"Discreditable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of the first subjects. The doctor regarded it as a discreditable performance, unworthy a great and generous nation. The Mormon question followed, and on this he had much curious information. Living in the interior of New York State, he had heard Joseph Smith's history from its beginning, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... sake go to him!" Mr. Blumentein declared irritably. "We have nothing to conceal here! All that we desire is to be left alone by guests whose conduct about the place is discreditable. Good ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... speak properly, and say Kone?" says the Dane. "Weib is the right word," says the German. "Who ever says woman?" cry both. The language has not been reduced to writing; indeed, the little that has been done with it is highly discreditable to the Sleswick-Holstein Church Establishment. It is spoken by upwards of thirty thousand individuals; and when we remember that the whole population of Denmark is less than that of London and the suburbs, we see at once that a large ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... at first, seem discreditable to Washington, as exhibiting the mighty strength of his passions when aroused. But upon mature consideration it does him great honor, affording equal evidence of his power of self-control, his public spirit, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... doctor tells him he must go South, to get braced up, and to avoid a New York February and March. Suppose the patient has only about money enough to get here, and relies on finding something to do to keep him in food and lodging. Well—there's nothing mysterious or especially discreditable in that, is there? ... The dew is beginning to fall. And I'm keeping you out here in the damp. Good ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... geographical service. There was a "huge white blot" on the maps of central Arabia where no European had ever been, and Burton's scheme, approved by the Royal Geographical Society, was to extend his pilgrimage to this "empty abode," and remove a discreditable blank from the map. War among the tribes curtailed the design, and his journey went no farther than Medina and Mecca. The exploit of accompanying the Muslim hajj to the holy cities was not unique, nor so dangerous as has been imagined. Several Europeans have accomplished ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... it, there began, with 1787, that system of bargaining, truckling, and compromising with a moral, political, and economic monstrosity, which makes the history of our dealing with slavery in the first half of the nineteenth century so discreditable to a great people. Each generation sought to shift its load upon the next, and the burden rolled on, until a generation came which was both too weak and too strong to bear it longer. One cannot, to be sure, demand of whole nations exceptional moral foresight ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... nine or ten, was Olympe Mancini, who, in spite of her childish lack of beauty, was destined to enslave the handsomest King in Europe; and, after a life of discreditable intrigues, in which she incurred the stigma of witchcraft and murder, to end her career in obscurity, shunned by all who had known her ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... herring-busses swarmed along our coasts as far north as the Hebrides. The Dutch supplied our markets with fish caught within sight of our own shores, while our coasting population stood idly looking on. Yarranton regarded this state of things as most discreditable, and he urged the establishment of various branches of home industry as the best way of out-doing the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... crime in French as in English middle-class circles), playing at billiards (ditto), and a free use of strong drink and strong language. He spends and gives money freely, but does not get into debt; flirts with grisettes, but falls into no discreditable ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... most embarrassing complications in questions of identity; and if this belief is borne in mind, the charge of being a devil, so freely made, in the times of which we write, and before alluded to, against persons who performed extraordinary feats of valour, or behaved in a manner discreditable and deserving of general reprobation, loses much of its barbarous grotesqueness. There was no doubt as to Coriolanus,[3] as has been said; nor Shylock.[4] Even "the outward sainted Angelo is yet a devil;"[5] and Prince Hal confesses that "there ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... transacted. Mr Gordon had more than once warned a dark sullen-looking man that he did not approve of his style of shearing. He was temporarily absent, and on his return found the same man about to let go a sheep whose appearance, as a shorn wool-bearing quadruped, was painful and discreditable in the extreme. ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... masters, is at issue. There are, I think, a great number of men and women who would go unflinchingly to the stake in vindication of a principle, whose resolution, somewhere in the course of a long, solitary, and indefinite imprisonment, would break down into a discreditable compromise of opinions for which they were ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... such a claim seems to not a few grotesque in its presumption. Have we not been told by Mr. Balfour that, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, man's "very existence is an accident, his story a brief and discreditable episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets"?—and shall such a one, member of such a race, dream of prolonging his atomic existence world without ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... happened to meet Madame Marneffe instead of Lisbeth Fischer, he would have found a protectress whose complaisance must have led him into some boggy or discreditable path, where he would have been lost. He would certainly never have worked, nor the artist have been hatched out. Thus, while he deplored the old maid's grasping avarice, his reason bid him prefer her iron hand to the life of idleness and ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... resolution for expunging that of the 8th of June preceding, by which it was authorised, he was left in a minority of one hundred and thirty-seven against one hundred and forty-two. It is said that Mr. Pitt engaged in this discreditable affair from the conviction, that, within a reasonable time, a decided majority of legal votes would be substantiated in favour of Sir Cecil Wray; but it would rather appear that it was from the enmity which he bore to his rival, Fox. This, indeed, is borne out by the debates on ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... home; and they were the best of friends from that day forth. I don't say it's a discreditable story, you observe," continued Mr. Gottesheim; "but it's droll, and that's the fact. A man should think before he strikes; for, as my nephew says, man to man was the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... again have I seen an audience moved to laughter and cheers and tears by a play which the great outside public would be informed the next morning was indifferent or worse. The discrepancy was sometimes explicable by claques, which are almost as discreditable to managements as the keeping of tame critics, who eat food out of their hand. Sometimes it was not professional claques, but amateurs come to see a friend's play en masse, and applauding out of all proportion to its merits, not so much perhaps from ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... contributed quite as much as Hamilcar and Hannibal to the decline in the vigour and the numbers of the Italian people. No one can say whether the government could have rendered help; but it was an alarming and discreditable fact, that the circles of the Roman aristocracy, well-meaning and energetic as in great part they were, never once showed any insight into the real gravity of the situation or any foreboding of the full magnitude of the danger. When a Roman lady ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... o' man's beyond belief. But it's awfu' discreditable to Holdock, Steiner & Chase, if that came oot ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... to make great sacrifices in order to render them kind. What the inner circle would do about this cook he had no idea; he must talk to Lucia about it, before the advanced class tomorrow morning. But anything was better than letting Hermy and Ursy loose in Riseholme with their rude laughs and discreditable exposures. This evening safely over, he could discuss with Lucia what was to be done, for Hermy and Ursy would have vanished at cock-crow as they were going in for some golf-competition at a safe distance. Lucia might ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... and by the more prominent Liberals among their supporters in the House; with evasions, silences, sneers, angry refusals, hasty promises given to-day (when Ministers were frightened) and broken to-morrow; with a whole series of discreditable tongue-in-the-cheek tricks of Parliamentary procedure; till at last the onlooker must have wondered at and felt grateful for our British phlegm; surprised that so little actual harm was done (except to the bodies of the Suffragists), ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... story," he said, "since I found that scrap in old Thomas' pocket. It bears out the statement that the woman with the child, and the woman who quarreled with Armstrong, are the same. It looks as if Thomas had stumbled on to some affair which was more or less discreditable to the dead man, and, with a certain loyalty to the family, had kept it to himself. Then, you see, your story about the woman at the card-room window begins to mean something. It is the nearest approach to anything tangible that ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... continuous crafty incitements to mutiny, or the hundred and one ways in which he strove, when out of harness, to work up hatred of Jan among his mates, or when in harness to play subtle tricks which should produce an effect discreditable ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... know every crimson eave of it, every flower in the trim garden, the settle by the porch where he should sit and smoke his pipe and drain his can and listen to the booming of the bees, while he complacently savored the after-taste of discreditable adventures. He knew it so well in his mind that he had half come to believe that it really existed, that he had always owned it, that it truly awaited his home-coming, and his feeling as he entered the village that morning had been that he ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... that all this has arisen very much from the idea of Peele's vagabondism given by the untrustworthy "Jests." The slander on Queen Eleanor was pretty certainly supplied to him by an older ballad. There is little or nothing else in Peele's undoubted writings which is at all discreditable. His miscellaneous poems show a man by no means given to low company or low thoughts, and one gifted with the truest poetic vein; while his dramas, besides exhibiting a greater command over blank verse than any of his predecessors and than any except Marlowe of his contemporaries can claim, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... may be provided by which every promising child may be able to climb beyond the elements, and to acquire the fullest culture of which his faculties are capable. There is not only no credit at the present day in wishing so much, but it is discreditable not to do what lies in one's power to further its accomplishment. But, then, is not that to increase enormously the field of competition? I, for example, am a literary person, after a fashion; I have, that is, done something to earn a living by my pen. I had the ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to the secrets confided to me. By the suddenness of my illness I believe that I had been poisoned that very morning, but my strong constitution has saved me. I know that a certain agent of the political police is dogging me, and trying to entangle me in some discreditable business. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... by need; and when he has, in his own will and fortune, the means to live without them. I know myself very well; but 'tis hard for me to imagine any so pure liberality of any one towards me, any so frank and free hospitality, that would not appear to me discreditable, tyrannical, and tainted with reproach, if necessity had reduced me to it. As giving is an ambitious and authoritative quality, so is accepting a quality of submission; witness the insulting and quarrelsome refusal ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... guessed the truth? or had she only surmised that her adopted daughter was connected in some discreditable manner with the mystery of "Mercy Merrick"? The line in which she referred to the intruder in the dining-room as "the lady" showed very remarkably that her opinions had undergone a change in that quarter. But was the phrase enough ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... 53: For a considerable period, during 1859, discreditable scenes of brawling took place at this Church as a protest against the High Church practices of the Rector, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Monmouth. The well-deserved detestation with which he was regarded makes it difficult to form any just estimate of his character. Where he had no temptation to do injustice he seems to have been a very good judge; but he had no hesitation in doing gross injustice by detestable methods, for wholly discreditable reasons. He is not seen quite at his worst in Alice Lisle's trial, because she was probably guilty and Dunne was a liar; nor is he seen at his best as a cross-examiner, because he had very good material to go on. He has been ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... Leonard, indignantly. "Do you suppose a man can take such a step as that without its getting known? Why, I shall be chaffed—enviously—about you two to-morrow! Many a thing the world little dreams of is an open secret in Club smoking-rooms. Generally more discreditable than Graham's, which must be made public of itself ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... or twice at the most, did my labours meet with the slightest recognition beyond payment. Once I remember that I accused a member of a discreditable manoeuvre to consume the time of the House, and as he represented a borough in my district, he wrote to the editor denying the charge. The editor without any inquiry—and I believe I was mistaken—instantly congratulated me on having "scored." At another time, when Parliament was not ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... said, "under what, to borrow a figure from your profession, may be called false colors. You bear the countenance of one who might be a useful subject, and yet are you suspected of being addicted to certain practices which—I will not say they are dishonest, or even discreditable—for on that head the opinions of men are much divided, but which certainly have no tendency to assist Her Majesty, in bringing her wars to a glorious issue, by securing to her European dominions that monopoly of trade, by which it is her greatest desire to ease us ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Oriental conquests was increased, rather than diminished, by this occurrence. He had sought a quarrel with Parthia as early as A.D. 214, when he demanded of Volagases the surrender of two refugees of distinction. The rupture, which he courted, was deferred by the discreditable compliance of the Great King ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... strictly beautiful. Her eyes were a trifle large, and their lashes longer than they need have been. An anarchy of small curls was her chevelure, a dark upland of misrule, every hair asserting its rights over a not discreditable brow. For the rest, her features were not at all original. They seemed to have been derived rather from a gallimaufry of familiar models. From Madame la Marquise de Saint-Ouen came the shapely tilt of the nose. The mouth was a mere replica of Cupid's bow, lacquered scarlet ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... senate supports the trumped-up religious scruple, not from any respect to religion, but from ill-feeling towards him, and disgust at the king's outrageous bribery. I never cease advising and instigating Pompey—even frankly finding fault with and admonishing him—to avoid what would be a most discreditable imputation.[437] But he really leaves no room for either entreaties or admonitions from me. For, whether in everyday conversation or in the senate, no one could support your cause with greater eloquence, seriousness, zeal, and energy than he has done, testifying ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the splendid personalizations of Shakspere, formulated on the largest, freest, most heroic, most artistic mould, are to me far dearer as lessons, and more precious even as models for Democracy, than the humdrum samples Burns presents. The motives of some of his effusions are certainly discreditable personally—one or two of them markedly so. He has, moreover, little or no spirituality. This last is his mortal flaw and defect, tried by highest standards. The ideal he never reach'd (and yet I think he leads the way to it.) He ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... discreditable custom of the people of Qamul, a long note in the second edition of Cathay, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... policy of Austria, purposely refrained from examining the text of the communication, so that it could thereafter claim that it was not responsible for Austria's action—a policy which would not lessen the discreditable character of this iniquitous conspiracy against the peace of Europe,—yet the more reasonable assumption is that the simultaneous issuance of Austria's ultimatum at Belgrade and Germany's warning to the Powers was the result of a concerted action and had a common ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... aloud, "I don't honestly think there can be any method, creditable or discreditable, that I haven't tried." Peter flung the one-sided interview into the wastepaper-basket, and slipping his notebook into his pocket, departed to drink tea with a lady novelist, whose great desire, as stated in a postscript to her invitation, was ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... deliver. I have always been unwilling to waste in unprofitable inactivity that leisure which the first years of my profession usually allow, and which diligent men, even with moderate talents, might often employ in a manner neither discreditable to themselves, nor wholly useless to others. Desirous that my own leisure should not be consumed in sloth, I anxiously looked about for some way of filling it up, which might enable me, according to the ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... wealth!'—her lips formed the words, without uttering them—'what cruel differences it makes! All smooth here! Young, not to be trusted, with strange reserves, discreditable connections,—that family,—that fearful temper, showing itself even to her! All will be overlooked! Papa will be delighted, I know he will! And how is it with us? Proved, noble, superior, owned as such by all, as Philip is, yet, for that want of hateful money, he would be ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who shrinks from kissing a woman on the ground that she may floor him with a chair leg. Each flees from a purely theoretical risk. Each is a useless encumberer of the earth, and the sooner dead the better. Each is a discredit to the human race, already discreditable enough, God knows. ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... well for Hal to be a main feature in her life, blessing it with her friendship, while she turned kindly, unseeing eyes away from the corners where the murky shadows lay: Hal, who knew about the mad, discreditable marriage and its violent termination, and probably also of her mother's insatiable thirst for admiration ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... perhaps, his champion had not. Borrow was neither one of the 'kindest of men' nor the reverse. He was a good hater and a whole-hearted lover, and to be thus is to fill a certain uncomfortable but not discreditable place in the scheme of things. About a month later Borrow was on the way to the East, travelling by Paris and Vienna. From Paris he wrote to Mr. John Murray that Vidocq 'wished much to have a copy of my Gypsies in Spain,' but ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... than justice to rank him far above those mere charlatans of science, and hunters for marvels by means of isolated observation and experiment, with whom many would place him. That the 'Century' contains much which would be very discreditable to any man of science at the present day, is very true. Perpetual motion, perfect aerostation, devices for idle tricks and mere thaumaturgy, appear in company with schemes to take unfair advantages at card playing, and for the construction of false dice boxes—of which latter it is indignantly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... evidently plumed himself on his power of "invention"[108] in the matter of plots—a faculty which he knew Shakspere to lack—he cannot conceivably have meant to charge his rival with having committed any discreditable plagiarism in drawing upon Montaigne. At most he would mean to convey that borrowing from the English translation of Montaigne was an easy game as compared with his own scholar-like practice of translating from the Greek and Latin, and ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... hacked from a low-limbed tree a branch as thick as his finger and about a yard in length, and, first trimming it, bent it as Bark had bent the twig and tied a strong sinew cord across. It was a not discreditable bow, considering the fact that it was the first ever made, though one end was smaller than the other and it was rough of outline. Then Ab cut a straight willow twig, as long nearly as the bow, and began repeating the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Yet twenty years ago it was almost accounted a disgrace for an ancient family even to part with its heirlooms. In those cases, when want of the money cannot and is not pleaded, the proceeding seems all the stranger and the more discreditable. The late Lord bought at the right time, and his son sold at the right time. The prices realised were not merely high, but outrageous. Yet, after all, prices are a figure of speech and a relative term. To a wealthy Manchester manufacturer ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... think of any form of perversion better than "Very discreditable to him. I hope you blew him ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... brother to undertake the charge of his household without due consideration. She by no means left out of view the contingency of his possible future marriage; but she trusted largely to her own influences in making it such a one, if inevitable, as should not be discreditable to the family name. And under such conditions she would retire with serene contentment to her own more private sphere of Canterbury,—or, if circumstances should demand, would accept the position of guest in the house of her brother. Nor did she leave out of view her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... this exercise, which I have not corrected, or allowed to be touched in any way, is not discreditable to B. F. You observe that he is acquiring a knowledge of zoology at the same time that he is learning French. Fathers of families in moderate circumstances will find it profitable to their children, and an economical mode of instruction, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... not found. He disappeared, and from that day was not seen in the neighborhood. It is supposed that he went West and found a secure concealment in some of the distant territories, where probably he is engaged in the same discreditable courses for which he ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... is the story of Henry VIII., Catharine, and Anne Boleyn. "Bluff King Hal," although a well-loved monarch, was none too good a one in many ways. Of all his selfishness and unwarrantable acts, none was more discreditable than his divorce from Catharine, and his marriage to the beautiful Anne Boleyn. The King's love was as brief as it was vehement. Jane Seymour, waiting maid on the Queen, attracted him, and Anne Boleyn was forced to the block to make room ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... possessed these papers, and held them in terrorem over his reputed sister. In the hands of a third person, an outsider, they were endowed with double powers for mischief. He could threaten the woman with exposure, the man with the revelation of a discreditable family secret. ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... where any of our young people happened to be on shore, they warned their companions against these men, but not always with success. Hindrances there must be always in the way of all attempts to do some good. But this is a sad business, and very discreditable to the persons employed in it and the Government which sanctions it, for they must know that they cannot control the masters of the vessels engaged in the trade; they may pass laws as to the treatment the natives are to receive on the plantations, as to food, pay, &c., the time of service, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Jesus, and the other in the reasonings of theologians, legends of miracles grew luxuriantly. It would be utterly unphilosophical to attribute these as a whole to conscious fraud. Whatever part priestcraft may have taken afterward in sundry discreditable developments of them, the mass of miraculous legends, Century after century, grew up mainly in good faith, and as naturally as elms along water-courses or ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... part, I cannot see why the king, who has so many advantages on his side, if 7 he desires to destroy us, should swear oaths and tender solemn pledges merely in order to perjure himself in the sight of heaven, to render his word worthless and his credit discreditable the wide world over." These arguments he propounded ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... Rome came within view, did it not occur to you, within these walls my house and guardian gods are, my mother, wife, and children? So then, had I not been a mother, Rome would not be besieged: had I not a son, I might have died free in a free country. But I can now suffer nothing that is not more discreditable to you than distressing to me; nor however wretched I may be, shall I be so long. Look to these, whom, if you persist, either an untimely death or lengthened slavery awaits." Then his wife and children embraced him: and the ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... persons, court ladies, even valets and waiting-women, had been sought and searched to satisfy his insatiable curiosity. It is true that the passions which often lit up the truth sometimes obscured it; any gossip discreditable to those whom he hated was welcome to him; he confesses that he did not pique himself on his impartiality, and it is certain that he did not always verify details. Nevertheless he did not consciously falsify facts; he had ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... civilized nations over the dark places of the earth has been fraught with widespread good for mankind; and my plea is that the civilized nations engaged in doing this work shall treat one another with respect and friendship, and shall hold it as discreditable to permit envy and jealousy, backbiting and antagonism among themselves. I visited four different British protectorates or possessions in Africa—namely, East Africa, Uganda, the Sudan, and Egypt. About the first ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... Ministers seats in both Houses (as in France), which he has probably put in the fire. I am very glad he has got the place, and though his opinions were not very decided before, he has always been anti-Tory, and has done nothing discreditable to get it, and it was offered to him ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... for his highmindedness, in suffering himself to be driven into his convictions by his party. On the other, a party is extolled for its political tact, in suffering itself to be forced out of its convictions by its leader. It is hard to decide which is the more discreditable and demoralising sight. The education of chiefs by followers, and of followers by chiefs, into the abandonment in a month of the traditions of centuries or the principles of a lifetime may conduce to the rapid and easy ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... Dennie, Coleman, and the other Federal journalists, not content with proclaiming him an ambitious, cunning, and deceitful demagogue, ridicule his scientific theories, shudder at his irreligion, sneer at his courage, and allude coarsely to his private morals in a manner more discreditable to themselves than to him; crowning all their accusations and innuendoes with a reckless profusion of epithet. While at the same times and places the whole company of the Democratic press, led by Bache, Duane, Cheetham, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... an episode in my Romance, having slight effect on the conduct and none on the fate of the hero, I am not aware of any resemblance between the two works; and even this coincidence I could easily have removed, had I deemed it the least advisable:—but it would be almost discreditable if I had nothing that resembled a performance possessing so much it ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... two very discreditable bills which would have been made positively infamous if it had not been for the active opposition of a few friends of liberty. One of these bills was designed to add to the stringency of the present obstructive medical law; the other ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... but failed to discover any more money. He felt indignant. It seemed to him that he was badly used. That a miser should have but a paltry ten dollars in his trunk was very discreditable. ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... discreditable circumstances under which the bill re-investing the clergy reserves in the Crown was passed. It, however, required the assent of the Queen before it became law. This it was destined never to receive, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... hands cordially, and Mr. Warbeck went off in a hansom. Thomas Bird, changing his mind about the tram, walked all the way home, and with bent head. One would have thought that he had just done something discreditable. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... me that you haven't given Stanley anything at all for his money—that you've cheated him outright. The thing itself is discreditable, but your tone suggests that you think I'll ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Haussmann a chance to play his part in the making of modern Paris, and if the Tuileries and Saint Cloud had not disappeared as a result of his indiscretion the period of the Second Empire would not have been at all discreditable, as far as the impress it left on ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... afraid that the man she favoured would think the worse of her for it.' That is also a part of the rake's creed. But should she resent ever so strongly, she cannot now break with me; since, if she does, there will be an end of the family reconciliation; and that in a way highly discreditable to herself. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... long discussion, the recesses and vaulted dome of this hall have reechoed to inflammatory appeals and violent declamations on the sanctity of national honor; and then, as if to justify them, followed reflections most discreditable to the conduct of our Government. The charge made elsewhere has been repeated here, that we have trodden upon Mexico, but cowered ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... as these life is pleasant; that they retain always—or almost always—that gay, happy light in the eye, that half-blossomed smile upon the lips; that they have blotted out, as far as possible, from their existence, imperious and discreditable ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... troublous life which awaited her as Madame Honore de Balzac. Madame de Balzac's letter further strengthened her resolve. Apparently, in addition to evidence about family dissensions, it contained disquieting revelations about the discreditable Henri, and the necessity for supporting the Montzaigle grandchildren; and the veil with which Balzac had striven to soften the aspect of the family skeletons was violently withdrawn. He was in despair. At this juncture his mother's ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... another for the use of discreditable tactics, but it will have no hesitation in using such itself if it can thereby snatch a discreditable victory. So, clear speaking is needed: a fight that is not clean-handed will make victory more disgraceful than any defeat. ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... distributed vast quantities of clothing and food among the inhabitants of Montenegro, and those American supplies which the Yugoslav Government purchased, mainly for the troops. But Mr. M'Neill, M.P., is very angry with the Serbs for spreading, as he says, reports discreditable to the King of Montenegro—if he knew a little more I think that he would say a good deal less—and Nikita must have deprecated the remark that no facilities at all had been given by the Great Powers to enable him and his Ministers to return to Montenegro. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... borrowed from his own armoury. As we have already seen, the division gives him the opportunity of making the most damaging reflections on the Sophist and all his kith and kin, and to exhibit him in the most discreditable light. ...
— Sophist • Plato
... old persons and others, a portion of the rescued slaves, who had been taken under the charge of the Mission, and could not be abandoned. The fear of the Portuguese seemed likely to lead to their being left behind. But Livingstone could not bear the idea. He thought it would be highly discreditable to the good name of England, and an affront to the memory of Bishop Mackenzie, to "repudiate" his act in taking them under his protection. Therefore, when Bishop Tozer would not accept the charge, he himself took them in hand, giving orders to Mr. E.D. Young (as he ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... of the fugitives, but, from some cause or other, failed to do their duty, and they must have been quite a way off at the time the Mohawk put out his awkward scow. The party on shore were angry because of the failure, which was certainly a discreditable one, and they were very ready to accuse their comrades of being "squaws" on the war-path. The accused were equally ready to charge the others with being "old women" for permitting the whites to land under their noses, and to reach cover again. It would be hard to say ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... which Barnum was subjected on his arrival in New York, was in strange and discreditable contrast to that which he had enjoyed abroad. He sometimes spoke of it in later life, though without any bitterness. He was too much of a philosopher to take it to heart. "After my arrival," he would ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... of the war was so discreditable to the Americans as this. In the loss of the "Chesapeake" and in the loss of the "Essex," there were certain features of the action that redounded greatly to the honor of the defeated party. But in the action between the "Argus" and the "Pelican," the Americans ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... time Bert made the acquaintance of a pony of a very different sort. How, indeed, it came to have this name does not seem to be very clear, for what natural connection can be established between a diminutive horse, and a discreditable method of reducing the difficulties of a lesson in Latin or Greek? It would appear to be a very unjust slur upon a very worthy little ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... declaration; for in that day, a travelled man was highly esteemed among us. In her eyes, it was a greater exploit to have seen Amsterdam, than it would now be to visit Jerusalem. Indeed, it is getting rather discreditable to a man of the world not to have seen the Pyramids, the Red ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... entirely unconcerned in the matter, instead of having been the chief culprit, he speaks of "cool effrontery;" "magisterial assumption, towards a parcel of naughty boys caught in their naughtiness;" "most discreditable;" "the epithet outrageous is hardly too strong." Here his breath fails him, and, fortunately for me, the climax ends. And this, we are asked to believe, is not loud and boisterous but gentle and calm: it is in fact "the language of simple-minded ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... in 1846 has been called, from another outlook, "one of the least creditable affairs in the highly discreditable Mexican War," and Fremont nothing more than a filibuster seeking private ends. California had been made ours, nevertheless, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... from Lord Chiltern with an assent, with an assured brow, and with much dignity in her gait; but as soon as she was alone she was a prey to remorse. She had declared to the man who was to have been her husband that his life was discreditable,—and, of course, no man would bear such language. Had Lord Chiltern borne it, he would not have been worthy ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... crucial examples which we have had in our own time. We have in our own time seen Great Britain inflamed by two frenzies—against France, and against the Boer Republics. In the history of public opinion there are no two chapters more discreditable. In the days of Fashoda the Frenchman was a degenerate tigre-singe, the sworn enemy of religion and soap. He had contributed nothing to civilisation except a loathsome science of sensuality, and the taint of decay was in his bones. In the days of Spion Kop the Boer was an unlaundered ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... the account in John is not wholly false, I think the reply in every case discreditable. If literal, it all but indicates wilful imposture. If mystical, it is disingenuously evasive; and it tended, not to instruct, but to irritate, and to move suspicion and contempt. Is this the course for a religious teacher?—to ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... The truth is probably that they are too backward ever to have had recourse to the Brahman priest, but now, though they still apparently have no desire for his services, they recognise the fact to be somewhat discreditable to themselves, and desire to explain it away by the story already given. In Hoshangabad the bride still goes to the bridegroom's house to be married as among the Gonds. A bride-price is paid, which consists ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... or five years, he avenged all the insults that had been lavishly flung upon her by every country in Europe throughout a long, disastrous, and most perplexing civil war. Gloriously did he retrieve the credit that had been mouldering and decaying during two weak and discreditable reigns of nearly fifty years' continuance—gloriously did he establish and extend his country's authority and influence in remote nations—gloriously acquire the real mastery of the British Channel—gloriously ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... Prevost, who proved himself a most irresolute and incapable commander-in-chief, retreated ignominiously from Sackett's Harbour, although Commodore Chauncey and his fleet were absent and the post was defended by only a small garrison. This discreditable failure, which cannot be in any way excused, was soon forgotten when the news came of the success of Colonel Harvey, afterwards a lieutenant-governor of the maritime provinces, at Stoney Creek, quite close to Burlington Bay. ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... Sometimes several doctors would hold a consultation, and, apparently forgetting the patient for the time, would hold violent disputations. Their main object was to display their dialectical skill, and their arguments sometimes led to blows. These discreditable exhibitions were rather frequent in Rome ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... eclipse; unable to show one's face; in the shade, in the background; out at elbows, down at the elbows, down in the world. inglorious; nameless, renownless^; obscure; unknown to fame; unnoticed, unnoted^, unhonored, unglorified^. shameful; disgraceful, discreditable, disreputable; despicable; questionable; unbecoming, unworthy; derogatory; degrading, humiliating, infra dignitatem [Lat.], dedecorous^; scandalous, infamous, too bad, unmentionable; ribald, opprobrious; errant, shocking, outrageous, notorious. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he had a remarkable interview with Jefferson in which he observed that it was for the interest of the party for him to retire, but that his retirement under existing circumstances would be thought discreditable. He asked "some mark of favor from me," Jefferson wrote in his journal, "which would declare to the world that he retired with my confidence"—an executive appointment, in short. This was tantamount to an offer of peace or war. Jefferson declined ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us. All that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable or discreditable to us, can be covered up and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms contributed by, and inherited from, a procession of ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clam or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been so ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... months. In one respect Rumania was less fortunate than the other little nations: in his fanatical hatred of Russia, Carp rejoiced in her ally's defeat—albeit that country was his own—and Marghiloman remained in Bukarest to curry favour with its conquerors, and ultimately to become for a brief and discreditable period the Premier whom the Germans imposed on Rumania after the Treaty of Bukarest. Meanwhile the patriotic parties rallied round the ministry at Jassy and formed a ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... little too good for artisans, too small and too silent to be the abode of various lodgers, and too mean for clerks who live on salaries. They are as dull-looking as Lethe itself, dull and silent, dingy and repulsive. But they are not discreditable in appearance, and never have that Mohawk look which by some unknown sympathy in bricks and mortar attaches itself to ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... attack, and perhaps retort it by seizing Albany. If the English, on the other side, had lost a great material advantage, they had lost no less in honor. The news of the surrender was received with indignation in England and in the colonies. Yet the behaviour of the garrison was not so discreditable as it seemed. The position was indefensible, and they could have held out at best but a few days more. They yielded too soon; but unless Webb had come to their aid, which was not to be expected, they must have ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... events connected with the Jameson raid into the Transvaal may also be cited. Of the raid itself there is little to be said. It was, in truth, one of the most discreditable as well as mischievous events in recent colonial history, and its character was entirely unrelieved by any gleam either of heroism or of skill. Those who took a direct part in it were duly tried ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... it as Basle is from Coire. We hold no such discreditable doctrines. I challenge the world to show a state that possesses a fairer set of maxims than ourselves, and we even endeavor to make our practice chime in with our opinions, whenever it can be done in safety. No in these particulars, Berne is a paragon of a community, and as rarely says one ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... possible that it should be otherwise. Bylandt's Dutch-Belgian brigade ran away from the French about two o'clock in the afternoon, and swept others with them in their rush, much to the rage of the British, some of whom hissed, hooted, and cursed, forgetting that quite as discreditable incidents had occurred in the course of the military history of their own country. One portion of the British troops that desired to fire upon those exhibitors of "Dutch courage" actually belonged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... horrible resolutions. He spoke to her about M. G—— M——, an old voluptuary, who paid prodigally for his pleasures; he so glowingly described the advantages of such a connection, that she entered into all his plans. This discreditable arrangement was all concluded before my return, and the execution of it only postponed till the next morning, after Lescaut should ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... clumsy satire. He was thoroughly alarmed. He began rapidly to review his own antecedents, and to scrape his memory for discreditable incidents. He could think of nothing he need feel ashamed of, nothing the world might not thoroughly investigate. There were mean actions, but many generous ones to balance in ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... consultation with his father, and the real trouble that had been fretting him, it seemed, was that now he repented and wanted to follow Cardinal to Cambridge, and—a year lost—go on with science again. He felt it was a discreditable fluctuation; he knew it would be a considerable expense; and so he took two weeks before he could screw himself up to ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... not easy to reconcile: one an appeal to the Convention in Paoli's behalf, the other a demand addressed to the municipality of Ajaccio that the people should renew their oath of allegiance to France. The explanation is somewhat recondite, perhaps, but not discreditable. Salicetti, as chairman of a committee of the convention on Corsican affairs, had conferred with Paoli on April thirteenth. The result was so satisfactory that on the sixteenth the latter was urged to attend a second meeting at Bastia in the interest of Corsican reconciliation ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... West ended, as it began, in a carnival of butchery. Treacherous attacks, massacres, burnings, and pillagings were everyday occurrences, and white men were hardly less at fault than red. Indeed the most discreditable of all the recorded episodes of the time was a heartless massacre by Americans of a large band of Indians that had been Christianized by Moravian missionaries and brought together in a peaceful community on the Muskingum. This slaughter of the innocents at Gnadenhutten ("the ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... saw the preacher roughly dressed during the week and doing work as hard as their own, yet the influence he gained over them was so strong that it came to be regarded as a very discreditable thing for any man or woman to stay away from ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... that they would not now oppose my going to the King my husband; that now, by the peace, the chief objection to it was removed, and if I delayed going, in the present situation of affairs, it might be prejudicial and discreditable to me. Both of them approved of my request, and commended my resolution. The Queen my mother added that she would accompany me on my journey, as it would be for the King's service that she did so. She said the King must furnish me with the necessary means for the journey, to which he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... unparalleled in all but Irish story: an English friend, however, has just mortified the Editor's national vanity by an account of the following custom, which prevails in part of Shropshire. It is discreditable for women to appear abroad after the birth of their children till they have been CHURCHED. To avoid this reproach, and at the same time to enjoy the pleasure of gadding, whenever a woman goes abroad before she has been to church, she takes a tile from the roof of her house, and puts it upon her ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... ceased to be considered disgraceful, or even discreditable, among the patrician order in Rome before the soldiers ventured to break their oaths of allegiance. Military service had, from the ignorance and selfishness of this order, been rendered extremely odious to free-born Romans; and they frequently mutinied ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... those three years had he shown a disposition to hark back on his old discreditable ways, and that was the result of a casual meeting with Gus one summer during the holidays, with whom, he afterwards confessed to Charlie, he was induced to forget for a time his better resolutions in the snares of a billiard-room. But ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... has made such a discreditable career," she murmured, "who has never been able to get a roof of his own over his head! I can very well understand his partiality for bullets! He can go and stand in their way if he chooses; but let him leave honest folks to their families! And then, he isn't pleasant ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... by the government, the perpetrators were neither punished nor reprimanded for their excursions against Spanish commerce at home or in the West Indies; rather were they commended, and it was considered not altogether a discreditable thing for men to get rich upon the spoils taken from Spanish galleons in times of nominal peace. Many of the most reputable citizens and merchants of London, when they felt that the queen failed in her duty of pushing the fight against the great Catholic Power, fitted ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... Commissioner of the Treasury: "Jeremiah Weymouth, the d——n of the kingdom, spoke as follows." And it may seem that the Opposition (for the affair was made a party question) can hardly be acquitted of a discreditable indifference to the dignity of the House in supporting a resolution of Colonel Barre, that "Jeremiah Weymouth, the d——n of this kingdom, is not a member of this House." On which the previous question was moved by the ministers, and carried by 120 ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... prevent the fulfilment of this project with no less obstinacy than he had shown zeal in forwarding it. He was ready to make any sacrifice, to go any lengths, to prevent our marriage taking place. Nevertheless this discreditable change of attitude, this deliberate quarrel with his mother, must not be laid to his charge, but to that of his father-in-law, Herennius Rufinus, whom you see before you, a man than whom no more worthless, wicked, and grime-stained soul lives upon this earth. I will—since I cannot ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... all present interfere at once. The honour of the regiment is the first point with us all. If men want to quarrel, there are plenty of French officers who would be quite ready to oblige them, but a quarrel among ourselves would be regarded as discreditable to the corps. Consequently, a dispute is always stopped before it reaches a dangerous point, and if it goes further than usual, the parties are sent for by the colonel in the morning, both get heavily wigged, and the colonel insists upon the matter being dropped, altogether. ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... resigned themselves to the post of usher in some ultra- Protestant school. Sport in all its forms, art and literature, being alike forbidden, the boy's hungry energy had found no reasonable outlet. He had been miserable, peevish, ailing, until at barely eighteen—after a discreditable episode with a scullery-maid—he had been shipped off to New York to learn business in the house of certain brokers and bill-discounters with whom Messrs. Barking Brothers had extensive financial relations. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... out here and there on his hardy body; his coat was distantly suggestive of a collie; his tail of a terrier. But something of width between the patient eyes and bluntness in the scarred muzzle spoke to a tough and hardy ancestor in his discreditable pedigree, as though a lady of his house had once gone away with a bulldog. His part in the company was to do tricks outside beerhouses. When the Signor's strumming had gathered a little crowd, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... running for office is that if a man has ever done anything discreditable it is sure to be brought ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... that they could not be reached. Orators at fashionable missionary-meetings were wont to speak of them as irreclaimable heathens who bid defiance to civilising influences from impenetrable fastnesses. Mr. George Smith may be credited with having broken down this discreditable state of things. He brought us face to face with this unfortunate section of our fellow-creatures, with what result it is not necessary to say. The sympathies of the public were effectually roused by the narratives which revealed ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... stories, many of which he claims were told him by President Lincoln. From this we might infer that the President has very little to do but entertain and amuse gentlemen, who apply to him for appointments, with conversation so coarse that it would be discreditable to a ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... men have brought upon your regiment." Every one of the guards at Holyrood Palace had been found 'beastly' drunk, excepting one man, who was keeping sentry at the magazine on the top of Arthur's Seat. The circumstance was especially discreditable as His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was staying at Holyrood. "I understand (continued the speaker) that they broke into the wine cellar, and stole some fifty bottles of port and champagne. Most of that they drunk, until when found ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... is not my fault,' said Lady Clonbrony; 'for I brought my lord a large fortune; and I am confident I have not, after all, spent more any season, in the best company, than he has among a set of low people, in his muddling, discreditable way.' ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... and conceal them. Thus also among ourselves should we adorn whatever blemishes and infirmities we find in our neighbor, and serve and help him to promote his honor to the best of our ability, and, on the other hand, prevent whatever may be discreditable to him. And it is especially an excellent and noble virtue for one always to explain advantageously and put the best construction upon all he may hear of his neighbor (if it be not notoriously evil), or at any rate to condone it ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... beneficent autocrat who had willed and given them effect for the general welfare. After Governor Longden came Sir Henry Turner Irving, a personage who brought to Trinidad a reputation for all the vulgar colonial prejudices which, discreditable enough in ordinary folk, are, in the Governor of a mixed community, nothing less than calamitous. More than amply did he justify the evil reports with which rumour had heralded his coming. Abler, more astute, more daring than Sir James Longden, who ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... fanciful origins have been invented by scholars, ancient or modern. It is necessary to return to the pedestrian facts, if merely in order to demonstrate the futility of the fancies. The result is in no way discreditable to Greece. Beginning, like other peoples, with the vague unrealised conception of the Corn Mother (an idea which could not occur before the agricultural stage of civilisation), the Greeks refined and elevated the idea into the Demeter of the Hymn, and of the Cnidian statue. To ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... nowise fascinating, either in face or manner. He made no bid for her attention. Yet during the half hour he sat there, Stella's mind revolved constantly about him. She recalled all that she had heard of him, much of it, from her point of view, highly discreditable. Inevitably she fell to comparing him with other men ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... being put to any inconvenience by this delay, I cannot help adverting to the circumstance which perhaps misled me into the expectation that you would not unwillingly allow me any reasonable time I might want for the payment of this bet. The circumstance I mean, however discreditable the plea, is the total inebriety of some of the party, particularly of myself, when I made this preposterous bet. I doubt not you will remember having yourself observed on this circumstance to a common friend the next day, with an intimation ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... be associated in my mind with a bowing down sense of loneliness, of empty, unredeemed sadness, and of irretrievable loss. I cannot pretend that I experienced any sense of remorse or penitence, where my abortive attempt to win another man's bride was concerned. I had no such feeling. But, discreditable as that fact may be, it did not make the aching sorrow that possessed ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... while indorsing in blank the policy of Austria, purposely refrained from examining the text of the communication, so that it could thereafter claim that it was not responsible for Austria's action—a policy which would not lessen the discreditable character of the whole business—yet the more reasonable assumption is that the simultaneous issuance of Austria's ultimatum at Belgrade and Germany's warning to the powers were the result of a concerted action ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the first works in which scientific knowledge was put in a popular shape, by the system of number publishing. The Doctor's performances in this way are not discreditable, and are still useful as works ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... among the latest floating population, comprised of all sorts and conditions, the Marquis de Ligne. The blood of the patroons flowed sluggishly through the land baron's veins, but his French extraction danced in every fiber of his being. After learning the more important and not altogether discreditable circumstances about the land baron's ancestors—for if every gentleman were whipped for godlessness, how many striped backs would there be!—the marquis, who declined intimacy with Tom, Dick and Harry, and their honest butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers of forefathers, permitted an acquaintance ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... aspirations of a high or an elevated character should, or at least need be connected. It is a reflection upon the integrity of the great agricultural interest of the country, that any such opinion should prevail; and discreditable to that interest, that its condition or example should for a moment justify, or even ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... incredible. Slaves deemed to be working animals, or merchandize; and called 'Stock,' 'Increase,' 'Breeders,' 'Drivers,' 'Property,' 'Human cattle'; Testimony of Thomas Jefferson; Slaves worse treated than quadrupeds; Contrast between the usage of slaves and animals; Testimony; Northern incredulity discreditable to consistency; Religious persecutions; Recent 'Lynchings,' and Riots, in the United States; Many outrageous Felonies perpetrated with impunity; Large faith of the objectors who 'can't believe'; 'Doe faces,' and 'Dough faces'; Slave-drivers acknowledge their own enormities; ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of Ormonde having been informed that certain statements, little complimentary to the reputation of Queen Elizabeth, and equally discreditable to the name of his ancestor, Thomas, Earl of Ormonde, have appeared in "NOTES AND QUERIES," wherein it is stated "that the Ormonde family possess documents which afford proof of this," begs to assure the editor of the journal in question, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... to say to you before work commences, boys, and I regret to say they are not of a very pleasant character. A most discreditable act—a criminal act—has been committed since we last met in this hall. This desk"—he turned from the boys to the desk, and brought his hand down upon it sharply—"has been forced open during the night, and five pages torn from the Black Book. That is not all. Admiral Talbot—one of the esteemed ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... common sense. However plausible may be the arguments which in this or that case may be adduced for concealment, the common instinct of mankind, which rarely errs in such matters, always conceives a suspicion that it is dictated by secret and discreditable motives; and that he who screens manifest guilt from exposure and punishment makes himself an accomplice in the wrong-doing, if he was not so before. But, though Louis judged rightly for his own and his queen's character in bringing those who were guilty of ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... all, what was to be done? Jackeymo was much too proud to exhibit his person, to the eyes of the Squire's butler, in habiliments discreditable to himself and the Padrone. In the midst of his perplexity the bell rang, and he went down ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... conclude this account with one of the most singular events that have ever happened in the world. Although it is discreditable to the Order of St. Augustine, it should be related here with all truth, because it is so public and will be so noised about through all the world. When Fray Vicente de Sepulveda, [16] first cousin of Father Juan Laurencio, rector of the College ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... minister who looked forward and planned for the future. And the plan? Why to stay in power for the longest possible period of time. It is as natural for a government to want to stay in power as it is for a man to want to live; nor is there in this anything discreditable. A prime minister is sure that he desires to retain power in order that he may serve the country as no rival could conceivably serve it; and even if the desire fades and is replaced by a lively appreciation of the personal satisfactions which can be served ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... thought it prudent somewhat to recoil, though backed by a party of friends, who, in their zeal for his honour, would rather have seen his bones broken in conflict bold, than his honour injured by a discreditable retreat; and Tyrrel seemed to have some inclination to indulge them. But, at the very instant when his hand was raised with a motion of no doubtful import, a whispering voice, close to his ear, pronounced the emphatic ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... advanced in behalf of truth, or to appreciate the proposition that is even fairly demonstrated. Neither do they think it unworthy of them to change their opinion if truth and undoubted demonstration require them to do so. They do not esteem it discreditable to desert error, though sanctioned by the highest antiquity, for they know full well that to err, to be deceived, is human; that many things are discovered by accident and that many may be learned indifferently from any quarter, by an old man ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution; which work with more energy than we believe whilst we depend on artificial restraints. The movement in this direction has been very marked in modern history. Much has been blind and discreditable, but the nature of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the revolters; for this is a purely moral force. It was never adopted by any party in history, neither can be. It separates the individual from all party, and unites him ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... consulted about this; the marquis undertook to cut the danger short. However, he dared put in practice nothing overtly against the child, a matter still more difficult just then, inasmuch as some particulars of his discreditable adventures had leaked out, and the Saint-Geran family ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... believe that to know human nature—at least to know it as its worst—one must be the victim of some discreditable misfortune in a small community. Moral cowardice, ingratitude, the greed which is ready to take advantage of some one unable to make an effective protest, the gratuitous insults offered the 'under dog' because he is helpless to fight back—he discovers it all, and when ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... suspicious, Percy thought: discreditable plots had been known before. But he could not ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... charges from his pistol lest they should be damp, and renewed them and placed the pistols by the candle. He had even begun to pity himself for his loneliness, and pity of that sort, he recognised, was a discreditable quality; the matter was altogether very disquieting. He propped his sword against the chair and undressed. Wogan cast back in his memories for the first sensations of loneliness. They were recent, since he had left Ohlau, indeed. He opened ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... not approve discreditable marriages; but, on the other hand, it did not actively interfere with a Service man's private affairs. A good officer might make his way in spite of an unfortunate marriage. There were worse instances in the "Indian Civil" than his. But he was certain, at ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... evidence tending to show that persecution was less severe than had been once believed, and they have slowly learned that they can afford to concede the validity of all the secondary causes assigned by Gibbon and even of others still more discreditable. The fact is, as the historian has again and again admitted, that his account of the secondary causes which contributed to the progress and establishment of Christianity leaves the question as to the natural or supernatural origin of Christianity practically ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on the staring wooden faces waiting to hear her try and persuade them to contribute to the alleviation of the urgent needs of the Hampstead poor, each one convinced that they needed contributions themselves. She looked as though she were hiding something discreditable but delightful. Certainly her customary clear expression of candor was not there, and its place was taken by a kind of suppressed and frightened pleasedness, which would have led a more worldly-minded audience to the instant conviction of ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... inconsistency. Francesca herself was blamed for it; and people used to wonder that she who was so often successful in reconciling strangers and promoting peace in families, had not the power of allaying an enmity discreditable to her husband and at variance with the dictates of religion. At last, however, by dint of patience and gentleness, she accomplished what had seemed for a long time a hopeless endeavour. The hearts of both parties were touched with remorse. Lorenzo, who ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton |
