"Despicable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to desire horse-exercise was a visit from Captain Lydgate, the baronet's third son, who, I am sorry to say, was detested by our Tertius of that name as a vapid fop "parting his hair from brow to nape in a despicable fashion" (not followed by Tertius himself), and showing an ignorant security that he knew the proper thing to say on every topic. Lydgate inwardly cursed his own folly that he had drawn down this visit by consenting to go to his ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of tolerance. Yes, the worst of them all, the immortal Becky (who was so plainly liked by her maker) awakens sympathy in the reader when routed in her fortunes, black-leg though she be. She cared for her husband, after her fashion, and she plays the game of Bad Luck in a way far from despicable. Nor is that easy-going, commonplace scoundrel, Rawdon, with his dog-like devotion to the same Becky, denied his touch of higher humanity. Behind all these is a large tolerance, an intellectual breadth, a spiritual comprehension ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... think of him was this: That he had become that which he had affected to consider the most despicable thing on earth—a hypocrite. Remember, she had no personal knowledge of the power of the Spirit of God over a human soul. She had no conception of how so mighty a change could be wrought in the space of a few hours, so her only solution of the mystery was that to serve ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... myself—and I couldn't. If the man Somers hadn't returned, I think I should have waited until they sent to arrest me. But he did come back and the instinct of self-preservation was too strong. I know my story about the men's desertion and my forcing him to back me up was vile and despicable. But I clung to life and it was my only chance. Afterwards, with the horror of the thing hanging over me, I didn't care so much about life. In the little fighting that was left for me I deliberately tried to throw it away. I ask you ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... from attending suffrage meetings; once he had me spirited away and imprisoned for a week when it fell to my lot to burn a railroad station for the good of the cause. He strove to ruin me with my leaders in this despicable manner. ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... I answered you so sharply. But all this worry and fuss over me is getting on my nerves. You've written down Cunningham as a despicable rogue, when he is only an interesting one. If only you would give banter for banter, you might take some of the wind out of his sails. But instead you go about as if the next hour was to be ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... consummation of those projects he had so long cherished: but, although bold and impatient, he was compelled to proceed with caution to the extinction of a race of kings to whom obedience had become a habit, and who were at that moment represented by a prince who, though weak and despicable, was endeared to many of his subjects by his misfortunes. His first step was to issue a proclamation, in which he inveighed with bitterness against a treaty which bounded the great empire of Persia by the river Araxes, and left many of the inhabitants ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... say; he dared not again mention the matter to the Emperor, and yet it was absolutely necessary to have the house. Napoleon learned what was passing, and was angry, but allowed the offer of the forty thousand. Again the dealer retracted, and demanded fifty thousand. "He is a despicable creature," said the Emperor. "I will have none of his paltry hut: it shall remain where it is, as a testimony of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... girl's fortune was ready to fall into his hands? Fool, to risk his health, his character, his beauty, the little money which at this moment of time might be so indispensable to his great project, for the chance of winning something which in comparison with Marie Melmotte's money must be despicable! But at last he came! She waited patiently till he had thrown aside his hat and coat, and then she appeared at the dining-room door. She had studied her part for the occasion. She would not say a harsh word, and now she ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... other element, a most undesirable one—the Boer who is continually stirring up ill-feeling. You will find him everywhere, and he is always at it. If his own brother happened to be an educated man, he could not get on with him; his nature is despicable. President Kruger thinks that race hatred will gradually disappear, for 'wherever love dwells, prosperity must follow.' Can anyone imagine love existing in the nature of the man I have cited? President Kruger himself ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... light in the room in which it is delivered. I remember once I went down to assist a friend of mine in an electioneering campaign in a small borough. His opponent was a most worthy and estimable squire, who resided in the neighbourhood. It was, of course, my business to prove that he was a despicable knave and a drivelling idiot. This I was engaged in doing at a public meeting in the town-hall. The Philippics of Demosthenes were milk and water in comparison with my denunciations—when just at the critical moment—as I was carrying conviction into the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... we prized so charily, for which we prayed the winds to be gentle, which we lapped from the cold in our arms, from whose footstep we would have removed a stone, should be suddenly thrust out of sight—an abomination that the earth must not look upon—a despicable loathsomeness, to be concealed and to be forgotten! And this same composition of bone and muscle that was yesterday so strong—which men respected, and women loved, and children clung to—to-day so lamentably ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the smoke of his cigar before him with a certain skill, so that his progress was a form of fumigation. The fear of infection is the only fear to which men will own, and it is hard to understand why this form of cowardice should be less despicable than others. Von Holzen was a German, and that nation combines courage with so deep a caution that mistaken persons sometimes think the former adjunct lacking. The mark of a wound across his cheek told that in his student days this man had, after due deliberation, ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... horses with cloths or mats, and their own clothing is confined to a single vesture somewhat like a petticoat. Their weapons are long lances or darts made of reeds, ten or twelve cubits long, pointed with iron and fringed with silk. The men are despicable looking people, of small stature, of a colour between black and yellow, which we call olive, having voices like women, and long black hair flowing on their shoulders. They are more numerous than can well be believed, and are continually at war among themselves. They inhabit ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... its origin. About twelve years before it broke out, Major Waldron treacherously seized a band of Indians at Dover in New Hampshire and sent them to Boston, where several of them were hanged for alleged complicity in Philip's war[5] and others sold into slavery. This despicable act the Indians never forgot ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... rather die in the gutter than live on money that was obtained by a vulgar fraud. She acted a lie—a damned despicable lie. That sort of thing is done every day, but the man usually knows what he is doing, and hasn't any scruples, and the girl sometimes learns to love him.... So we're living on the benevolence and innocence of a man ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... withhold anything. To enter military service of one's own free will, I consider either a stupid, insensate action, suitable for a savage if the man does not understand the evil of his action, or despicable if he does it ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... spider and drinks its heart's blood. That was how this woman fastened upon me and sucks the blood of my heart. She hates and despises me for being so stupid; that is, for marrying a woman like her. My chivalry seems to her despicable. 'A wise man cast me off,' she says, 'and a fool picked me up.' To her thinking no one but a pitiful idiot could have behaved as I did. And that is insufferably bitter to me, brother. Altogether, I may say in parenthesis, fate has been hard upon me, ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... southward by the Chesapeake of the capital of "the rebels." This was in accordance with the plan, as we now know, of General Charles Lee, second in command to Washington, while he was a prisoner in New York. He thus proved himself a traitor more despicable even than Arnold. His infamy did not become known until of late years. Moving northward from the head of the Chesapeake Bay, the British encountered Washington at Brandywine and, defeating him, secured an entrance to Philadelphia when it pleased General Howe to enter, which ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... them and looked upon them as dirt. They WERE despicable. They WERE dirt. They admitted ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... slander is, imputing to our neighbor's practice, judgment, or profession, evil consequences (apt to render him odious, or despicable) which have no dependence on them, or connection with them. There do in every age occur disorders and mishaps, springing from various complications of causes, working some of them in a more open and discernible, others in a more secret and subtle way (especially from Divine ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Satires and Fescenine verses so long the admiration of the Romans, into regular form and dialogue, and though the character of a player, so long valued and applauded in Greece, was reckoned vile and despicable among the Romans, Andronicus himself acted a part in his dramatic compositions. At the time of Cicero the works of this poet were obsolete; yet some passages of them are preserved ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... since I know how good you were to Grace, but I can't help you in this matter. I hated Kara living, I hate him dead," he cried, and there was a passion in his voice which was unmistakable; "he was the vilest thing that ever drew the breath of life. There was no villainy too despicable, no cruelty so horrid but that he gloried in it. If ever the devil were incarnate on earth he took the shape and the form of Remington Kara. He died too merciful a death by all accounts. But if there is a God, ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... tower of the ABBAYE ST. OUEN—with hanging gardens, and white houses, to the left—covering a richly cultivated ridge of hills, which sink as it were into the Boulevards, and which is called the Faubourg Cauchoise. To the right, through the trees, you see the river SEINE (here of no despicable depth or breadth) covered with boats and vessels in motion: the voice of commerce, and the stir of industry, cheering and animating you as you approach the town. I was told that almost every vessel which I saw (some of them of two hundred, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to be immediately perceived, and I trust, from the principles I have always endeavoured to instil into your young mind, that you will ever prefer the fair and open path she points out, to the intricate labyrinths of despicable falshood. ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... quick to take note of this, and it suited his plans exactly. At first he thought he would speak to Tom Martin about his despicable purpose, and get his assistance. But he knew Dave Farrington would not listen to it, for he had already shown a preference for Fred; so he finally concluded to keep his own counsel, for should the facts at any time ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... being able to hear it physically (he not being allowed to hit us too hard) to outface the dishonor we should have been taught to die rather than endure. And so idleness and worthlessness on the one hand and a pretence of coercion on the other became a despicable routine. If my schoolmasters had been really engaged in educating me instead of painfully earning their bread by keeping me from annoying my elders they would have turned me out of the school, telling me that I was thoroughly ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... afterward, in averring that the break had been planned by Winwood? The Prison Board of Directors believed, to a man, that the forty lied in an effort to save themselves. The Board of Pardons likewise believed, for, ere three months were up, Cecil Winwood, forger and poet, most despicable of men, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... but the worst, the cruellest, the lowest of all is yourself! I had hoped to have found rest and refuge here for a little time, but you have driven me out. Oh, I did not believe that anything so despicable, so unmanly as you could exist. I do not know why you have done this, perhaps it ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... necessary to fall upon some expedient, without delay, which might serve our purpose: accordingly the gunner, carpenter, and some more, turning the cutter keel upwards, and fixing it upon props, made no despicable habitation. Having thus established some sort of settlement, we had the more leisure to look about us, and to make our researches with greater accuracy than we had before, after such supplies as the most desolate coasts ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... were noticeably curved. For a moment the thought in her mind was simply, "Could I live with those nails?" She hated herself for that thought; she despised herself for it; she considered herself almost inhuman and certainly despicable, and she recalled swiftly what Seymour was, the essential beauty and fineness of his character, his truth, his touching faithfulness. And almost simultaneously she thought, "Why do old men get those terribly bushy ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... continuance of the war, he so broke the very heart of the Spanish monarchy, so absolutely and irrecoverably impoverished them, that they have ever since languished of the disease, till they are fallen from the most powerful, to be the most despicable nation in the world. ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... away from your gun," he said quietly. "I'm covering you with mine, and I'm quicker than you. Listen! You see, I know about that affair. I was hoping that you'd be able to tell me you'd no hand in it. But now I know by your behaviour that you're guilty, that you were the ringleader of the despicable gang. I'm not accusin' you. I repeat that I'm not in the vigilance service; I'm not a policeman. I may tell you, however, that I knew your evil reputation before I engaged you to take charge of my ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... me at all," said he, as she threw her arms about his neck and laid her head on his shoulder. "Don't you know that I have roamed the high sea, smelled powder, and helped capture a Yankee vessel? It's the most despicable business in the world," he added, as he led his mother into the house out of earshot of all the servants. And then he told her how the capture had been effected, and explained why Beardsley would not immediately put to sea to try his luck again. He said, with a long-drawn sigh, ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... cordiality of Sir Lucius, and the unobtrusive devotion of Lady Afy, melted his soul. These agreeable circumstances graciously whispered to him each hour that he could scarcely be the desolate and despicable personage which lately, in a moment of madness, he had fancied himself. He began to indulge the satisfactory idea, that a certain person, however unparalleled in form and mind, had perhaps acted with ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... But despicable as his conduct had been, he underwent no hasty condemnation. The defection was discussed in all its bearings, but it seemed sadly clear at last that this uncle must possess some innate badness of character and fondness for low ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... religious Thought. Decency of Behaviour, all outward Show of Virtue, and Abhorrence of Vice, are carefully avoided by this Set of Shame-faced People, as what would disparage their Gayety of Temper, and infallibly bring them to Dishonour. This is such a Poorness of Spirit, such a despicable Cowardice, such a degenerate abject State of Mind, as one would think Human Nature incapable of, did we not meet with frequent Instances of it in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... that history was a thoroughly despicable exercise of rhetoric. According to him, the only true history was the natural history of man. Michelet was in the right path when he came in contact with the fistula of Louis XIV., but he fell back into the old rut almost ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... the Huguenots were despicable, that Charles I. was a saint, that the Old Pretender was James III., that the Revolution of 1688 was a crime, and that the Non-jurors were the true confessors of the English Church, it did not seem to square with his reading, or his reflections. Perhaps, after all, the infallible ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... the whole morning in keeping William's right wing in check, covered the flight of the beaten army. They were indeed in some danger of being broken and swept away by the torrent of runaways, all pressing to get first to the pass of Duleek, and were forced to fire repeatedly on these despicable allies, [700] The retreat was, however, effected with less loss than might have been expected. For even the admirers of William owned that he did not show in the pursuit the energy which even his detractors ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... more than her beauty, for he did not like to feel himself unpossessed of the entree to such a house. Also he was a writer of society verses—not so good as they might have been, but in their way not altogether despicable—and had already begun to turn it over in his mind whether something might not be made of—what ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... students, "He is a devil," and repudiated the idea of casting out devils through Beelzebub. Erring human mind is by no means a de- [10] sirable or efficacious healer. Such suppositional healing I deprecate. It is in no way allied to divine power. All human control is animal magnetism, more despicable than all other ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... the resolution and self-control to resist the little impulses by which they creep on surely toward a fatal end. Does anybody set out meaning to ruin himself, or to drink himself to death, or to waste his life so that he becomes a despicable old man, a superannuated nuisance, like a fly in winter. Yet there are plenty, of whose lot this is the pitiable story. Well now, supposing us all to have the best intentions, we working men, as a body, run some ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... a crafty political move. The enormity of the despicable acts was advertised as never before, while the endorsement of them by federalist legislators went upon record. Petitions for repeal came in so numerous and numerously signed that the VIth Congress could not but raise a committee to consider ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... to be ratified; when I was upholding the resolution of the allies and working for a Peace on just and equitable terms; when you in your desire for such a Peace would not even listen to the voice of the despicable Philocrates; then, I say, Aeschines rose and spoke in support of him, using language for which he deserves, God knows, to die many deaths, {16} saying that you must not remember your forefathers, nor tolerate speakers who recalled your trophies and your victories by sea; ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... cloths, had followed up the Signoria, and been duly consecrated to San Giovanni, and every one was moving from the window—Nello, whose Florentine curiosity was of that lively canine sort which thinks no trifle too despicable for investigation, put his hand on ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... by mosquitoes during the season when picnics seem most natural, that those of my visitors who have been taken there for a treat have invariably lost their tempers, and made the quiet shores ring with their wailing and lamentations. These despicable but irritating insects don't seem to have anything to do but to sit in multitudes on the sand, waiting for any prey Providence may send them; and as soon as the carriage appears they rise up in a cloud, and rush to meet us, almost dragging us out bodily, ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... of England needed a great deal of education in war saving. We had to fight the strongly held conviction that of all sins the most despicable is "meanness," and that too much ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... the doctrine by your consistent living. To profess one thing and practise another is a blot on the profession, and a despicable thing. What I may call mere Meeting piety, platform or parlour Holiness, will not stand the weather. It is too much like the painted sparrows sold as canaries—the paint comes off and the real nature of the bird is revealed. For instance, ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... as Nature's agent, crouching and ready to destroy the child's life, not in open combat, but invisibly concealed by the limitation of our senses. This is one of Nature's unspeakable crimes; one of God's despicable impositions. ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... their house I met him. He behaved shamefully ill; he repaid their hospitality with gross ingratitude; other details and facts regarding his conduct also became known to me. Altogether I believe him to be a base and despicable man, both by nature and inclination, and that he will remain such to the end ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... has always been a sentiment of mine—that to propagate a malicious Truth wantonly—is more despicable than to falsify from Revenge, but can you Maria feel thus [f]or others and be unkind to me alone—nay is hope to be denied ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... said Mr Warner, "I answered, that I heartily wished it might prove so, and that nothing would be wanting on my part to make it so; and I added, the presbyterians in Scotland, Great Sir, are looked upon as a very despicable party; but those who do so measure them by the appearance at Pentland and Bothwell, as if the whole power of the presbyterians had been drawn out there; but I can assure your Highness that such are greatly mistaken; for many firm presbyterians were not satisfied as to the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... greater part begin shouting for no particular reason because a few others have led the way, and they end by believing that the man whom they are acclaiming is almost divine; yet it is certain that they elected this man on the whole because of the two he had more points in common with them, this poor despicable and very unheroic thing was the person whom they delighted to honour because they themselves were very unheroic and somewhat despicable. We cannot see the greatness of a truly great man unless there is just a bit of greatness in ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... kept that oath. If the man had not been dead, I might have ended by breaking it—who knows? What I have to tell you is that, some two months after the Relief, when your engagement to the lady who is now your wife was first made public, I, impelled and prompted by a despicable envy of the great good-fortune that had fallen—deservedly fallen—to your lot, sought out Miss Mildare, and told her—something I had learned to your detriment, from a man called Brooker, a babbling, worthless creature, a Gueldersdorp tradesman who, on the strength of a seat ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... by no means despicable men; for one of them clubbed his musket and therewith hit Ben such a blow on the head that he fell flat on the deck. Seeing this, Bill Bowls bestrode his prostrate comrade, and defended him for a few seconds with ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... is, in one aspect, a wretched story of folly and selfishness wrecking a nation, and, in another, a solemn instance of divine retribution working its designs by men's sins. The greater part of this account deals with it in the former aspect, and shows the despicable motives of the men in whose hands was the nation's fate; but one sentence (verse 15) draws back the curtain for a moment, and shows us the true cause. There is something very striking in that one flash, which reveals the enthroned God, working through the ignoble strife which makes ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... women who had nowhere else to pass an hour. At the arrival of our Sovereigns, they were astonished at the unusual vacancy, and indignantly regarded each other. After vespers were over, one of Bonaparte's spies informed him of the cause, when, instead of punishing the despicable and hypocritical courtiers, or showing them any signs of his displeasure, he ordered Salmatoris under arrest, who would have experienced a complete disgrace had not his friend Duroc interfered and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... believed the worst of her, and had withdrawn from her altogether his support, when the slightest support from him would have been invaluable to her. Could she forgive this? Never! never! She was not a woman to wish to forgive such an offence. It was an offence which it would be despicable in her to forgive. Many had offended her, some had injured her, one or two had insulted her; but, to her thinking, no one had so offended her, had so injured her, had so grossly insulted her as he had done. In what way, then, would it become her ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... both instituted and was in charge of the investigation that now threatened New York with an upheaval that promised to shake many a social structure to its foundations. Yes, they would play their last card, a vile, despicable and hellish card—but how little they knew David Archman! They would break his life; it would, indeed, as the Tocsin had said, be murder—but they would never break David Archman's unswerving loyalty to principle and duty! They had tried that—by threats of personal violence, by the offer of ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... evident that lodging-searching was quite out of the question for the time being, it was agreed that we should all spend the night in the office, where heaps of old papers and sacking made up into not altogether despicable couches. Moreover, publication date was approaching, and at such times we were in the habit of getting later and later in the office, the necessity for Short's assistance rendering it impossible to get the work done in an ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... [261] 'The despicable wretchedness of teaching,' wrote Carlyle, in his twenty-fourth year, when he was himself a teacher, 'can be known only to those who have tried it, and to Him who made the heart and knows it all. One meets with few spectacles more afflicting ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... a new light. He still sneered, but behind the mask she got for the first time a glimpse of another man. Only dimly she divined him; but what she visioned was half devil and half hero, capable of things great as well as of deeds despicable. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... is, in a sense, true, but it is the fault of nothing in heaven or earth except the attitude and the phrases quoted at the beginning of this article. We have no doubt in the world that, if the other forms of art had been equally despised, they would have been equally despicable. If people had spoken of 'sonnets' with the same accent with which they speak of 'music-hall songs,' a sonnet would have been a thing so fearful and wonderful that we almost regret we cannot have a specimen; a rowdy sonnet is a thing to dream about. If people ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... venture on the encounter. The war had not been formally committed to him; and if he did not prosper in it, he dreaded the accusations of his enemies at Rome. He had seen, moreover, with his own eyes; that the Parthians were an enemy far from despicable, and his knowledge of campaigning told him that success against them was not certain. He feared to risk the loss of all the glory which he had obtained by grasping greedily at more, and preferred enjoying the fruits of the good luck which had hitherto attended him to tempting fortune ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... acted in open hostility to the existing government. With his usual promptitude and decision, he attacked Panos Kolokotroni, the son of the old Klepht, and Staikos, a Moreote captain of some reputation, in the plain of Tripolitza, where they were posted for the despicable purpose of intercepting the trains of mules laden with merchandise for the supply of the shops of Tripolitza, then the great market of all the central ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... for this attack? There were other men and women in this court, some very near me if I remember rightly. In what are their characters superior, or their claims to respect greater, that you should thus single me out as the fool or knave who could not only commit so wild and despicable an act, but go so far in folly—let alone ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated "masher." The refined and elegant appearance of his victim and the contiguity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would insure his winter quarters on the ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... little hope of victory until this man could be placed hors de combat. He therefore pressed in toward him, plying his cutlass vigorously with one hand, and laying manfully about him with the butt of his empty pistol with the other, and calling upon the fellow by every despicable epithet he could think of to turn and meet him. He had very nearly reached him—there were only some half-a-dozen people between the two—when another voice, that of Bowen, was heard, and the next ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... not to be despicable; the measures she recommended relieved the little one, and by the time Percy and the apothecary made their appearance, it was asleep on Theodora's lap, and Mr. Legh pronounced that it was in a fair way to do well. She wished she could have watched it all night, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... before him, Laurence Vanderlyn, for the first time in his life, learned what so many men and women learn very early in their lives,—what it is to be afraid of a person, who, however despicable, is, or ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... poor boy, born on the edge of the wilderness,—"at a despicable plantation on the river of Kennebec, and almost the farthest village of the eastern settlement of New England,"—yet who ended his life as governor and nobleman, is what we have to tell. It is one of the most romantic stories in history. He was born in 1651, being a scion of the early days of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... God—even to sinners, Mr. Wilson. We don't always deserve all the goodness we get, you know," Cleek went on. "The notes are found you see; the notes, you murderer, you despicable thief, the notes which were entrusted to your care by the innocent people who pinned ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... come of the warm exhilaration of this first breath of sweet, outdoor air, or perhaps it needed neither of these things, for the girl was very beautiful—enchantment breathed from her, and, though he knew what she was, in what despicable plot she was engaged, he was too much Ste. Marie to be quite indifferent to her. Though he looked upon her sorrowfully and with pain and vicarious shame, he could not have denied the spell she wielded. After all, he was ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... I am going to fulfill your wishes in perhaps a little different way from what you desire. To lie, to act a degrading comedy, to bribe women of the streets for evidence—the ugliness of it all disgusts me. I am a bad man, but this despicable thing I am utterly unable to do. My solution is after all the simplest. You must marry to be happy. I am the obstacle, consequently that obstacle ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... afloat again, however, and Frobisher breathed a sigh of thanksgiving. He had set his heart on commanding her, and he would have been bitterly disappointed if so fine a ship had been lost to him and the Navy through the despicable cupidity of a mandarin and the incompetence ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... love of overcoming obstacles is deeply rooted in the heart of every true man. What is the meaning of our English love of field sports? What the explanation of the mania for Alpine climbing? It is no despicable craving for distinction, it is the innate love ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Why should not things go in these matters as they do in life, where it is not necessarily the best men that get on best? Well, it is due to the pitiless severity of the critics that calculations of this kind would be as disastrous as they are despicable. ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... gazed at the singer, not seeing in him the indolent, sickly youth, despicable on account of his uselessness for work. In their primitive minds stirred a vague something which impelled them to respect the words and complaints of the weakling. It was something extraordinary, which seemed to ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 'Anyhow, whatever the issue, the blood of the country is up. We must fight the thing through. It is splendid the way the upper classes are stepping into the breach on the railways. I honour them. I only hope they won't all be murdered by these despicable brutes.' ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... obtrude their ugly heads here and there from under Branwell's finest phrases. And since there is no single vulgar, trite, or Micawber-like effusion throughout 'Wuthering Heights;' and since Heathcliff's passion is never once treated in the despicable would-be worldly fashion in which Branwell describes his own sensations, and since at the time that 'Wuthering Heights' was written he was manifestly, and by his own confession, too physically prostrate for any literary effort, we may conclude that Branwell ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... minute acts, alterations of alterations in the cash entries, and constant ingenuity in a hundred ways. But it ought to have been done, and might have been done. It might have been done. He admitted that candidly, fully, with despicable tremblings.... ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... he afford his enemies so much occasion to brand him with disloyalty?" Said The Free Press, of Hamilton, "It is not the domination of the mother country that Reformers complain of; it is only the tyrannical conduct of a small and despicable faction in the colony. The domination of the mother country is as necessary to our present happiness and future greatness as the mother's breast is to the infant." "There can be but one opinion," said The British American Journal, of St. Catharines, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... statement of a theory of literary art. Scott did not pose as the leader of a school, or compose prefaces and lectures like Hugo and Schlegel.[26] As a contributor to the reviews on his favourite topics, he was no despicable critic; shrewd, good-natured, full of special knowledge, anecdote, and illustration. But his criticism was never polemic, and he had no quarrel with the classics. He cherished an unfeigned admiration for Dryden, whose life he wrote and whose works he edited. Doubtless he would ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... camp to-day. Result of visit, about a dozen have joined forces of the English. Wonder if a worm wouldn't have more self-respect! Such characters make themselves despicable and contemptible in eyes of the English themselves. To us it brings deep-down humiliation. Can a man ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... he raised his hands against himself in the wildest despair, and tore his hair. But this newly-acquired treasure gave me the means and the disposition to mingle again among my fellow-men. No pretext was wanting for palliating to my own mind this despicable robbery; or, rather, it wanted no such pretext. With a view of ridding myself of any internal reproaches, I hurried away, not even looking back on the unfortunate victim, whose agonized tones I heard long repeated after me. So, at least, at that time I ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... their prefaces how little time their works have cost them, and what other business of more importance interfered; but the reader will be as apt to ask the question, why they allowed not a longer time to make their works more perfect? and why they had so despicable an opinion of their judges, as to thrust their indigested stuff upon them, as if they ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... all; I am in your eyes an abject and most despicable creature; and I am sometimes the same in my own eyes, though not often: I more frequently congratulate myself on my vices than blame myself for them; you are more constant in ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... understood, was not needed to win his regard. Browning's eye was an instrument made for exact and minute records of natural phenomena. "I have heard him say," Mr Sharp writes, "that at that time"—speaking of his earlier years—"his faculty of observation would not have appeared despicable to a Seminole or an Iroquois." Such activity of the visual nerve differs widely from the wise passiveness or brooding power of the Wordsworthian mode of contemplation. Browning's life was never that of a recluse who finds in ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... obstinately. Not since the days when Dick had offered his blind loyalty had any one tried to understand her as Austin Selwyn had done. She was grateful for that. She might even have valued his friendship if he had not been so despicable that awful night. To insult her with his talk of pacifism, and then, heedless of her intensity, to propose to her! She could not forgive him for that. She was glad her ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... capaciousness and the moral aim jars upon the sense of fitness, and the name of Bacon, "wisest, meanest," has passed into a proverb. Milton's fall is far worse. It is not here a union of grasp of mind with an ignoble ambition, but the plunge of the moral nature itself from the highest heights to that despicable region of vulgar scurrility and libel, which is below the level of average gentility and education. The name of Milton is a synonym for sublimity. He has endowed our language with the loftiest and noblest ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... to be his son. Imogine re- appears at the convent, and dies of her own accord. Bertram stabs himself, and dies by her side, and that the play may conclude as it began, to wit, in a superfetation of blasphemy upon nonsense, because he had snatched a sword from a despicable coward, who retreats in terror when it is pointed towards him in sport; this felo de se, and thief-captain—this loathsome and leprous confluence of robbery, adultery, murder, and cowardly assassination,—this ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sole end the subversion of the existing state of things. He would probably succeed in getting back the money he had spent, and more also, by illicit means. If he failed, the money would be lost, and he would go from bad to worse, intriguing and mixing himself up with the despicable radical press, in the hope of getting a ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... to which laudable determination the handsome mansion in Albert Gate opened wide its portals, and all London—a far from despicable company in numbers, since Parliament was still sitting and the session promised to be rather indefinitely prolonged—crowded its fine stairways and suites of lofty rooms, resplendent in silks and satins, jewels and laces, in orders and titles, and manifold ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... was calculating and despicable; she was not the woman to marry where she did not love! But then she really did love Richie in a way. And Richie loved her—no question of that! Loved her more than Warren did for all his letters and gifts, she ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... That is, a great many retailers are. They do not seem to care anything about the quality, if they can only give the largest prize. Quality is not considered at all. They buy the thing for the great prize offered. When the retail merchants of this country shut down on this despicable way of doing business and sell goods on their merits, without a prize package attached, just so soon will a blow have been struck at the root of the whole matter.' These pretty fairly represent the growing sentiment among large and small traders of brains. They see that the moment an article ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... convenience and enjoyment which modern science could alone supply. All this is not denied. Your order stands before Europe the most gorgeous of existing spectacles; though you have of late years dexterously thrown some of the odium of your polity upon that middle class which you despise, and who are despicable only because they imitate you, your tenure of power is not in reality impaired. You govern us still with absolute authority—and you govern the most miserable people on the face of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... "seen through him"; others had "never liked him"; others had wondered how it was he kept his place so long in Lehfeldt's shop. Poor fellow! his life and actions, like those of every one else when illuminated by a light thrown back upon them, seemed so conspicuously despicable, although when illuminated in their own light they had seemed innocent enough. His mother's frantic protestations of her son's innocence—her assertions that Franz loved Lieschen more than his own soul—only served to envelop her in the silent accusation ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the money to me (whenever it shall be issued) that I have employed it in the maintenance and the education of those whom I do not myself know, nor can tell in any regular and authorised manner from whom I received them, I should make a very despicable, not to say a criminal figure. I cannot take your Lordship's pleasure from the Bishop of Leon; though he tells me he is (not your Lordship's friend and adviser) but your clerk, as you have never informed me of this his relation to you. I therefore, for my voucher ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... went up to the sofa slowly and held out her hand. "You are welcome," she said gravely to Josephine, but the contempt which she had always had for her father, though she had tried so hard of late to wear it down, surged up afresh, and she could not turn her eyes his way. What a despicable thing that must be, she thought—that thing he called his heart—to shift from one to the other so easily! To her, the keynote of whose character was single-hearted devotion, this facile, fluid love, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... of seizing Abellino. If justice required him to be delivered up, it was necessary that he should be delivered up by himself! Or do ye take Abellino for an ordinary ruffian, who passes his time in skulking from the sbirri, and who murders for the sake of despicable plunder? No, by heaven, no! Abellino was no such common villain. It's true I was a bravo; but the motives which induced me to become one ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... known him, to give the right meed of love and worship. Because the outward man lacked perfection and strength equal to his, he had taken the love and worship of that great pure heart as his due; he, so unworthy in the inner reality, so mean, so despicable, callous, and contemptuous towards the brother who had laid down his life to save him. He longed for utter annihilation, that so he might lose the agony of knowing himself so unworthy such perfect love. The frozen calm of death on ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... complaints, prescribing for them as such, and receiving the wages of imposition, instead of the honorable reward of science. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the faculty has always possessed members of a spirit to condemn and regret such despicable practices. There cannot be juster objects of satire than such empirics, nor is there a foible more deserving of ridicule than the selfish timidity of the hypochondriac, who, ungrateful for the store of good health with which nature has endowed him, assumes the habitual precautions ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... man who had made a shipwreck of his life, that in a moment of folly—a moment of funk she knew now to be the veridical description!—he had flung away the whole chances of his life. The man whom she had loved, and, in her love, idealized, had proved himself, when the test came, that most despicable of things, a coward! The pain ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... in robbing him of his labor, his self-respect, his franchise, his liberty, and life itself. Many of the officials of Southern States, including numerous judges and not a few Christian ministers, helped or sanctioned these Negro-hating editors and reporters in their despicable onslaught upon the Negro, while tens of thousands of white business men of the South fattened upon Negro convict labor and the proceeds ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Man's wisdom may not vaunt itself. God's moral system is no well-lit room in which all furnishings are visible; rather a twilight gloom, where men and women grope. We know enough. Virtue is made very evident, and vice very despicable, and God very apparent—and these be the sufficient data for the monograph of life. "All things work together for good to them that love God," is the far-away response to Job's troubled cry. God converses with Satan ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... very badly treated. Captain Swales and his officers are as nasty as they come. There is a fire on board, and the people are rescued by the MARY, Captain Dean, who is a very different kind of man than the despicable Captain Swales. At Quebec Peter joins the FOAM, Captain Hawk. There then follows a series of events, some good, and some ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... chieftain, and wielding it with remorseless dexterity, he soon slew or wounded, or compelled to flight, the objects of his resentment; nor was there any of them who abode an instant to support the boast which they had made. "The despicable churls!" said the Countess to Agelastes; "it irks me that a drop of such coward blood should stain the hands of a noble knight. They call their exercise a tournament, although in their whole exertions every blow is aimed behind the back, and not one has the courage to throw his windlestraw ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... and denied the chance of obtaining a footing for myself in society. Yes; I had not even the chance of being considered as a fellow-creature—yet all the people with whom I lived, brutalized as they were by the low cunning of trade, and the despicable shifts of poverty, were not without bowels, though they never yearned for me. I was, in fact, born a slave, and chained by infamy to slavery during the whole of existence, without having any companions ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... his duty. We were aware that the true strength of a nation is moral and not material; that dominion which rests on mere military force is destined quickly to decay, that the tyrant, however admired and prosperous, is in reality despicable, and miserable, and alone; that the true man should face death itself rather than parley with dishonour. These truths are admitted in all ages; yet it is scarcely stretching language to say that they are known to but few men. ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... absorbing and so intense that it left him no rest until, by hook or by crook, by supplication, or by trickery, or by paying down hard cash, he had obtained the close and constant proximity of—what?—of a man whom he himself described as a 'singe' and a 'scelerat,' a man of base soul and despicable character. And Frederick appears to see nothing surprising in this. He takes it quite as a matter of course that he should be, not merely willing, but delighted to run all the risks involved by Voltaire's undoubted roguery, so long as he can be ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... "single campaign" is over, and America not conquered. The whole work is yet to do, and the force much less to do it with. Their condition is both despicable and deplorable: out of cash—out of heart, and out of hope. A country furnished with arms and ammunition as America now is, with three millions of inhabitants, and three thousand miles distant from the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... grieved by the despicable trick that he retired to his former home, the cave in the hillside, and there remained without food ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... forthwith began to make arrangements for proceeding on to Unyoro, governed by a chief named Kamrasi, of despicable character and considered merciless and cruel, even among African potentates, scattering death and torture around at the mere whim of the moment; while he was inhospitable, covetous, and grasping, yet too cowardly to declare war against the King of the Waganda, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... The Oxford historian, who had little reverence for new lights, and never loses an opportunity of girding at those whose weights and measures were not according to the current and only authentic standard, has left no very flattering account of his person. "He was a little crooked man, and of a despicable presence. He was laughed at by the boys of this University, because, as they said, he himself looked like a little wizard." Small as might be his stature, and questionable the shape in which he appeared, he might still have taken up the boast of the author of the ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... his peculiar characteristics, Pope was no despicable foe. The Federal cavalry were employed with a boldness which had not hitherto been seen. Their outposts were maintained twenty miles in advance of the army. Frequent reconnaissances were made. A regiment of Jackson's cavalry was defeated at Orange Court House, with a loss of 60 or 70 ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... wrought and suffered in vain, when the privileges they so dearly bought were so soon set aside. And I was sad, that one endeavouring to follow our dear Master should be so generally regarded as a despicable ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... part these women lodge in pairs in their own flats, where they pay about 35s. a week for three unfurnished rooms. The Officer told me that often some despicable man, who is called a 'bully,' lives on them, following them round the streets, and watching them. Even the smartest girls are not infrequently the victims of such a man, who knocks them about and takes money from them. Occasionally he may be a husband or a relative. She added that ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... feel contempt for the study of the lower animals, since in all nature's work there is something wonderful. And if any one thinks the study of other animals despicable, he must despise the study of ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... Wolf was carrying out his scheme to rob his accomplices in smuggling, he was planning a still more despicable act, and that was to take his hoard of money, stow all valuables on the sloop, sail to a Nova Scotia port, and when near it, to kill the Indian, sell the Sea Fox and ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... tribute which a lover lays at the feet of his lady is, in ordinary, the stamped-upon and abused summary of his personal attributes, which, in his own mind, he has taken remarkable pains to render as despicable as possible, and which, in hers, her imagination contrives not only to rehabilitate, but to imbue ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... so ashamed, Mike, but for days my shame has been drowned in anger. I followed you and trapped you and spied upon you." She looked up pleadingly. "And I'd do it all over again, even worse, Mike, I know I would, even though I am despicable ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... stronger than love, or faith, or honor. God knows I never thought myself weak; at school I was the least impetuous of the two. Everything went, and they cheated me from the start. Roulette and faro. Then I put my hand in the safe. To this day I can not tell why. I owed nothing to those despicable thieves, Craig least ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... have confined himself to grumbling and to calling for slow-arriving thunderbolts to crash the oppressors who were despoiling him had he felt certain that the plunder would be confined to them, that his property would be safe, at least, from the attacks of those insignificant, despicable but eminently dangerous plunderers who became known to the police as common criminals. This, however, was not so. After being flayed by iniquitous taxes, which he knew were destined to add to the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... make too much haste to despise our neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence, and we are in danger of doing that deliberately, which the Scots did not do but in the unsettled ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson |
