imploring, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... exactly misanthropic sailor was leaning over the gate moodily. When he saw the white-faced restless Flora drifting like a lost thing along the road he put his pipe in his pocket and called out "Good morning, Miss Smith" in a tone of amazing happiness. She, with one foot in life ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... was but a grim old bull, roaming the prairie by himself in misanthropic seclusion; but there might be more behind the hills. Dreading the monotony and languor of the camp, Shaw and I saddled our horses, buckled our holsters in their places, and set out with Henry Chatillon ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the present summer, and only eight unmistakable adult males. If any adult females came in, they passed among the unidentified and uncounted.[16] I was glad I had made the test. As a kind-hearted cynic (I confess to being nothing worse than this), I was relieved to find my misanthropic, or, to speak more exactly, my misornithic, notions ill founded. As for the sprinkling of adult males, they may have been, as a "friend and fellow woodlander" suggests, birds which, for one reason or another, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... my friend Bill, from being the pleasantest and most genial of fellows, he became a morose, misanthropic man. Dr. Franklin has a significant proverb,—"Silks and satins put out the kitchen-fire." Silks and satins—meaning by them the luxuries of housekeeping—often put out not only the parlor-fire, but that more sacred flame, the fire of domestic love. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... sympathy, is selfish indifference, not in the least more laudable than misanthropic isolation. There is sympathy even among the hair-like oscillatorias, a tribe of simple plants, armies of which may be discovered, with the aid of the microscope, in the tiniest bit of scum from a stagnant ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... commander of the pretorian guard,—that is, of the only military force stationed in Italy,—and he had terrified with his implacable persecutions all those whom he had failed to win over through his promises or his favors. Could the duel between this misanthropic old man and this vigorous, energetic, ruthless climber end in any other way than with the ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... to believe that Livingstone possessed a splenetic, misanthropic temper; some have said that he is garrulous; that he is demented; that he is utterly changed from the David Livingstone whom people knew as the reverend missionary; that he takes no notes or observations ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... ruin all the trades connected with either the established worship—as amongst the silversmiths at Ephesus—or with the luxuries and amusements of life. Those amusements in circus or amphitheatre he hated, and therefore appeared misanthropic. He not only stood aloof from the religious observances of the state and the household, but treated them with ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... foreshadowed his plans. It was modeled after the "Orbis Pictus" of Comenius. The interest of these distinguished patrons shows how urgent was the need of an educational reform. Basedow also made the acquaintance of the great literary men of the time, chief among whom was Goethe. In temperament he was misanthropic and peevish, owing in part, doubtless, to ill health brought on by ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... severe, nevertheless contains several grains of truth, for women, as a rule, talk more than men. They are more sociable, and a Miss Misanthrope, in spite of Justin McCarthy's, is unknown—at least in civilised communities. Miss Frettlby, being neither misanthropic nor dumb, began to long for some one to talk to, and, ringing the bell, ordered Sal to be sent in. The two girls had become great friends, and Madge, though by two years the younger, assumed the ROLE ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... farewell to the few who, in the blight of fortune, called themselves their friends. The sadness of the parting moment had, to each of the pilgrims, its peculiar alleviations. Reuben, a moody man, and misanthropic because unhappy, strode onward with his usual stern brow and downcast eye, feeling few regrets and disdaining to acknowledge any. Dorcas, while she wept abundantly over the broken ties by which her simple and affectionate nature had bound itself ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... near to her father's chair and laid a timid hand on his shoulder. An immense gush of pity for him flooded her heart. If she had known this story before, she would have understood, and instead of thinking him unkind and misanthropic she would have tried to be a better daughter to him. The new-found knowledge illuminated all the past and seemed ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... realization of evil, and by a constantly growing inclination to suppress it. The first condition is illustrated by the fierce satire of "Gulliver's Travels," the second by the earnest admonitions of the Spectator. The two great authors make a striking contrast. Swift, misanthropic, miserable, bitter; Addison, happy, loving mankind, admired alike by ally and opponent, Swift, dying mad; Addison, calm, conscious, employing his last moments to ask pardon of one he had offended. The same contrast is in their works. Swift dwelt and gloated on the evil about him, exposed it in ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... no desire for companionship, but there was nothing morose or misanthropic in his love of seclusion, and I soon saw that, though he had no care for intellectual growth and no longing for books, he thought a good deal in his own way, and that, mingled with his limited thinking ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... vein of misanthropic irony in most of what Anthony Thurston said, but the other man had the same blood in ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... is close to the pavement, and it is impossible to go that way without seeing it. We can imagine that one who was so entirely the opposite of misanthropic would wish to lie like this within ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... and graceful, frequently tinged with a shade of melancholy, but never despairing, cynical, or misanthropic. It never deals with the highest themes, nor rises to sublimity, but its influence is calculated to make the reader truer, nobler, and ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... King, when the Catholic Bill hung upon his caprice. Palmerston told me he had never been in the Castle since the eventful day of Herries' appointment and non-appointment; and how many things have happened since. What a changement de decoration; no longer George IV., capricious, luxurious, and misanthropic, liking nothing but the society of listeners and flatterers, with the Conyngham tribe and one or two Tory Ministers and foreign Ambassadors; but a plain, vulgar, hospitable gentleman, opening his doors to all the world, with a numerous family and suite, a ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... tart, acetose, acerbitous, acrid; rancid, musty; curdled, loppered; imbittered, morose, misanthropic, unamiable, dour, cynical, surly, grum, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... here late this afternoon. I've been over to Morton House, consoling a homesick cousin who is sure she is going to hate college. I've been out since before luncheon. Had it at Martell's with my dolorous, misanthropic relative. I tried to get her in here, but everything was taken. We are to have ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... and reverend of aspect; much of a philosopher. To him, all gnarled and knotty subjects were familiar; in his day he had cracked many a crabbed nut. And so in love with his Timonean solitude was Rozoko, that it needed many bribes and bland persuasions, to induce him to desert his mossy, hillside, misanthropic cave, for the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... you two also! Bless my soul! From a lonely, somewhat misanthropic old man, you young people have turned me into a real human being! I like young voices round me, and young folks's pleasures going on in my house. Well, my dears, are you interested ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... a woman is happiest when most deceived?' he asked, with a glance towards his wife. 'Either he or some other misanthropic old Frenchman; but whoever it was, master James has evidently read ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... well equipped, at least as powerful as Voltaire; it may be said that the last half of the eighteenth century belongs to him. A foreigner, a Protestant, original in temperament, in education, in heart, in mind and in habits, at once misanthropic and philanthropic, living in an ideal world constructed by himself, entirely opposed to the world as it is, he finds himself standing in a new position. No one is so sensitive to the evils and vices of actual society. No one is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... philosopher is not in every respect "the compleat gentleman," a citizen totus teres atque rotundus, his works are not profitable for the building up of that character. If it did, we must by parity of reasoning discard the discoveries of a misanthropic inventor and the theories of a bigamous chemist. We go to Plato and Catullus, to Shakespeare and Shelley, for what they have to give: if we go with our own pet notions of what that ought to be, we are naturally as disgusted as Herbert Spencer was with Homer and Tolstoy ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various |
