"Disdained" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and great were the preparations. Reed and all kinds of poles were taken down from their hooks, or cut in a neighboring thicket, the country store was depleted of its stock of rusty hooks, and stray corks were fastened on the brown linen lines for floats. Burt disdained to take his scientific tackle, and indeed there was little use for it in Moodna Creek, but he joined readily in the frolic. He would be willing to fish indefinitely for even minnows, if at the same time there was a chance ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... averred that never before had they been out in such a tempest, which was true; for, possessing a perfect knowledge of all the rivers and headlands and havens, Jasper would have carried the cutter in shore long ere this, and placed her in safety in some secure anchorage. But Cap still disdained to consult the young master, who continued below, determining to act like a ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... in blank despair, Deeply vexed and shamed his air. "Well," said Joey, "since you would Choose the bad and leave the good; Since you claimed the outer part, And disdained the juicy heart,— Yours the rind, and mine the rest; But as you're my friend and guest, Charley, man, cheer up and laugh, And we'll share it half and half; Looking out for number one Doesn't ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... ability have that purest form of egotism which makes one profoundly content with himself, genuinely indifferent to the approval or the disapproval of others. Norman's vanity had a certain amount of alloy. He genuinely disdained his fellow-men—their timidity, their hypocrisy, their servility, their limited range of ideas. He was indifferent to the verge of insensibility as to their adverse criticism. But at the same time it was necessary to his happiness that he get from them evidences of their admiration and envy. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... looks and words a good faith which overwhelms me; and, what is almost incredible, my belief in him has increased in proportion to his showing me how slight my power was over him. I threw, like the wily angler, every bait I could devise, and some of them such as a king would scarcely have disdained; to none of these would he rise; but yet he gorges, I may say, the bare hook, and enters upon my service without a shadow of self-interest.—Can this be double- distilled treachery?—or can it be what men call disinterestedness?—If ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... delectable regiment, and hugged himself at the thought of how he would in a morning's work thoroughly purge it of all that were his antagonists, he suffered his wits to go wool-gathering in one instance where they should have been most alert. Either he clean forgot or he disdained to remember a certain wager of his, and a certain very fair and very cunning lady with whom he had laid it, and to whose very immediate interest it was that she should win the wager. Messer Simone ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and strength the foes of feebleness; Yet I my health no sooner 'gan recover, But my old thoughts, though full of cares, retained, Made me, as erst, become a wretched lover Of her that love and lovers aye disdained. Then was my pain with ease of pain increased, And I ne'er ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... and doubted him from the start. The fellow was almost foppish;—could anybody who wore such good clothes have also good motives and good principles? Abner disdained him too as a public speaker;—what could a man hope to accomplish by a few quiet colloquial remarks delivered in his ordinary voice? The man who expected to get attention should claim it by the strident shrillness of his tones, should be able to bend his two knees in eloquent unison, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... because such persons are engaged in Divine things. Secondly, on account of some personal defect, either of body (for instance a blind man whose attendance in a court of justice would be unbecoming) or of soul, for it ill becomes one who has disdained to be just himself, to plead for the justice of another. Wherefore it is unbecoming that persons of ill repute, unbelievers, and those who have been convicted of grievous crimes should be advocates. Nevertheless this unbecomingness is outweighed by necessity: and for this reason ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the opposite page he gives us a salutary caution (indeed, it is very nearly in the words of the author's motto): "Avoid," says he, "being out late at night and in foggy weather, for a cold now caught may last the whole winter."[9] This ingenious author, who disdained the prudence of the Almanack, walked out in the very fog he complains of, and has led us to a very unseasonable airing at that time. Whilst this noble writer, by the vigor of an excellent constitution, formed for the violent changes he prognosticates, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... done against him with a certain proud patience that disdained to complain: he only gave way a little when he was quite alone with old Patrasche. Besides, he thought, "If it should win! They ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... to those of the evening were taken in the morning, when the travellers took the cars of the Central Road, for Utica and their separation; but in that instance they seemed to be superfluous. Whether Colonel Egbert Crawford disdained to pursue his route at that early hour in the morning, or whether he had one more favorable report to make at the Adjutant-General's office, of the condition of the Two Hundredth Regiment, detaining him in Albany for another train,—certain it is that he did not make his appearance, and that ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... adopted in business are very different from those she still enforces in her own home? Why does she not compare housework with all other work in which women are employed, and find out why housework is disdained by nearly all ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... host—not and if thou said'st Agamemnon, Who now sits in his glory, the topmost flower of the armies." Then did the blameless prophet at last wax valiant and answer: "Lo! He doth not reprove us of prayer or of oxen unoffered; But for his servant's sake, the disdained of king Agamemnon, (In that he loosed not his daughter, inclined not his ear to a ransom,) - Therefore the Far-darter sendeth, and yet shall send on us, evil. Nor shall he stay from the slaughter the hand that is heavy upon you, Till to her own dear ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... a Rank and Nature far superior to ours have not disdained to amuse themselves with making and launching Balloons, otherwise we should never have enjoyed the Light of those glorious objects that rule our Day & Night, nor have had the Pleasure of riding round the Sun ourselves upon the Balloon we ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... notwithstandyng he knewe not how to bee able in persone, nor in those of his sonnes to use it, beeyng borne in so corrupte a worlde, where one that would digresse from the common use, should bee infamed and disdained of every man: consideryng that if one in the hottest day of Summer being naked, should wallowe hymself upon the Sande, or in Winter in the moste coldest monethes upon the snowe, as Diogenes did, he should be taken as a foole. If one, (as the Spartans were wonte to doe) should ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... rises. They will not return, he says, even if Helen be restored, for even a fool knows that Troy is doomed, because of the broken oath. The rest shout acquiescence, and Agamemnon refuses the compromise. Apparently he would not have disdained it, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... friends, giving out that he was leaving Seville for some time. Then drawing on a pair of linen drawers and a clean shirt, he put over them a suit of clothes so torn and patched, that the poorest beggar in the city would have disdained to wear such rags. He shaved off the little beard he had, covered one of his eyes with a plaster, tied up one of his legs, and hobbling along on two crutches, appeared so completely metamorphosed into a lame beggar, that no real cripple could have looked less ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... one denial of his guilt, disdained to repeat it. He met her ladyship's hand haughtily, and, bowing to Sir ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... has not disdained to warble harmonious numbers in praise of her favorite beverage. There is a celebrated ballad on tea-picking, in thirty stanzas, sung by a young woman who goes from home early in the day to work, and lightens her labors with song. I give ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... have known he was wanted here?" asked the Captain of the Count. "Your offer of a messenger was disdained." ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... arose in sharp ululating wails, and the ragged line swept from the road, tightening into a semblance of the saber blades Morgan's men disdained to use ... clashed.... Then, after what seemed like only a moment's jarring pause, it was on the move once more while before it crumpled motes of blue were carried down the slope to the riverbank, there to steady ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... the Skaggs-Wyckholme revelations had not yet spread to the Grand Duchy of Rapp-Thorberg, apparently lost as it was in the cluster of small units which went to make up a certain empire: one of the world powers. The Grand Duke Michael disdained the world at large; he had but little in common with anything that moved beyond the confines of his narrow domain. His court was sleepy, lackadaisical, unemotional, impregnable to the taunts of progression; his people were thrifty, stolid and absolutely stationary in their loyalty to the ancient ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... none, sir, to me. I love you better now, when I can really be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when you disdained every part but that of the giver ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... of Warburton: 'His abilities gave him an haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal or mollify; and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his adversaries with such contemptuous superiority as made his readers commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes of some who favoured the cause. He seems to have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... the English language, mistook Dunn's deception for friendship, and moved by that extreme French politeness and warmth of feeling, which he thought doing the gentleman par excellence; while the latter, with a quicker perception of right and wrong, and understanding our language, saw the motive and disdained its nefarious object. For when Paul arrived at the jail he was minus a five-dollar gold-piece, which his very amiable official companion took particular care of, lest something should befall it. Poor John Paul! He was as harmless as South Carolina's secession ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... clever fellow, but like many sharp men he could be too much so sometimes. Metaphorically, he was one of those men who disdained the use of stirrups for mounting a horse, and liked to vault into the saddle, which he could do with ease and grace, but sometimes he would, in his efforts to show off, over-leap himself—vaulting ambition fashion—and come down heavily on the ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... might be led to embrace our religion; but then I thought Clement Darpent so doubtful a Catholic that she would be more likely to lead him away. My confidence was chiefly in his bourgeois pride, which was not likely to suffer him to pay his addresses where they would be disdained by the family, and in his scrupulous good faith, which would certainly prevent his taking advantage of the absence of ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and rich. Horses winter out, and are round-carcased, and fat in spring. The lake-shores are deep in hay; lakelets every where. Rivers close in mid-November and open in mid-April. The lakes teem with fish; and such fish! fit for the table of a prince, but disdained at the feast of the Indian. The river-heads lie all in a forest region; and it is midsummer when their water has reached its highest level. Through the land the red man stalks; war, his unceasing toil—horse-raiding, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... in a yellow glow which was not so much sunlight as that mellow haze which we call Indian Summer. She looked in at the stable, and then came straight over to Dick. There was, when Josephine was her natural self, something very direct and honest about all her movements, as if she disdained all feminine subterfuges and took always the straight, open ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... Carter been one of those generous highwaymen, of whom we sometimes read, he would have disdained to rob Ben and his friend of their little all. But indeed ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... the pastoral poem which is misliked? for perchance, where the hedge is lowest, they will soonest leap over. Is the poor pipe disdained, which sometime out of Melibeus's mouth, can show the misery of people under hard lords, or ravening soldiers? And again, by Tityrus, what blessedness is derived to them that lie lowest from the goodness ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... had invaded the Reed's side of the block. Charles had strict injunctions not to parley with them. But one went in an office as errand boy, and the other quite disdained Jane Robertine Charlotte, as he called him. It did begin to annoy Mr. Reed to have his son made the butt of the street. He was a nice, obedient, upright, orderly boy. What was lacking? In some respects he was very manly. Mr. Reed suddenly concluded that a woman wasn't ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... propounding the most popular of all principles, the absolute good, which rules rulers, and judges the judge. If he made transcendental distinctions, he fortified himself by drawing all his illustrations from sources disdained by orators, and polite conversers; from mares and puppies; from pitchers and soup-ladles; from cooks and criers; the shops of potters, horse-doctors, butchers, and fishmongers. He cannot forgive in himself a partiality, but is resolved that the two poles of thought shall appear in his ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... bent down and raised her; then looking round for the assailant with an eye whose dark fire shone through the gloom, he perceived the coward stealing off. He disdained to pursue. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... report abroad regarding the poor Indian woman. As for Madam Esmond, she had repelled the insinuation with scorn when Parson Stack brought it to her, and said, "I should as soon fancy Mr. Esmond stealing the spoons, or marrying a negro woman out of the kitchen." But, though she disdained to find the poor Biche guilty, and even thanked her for attending her son in his illness, she treated her with such a chilling haughtiness of demeanour, that the Indian slunk away into the servants' quarters, and there tried to drown her disappointments with drink. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... know not whither. I love madly, even to the point of coming to tell it, wretch that I am, over the ashes of the dead, and I do not blush for it—I have no remorse on this account. Such love is a religion. Only, as hereafter you will see me alone, forgotten, disdained; as you will see me punished, as I am destined to be punished, spare me in my ephemeral happiness, leave it to me for a few days, for a few minutes. Now, even at the moment I am speaking to you, perhaps it no longer exists. My God! this double ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... little girls get along famously. It was whispered among the school children that Margaret was an "orphan asylum girl," and there were some who disdained her in consequence, but Edna's love and loyalty, with Dorothy's help, came to the rescue, and now Margaret MacDonald is one of the most popular girls in the school. She is so bright and amiable; moreover, the little romance about ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... when I first met him, was of the sort which does not make friends with white men. Silent, resolute, reserved, a man apart, he disdained the race-shattering language his fellows hastened to acquire. His pidgin English, limited to a few words, was almost as unintelligible as his own rude tongue. Once I landed on the beach which was his favourite resort, and as the anchor slipped into the sea, smoke puffed and drifted from the camp ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... him think his swan a crow. Romeo had small faith in Benvolio's words; nevertheless, for the love of Rosaline, he was persuaded to go. For Romeo was a sincere and passionate lover, and one that lost his sleep for love and fled society to be alone, thinking on Rosaline, who disdained him and never requited his love with the least show of courtesy or affection; and Benvolio wished to cure his friend of this love by showing him diversity of ladies and company. To this feast of Capulets, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... immense erudition and a wonderful flow of "the best broken English that ever was spoken." He was well read in Egyptology and in mediaeval history, and had a wide general knowledge of the sciences, without special familiarity with any except jurisprudence. He disdained the details of the natural sciences, and despised their professors, whose pursuits seemed to him frivolous. He was jealous of Agassiz, and of the fame and influence he had attained in this country, and was in the habit ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... tortoise ate him I know not; for some say that earth and sea both disdained to take his body, so foul it was with sin. So the sea cast it out upon the shore, and the shore cast it back into the sea, and at last the waves hurled it high into the air, in anger; and it hung there long without a grave, till it was changed into ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... tangled heap of shattered horses and men. It was a mad wild rush, for in a few minutes the fight must be renewed, and yet there was a rich harvest of wealth for the lucky man who could pick a wealthy prisoner from amid the crowd. The nobler spirits disdained to think of ransoms whilst the fight was still unsettled; but a swarm of needy soldiers, Gascons and English, dragged the wounded out by the leg or the arm, and with daggers at their throats demanded their names, title and means. He who had made a good prize ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Bach to wife. If we are right in regarding the marriage union of individuals from families not allied in blood as the cause of a stronger growth of development in the children, Bach's choice may signify that in him the highest summit of a development had been reached, so that his instinct disdained the natural way of attempting further improvement, and attracted him to his own race. His second wife, indeed, was not allied with him in blood, but that with the first he found, in some respects, his more natural development ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... riot of wonderful color they made just after the first frosts had turned their green to red and gold and brown! As a boy I disdained so weak a thing as noticing the coloring on Big Hill—but now, in the long-after years, I realize that its vivid Autumn garment was indestructibly fixed in my memory and has lived—saved for me until I could look back through Time's ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... influenced by Nature. He was a man of principle and of religious faith. Toepffer had but to gaze into his own heart to find all the sweet, the graceful, and the fresh poetry of his country. His untiring and patient observation of Nature is the secret of his power as a writer. He disdained nothing, for nothing seemed too small for him. Nature, in none of its phases, could appear insignificant to his fertile and mellow soul. When he could not soar in the high regions of contemplative philosophy, he stooped as low ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... in with a cursed wight who called himself 'Despair,' who had plucked all hope from their breasts, and bade them seek death, the one with a rope, the other with a knife. His friend, whose love had been disdained by a proud lady, fell an easy prey to the persuasions of the giant, and it was the sight of his corpse lying weltering in his blood that drove this man to ride away while yet the rope hung loose. 'O sir,' he added when the sad tale was told—'O sir, be warned by me, ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... so large a sum in his eyes as it would have been the day previous, for in the last twenty-four hours he had earned, and was confident of receiving, a reward of two hundred and fifty dollars. Still, even if this had not been the case, he would have disdained to sell his assistance ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... their Fate; but at the same Time they mutually protested, that even Fetters and Slavery were soft and easy, and would be supported with Joy and Pleasure, while they could be so happy to possess each other, and to be able to make good their Vows. Caesar swore he disdained the Empire of the World, while he could behold his Imoinda; and she despised Grandeur and Pomp, those Vanities of her Sex, when she could gaze on Oroonoko. He ador'd the very Cottage where she resided, and said, That little Inch of the World would give him more Happiness than all the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... there had been between the two Courts. Friedrich Wilhelm left Prag full of contempt [dimly, altogether unconsciously, tending to have some contempt, and in the end to be full of it] for the deceitfulness and pride of the Imperial Court: and the Emperor's Ministers disdained a Sovereign who looked without interest on frivolous ceremonials and precedences. Him they considered too ambitious in aiming at the Berg-and-Julich succession: them he regarded [came to regard] as a pack ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Then a thought of Katharine, alone and in terror, roused all his real manliness, so that he cared no further for anything save to set her free. He would now promptly have knocked any other boy down for calling him the hard names he called himself all the way from the Mansion to Aunt Eunice's, and he disdained to think of tramps, thunder-claps, or broken tree-limbs, even though he stumbled over some of these along the path. Despite the obstructing wind, he had never run so swiftly, and the resounding whack he gave the Maitland knocker startled ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... steak, Juliet opened a can of salmon, fried some potatoes, put a clean spoon into a jar of jam, and cut a loaf of bread into thick slices. When Romeo came in, he set the table, made coffee, and opened a can of condensed milk. They disdained to wash dishes, but cleared off the table, after supper, lighted the lamp, and talked ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... scheme of years to be disdained and dashed By this man's like, a wretched moral coward, Whom you must needs foist on me as one fit For full ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No sister flower would be forgiven If it disdained ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... an increasing sense of some swift- approaching disaster, his thoughts once more reverted anxiously to Sah-luma. He must be warned,—yes!—even if he disdained all warning! Yet, . . warn him against what? "BID HIM AVOID THE TEMPLE ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... with his chivalrous nature, disdained to seek any unfair advantage, his purpose being to engage in what is called a fair yardarm and yardarm fight. It was toward the close of the first day of summer, with thousands crowding the hills and points of advantage and peering at the ships through glasses, that the battle ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... as inferior, in point of fortune, to his merit, as his alliance was thought by Montoni to be humiliating to the beauty of Emily; and, though her pride was wounded by this rejection of a member of her family, she disdained to shew resentment otherwise, than ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... that it was quite impossible to persuade him to leave. At his own request, blankets had been spread for Durwent on the floor, and after a hot bath he had rolled up for the night close to the fire. Johnston Smyth had also disdained the offer of a bed and ensconced himself on the couch, where he lay on his back and uttered vagrant philosophies on a vast ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... heart of their founder, to whom honour had this day been rendered, must have gladdened if he could but have listened to the story of dignified progress! Applause, loud and long, greeted the close of the address. Buckland Warricombe was probably the only collegian who disdained to manifest approval in ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... roads without a pass; and I suppose this statute arose from their frequently robbing on the highways in the character of beggars.[11] There must at that time have been an immense number of soldiers in the transition state in England; men who disdained the labours of peaceful life, or had by long habit become unfitted for them. Religions mendicity has hitherto been the great safety valve through which the unquiet transition spirit has found vent under ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Then, as if she disdained to continue, she went on her way, hearing behind her the voice and the insults of the other pursuing her. All her limbs trembled and she faltered at every step ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... her improvement! It would have moved the heart of a stone. The hidalgo wept copiously at his own pathos. And to such a height of grandeur had he carried his Spanish sense of the sublime, that he disdained to mention the pocket- handkerchief which he had left at St. Sebastian's fifteen years ago, by way of envelope for 'pussy,' and which, to the best of pussy's knowledge, was the one sole memorandum of papa ever heard of at St. Sebastian's. Pussy, however, saw no use in revising and correcting the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... his mother, who brought back from a visit to Hanaford the news that Mrs. Westmore was leaving at once for an indefinite period, and that the Hanaford house was to be closed. Irony would have been the readiest caustic for the wound inflicted; but Amherst, for that very reason, disdained it. He would not taint his disappointment with mockery, but would leave it among the unspoiled sadnesses ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... suspicion of his own making, where every imagination is real and as dreadful as the fact. In his own mind young Barter credited himself with courage when he made overtures for Philip's companionship. In reality he made the overtures because he was a coward, and a braver scoundrel would have disdained them. ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... desperate effort was failing. Not all the generous will in the heart of the stallion could give his legs the speed they needed; and he fell back by inches, by feet, by yards, toward the posse. They disdained their guns now, and kept them in the cases; for the game ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... He always disdained circumlocution, prided himself upon the directness and simplicity of his address. This acted now as a dissuasive to the sentimental address Mrs. Sutton had meditated as a means of winning the flinty walls behind which his social affections and sympathies ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Rowden disdained to answer him. Colette caught another gudgeon and awoke Elliott, who protested and gazed about for the lunch baskets, as Clifford and Cecile came up demanding instant refreshment. Cecile's skirts were soaked, and her gloves torn, but she was happy, and ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... full of seeds, and holes in all her pockets, has covered with hungry plebeian growths, which fight for life with each other, until some of them get broad-leaved and succulent, and you have a coarse vegetable tapestry which Raphael would not have disdained to spread over the foreground of his masterpiece. The Professor pretends that he found such a one in Charles Street, which, in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble vegetation, beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of the Public Garden as ignominiously ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... blanched whiteness of premature old age. Licentiousness without shame, drunkenness without rebuke, gambling without honor, and frivolity without wit characterized, alas, a great proportion of that "upper class" who disdained the occupations and sneered at the virtues of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... plays, especially as you can see Oscan farces in your senate-house over there, while you are so far from liking Greeks, that you generally won't even go along the Greek road to your villa. Why, again, should I suppose you to care about missing the athletes, since you disdained the gladiators? in which even Pompey himself confesses that he lost his trouble and his pains. There remain the two wild-beast hunts, lasting five days, magnificent—nobody denies it—and yet, what pleasure can it be to a man of refinement, when either a weak ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... wanted to feather his nest from his son-in-law's affairs; "it was no shame, even for a General," said he, "to manage the estate of so near a relative." It must be assumed that Pavel Petrovitch would not have disdained to busy himself with the estate of an entire stranger. Varvara Pavlovna conducted her attack in a very artful manner: without thrusting herself forward, and still, to all appearances, wholly absorbed in the felicity of the honeymoon, in quiet country life, in music and reading, she little by little ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... Dunton called him, in his curious Life and Errors, was a mere huckster, who could scarcely be said as yet to belong to a profession. A Tutchin or Defoe might be pilloried, or flogged, or lose his ears, without causing a touch of compassion from men like Swift, who would have disdained to call themselves brother authors. Yet politicians were finding him useful. He was the victim of one party, and might be bribed or employed as a spy by the other. The history of Defoe and his painful struggles between his conscience ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... arms, and hands; a practice which I found it impossible to adopt; and in spite of my zealous friend Henry Greville's rather indignant expostulation, to the effect that what so beautiful a woman as Madame Grisi condescended to do, for the improvement of her natural charms, was not to be disdained by a person so comparatively ugly, I steadily refused to make a whited sepulchre of that description of myself, and continued to confront the public with my own skin, looking, probably, like a gypsy, or, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... that colour with which the hours of the morning grow ruddy, turned pale, and the aether lay hid in clouds. But the parent could not endure to behold his limbs laid on the closing flames. But with loose hair, just as she was, she disdained not to fall down at the knees of great Jove, and to add these words to her tears: "Inferior to all {the Goddesses} which the golden aether does sustain, (for throughout all the world are my temples the fewest), still, a Goddess, I am come; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... born for Mademoiselle de la Valliere. It was this young officer, endowed with all perfections imaginable, whom Heaven had designed for her, to complete her happiness. Despite his sincere, incomparable attachment for her, she disdained him, preferring a king, who soon afterwards ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... she possessed, to move the fears or excite the compassion of the outlawed mountaineers, for she doubted not that she had fallen under the power of such a party. When she found her requests were unheeded, and she perceived it was their purpose to detain her prisoner, she disdained to use farther entreaties, but demanded at their peril that they should treat her with respect, promising in that case that she would pay them a large ransom, and threatening them with the vengeance of the Lords Marchers, and ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... stretching his fine feline head towards it. When he had lapped up his saucer of water; he marched into the parlor, and riveted the chains upon our fondness by taking the best chair and going to sleep in it in attitudes of Egyptian, of Assyrian majesty. His arts were few or none; he rather disdained to practise any; he completed our conquest by maintaining himself simply a fascinating presence; and perhaps we spoiled Jim. It is certain that he came under my window at two o'clock one night, and tried ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with one voice; "the youngest who ever went down!" They would not hear a word from him; and 280 voices sentenced the great philosopher [Picture: Plato] to die, after the Athenian fashion, by being poisoned with hemlock. He disdained to plead for a lessening of the penalty; but it could not be carried out at once, because a ship had just been sent to Delos with offerings, and for the thirty days while this was gone no one could be put to death. Socrates therefore was kept in prison, with chains upon his ankles; but ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... deference and submission; and, having got over something like terror, that was at first inspired by the imperious manner in which she was now catechised, her next feeling was that of the warmest resentment. She disdained to satisfy so insolent a questioner, and even indulged herself in certain oblique hints calculated to strengthen his suspicions. For some time she described his folly and presumption in terms of the most ludicrous sarcasm, and then, suddenly changing her style, bid him ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... laying down his glass and seizing a rifle. "Well, just to let you know that I have a certain opinion of you, also, my friend Loge——" And he sent a bullet over the heads of the three men. They hastily ducked into the house. Cleggett might have picked Loge off, but he disdained to do so. It was his purpose to take the man ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... a skin was taken from the sledge as a seat, and we all squatted down to a repast which was quite new to me. In ten minutes the natives had picked the deer's bones so clean that even the hungry dogs disdained to gnaw them a second time. Dunn and myself made our breakfast on a choice slice cut from the spine, and found it so good, the windpipe in particular, that at dinner-time we preferred the same food ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... tricked out in dreadful masks ran and frollicked and sang coarse songs. It goes without saying that I had no desire to be one of them; the very idea of jostling against them filled me with distaste, and I disdained their rude sport. And I sincerely felt that it was better for me to be where I was, occupied with putting the many-colored family of the Purpura and the twenty-three varieties of the Gastropoda ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... stress of invitations it bores them to accept, and the inclination of wives and daughters to desire acceptance. She was not contemplating with any premonitory regrets a future in which, when Walderhurst did not wish to go out to dinner or disdained a ball, she should stay at home. Far from it. She simply rejoiced with Lady Agatha, who was twenty-two ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... platform with true Prussian arrogance, jostling the fatigued, cursing the helpless who lounged in their path, ignoring the distress of the children, sneering at the pitiful pleadings of the women—in fact caring about nothing beyond their own importance. They disdained to reply to any question, and said nothing beyond the terse statement that no more trains were going East to Russia. At this intelligence the travellers bound for the latter country collapsed, the majority, women, flopping upon their baggage and ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... escape. The city was of small value to the republic. The principal advantage of a victory would have been increased military renown for himself. Viewed in this light, there is something almost sublime in the phlegmatic and perfectly republican composure with which he disdained laurels, easily enough, as it would stem, to have been acquired, and denied his soldiers the bloodshed and the suffering for which they ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Macnooder disdained to rise; one or two faltered and tripped along for brief spaces, and then sat down. The Roman, counting his ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... stood alone, no other in sight, with a dark background of wood rising behind it on the other side of the brook; the stream itself running smoothly for a small space above the mill, and leaping down madly below, as if it disdained its bed and would clear at a bound every impediment in its way to the sea. When the mill was not going the quantity of water that found its way down the hill was indeed very small, enough only to keep up a pleasant chattering with the stones; but as soon as the ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... wisdom "that cometh from above" and with calm dignity; and in "Emilia Galotti" he has been the first to draw the veil, hitherto respected, from scenes in real life. His life was, like his mind, independent. He scorned to cringe for favor, even disdained letters of recommendation when visiting Italy (Winckelmann had deviated from the truth for the sake of pleasing a patron), contented himself with the scanty lot of a librarian at Wolfenbuettel, and even preferred losing that appointment rather than subject himself to ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... gigantic. He had towns built in the Crimea, solely that the empress might see them on her passage; he ordered the assault of a fortress, to please a beautiful woman, the princess Dolgorouki, who had disdained his suit, The favor of his Sovereign mistress created him such as he showed himself; but there is remarkable, notwithstanding, in the characters of most of the great men of Russia, such as Menzikoff, Suwarow, Peter I. himself, and in yet older times Ivan ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... his ancestors. Had he been a mere adventurer or usurper he might have lived henceforth, and died, Emperor of Morocco, But his whole soul was patriotically bent on one object, the freedom and independence of Algeria. He disdained to wear a borrowed crown. As he afterward declared, "His religion forbade him to injure a sovereign chosen and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... scrambling for eagles, or robbing "against time." The corruption that has long prevailed in Congress, whenever a "private bill" is in question, has long been notorious; but this, at least, was shrouded with a thin vail of decorum which the peculators in military and civil high places disdained to encumber themselves with in these ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... many of them being embarrassed with the fruits of their pillage, became less active, less thoughtless: in danger they began to calculate, and in order to save their booty, they did what they would have disdained to do to ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... of the most noble not merely in France but in Europe, and we do not begin to understand the author until we realize his excessive pride of birth. In a letter he wrote to Cardinal Mazarin in 1648 he says, "I am in a position to prove that for three hundred years the monarchs [of France] have not disdained to treat us as members of their family." This arrogance of race inspired the early part of his life to the exclusion, so far as we can perceive, of any other stimulus to action. He was content to be the violent and fantastic swashbuckler of the ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... in peace, but the general was anxious to get his hand into the management of his son-in-law's affairs. To see after the property of so near a relative, he said, was an occupation that even a general might adopt without disgrace. It is possible that Pavel Petrovich would not have disdained to occupy himself with the affairs ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... hand were Gluck and his friend Calzabigi, whose partisans disdained the old style, and lauded the new one to the skies. Gluck was perfectly indifferent to all this strife of party. Not once, since the first day of rehearsal, had his countenance lost its expression of calm and lofty security. Resolved to conquer, he receded before ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... face I resolved to honour and renown ye; If now I be disdained I wish my heart had never known ye. What? I that loved and you that liked, shall we begin to wrangle? No, no, no, my heart is ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... rushed to Rudabeh's chamber to destroy her, had not Sindokht fallen at his feet and restrained him. He insisted, however, on her being brought before him; and upon his promise not to do her any harm, Sindokht complied. Rudabeh disdained to take off her ornaments to appear as an offender and a supplicant, but, proud of her choice, went into her father's presence, gayly adorned with jewels, and in splendid apparel. Mihrab ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... meal a day, so small that they continually suffered the pangs of hunger.... Some of the hermits lived in deserted dens of wild beasts, others in dried-up wells, while others found a congenial resting-place among the tombs. Some disdained all clothes, and crawled abroad like the wild beasts, covered only by their matted hair. The cleanliness of the body was regarded as a pollution of the soul, and the saints who were most admired had become one hideous mass of clotted filth. St. Athanasius relates with enthusiasm how ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... translations in his beloved books rather than with the beating hearts of men and women around him. Still, although he spoke like one who learns a language from books instead of the familiar converse of people, and his thoughts clothed themselves in images which those about him disdained and threw off as impeding their hard race of life, poor Lot Gordon's heart beat in time with the hearts of his kind. But that Madelon could not know because hers was so ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... scornful smile, denoting how much she disdained a crime of the nature she was suspected of, and followed one of the officers, who conducted her to the ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... and hunting-lodges erected by FrancisI. display the greatest diversity of plan and treatment, attesting the inventiveness of the French genius, expressing itself in a new-found language, whose formal canons it disdained. Chief among them is the Chteau of Chambord (Figs. 177, 178)—"a Fata Morgana in the midst of a wild, woody thicket," to use Lbke's language. This extraordinary edifice, resembling in plan a feudal castle ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... death of his jockey; the last causing him more pain than the light-hearted companions around him would have believed possible. Neither had the half-defined charge made against Jasper escaped his notice, though he had disdained to ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... tolerably composed. She selected a few clothes which were necessary, and prepared them for her journey. A sentiment of generosity justified her in the reserve she preserved to Emilia and Madame de Menon, whose faithfulness and attachment she could not doubt, but whom she disdained to involve in the disgrace that must fall upon them, should their knowledge ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... narrow path that leads to them, on the edge of the eminences, and met a troop of beautiful peasants, all of the name of Anna (for it was her saintship's day), going to pay their devotions, severally, at these neat white fanes. There were faces that Guercino would not have disdained copying, with braids of hair the softest and most luxuriant I ever beheld. Some had wreathed it simply with flowers, other with rolls of a thin linen (manufactured in the neighbourhood), and disposed it with a degree of elegance one should not have expected ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... occupations, compelled to live in London, or at watering-places, where he could find no employments that were suitable to him—set down, late in life, in the midst of strangers, to him cold and reserved—himself too proud to bend to those who disdained him as an Irishman—is he not more to be pitied than blamed for—yes, I, his son, must say the word—the degradation which has ensued? And do not the feelings, which have this moment forced him to leave the room, show of what he is capable? ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... of the former's labors. So it was that they sundered their former relations, wherein they were wont harmoniously to assist each other with mutual profit, and no longer made distinctions between foreign and native races. Indeed, both disdained moderation, and the one class set its heart upon an extreme of dominion, the other upon an extreme of resistance to voluntary servitude; consequently they missed the results accomplished by their previous ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... yea, he would be haunting of me, and continually whispering me in the ear, with some one or other of the infirmities that attend religion; but at last I told him it was but in vain to attempt further in this business; for those things that he disdained, in those did I see most glory; and so at last I got past this importunate one. And when I had shaken him off, then I ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... late; another has accepted before you and if I were to return to you, I should basely abuse the place of rest in which I sought refuge, and should wound the goodness of her to whom I fled when you disdained me. ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... often, when we distrust our own judgment, do we seek support in the advice of a friend. How strong is our persuasion that we are in the right when public opinion is with us. For this even the Church has not disdained to call together Councils, aiming thereby at a surer means of arriving at the truth. The Council is more trustworthy than an individual, whoever he may be. The probabilities increase with the number of consenting ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... lost upon her husband; while, upon the rare occasions when they entertained a clerical guest, she added an extra note of unaccustomed abnegation which was intended to impress upon the guest that she was the hapless victim of a fall from better days. The parish, in so far as she was able, she disdained completely. At the infrequent times that she was driven into close quarters with it, she made up for her unpopularity among the vestrymen by taking it out most vigorously upon their wives. Indeed, her ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... daughter Annot. Annot had been running; and dragging her father by the hand, had hallooed with all her breath, for she had heard from some of those who still dared to trust themselves to the blues, that the last boat was on the point of leaving the shore. The old man had disdained to halloo, and had almost disdained to run; but he had suffered himself to be hurried into a shambling kind of gait, and when he was met by Chapeau, he was almost as much out of ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... letters, there is no member of such inferior rank, or who is so much disdained by his brethren of the quill, as the humble Novelist; nor is his fate less hard in the world at large, since, among the whole class of writers, perhaps not one can be named of which the votaries are ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... imitate with subtle dyes compounded by court chemists. The girl's figure, tall, slender, and flexible, imparted grace and beauty to a shabby cotton dress and linen collar, that many a maid-servant would have disdained to wear; and the foot visible below the scanty skirt was slim and arched as the foot ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Longman, and all the servants, on this occasion. Mr. B.'s acquainting me with Miss Godfrey's affair, and presenting to me the pretty Miss Goodwin, at the dairy-house. Our appearance at church; the favour of the gentry in the neighbourhood, who, knowing your ladyship had not disdained to look upon me, and to be favourable to me, came the more readily into a neighbourly intimacy with me, and still so much the more readily, as the continued kindness of my dear benefactor, and his condescending deportment to me before them (as if I had been worthy ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... him into the spirit of opposition, and he felt an immediate impulse to compel her reluctant interest—to arouse her admiration of the very qualities she now disdained. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... seclusion of a large school-room in the rambling house in Grosvenor Square. And that the learning for which they all strove was of a comprehensive nature, moreover, that those of their party who had already entered the gay world never disdained to share such labours, is shown in a letter written many years afterwards to John by his brother Charles, in which ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... probably take more delight in walking among the holly griffins, and yew sphinxes of the city gardener, than in ranging among the groves and lawns which have been laid out by a hand that feared to violate nature, as much as it aspired to embellish her; and disdained the easy art of startling by novelties, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... goes a dash of mysticism, of pantheism. He is essentially a poet, and had he chosen to expend more labour upon his verse he might have risen to high rank on that side. But with him the thing to be said has seemed vastly more important than the way of saying it, and he has, perhaps rightly, disdained to be laborious in the mere texture of his verse. It is rational to argue that if the poetic, inspiration is not vital enough to find an immediate expression it is not true enough to make it worth while to remould and recast it. It would seem—judging by results—that ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... field procured him the honour of the first refusal. Not that he was the man to refuse, for he jumped at the offer, and, as he would be of age before the season came round, and would have got all his money out of Chancery, he disdained to talk about a subscription, and boldly took the hounds as his own. He then became a very important personage at ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees |
