"Discreditable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poisoned at its very source. If this be so, then it is as reprehensible in those whose vocation is to watch over the moral and spiritual development of their fellow-men to be indifferent to the conditions by which life is surrounded as it would be discreditable to the physicians of a city swept year after year by pestilence, if they took no interest in the insanitary conditions to which the epidemic was due, but lazily contented themselves with curing ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... that he built something; and amid the Greek there is the word [Greek: sigor-alem], which occurs also in the above-mentioned document and is regarded as Turanian.... What we do know about this race is by no means so discreditable; it is true that they are reputed to have had no great esteem for the aged, and, according to a Chinese chronicle of the year 545, "the characters of their writing are like those of the barbarians." They held it to be ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... in suffering himself to be driven into his convictions by his party. On the other, a party is extolled for its political tact, in suffering itself to be forced out of its convictions by its leader. It is hard to decide which is the more discreditable and demoralising sight. The education of chiefs by followers, and of followers by chiefs, into the abandonment in a month of the traditions of centuries or the principles of a lifetime may conduce to the rapid and easy working of the machine. It certainly marks a triumph of the political spirit ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... Tighe had warned her to be careful what she told Street. She distrusted the cripple profoundly. Half the evil that went on in the park was plotted by him. There had been a lot of furtive whispering about the house for a week or more. Her instinct told her that there was in the air some discreditable secret. More than once she had wondered whether her people had been the express company robbers for whom a reward was out. She tried to dismiss the suspicion from her mind, for the fear of it was like a leaden weight at her heart. But many little ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... sort," urged Frank Carlton. "I came out here to form an estate, and I have succeeded in what I undertook, while a number of other persons with similar opportunities have failed. I do not say this for the sake of boasting, but simply as a fact which is certainly not discreditable." ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... them that he believed he was on the track of some discreditable incident in the past of their rival which would banish him from their path. And no more handkerchiefs had been found, ownerless, in their hall. It ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... Clement Austin suspected that this mystery involved anything discreditable to Margaret herself. The girl's sad face seemed softly luminous with the tender light of pure and holy thoughts. The veriest churl could scarcely have associated vice or falsehood with such a lovely and ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... he said, "a discreditable but incontrovertible fact that saints have always been reviled. I suppose it's jealousy." He turned to his wife. "By the way, did you pack my aureola? I left it hanging on ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... hacked from a low-limbed tree a branch as thick as his finger and about a yard in length, and, first trimming it, bent it as Bark had bent the twig and tied a strong sinew cord across. It was a not discreditable bow, considering the fact that it was the first ever made, though one end was smaller than the other and it was rough of outline. Then Ab cut a straight willow twig, as long nearly as the bow, and began repeating the experiments of the day before. Never was man more astonished than ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... doubt that the atrocities of which Montreal was the scene constitute the most discreditable features in modern Canadian history, and which, it is to be hoped, the instigators to and actors in are long since fully ashamed of; nor can the temper and judgment of the Governor-General on this trying occasion be too highly ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... McRimmon. 'The ineequity o' man's beyond belief. But it's awfu' discreditable to Holdock, Steiner & Chase, if ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Napoleon III, who, weakling that he was, had the perspicacity to give the Baron Haussmann a chance to play his part in the making of modern Paris, and if the Tuileries and Saint Cloud had not disappeared as a result of his indiscretion the period of the Second Empire would not have been at all discreditable, as far as the impress it left on ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... fast as the day before, but I could not delay any longer. My servant, as he gave me water to wash, wore a special smile on his face, a smile of restrained irony. I knew that smile well; it indicated that my servant had heard something discreditable or even shocking about gentlefolks. He was obviously burning with impatience to communicate ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... freely, and, as many even of his own supporters thought, imprudently. The Republicans were eager to obtain the two-thirds majority in both Houses necessary to carry measures over his veto, and to get it even the meticulous Sumner was ready to stoop to some pretty discreditable manoeuvres. The President had taken the field against Congress and made some rather violent stump speeches, which were generally thought unworthy of the dignity of the Chief Magistracy. Meanwhile alleged "Southern outrages" against Negroes were vigorously ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... leaders. He eclipsed the foremost of the Grant clique, Morton and Conkling, who after a little fruitless third-term talk were both hoping to be legatees of the Grant influence in the approaching Presidential convention. But at the eleventh hour a cloud swept over Blaine's prospects, in charges of discreditable receipt of favors from railroads looking for political aid. The testimony was conflicting, but Blaine's palpable seizure of his own letters from a hostile witness was hardly outweighed even by his spectacular vindication of his ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... increased, rather than diminished, by this occurrence. He had sought a quarrel with Parthia as early as A.D. 214, when he demanded of Volagases the surrender of two refugees of distinction. The rupture, which he courted, was deferred by the discreditable compliance of the Great ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... drink, a loafer's life, and a pauper's grave. Perhaps the regiment—the officers, that is to say—would succeed in getting him work, and would from their own resources supplement his pension. But what a wretched and discreditable system is that, by which the richest nation in the world neglects the soldiers who have served it well, and which leaves to newspaper philanthropy, to local institutions, and to private charity, a burden which ought to be proudly borne ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... in my Romance, having slight effect on the conduct and none on the fate of the hero, I am not aware of any resemblance between the two works; and even this coincidence I could easily have removed, had I deemed it the least advisable:—but it would be almost discreditable if I had nothing that resembled a performance possessing so much it were ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... cut out by the Jews, as he suggests in his Epistle to Africanus. Bishop Gray (O.T. p. 612) describes this Epistle as 'suspected'; but it appears now to be generally accepted. Origen thinks that the motive of Susanna's exclusion was its relation of particulars discreditable to the Jewish nation. But the Bishop truly says, "there is no foundation for this improbable fancy." It is, however, maintained by Philippe in Vigouroux' Dict. (cf. 'Title and Position,' ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... and even in England. There, not only are artists and men of letters honoured when they are successful—they are, of course, honoured at that stage in America; but the pursuit of literature and art is one which a young man need not feel it discreditable to adopt. The contemporaries of a brilliant youth at Oxford or at Cambridge do not secretly despise him if he declines to enter business. The first-class man does not normally aspire to start life as a drummer. Public life and ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... are no doubt discreditable to human reason; they attest the inferiority of our nature, which is incapable of laying firm hold upon what is true and just, and is often reduced to the alternative of two excesses. In strict connection with this penal legislation, which bears such striking marks of a narrow sectarian ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Federal journalists, not content with proclaiming him an ambitious, cunning, and deceitful demagogue, ridicule his scientific theories, shudder at his irreligion, sneer at his courage, and allude coarsely to his private morals in a manner more discreditable to themselves than to him; crowning all their accusations and innuendoes with a reckless profusion of epithet. While at the same times and places the whole company of the Democratic press, led by Bache, Duane, Cheetham, Freneau, asserted with equal energy that he was the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... reverses, springing from united ill luck and want of skill; but it was as well understood that much still remained. And then, as now, the morality of gambling was of a most questionable character—invited guests not thinking it discreditable to unite in any combinations for the purpose of better pillaging their host. This seemed now the general purpose; for, leaving each other in comparative freedom from attack, they came forward one ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... occasionally got into the House of Commons. The vulgar half-educated preacher, who without any introduction asked a patron for a vacant living in the Church, has now and then got the living. And however unfit you may be for a place, and however discreditable may have been the means by which you got it, once you have actually held it for two or three years people come to acquiesce in your holding it. They accept the fact that you are there, just as we accept ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... that Tom should have given up so quickly. It soon appeared that it was not caprice, but that he had an object in view, and that a very discreditable one. ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... day dawns, or sunset reddens, how joyous we shall all be! Facts will be regarded as discreditable, Truth will be found mourning over her fetters, and Romance, with her temper of wonder, will return to the land. The very aspect of the world will change to our startled eyes. Out of the sea will rise Behemoth and Leviathan, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... of this class of creatures towards all the elements of moisture, at once relinquished its hold, and going direct to the part of the works indicated, it there awaited its victim with the design of resuming its discreditable persecution. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... Janet really guessed the truth? or had she only surmised that her adopted daughter was connected in some discreditable manner with the mystery of "Mercy Merrick"? The line in which she referred to the intruder in the dining-room as "the lady" showed very remarkably that her opinions had undergone a change in that quarter. But was the phrase enough of itself to justify the inference that she had ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... far-off land. We were gloomily told that they could not be reached. Orators at fashionable missionary-meetings were wont to speak of them as irreclaimable heathens who bid defiance to civilising influences from impenetrable fastnesses. Mr. George Smith may be credited with having broken down this discreditable state of things. He brought us face to face with this unfortunate section of our fellow-creatures, with what result it is not necessary to say. The sympathies of the public were effectually roused by the narratives which revealed to us the deplorable depths ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... for money, was the child of a most horrible incest, his sisters were prostitutes, his sons and brothers were debauchees and drunkards, and, in short, never had a distinguished man a more uncomfortable and discreditable family-circle than that which surrounded Barneveld, if the report of his enemies was to be believed. Yet it is agreeable to reflect that, with all the venom which they had such power of secreting, these malignant tongues had been unable to destroy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hunger, he was overwhelmed with confusion at having actually attempted to steal, and been caught in the act. He was by no means a model boy; but apart from anything which he had been taught in the Sunday school, he considered stealing mean and discreditable, and yet he had been led into it. What would his friends at home think of it, if they should ever hear of it? So, as I said, he stood without a word to say in his defence, mechanically replacing ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... managed matters, that the credit he acquired by the former bore him out, or at least served for his apology, when the latter propensity led him into scrapes, of which, however, it is but fair to state, that they had hitherto inferred nothing mean or discreditable. Some aberrations there were, which David Ramsay, his master, endeavoured to reduce to regular order when he discovered them, and others which he winked at—supposing them to answer the purpose of the escapement of a watch, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... prisoners.[12] A similar recommendation has been made from time to time since, and a few years ago a law was passed providing for the selection of sites for three such institutions. No appropriation has, however, been made to carry the act into effect, and the old and discreditable condition ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... interposed the housekeeper, "that this seems a very discreditable conspiracy against my stepson. I am sure, Mr. Reynolds, you won't allow his reputation to be injured by such ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... had not forgotten in his calculations the pride which old Saracinesca must naturally feel in his race, and which would probably induce him to take very great pains in finding a suitable wife for San Giacinto rather than permit the latter to contract a discreditable alliance. ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... will retract these words, and suppose it is from an anxiety to secure me rank and happiness,—I say, father, when you thus forget all that constitutes the integrity and dignity of man, and stoop to the discreditable meanness of falsehood, I ask you, is it manly, or honorable, or affectionate, to involve me in proceedings so utterly shameful, and to ask me to abet you in such a wanton perversion of truth? Sir, there are fathers—indeed, I believe, most fathers living—who would rather see any child ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... to himself aloud, "I don't honestly think there can be any method, creditable or discreditable, that I haven't tried." Peter flung the one-sided interview into the wastepaper-basket, and slipping his notebook into his pocket, departed to drink tea with a lady novelist, whose great desire, as stated in ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the American merchant marine is such as to call for immediate remedial action by the Congress. It is discreditable to us as a Nation that our merchant marine should be utterly insignificant in comparison to that of other nations which we overtop in other forms of business. We should not longer submit to conditions under which only a trifling ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... the rich are too rich, they have been stealing; if a closely fought election is lost, the electorate was corrupted; if a statesman does something of which you disapprove, he has been bought or influenced by some discreditable person. If workingmen are restless, they are the victims of agitators; if they are restless over wide areas, there is a conspiracy on foot. If you do not produce enough aeroplanes, it is the work of spies; if there ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... any form of perversion better than "Very discreditable to him. I hope you blew him ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Frisian language. "Why can't they speak properly, and say Kone?" says the Dane. "Weib is the right word," says the German. "Who ever says woman?" cry both. The language has not been reduced to writing; indeed, the little that has been done with it is highly discreditable to the Sleswick-Holstein Church Establishment. It is spoken by upwards of thirty thousand individuals; and when we remember that the whole population of Denmark is less than that of London and the suburbs, we see at once that a large proportion of it has been less heeded in respect to its spiritualities ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... ass." And then. "I'm never going to tell her." "You ass," again. After all, it was not a practical question; Agnes would never hear of his fall. If his friend had been, as he expressed it, "labelled"; if he had been a father, or still better a brother, one might tell him of the discreditable passion. But why irritate him for no reason? Thinking "I am always angling for sympathy; I must stop myself," he ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... understood, in theory at least, several others, it is no more than justice to rank him far above those mere charlatans of science, and hunters for marvels by means of isolated observation and experiment, with whom many would place him. That the 'Century' contains much which would be very discreditable to any man of science at the present day, is very true. Perpetual motion, perfect aerostation, devices for idle tricks and mere thaumaturgy, appear in company with schemes to take unfair advantages at card playing, and for the construction of false dice boxes—of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us. All that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable or discreditable to us, can be covered up and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms contributed by, and inherited from, a procession of ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clam or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been so tediously and ostentatiously ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it, I think," he retorted; "the other you would have sold to whichever spy of the Danish or Russian Governments happened to have employed you in this discreditable business." ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... fire soberly. "I know there may be plenty of fine men who have a discreditable youth to look back upon,—a youth finally repented of and atoned for; but that is rather a weary process, I should think, and they are surely no stronger men because of the 'wild oats,' but rather in ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... am sure it is not my fault,' said Lady Clonbrony; 'for I brought my lord a large fortune; and I am confident I have not, after all, spent more any season, in the best company, than he has among a set of low people, in his muddling, discreditable way.' ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... promises! As for the other plea, the tripartite treaty contained no covenant that we should send a corporal's guard across our frontier. If Shah Soojah had a powerful following in Afghanistan, he could regain his throne without our assistance; if he had no holding there, it was for us a truly discreditable enterprise to foist him on a recalcitrant people at the ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... acquitted. Considering that the "spectral evidence" was wholly thrown out at these trials, the facts that the grand jury, under the advice of the Court, brought in so many indictments, and that three were actually convicted, are as discreditable to the regular Court as the convictions at the Special Court are to that body. It has been said that the Special Court had not an adequate representation of lawyers in its composition; and the results of its proceedings have been ascribed to that circumstance. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... been prepared to worship as a teacher. There can be little doubt that the whole story is a fabrication, in which the Countess von Hatzfeldt had a considerable part. The Countess was rightly judged by popular opinion to have played a discreditable role in the love passages between Lassalle and Helene; and Helene's own account of the matter in her Reminiscences was an additional blow at the pseudo-friend who might have helped the lovers so much. What more natural than that the Countess should be anxious to break ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... hypotheses—as, for instance, that Papias did not refer to our St Mark's Gospel—does not savour more of the vehemence of the advocate than of the impartiality of the judge, I must ask the reader to decide for himself. But of the highly discreditable practice of imputing corrupt motives to those who differ from us there cannot be two opinions. We have already seen how a righteous nemesis has overtaken our author, and he has covered himself with confusion, while recklessly flinging ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... but the background of them all, the conclusion of them all, was the greatness of her brothers. Ah! she was a strange little woman with the foolish Gaelic notion that an affection bluntly displayed to its object is an affection discreditable. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... with these discussions, we find a sketch of the conditions of the nobles in various parts of Italy. In Naples they will not work, and busy themselves neither with their own estates nor with trade and commerce, which they hold to be discreditable; they either loiter at home or ride about on horseback. The Roman nobility also despise trade, but farm their own property; the cultivation of the land even opens the way to a title; it is a respectable but boorish nobility. In Lombardy the nobles live upon ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... place in the full heat of mid-day; Chrysantheme and her mother arrived there together, and I went alone. We seemed to have met for the purpose of ratifying some discreditable contract, and the two women trembled in the presence of these ugly little individuals, who, in their eyes, were the personification ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... and there on his hardy body; his coat was distantly suggestive of a collie; his tail of a terrier. But something of width between the patient eyes and bluntness in the scarred muzzle spoke to a tough and hardy ancestor in his discreditable pedigree, as though a lady of his house had once gone away with a bulldog. His part in the company was to do tricks outside beerhouses. When the Signor's strumming had gathered a little crowd, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... on the 9th of March, Mr. Francis moved a resolution for expunging that of the 8th of June preceding, by which it was authorised, he was left in a minority of one hundred and thirty-seven against one hundred and forty-two. It is said that Mr. Pitt engaged in this discreditable affair from the conviction, that, within a reasonable time, a decided majority of legal votes would be substantiated in favour of Sir Cecil Wray; but it would rather appear that it was from the enmity which he bore to his rival, Fox. This, indeed, is ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... not required as further proof, and not given. The key was left in the tap of the cider-barrel, instead of being carried in a pocket. And finally the tranter had to stand up in the room and let his wife wheel him round like a turnstile, to see if anything discreditable was visible in ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... or indeed more nefarious, than these arrangements. They were discreditable to George the First, and they were disgraceful to the King of Denmark. Yet the general policy of that time seems to have approved of the whole transaction, and regarded it merely as a good stroke of business for Hanover and for England. Alberoni, having secured the help ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Federal engineers exploded a mine under the hostile works, and Burnside's corps rushed to the assault. But the attempt ended in failure—the first defeat of the Army of the Potomac which could fairly be called discreditable. Still, Lee was losing men, few it is true, but most precious, since it was impossible to replace them, while the North poured unlimited numbers into the Federal camps. The policy of "attrition" upon which Grant had embarked, and which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... practicable, would at once make all things comfortable for Ralph, and would give him, probably, a large unembarrassed revenue,—so large, that the owner of it need certainly have recourse to no discreditable marriage as the means of extricating himself from present calamity. But then Sir Thomas had very strong ideas about a family property. Were Ralph's affairs, indeed, in such disorder as to make it ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... The relevancy of this rather startling query was a little obscure, but somebody replied: "He was visiting the Kaiser." This was too much for our interlocutor; he pitied our ignorance of the world, lamented our neglected education, and, as if our weakness in arithmetic was peculiarly discreditable, deplored our inability to ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... should not only be seeking to procure copies of his books but also asking for busts of him. Why then, as he is still amongst us, should his credit and popularity dwindle, as though we were tired of him? Surely it is discreditable and scandalous that we should not give a man the due he richly deserves, simply because we can see him with our own eyes, speak to him, hear him, embrace him, and not only praise but ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... thoughtful attitude, and by means of grave looks and evasive answers, I conceal—or at least I hope I conceal—my discreditable secret. ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... appropriated a great deal more—if they had taken Candia too, if they had taken whatever they could lay their hands upon—that majority, equally patient, and equally docile, and not only patient and docile, but exulting in the discreditable obedience with which it obeyed all the behests of the Administration—that majority never would have shrunk, but would have walked into the lobby as cheerfully as it did upon the occasions of which you have heard ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... case; an' then followin up this proceedin wi' ca'in on the editors o' the twa papers in which the injurious statements had appeared, an' requestin, nay, insistin, on their puttin in a true version o' the story, at the same time carefully markin my identity, an' separatin me frae a' discreditable transactions, of every kind, degree, an' character whatsoever. A' this I thocht o' doin, I say; but, on reflection, I changed my mind, an' determined no to gie mysel ony such trouble, but just to let things tak their course, an' trust to my ain conduct, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... Eristic Sophist with weapons borrowed from his own armoury. As we have already seen, the division gives him the opportunity of making the most damaging reflections on the Sophist and all his kith and kin, and to exhibit him in the most discreditable light. ...
— Sophist • Plato
... engaging he committed palpable and even discreditable mistakes. Hauling to windward—away—when the Marlborough forced him ahead, abandoned that ship to overwhelming numbers, and countenanced the irresolution of the Dorsetshire and others. Continuing to stand north, after wearing on the evening of the battle, was virtually a retreat, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... there was an infinite number of petty chieftains, who commanded single ships or small detached squadrons. These were generally the younger sons of sovereigns or chieftains who lived upon the land, the elder brothers remaining at home to inherit the throne or the paternal inheritance. It was discreditable then, as it is now in Europe, for any branches of families of the higher class to engage in any pursuit of honorable industry. They could plunder and kill without dishonor, but they could not toil. ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... fittest manner. A language destitute of grammatical regularity can possess neither {ix} perspicuity nor precision, and must therefore be very inadequate to the purpose of conveying one's thoughts. The Gaelic is in manifest danger of falling into this discreditable condition, from the disuse of old idioms and distinctions, and the admission of modern corruptions, unless means be applied to prevent its degenerating. It is obvious that a speaker cannot express himself with precision without ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... said North. "I was thinking of you when Brockett came to tell me you were here. Won't you go away from Mount Hope? I want you to forget,—no—" for she was about to speak; "wait until I have finished;—even if I am acquitted this will always be something discreditable in the eyes of the world, it's going to follow me through life! It is going to be hard for me to bear, it will be doubly hard for you, dear. I want your father to take you away and keep you away until this thing is settled. I don't want your name linked with mine; that's why I am sorry ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... punishment. The punishment grows logically out of the offense and has a direct relation to the misdeed. Persons are not rewarded for their good deeds but they are happy in being good. It is not a credit to do right, but wrongdoing is discreditable. Little meannesses stand in the way of happiness though they may not bring any definite punishments. Evil is ugliness, goodness is beauty. Friendship is made attractive and filial love is strongly inculcated. The strong appeal made to the sympathy of the reader by the very ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... her own right comfortably well-to-do. But, despite the exiguous nature of my own resources, it was not the money question which impressed me most in this connection, but rather the fact that, while my only acquaintances in London were of a more or less discreditable sort, Constance seemed to have friends everywhere, and these in almost every case people of standing and importance. Her army friends were apt to be generals, her political friends ex-Ministers, her journalistic friends editors, and so forth. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... closed, and I did greatly compliment myself upon the sagacity and coolness of head with which I extricated myself from my pretty kettle of fish. For to have denounced myself as the real alarmist would have rendered the affair more, rather than less, discreditable to my feminine companion, and I should have been arraigned before the solemn bar of a police-court magistrate, who might even have made a Star Chamber matter of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... example of his predecessors. If he violated their privileges, it was because their privileges had not been accurately defined. No act of oppression has ever been imputed to him which has not a parallel in the annals of the Tudors. This point Hume has labored, with an art which is as discreditable in a historical work as it would be admirable in a forensic address. The answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charles had assented to the Petition of Right. He had renounced the oppressive powers said to have been exercised by his predecessors, and he had renounced ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... persons are of the class who are horrified that a Prince of the Republic should have debased himself as did Commodus, who feel that it is discreditable to Imperial Majesty in general that such shameful occurrences took place and who are foolish enough to fancy that harm done may be undone by forgetting what happened, by whispering about it, by keeping silent, by hushing up as much as possible ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... nations. They made mistakes, but they made fewer than their neighbors made. The benefits which they conferred were incomparably greater than the errors they committed. There is nothing more striking than the fact that, after a brief and discreditable episode, the states were an asylum for the persecuted. The Jews, who were condemned because they were thrifty, plundered because they were rich, and harassed because they clung tenaciously to their ancient faith and customs, found an asylum in Holland; and some of them perhaps, ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... afterwards, the man next to him was shot dead, and a little later he himself was slightly wounded by a bullet which passed between the saddle and his thigh. Into the details of the fight that ensued it is not necessary to enter here. They were, if anything, more discreditable than most of the episodes of that unhappy war in which the holding of Potchefstroom, Lydenburg, Rustenburg, and Wakkerstroom are the only bright spots. Suffice it to say that they ended in something very like an utter rout of the English at the hands of a much inferior force, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... within the last year, my children have all gone to service. Having been rather busy this last week, sir, I have taken up but little time in the preparation of this, and I am fearful you will think it comes before you in a discreditable shape; but I hope you will be able to collect from it all that may be required for your benevolent purpose: but should you wish to be empowered to speak with greater confidence of my character, by having the testimony of others ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... to avoid a New York February and March. Suppose the patient has only about money enough to get here, and relies on finding something to do to keep him in food and lodging. Well—there's nothing mysterious or especially discreditable in that, is there? ... The dew is beginning to fall. And I'm keeping you out here in the damp. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... promising child may be able to climb beyond the elements, and to acquire the fullest culture of which his faculties are capable. There is not only no credit at the present day in wishing so much, but it is discreditable not to do what lies in one's power to further its accomplishment. But, then, is not that to increase enormously the field of competition? I, for example, am a literary person, after a fashion; I have, that is, done something to earn a living by my pen. I had the advantage at starting of belonging ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... constitution; which work with more energy than we believe whilst we depend on artificial restraints. The movement in this direction has been very marked in modern history. Much has been blind and discreditable, but the nature of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the revolters; for this is a purely moral force. It was never adopted by any party in history, neither can be. It separates the individual ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... told me that you haven't given Stanley anything at all for his money—that you've cheated him outright. The thing itself is discreditable, but your tone suggests that you think I'll admire ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... trash to them, or purloining and publishing what the authors would have suppressed. Dublin was to London what New York is now, and successful books were at once reproduced in Ireland. Thus the lower strata of the literary class frequently practised with impunity all manner of more or less discreditable trickery, and Pope, with his morbid propensity for mystification, was only too apt a pupil in such arts. Though the tone of his public utterances was always of the loftiest, he was like a civilised commander who, in carrying on a war with savages, finds it convenient to adopt the practices ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... imposts which had been repealed in the time of Galba, he imposed new and onerous taxes, augmented the tribute of the provinces, and doubled that of some of them. He likewise openly engaged in a traffic, which is discreditable [758] even to a private individual, buying great quantities of goods, for the purpose of retailing them again to advantage. Nay, he made no scruple of selling the great offices of the state to candidates, and pardons to persons under prosecution, whether ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... her with great mildness. He observed, that, although her appearance at church had been uncommon, and in strange, and he must add, discreditable society, and calculated, upon the whole, to disturb the congregation during divine worship, he wished, nevertheless, to hear her own account of herself before taking any steps which his duty might seem to demand. He was a justice of ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... their former influence in politics. As their means of corruption have become generally known they have become less effective. The public is more on the alert, and corrupt politicians often find themselves unable to carry out their discreditable compacts. ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... then, and Julia went to them for some purpose besides earning a pittance as companion. She had not taken a blue daffodil; she said so; she also said at another time she had failed in the object of her coming and that failure and success would have been alike discreditable. Poor Julia! And now here was some one in Norfolk exhibiting a daffodil of mixed blue and yellow called, by a strange coincidence, "The Good Comrade." Of course, it was only a coincidence and yet, when reason is not helping as much as it ought, one is inclined ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... scoffers food for merriment. Judges who that day might have sentenced some unfortunate to imprisonment for drinking, drank with a gusto equalled only by lawyers who would talk an hour in court to prove a man discreditable evidence because he was known to visit bar-rooms! It was the influence of these, and such like, that made James drink, and caused the labor of George to prove all unavailing. It is the example of the rich that impedes the progress of temperance,—they ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... Caleb, who never referred the knowledge of discreditable doings to any higher power than the deuce. "But Bulstrode has long been wanting to get a handsome bit of land under his fingers—that I know. And it's a difficult matter to get, in this ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... sectarian methods in promoting reforms as in advancing the interests of religion. It is probable that in these heated times neither party did full justice to the spirit and purposes of the other. Even so gentle and charitable a man as Rev. Samuel J. May speaks of the "discreditable pro-slavery conduct of the Unitarian denomination." "The Unitarians as a body," he says again, "dealt with the question of slavery in anything but an impartial, courageous, and Christian way. Continually in their ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... ground. Our city cousins like to be two or three times as high. Under these circumstances building a one-story house would be likely to prove a flying-not in the face of Providence, but, what is reckoned more dangerous and discreditable—flying in the face of custom. Humility isn't popular in the matter ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... existed among the Indians as to the manner in which this plant was first bestowed upon mankind, is extremely whimsical, somewhat discreditable, and withal of such a nature as to preclude the propriety of our introducing it in this place to the acquaintance of our readers. But writers are not wanting who have carried the original of tobacco into ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... much disturbed. Mr. Jordan was a well-known and eminent attorney. Moreover, he was opposed in politics to the would-be mayor. If his opponent should get hold of this discreditable chapter in his past history, his political aspirations might as well be given up. Again he asked himself, "How much of the story ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... "The Coronation of Napoleon." On the sideboard, between fluted Sheraton knife-cases, stood a decanter of Haut Brion, and another of the old Lanning port (the gift of a client), which the wastrel Tom Lanning had sold off a year or two before his mysterious and discreditable death in San Francisco—an incident less publicly humiliating to the family than the ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... of three or four articles, the whole number is discreditable to The National Association of Inventors. A second number should not appear until the editors have had the benefit of at least one term in the ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... have no right to petition on political subjects; that it is discreditable, not only to their section of the country, but also to the national character; that these females could have a sufficient field for the exercise of their influence in the discharge of their duties to their fathers, their ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Greville's "Memoirs," he makes a statement that Miss Tree was never engaged at Covent Garden. The play-bills and the newspapers of the day abundantly contradicted this assertion (at the time he entered it in his diary), and, of course, the discreditable motive assigned ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... chosen profession Marie Gessler found nothing discreditable. Of herself her opinion was not high, and her opinion of men was lower. For her smiles she had watched several sacrifice honor, duty, loyalty; and she held them and their kind in contempt. To lie, to cajole, to rob men of secrets they thought important, and of secrets the importance of which ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... a perpetual curacy or vicarage, worth at that time only 35 per annum! forming one of the discreditable anomalies of the church, in the division of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... not always deserving of credit. According to some, he was deserted by both his parents, and left as a foundling at the door of one of the principal churches of the city. It is even said that he would have perished, had he not been nursed by a sow.3 This is a more discreditable fountain of supply than that assigned to the infant Romulus. The early history of men who have made their names famous by deeds in after-life, like the early history of nations, affords a fruitful field ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... which I have not corrected, or allowed to be touched in any way, is not discreditable to B. F. You observe that he is acquiring a knowledge of zoology at the same time that he is learning French. Fathers of families in moderate circumstances will find it profitable to their children, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... small jokes and stories, many of which he claims were told him by President Lincoln. From this we might infer that the President has very little to do but entertain and amuse gentlemen, who apply to him for appointments, with conversation so coarse that it would be discreditable to a stable boy. ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... freest, most heroic, most artistic mould, are to me far dearer as lessons, and more precious even as models for Democracy, than the humdrum samples Burns presents. The motives of some of his effusions are certainly discreditable personally—one or two of them markedly so. He has, moreover, little or no spirituality. This last is his mortal flaw and defect, tried by highest standards. The ideal he never reach'd (and yet I think he leads the way to it.) ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... during the last century, and in our own land, matrimony has been so much esteemed, notably by women, that it has come to be regarded as in some sort discreditable for them to remain single. Old maids are mentioned on every hand with mingled pity and disdain, arising no doubt from the belief, conscious or unconscious, that they would not be what they are if they could help it. Few persons ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Linne of France," was buried as one forgotten and unknown. We read with astonishment, in the account by Dr. A. Mondiere, who made zealous inquiries for the exact site of the grave of Lamarck, that it is and forever will be unknown. It is a sad and discreditable, and to us inexplicable, fact that his remains did not receive decent burial. They were not even deposited in a separate grave, but were thrown into a trench apparently situated apart from the other graves, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... contingencies a mediating power steps in, and brings things to an equilibrium."[25] These great and obvious advantages of the new tariff, the opponents of Ministers, and especially their reckless and discreditable allies called the "Anti-corn-law League," see as plainly as we do; but their anxious aim is to conceal these advantages as much as possible from public view; and for this purpose they never willingly make any allusion to the tariff, or if forced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... repeating the impressions of Sir William Pepys, one of the bitterest opponents of the marriage, to whom she certainly never said anything derogatory to her second husband. The uniform tenor of her letters and her conduct shew that she never regarded her second marriage as discreditable, and always took a high and independent, instead of a subdued or deprecating, tone with her alienated friends. A bare statement of the treatment she received from them is surely no proof ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... these men are positivists, only recognizing those things that can be weighed and measured. Anything beyond that they consider as rather discreditable nonsense, that same nonsense about which they held yesterday the theories ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... mannerisms as well as with the habitual turn of speech in Marston's acknowledged comedies. There is a certain incomposite and indigestive vigor in the language of this play which makes the attribution of a principal share in its authorship neither utterly discreditable to Marston nor absolutely improbable in itself; and the satire aimed at Ben Jonson, if not especially relevant to the main action, is at all events less incongruous and preposterous in its relation to the rest of the work than the satirical or controversial part of Dekker's "Satiromastix." ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... pedigree of an idea is not a bad means of roughly estimating its value. To have come of respectable ancestry, is prima facie evidence of worth in a belief as in a person; while to be descended from a discreditable stock is, in the one case as in the other, an unfavourable index. The analogy is not a mere fancy. Beliefs, together with those who hold them, are modified little by little in successive generations; and as the modifications which successive generations of the holders undergo do not destroy ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... discreditable motives for everyone who would not take her at her own estimate of herself. She detested Clutton. She told Philip that his friend had no talent really; it was just flashy and superficial; he couldn't compose a figure to save his life. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... laughter and cheers and tears by a play which the great outside public would be informed the next morning was indifferent or worse. The discrepancy was sometimes explicable by claques, which are almost as discreditable to managements as the keeping of tame critics, who eat food out of their hand. Sometimes it was not professional claques, but amateurs come to see a friend's play en masse, and applauding out of all proportion to its merits, not so much perhaps from friendship ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... or, being captivated, to marry her; and the admiration, the delight, the passion, the wonder, the unbounded confidence, and frantic adoration with which, by degrees, this big warrior got to regard the little Rebecca, were feelings which the ladies at least will pronounce were not altogether discreditable to him. When she sang, every note thrilled in his dull soul, and tingled through his huge frame. When she spoke, he brought all the force of his brains to listen and wonder. If she was jocular, he used to revolve her jokes in his mind, and explode over them half an hour afterwards ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hear any particulars of the news which had spread like wildfire from Vandon throughout the whole village the previous afternoon, and which was already miraculously flying from house to house in Slumberleigh this morning, as things discreditable do fly among a Christian population, which perhaps "thinks no evil," ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... have been shy of disclosing that after the death of this charming woman [his first wife] he married her maid. And yet the act was not so discreditable to his character as it may sound. The maid had few personal charms, but was an excellent creature, devotedly attached to her mistress, and almost broken-hearted for her loss. In the first agonies of his own ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... brimstone, foretells that discreditable dealings will lose you many friends. if you fail to rectify ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... no doubt discreditable to the human reason; they attest the inferiority of our nature, which is incapable of laying firm hold upon what is true and just, and is often reduced to the alternative of two excesses. In strict connection with this penal legislation, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... seconds she stood watching him and both were thinking very quickly. Her state of mind would have seemed altogether discreditable to her grandmother. She ought to have been disposed to faint and scream at all these happenings; she ought to have maintained a front of outraged dignity to veil the sinking of her heart. I would like to have to tell it so. But indeed that is not at all a good description of her ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... great persons, court ladies, even valets and waiting-women, had been sought and searched to satisfy his insatiable curiosity. It is true that the passions which often lit up the truth sometimes obscured it; any gossip discreditable to those whom he hated was welcome to him; he confesses that he did not pique himself on his impartiality, and it is certain that he did not always verify details. Nevertheless he did not consciously falsify facts; he had a sense of the honour of a gentleman; his spirit was serious, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... dates his decease at least a year earlier?* It is not a mere conjecture, as, on March 3, 1693, Barbezieux begs Saint-Mars to mention his Protestant prisoners under nicknames. There are three, and Malzac is no longer one of them. Malzac, in 1692, suffered from a horrible disease, discreditable to one of the godly, and in October 1692 had been allowed medical expenses. Whether they included a valet or not, Malzac seems to have been non- existent by March 1693. Had he possessed a valet, and had he died in 1694, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... him 'Crooks,'" said the doctor, angrily. "You've been risking your life and that pretty pink English skin of yours for one of the most worthless men in British Columbia; he's been a cattle rustler, a 'salter' of gold mines, and everything that is discreditable; it makes me indignant. He tells me he at least had the decency to warn you, when you came here. What ever made ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... hands cordially, and Mr. Warbeck went off in a hansom. Thomas Bird, changing his mind about the tram, walked all the way home, and with bent head. One would have thought that he had just done something discreditable. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... the discreditable custom of the people of Qamul, a long note in the second edition of Cathay, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... your conduct is by no means what it should be. What is all this disturbance that has been going on, and how came you to allow a stranger to be so disgracefully ill-treated? What would have happened if he had suffered serious injury while a suppliant in our house? Surely this would have been very discreditable to you." ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... but, from some cause or other, failed to do their duty, and they must have been quite a way off at the time the Mohawk put out his awkward scow. The party on shore were angry because of the failure, which was certainly a discreditable one, and they were very ready to accuse their comrades of being "squaws" on the war-path. The accused were equally ready to charge the others with being "old women" for permitting the whites to land ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... was an immediate falling off from the Federation, on the one hand of the sane tacticians of the movement, and on the other of those out-and-out Insurrectionists who repudiated political action altogether, and were only too glad to be able to point to a discreditable instance of it. Two resolutions were passed, one by the Socialist League and the other by the Fabian Society. Here ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... during those three years had he shown a disposition to hark back on his old discreditable ways, and that was the result of a casual meeting with Gus one summer during the holidays, with whom, he afterwards confessed to Charlie, he was induced to forget for a time his better resolutions in the snares of a billiard-room. But the backsliding ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... kill Brengwain, and a cross between Potiphar's wife and Catherine of Russia, without any of the good nature and "gentlemanliness" of the last named. The real Guinevere, the Guinevere of the Vulgate and partly of Malory, is freed from the colourlessness and the discreditable end of Geoffrey's queen, transforms the promiscuous and rather louche Melvas incident into an important episode of her epic or romantic existence, and gives the lie, even in her least creditable or least charming moments, to the Launfal libel. As before in Lancelot's case, details of her ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... since ceased to be considered disgraceful, or even discreditable, among the patrician order in Rome before the soldiers ventured to break their oaths of allegiance. Military service had, from the ignorance and selfishness of this order, been rendered extremely odious to free-born Romans; and they frequently mutinied and murdered their generals, though ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... took to his bed; was unable to attend to his business, some one else attended to it; and the consequence was, that the house stopped payment, and was discovered to have been insolvent for the last ten years. Not a discreditable bankruptcy. There might perhaps be seven shillings in the pound ultimately paid, and not more than forty families irretrievably ruined. Old Fossett, safe in his bed, bore the affliction with philosophical composure; observed to Arabella that he had always warned ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... threatened attack, and perhaps retort it by seizing Albany. If the English, on the other side, had lost a great material advantage, they had lost no less in honor. The news of the surrender was received with indignation in England and in the colonies. Yet the behaviour of the garrison was not so discreditable as it seemed. The position was indefensible, and they could have held out at best but a few days more. They yielded too soon; but unless Webb had come to their aid, which was not to be expected, they ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Modena scheme) wrote a letter to the King on this subject, in which he stated it as his belief that the Austrian plan was to get Charles Albert accidentally killed, or to plunge him in vice, or to make him contract a discreditable marriage. This was why they had invited him to their camp. He adds the characteristic remark that their nephew would be in no less danger at the headquarters of the Duke of Wellington 'a cause de la religion.' ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... this cook he had no idea; he must talk to Lucia about it, before the advanced class tomorrow morning. But anything was better than letting Hermy and Ursy loose in Riseholme with their rude laughs and discreditable exposures. This evening safely over, he could discuss with Lucia what was to be done, for Hermy and Ursy would have vanished at cock-crow as they were going in for some golf-competition at a safe distance. Lucia might recommend doing nothing at all, and wish to continue ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... suffrage in the Reconstruction laws. The Republican victory of 1868, it was now resolved in the councils of the party, should lead to the incorporation of impartial suffrage in the Constitution of the United States. The evasive and discreditable position in regard to suffrage, taken by the National Republican Convention that nominated General Grant in 1868, was keenly felt and appreciated by the members of the party when subjected to popular discussion. There was something so obviously unfair and unmanly in the proposition ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... controversy, we venture to affirm, there never was an instance of so triumphant a refutation as that by which these slanderous aspersions were instantly refuted, and their authors and their accomplices reduced to a silence as prudent as discreditable. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... made a sort of resolve that as long as he kept that in his possession, as long as he had that near his heart, he would not go near Norah Geraghty. This resolution he had kept; but though he did not go to the 'Cat and Whistle,' he frequented other places which were as discreditable, or more so. He paid many very fruitless visits to Mr. M'Ruen; contrived to run up a score with the proprietor of the dancing saloon in Holborn; and was as negligent as ever in the matter ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... admitted, but just at this period no national crisis called his nobler qualities into action, and his course was largely influenced by selfish considerations. It was not long before Mr. Calhoun also entered the lists, though in a manner less discreditable to himself, personally, than were the resources of Crawford and Clay. The daily narrations and comments of Mr. Adams display and explain in a manner highly instructive, if not altogether agreeable, the ambitions (p. 107) and ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... the major, who was glad to be saved the expense of a new suit for Joe. Even he had been unpleasantly conscious that Joe's appearance had become discreditable to him. "You may bring ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... nothing where you most wish her to speak! If enlightened Curiosity ever get sight of the Marseilles Council-Books, will it not perhaps explore this strangest of Municipal procedures; and feel called to fish up what of the Biographies, creditable or discreditable, of these Five Hundred and Seventeen, the stream of Time has ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Greenwood. He, conceivably, will argue that the Earl knew the real concealed author, and the secret of the pseudonym. But of the hypothesis of such a choice of a pseudonym, enough has been said. Whatever happened, whatever the Earl knew, if it were discreditable to be dedicated to by an actor, Southampton was discredited; for we are to prove that all in the world of letters and theatre who have left any notice of Shakespeare identified the actor ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... d'Affaires for Central America, was perhaps at this period of the most general interest. Others were puerile, and as unfit in subject as in ability for presentation in such an assembly. It is to be regretted that the Association does not adopt the only protection against such discreditable annoyances, by insisting upon the submission of everything offered for its consideration to a competent ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... our soldiers, both at Siboney and at the front, in the early days of the campaign, was discreditable to the army and to the country; and there is no reason why military surgeons should not frankly admit it, because it was not their fault, and they cannot justly be held accountable for it. The blame should rest, and eventually will rest, upon the ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... propounding such a scheme would be discreditable, and that the thing is unprecedented. Reflect, my dear PUNCH, for an instant. Surely, nothing can be deemed to be discreditable by a Whig government, after the cheap sugar, cheap timber, cheap bread rigs. Why, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... keep the revelation from Alice, even though she knew what Alice knew, for Alice was not very well, and Chris was sure that it would only agitate and frighten the invalid to feel that the family's discreditable secret was just that much nearer betrayal. So she and Chris alone shared the agitation, strain, and bewilderment of the almost overwhelming discovery; and Norma, in turning to him for advice and sympathy, deepened tenfold ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... did not disguise his gratification when a book brought a heavy profit. Yet twenty years ago it was almost accounted a disgrace for an ancient family even to part with its heirlooms. In those cases, when want of the money cannot and is not pleaded, the proceeding seems all the stranger and the more discreditable. The late Lord bought at the right time, and his son sold at the right time. The prices realised were not merely high, but outrageous. Yet, after all, prices are a figure of speech and a relative term. To a wealthy Manchester ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... not to know—about the composition of Homer, the purpose of the Divina Commedia, the probable plan of the Canterbury Tales, the Ur-Hamlet. Nobody put preliminary advertisements in the papers, you see, about these things: there was a discreditable neglect of the first requirements of the public. So it is with Esmond. There is, I thought, a reference to it in the Brookfield letters; but in several searches I cannot find it. To his mother he speaks of the book as "grand and melancholy", ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not lift the starlike eyes that were so troubled from the face of Bleyer. She knew the man implied something discreditable to Kilmeny. The look that had flashed between him and Verinder told her so much. Red signals of defiance blazed on both cheeks. Whatever it was, she did not intend ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... senate supports the trumped-up religious scruple, not from any respect to religion, but from ill-feeling towards him, and disgust at the king's outrageous bribery. I never cease advising and instigating Pompey—even frankly finding fault with and admonishing him—to avoid what would be a most discreditable imputation.[437] But he really leaves no room for either entreaties or admonitions from me. For, whether in everyday conversation or in the senate, no one could support your cause with greater eloquence, seriousness, zeal, and energy than ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... learned sir," said Dridrano. "Surely it would be very unbecoming, in one of my age and standing, to set up a theory in opposition to yours, but it would be yet more discreditable to be a plagiarist; and, with all due respect for your superior wisdom, it does seem to my feeble intellect, that no two theories can be more different. You use several remedies for one disease: I admit several diseases, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... five years, he avenged all the insults that had been lavishly flung upon her by every country in Europe throughout a long, disastrous, and most perplexing civil war. Gloriously did he retrieve the credit that had been mouldering and decaying during two weak and discreditable reigns of nearly fifty years' continuance—gloriously did he establish and extend his country's authority and influence in remote nations—gloriously acquire the real mastery of the British Channel—gloriously send forth fleets ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... with passion and Madeira, the idea of bankruptcy seemed discreditable in connection with a relative of Phyllis. Besides, the old boy was far from that! Had he not just made this settlement on Mrs. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... early stages of human life was a necessity, has become with advancing civilization not merely a passion but a dilettanteism, and the cruel records of this pastime are among the most discreditable pages in modern literature. It is true that in India and other tropical countries, the number and ferocity of the wild beasts not only justify but command a war of extermination against them, but the indiscriminate slaughter of many quadrupeds which are ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh |
