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Contemptuous   /kəntˈɛmptʃuəs/   Listen
Contemptuous

adjective
1.
Expressing extreme contempt.  Synonyms: disdainful, insulting, scornful.



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"Contemptuous" Quotes from Famous Books



... Tidd looked at her and said nothing; I looked at prints, and Mrs. Brough sat knitting stockings for the poor. The Captain was sneering openly at Miss Brough and her affected ways and talk; but in spite of his bullying contemptuous way I thought she seemed to have a great regard for him, and to bear his ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the world, which poses in every country as an elite body of scientific fighters, and is often found on the battle-field to be an aggregation of abstruse theorists, were jealous and contemptuous. They said, "See how easily the artillery knocked out machine guns at Gravelotte." The Cavalry of the world, famous everywhere for an esprit-du-corps which looks haughtily down on all other arms of the service, were too deeply absorbed in the merits of ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... villages and hunting grounds lay well to the northeast, some below and some above the boundary line in the country of the Saskatchewan. Thither the Shawanoe would go, though knowing absolutely nothing of the region or the people. In his contemptuous scorn of Amokeat, Deerfoot did not so much as look behind him until the afternoon was nearly gone and night was closing in. Then, when he turned his gaze to the rear, he saw ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... well assured of the qualitie of his owne deseruings) blessed himselfe with the signe of the crosse at his comming into the court, as though he should haue come before some tyrant or schismaticall person. Notwithstanding all which contemptuous and ambitious behauiour, the kings maiestie was nothing offended, but committed the iudgement of his cause to the faithfull order of the bishops, meaning so to deliuer himselfe of all suspicion of wrong dealing. ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed

... in his funeral sermon, charitably says, that in pronouncing the population of England to be "thirty millions, mostly fools," Carlyle merely meant that "few are chosen and strait is the gate," generously adding—"There was that in him, in spite of his contemptuous descriptions of the people, which endeared him to those who knew him best. The idols of their market-place he trampled under foot, but their joys and sorrows, their cares and hopes, were to him revered things." Another critic pleads for his discontent that it had in it a noble side, like that of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... shine in circles to which Grace Darling would not have been admitted, and her description of the habits of thought and modes of life of the people among whom she associated, was graphic, piquant, and most entertaining. Like many a merry, warm-hearted girl, she cherished a half-contemptuous opinion of much that was fashionable and gay; and to hear her speak of the crowded assemblies, the dreary dinner parties, the exciting balls, and the endless morning calls, was to give Grace both surprise ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... watched for their return, counting on an access of misery, for she believed that Alice would come also. It was what she would have done. Rage took possession of her when she saw father alone. She planted herself before him, in my presence, in a contemptuous attitude. He changed color, and then her ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... opinion that heterogeneous and artificial whole which constitutes the manners and morals of the upper classes; it severs those ties of affection and good-will which should bind the middle to the lower orders, by disposing the one to regard whatever is below them with a true contemptuous indifference, and by provoking a bitter and indignant, though natural jealousy in the other for being so regarded; and, finally, by leading those who most entertain it into habits of expense, torturing ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... in Illyricum, the minds of all men impatiently looking for vengeance upon Piso; and amidst many complaints, that while he was roaming at large through the delightful regions of Asia and Greece, he was undermining by contemptuous and artful delay the evidences of his crimes; for it was generally known that Martina, that notorious trafficker in sorceries, and sent, as I have above related, by Cneius Sentius to Rome, had died suddenly at Brundusium; that poison ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various

... friend to the interests and prosperity of his King and country. It must be acknowledged, however, that both in this and his two former pamphlets, there was, amidst many powerful arguments, not only a considerable portion of sophistry, but a contemptuous ridicule of his opponents, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... the little maid protested. Massive, silent, contemptuous, his small eyes under the wolfish skull cold and alight with a look that sent shuddering from him the timid,—thus he had been in his hard-fought and hard-won supremacy, a great, mysterious beast brought full-grown from the snowbound wilderness of the forest one famine-time by ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... provoking—Baldassare hot and flushed with a concentration of rage he dared not express. The cavaliere, thanks to his court education, was an admirable whist-player. His frequent observations to his young friend were excellent as instruction, but were conveyed in somewhat contemptuous language. Baldassare, having been told by the cavaliere that playing a good hand at whist was as necessary to his future social success ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... Turner, and his removal from office, charging as grounds for it his incompetency from ignorance to discharge its duties, his arbitrary and tyrannical conduct towards the County Judge and members of the Marysville bar, the particulars of which I have related, his contemptuous treatment of the writ of habeas corpus, ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... he were daring to claim kindred, or demand a contest with a superior order of beings. Shelley's is half bent, in reverence and humility, before some vast vision seen by his own eye alone. Misery erect, and striving to cover its retreat under an aspect of contemptuous fury, is the permanent and pervading expression of Byron's countenance. Sorrow, softened and shaded away by hope and habit, lies like a 'holier day' of still moonshine upon that of Shelley. In the portrait of Byron, taken at the age of nineteen, you see the unnatural age of premature ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... on, a harvest of ingratitude. How dangerous it is to accustom your sons and daughters to a style of living beyond your means and theirs! In the first place, it is very bad for your purse; in the second place it develops a contemptuous spirit in the very bosom of the family. If you dress your children like little lords, and give them to understand that they are superior to you, is it astonishing if they end by disdaining you? You will have nourished ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... nothing," said Georgie K. It had seemed impossible for his great pink face to look angry and contemptuous, but it did. "I don't set up for much," said he, "but I must say I like ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... round the house. At the back a pair of French windows were open, but heavy curtains were drawn across them. No light was visible. They listened. A voice was speaking—slowly, scarcely above a whisper, but a whisper of contemptuous pride. ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming

... national church of Russia, Peter treated it with contemptuous indifference. The office of patriarch becoming vacant, he left it unfilled for twenty-one years, and finally, on being implored by a delegation from the clergy to appoint a patriarch, he started ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... city Baecula. Before his camp he had outposts of cavalry. On these the light-armed, those who fought before the standards and those who composed the vanguard, as they came up from their march, and before they chose the ground for their camp, commenced an attack in so contemptuous a manner, that it was perfectly evident what degree of spirit each party possessed. The cavalry were driven into their camp in disorderly flight, and the Roman standards were advanced almost within their very gates. Their minds on that day having only ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... Tranmore's parties; beyond him a red-faced colonel, conspicuous alike for doubtful money-matters and matrimonial trouble; and in a farther corner the sallow profile of a writer whose books were apt to rouse even the man of the world to a healthy and contemptuous disgust. Surely these persons had never been there of old; he could ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... contemptuously on the little one-story lodge just inside the park gates, and fail to get a glimpse of the magnificent mansion, with its wealth of adornment and treasure, that lies a mile among the trees. No wonder that men grow discontented or contemptuous when they mistake the porch for the house. If a man would understand himself and discover his resources and put his hand on all life's highest uses, he must look out and up unto his God. Then he comes to know that sunrise and ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... person in all Cuba in every respect qualified to share O'Reilly's perils. To begin with, he was not afraid of Spaniards, or anything else, for that matter—he dismissed the subject of personal courage with a contemptuous shrug. As for cunning, sagacity, prudence, resource, all-around worth, he was, without doubt, unequaled in any country. He was a veritable Spartan, too, when it came to hardship— privation and suffering were almost ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... her shoulder away from him; laughing a little, scornful laugh, and saying a few contemptuous words to her partner, directed to Jan. Jan propped his back against the wall, and watched her, giving her a few words ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... at his building again,' she said, pointing a contemptuous thumb at Philip, 'I was just going to pull it down, and I knocked down a brick or two with my sleeve, and not thinking what I was doing I built them up again; and then I got a bit giddy and the whole thing seemed to begin to grow—candlesticks and bricks ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit

... She goes in for it, Rhoder does. I don't, now. I'm a stupid old thing, as they'll all tell you." She nodded cheerfully and inclusively at Mr. Vyvian and Rhoda and Miss Barnett. They did not notice. Vyvian, toying disgustedly with his burnt minestra, was saying in his contemptuous voice, "Of course, if you like that, you may as well like the Frari monuments at once ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... cross-examination of one of the witnesses; but at the same time I had no intention to cast any reflection on the learned counsel who I am sure is known to you all as a most able—" but before his lordship could proceed any further James interposed, and in a contemptuous voice exclaimed: "My lord, I have borne your lordship's censure, spare ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... to have got on all right with him. But then Watts would get on with anybody. Besides, the two men had a common topic in Romany lore. But toward the literary man in general his attitude was pretty much that of Carlyle. He was contemptuous towards those who followed ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... jerked a contemptuous head at the ceiling. "She'll have to go with me," he added thickly. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... He grew contemptuous of the king of instruments as he essayed the C major invention of Bach. He sneered at stops and pedals, and believed, in his foolish way, that all polyphony was bound within the boards of the Well-Tempered ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... point outside the room. E. Eliot and Genevieve came to this conclusion after having lost Betty and failed to raise any answer to their repeated calls. Somebody came and looked in at them through the half-open door, and, seeing them still bound, had gone away again with a short, contemptuous laugh. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... pocket. In his exaltation he felt that even the mother he had never loved was promoted to a certain respect as his father's wife, although he was equally conscious of a new resentment against her for her contemptuous allusions to HIS father, and her evident hopeless inability to comprehend his position. His mother, he feared, was indeed low!—but HE was his father's son! Nevertheless, he gave her a funeral at Atherly, long remembered ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... violent contortion you slue your body round and serve, whereupon your opponent perceives that you ARE playing, and that it is just one more ordinary fault into the wrong court. So she calls "Fault!" in a contemptuous tone and drops her racket... and then adds hurriedly, "Oh, no, sorry, it wasn't a fault, after all." That being where the wind ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... appropriated was not made till 1839, and consequently could not have been expended in 1838; second, although it was appropriated, it has never been expended at all. Those who heard Mr. Douglas, recollect that he indulged himself in a contemptuous expression of pity for me. 'Now he's got me,' thought I. But when he went on to say that five millions of the expenditure of 1838 were payments of the French indemnities, which I knew to be untrue; that five millions had been for the post-office, which I knew to be untrue; that ten millions ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... the only trained caste. Their professional education and every circumstance in the manipulation of the fantastically naive electoral methods by which they clambered to power, conspired to keep them contemptuous of facts, conscientiously unimaginative, alert to claim and seize advantages and suspicious of every generosity. Government was an obstructive business of energetic fractions, progress went on outside of and in spite of public activities, and legislation was the last crippling recognition ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... the most widely spread of Christian names, and said to be derived from the French JACQUES or, as others maintain, from JANKIN, a distinctive form of JOHAN or JOHN; JOHNKIN gives us JOCK and JOCKEY; from its extreme commonness it has acquired that slightly contemptuous signification observable in such compounds as "every man JACK," "JACK-of-all-trades," "JACK-an-apes," and the name as applied to the knaves in playing-cards, and to the small white ball used as a mark in the game of bowls is an example ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... didn't say it WAS, m' friend," he retorted with contemptuous pity. "I mean them history-books. It's in ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... them all. She was no woman to bow before the storm of ridicule and censure. She openly defied it to do its worst. Her splendid equipage was to be seen everywhere, with the autocratic Duchess, serene, smiling, contemptuous. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... the Bohemian and cosmopolitan elements in Quita made her airily contemptuous of trifles, of the petty point of view, the 'local' attitude of mind often found in isolated Indian stations, more especially among the women. And setting aside Honor and Frank, the half-dozen officers' wives belonging to the Infantry ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... the passage, I was thinking whether my dress could be so very ridiculous as my old cousin thought it, and trying in vain to recollect any evidence of a similar contemptuous estimate on the part of that beautiful and garrulous dandy. I could not—quite the reverse, indeed. Still I was uncomfortable and feverish—girls of my then age will easily conceive how miserable, under similar circumstances, such ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... your hands," said Challoner, with a contemptuous laugh. "And now listen to me. I want no quarrel with you—don't force one ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke

... exclamations of tenderness and assurances of friendship. The empress had spoken, the slaves must obey; and these princes and counts, these generals and field-marshals, who yesterday would hardly have thrown away a contemptuous glance upon these grenadiers, now called them friends and brothers, and were most happy to admit them ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... potentates seemed falling and ancient dynasties crumbling on all sides—a period of eager hope to many, followed by despair when the reaction set in, accompanied in too many places by repressive measures of pitiless severity. The contemptuous feeling with which many Englishmen were wont to view such Continental troubles is well embodied in the lines which Tennyson put into the mouth of one of his ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... in the middle of this scene that Graham's midnight-written letter arrived. Rush's attitude toward his partner's flight—after the first moments of mere incredulity—had been one of contemptuous irritation, the natural attitude for any young man who sees a comrade taking no more of a matter than a disappointment in love with an evident lack of fortitude. This was heightened, too, by a rapidly developed sense of personal grievance. What the devil did Graham think was going to happen to ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... duties are different from yours, I am your fellow-servant. I come to advise with you, And you hear me with contemptuous indifference, My words are about the (present urgent) affairs;—Do not think them matter for laughter. The ancients had a saying:—'Consult the gatherers of ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... Enraged and bewildered by Sanin's unconventional method of dealing with the difficulty, the discomfited emissaries withdraw. Later, the challenger meets Sanin in the street, and goaded to frenzy by his calm and contemptuous stare, strikes him with a whip; he immediately receives in the face a terrible blow from his adversary's fist, delivered with all his colossal strength. A friend carries him to his lodgings, and there he commits suicide. From the conventional ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... you see a Moslem rushing at you, scimitar in hand, and know that if you do not cut him down he will cut you down, you naturally strike as hard and as quickly as you can. You have never liked Gervaise, Rivers. I am sure I don't know why, but you always speak in a contemptuous sort of tone about him. True, it does him no harm, but it certainly does you no good. For what reason should you feel a contempt for him? Although so much younger, he is a better swordsman and a better rider than you are. He is liked by every one in the auberge, which is more ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... were now in such a situation that either they could proceed to the reduction of the forts outside Paris (to which their experience of their hitherto immediate reduction of every other permanent work left them contemptuous), or they could proceed to break at will the ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc

... vexation at being thwarted by one branch of the family, Cupid began to work harder at the other, among the moors and mountains. Not that either my lady Philippa or gentle Mistress Carnaby fell back into the snares of youth, but rather that youth, contemptuous of age, leaped up, and defied everybody but itself, and cried tush to its ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... the photograph and cast it into Beauvais's lap. "Do you recognize that face? Is it not a mute accusation to your warped conscience?" The voice, changing from the monotone of narrative, grew strong and contemptuous. "I know you. I recognized you the moment I laid eyes on you, only I could not place you. Perhaps it was because it did not seem possible that you would dare show your face to civilized people. That photograph has done its work. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... people, to be sure, who paid little attention to him, but he did not notice them; and those who showed it more plainly were "Philistines, everyday fellows, insignificant people," as he whispered to his brother with contemptuous pity. It was quite peculiar: everyone's greater or lesser importance as a man and a citizen could be measured with perfect exactitude by the degree of his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... dress himself during this long speech, assuming a show of contemptuous indignation as it progressed. When Overfield, astonished at his own eloquence, had subsided, the young man replied, in a quiet but ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... Pascal’s hostile relations with the Jesuits. On their part, they failed not to remember in after years, and in a more serious struggle, that he was an old enemy; whilst he on his part probably drew something of the contemptuous scorn which he poured upon them from the recollection of their obstinate ignorance in matters ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... Dolly. "I'm not going to read all this, you know." And, with a somewhat contemptuous smile, she walked back to her chair. "They ought to be ashamed of themselves," she added, as she sat down. "It's just ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope

... the other children, who eagerly laughed at each one of Moronval's witticisms. The fact was, that Jack dreaded the veiled allusions to his mother with which these remarks invariably terminated. He, to be sure, rarely caught their full meaning, but he saw by the contemptuous laughter that they were far from kindly. Madame Moronval would sometimes interrupt the conversation by a friendly word to Jack, or by sending him on some trifling errand. During his absence, she administered a reproof to ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... coursed, burning, through his veins; the other's contemptuous manner stung him more fiercely ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... of this "blue-stocking of the desert." Lady Esther's father, Earl Charles Stanhope, Viscount Mahon, a peer of England, and a distinguished scholar, invented a printing press, known to fame as the Stanhope press, of which the miserly and mechanical Jerome-Nicholas Sechard expressed a contemptuous opinion to ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... false. The Count felt for something in his pocketbook, about twice as large as a spectacle-case, and, at length, drew out two or three little paper packets, which he unfolded, and exhibited a superb ruby. He threw on the table, with a contemptuous air, a little cross of green and white stones. I looked at it and said, "That is not to be despised." I put it on, and admired it greatly. The Count begged me to accept it. I refused—he urged me to take it. Madame then refused it for me. At length, he pressed it upon me so warmly that Madame, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... general sense than treason, and extends to other offences, not capital, of a like tendency, but without any actual design against the king in contemplation, such as contempts of the king and his government, riotous assemblings for political purposes, and the like; and in general all contemptuous, indecent, or malicious observations upon his person and government, whether by writing or speaking, or by tokens, calculated to lessen him in the esteem of his subjects, or weaken his government, or raise jealousies of him amongst the people, will fall under the notion of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... downright swearing, you must go to Gaelic," said the General, branching off. "Donald used to be quite contemptuous of any slight efforts at profanity in the barrack yard, although they sickened me. 'Toots, Colonel; ye do not need to be troubling yourself with such poor little words, for they are just nothing at all, and yet the bodies will be saying them over and over ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... to everything that was not rustic, felt in her narrow soul a kind of hatred for the ecstatic extravagances of the old girl. She had found a phrase by which to describe her, I know not how, but a phrase assuredly contemptuous, which had sprung to her lips, invented probably by some confused and mysterious travail of soul. She said: 'That woman is a demoniac.' This phrase, as uttered by that austere and sentimental creature, seemed to me irresistibly comic. I, myself, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... often, indeed, do not even mention it. A few articles, a few brief, scarce monographs, make up the sum of the past twenty-five years' work on the subject. The subject does not, however, at all deserve this indifferent or contemptuous attitude. Its importance is unquestionable, and even though the study of the creative imagination has hitherto remained almost inaccessible to experimentation strictly so-called, there are yet other objective ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... know how to play, if he isn't sixty-five," said Miss Maria Snod-grass, who had listened indignantly to Mr. Beck's contemptuous remarks about our hero, whose cause ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger

... manufacturer of the article; and the appellation of Loco-Foco party was proposed in derision, for this small band of seceders; who, however, in time, brought over the original majority to their views. Hence the Whigs continued to apply the contemptuous designation to the whole democratic or ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... most beautiful of all Wagner's operas. The story of it is a fairy story, as I have said, and superficially a very ordinary sort of fairy story. We have the distressed maiden in the hands of persecutors, the knightly hero who rescues her, the maiden's faithlessness, and the contemptuous departure of the hero. But Wagner has clothed the whole of this work-a-day mediaeval legend in a wondrous atmosphere of mystical beauty, and that beauty springs from the thought ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... as silently as before, perhaps a little inclined to be contemptuous of any one who could fail to notice so plain a warning, and he supposed that the man he was following must be some townsman who knew nothing at all of the life of the country and was, like so many of the dwellers in cities, blind and deaf ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon

... kicking your heels against the fence all the morning? Now just look around, my boy, until you find something that wants fixing up, and take off your coat and go at it. You won't have to look far about here." And the Judge gave a contemptuous glance toward the widow Fairlaw's neglected farm. "Take my word for it, boy," he added, "work's a mint—work's a mint." And then he turned away, walking with dignified pace toward the ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... us by their eloquence, come at length to suspect the eloquent; and in their "pride of office" would now drive us by that single force of despotism which is the corruption of political power. Our late great Minister, Pitt, has been reproached even by his friends for the contemptuous indifference with which he treated literary men. Perhaps BURKE himself, long a literary character, might incur some portion of this censure, by involving the character itself in the odium of a monstrous political sect. These political ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... shifting humour's peevish gale. To nature dead, he must adopt vile art, And wear a smile, with anguish in his heart. A sense of honour would destroy his schemes, And conscience ne'er must speak unless in dreams. When he hath tamely borne, for many years, Cold looks, forbidding frowns, contemptuous sneers, 170 When he at last expects, good easy man! To reap the profits of his labour'd plan, Some cringing lackey, or rapacious whore, To favours of the great the surest door, Some catamite, or pimp, in credit grown, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... been Archie's habit to greet courteously the policemen he passed at night in the Avenue, little dreaming that the day would come when he would view the policing of the world with contemptuous disdain. The Governor spoke of policemen and detectives with pity; they were so stupid, he said, though he admitted under Archie's cross-examination that they could be a nuisance ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... turned round and favoured the orator with a long and curious glance. Her expression was quite indefinite, but it was not contemptuous, a fact on which I inwardly congratulated Grushnitski from ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... Christian cabmen on the rank, pleading her poverty, and begging to be conveyed with her goods for a ridiculous sum. At first none of them would take notice of the old Jewish crone, but would read their papers in contemptuous indifference. But gradually, as they remained idly on the rank, the endless stream of persuasion would begin to percolate, and at last one would relent, half out of pity, and would end by bearing the sack gratuitously on his shoulder from the house to his cab. Often there ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... I retorted curtly. It was a relief; I had been wanting to say it ever since we had first met. His jaw shot out menacingly, and for an instant he squared off from me with the look of the professional boxer; but, rather to my disappointment, he thought better of it and turned a contemptuous back. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... Hopkins' smile was almost contemptuous. "I guess you had better burn them when I am through. I'll mention one or two items. One hundred dollars for flowers; one thousand in several bills from Chicago jewellers! The articles would count as an ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... Dependency feel assured that it is regarded as worthy of attention by those nearest to the Crown, and any sense of isolation, any suspicion that the people, or their country are regarded with any measure of contemptuous indifference must forthwith vanish. Sympathy, encouragement, personal contact, seem to be essential elements to the solution of ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young

... the kitchen, where his assumed simplicity highly amused the servants, who, after an hour or two's fun with "Paddy," conducted him in a kind of contemptuous procession to the barn, where they ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... the bundles on the lower step and stared, speechless. Then he mopped his drenched, turkey-red face with his handkerchief. He got his breath after a spell of contemptuous snorting. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... to notice the contemptuous language of Philip II.'s laws, which designate the most useful mechanic arts, as those of blacksmiths, shoemakers, leather-dressers, and the like, as ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... seemed to be an indefinable charm; her eyes, more sunken, but inscrutable as ever, showed less pride and more melancholy than of old; her mouth had become more mobile, and her smile was more delicate and less contemptuous. When she spoke to me, I seemed to behold two persons in her, the old and the new; and I found that, so far from having lost her beauty, she had attained ideal perfection. Still, I remember several persons at that time used to declare that she had "changed very much," ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... contemptuous nickname given by Dissenters to the Book of Common Prayer. On 24 August, 1662, Pepys hears that there has been 'a disturbance in a church in Friday St.; a great many young [people] knotting together ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... for the beauty and dignity of manhood!" she said with a contemptuous shrug of her snowy shoulders,—"All perished in the space of a few brief moments! Look you, ye fair sirs that take pride in your strength and muscular attainments! ... Ye shall not find in all Al-Kyris ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... only wear; but, per Bacco, he should learn it too! She was in a high rage. The Captain was given to know that Ferrara was a great city, with more houses in it than one; in fine, he was shown the door. Supper first was an extreme and contemptuous condescension of Olimpia's, urged by the thought that a fed Mosca might be a more desperate Mosca, while a lean one would be desperate only for ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... who had sometimes been a little less than civil and a little more than contemptuous, now touched his cap, and uttered ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit

... in gold-spangled red; and by it, on either hand, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal. The hierarchy were, on the right, Arundel at their head, having coolly repossessed himself of the see from which he had been ejected as a traitor; an expression of contemptuous amusement hovering about his lips, which might be easily translated into the famous (but rather apocryphal) speech of Queen Elizabeth to the men of Coventry—"Good lack! What fools ye be!" On the left hand of the throne stood Lancaster, ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... to retire before the enemy; and because, instead of honour and glory, they had earned only ridicule. His limbs shook and he sweated with agony as he recalled the interview with his chief: "You're only fit to be a damned missionary," and the last contemptuous words, "I shan't want you any more. You can send in ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... not encourage confidence, and he gathered that his own more sinister interpretation would be dismissed with contemptuous incredulity. Anthony was under his wife's thumb and Frances had been completely bamboozled by her dearest friend. Still, when once their eyes were opened, he reckoned on the support of Anthony and Frances. It was inconceivable, that, faced ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... Lord Byron humbles man, it proceeds from a soul-felt want of truth and justice. He sought truth by a natural law of his mind, expressed it unflinchingly, and thus yielded a pleasure to his heart and understanding. But if the impulse that sometimes provoked his severe or contemptuous words was not the sublime one of Christian orthodoxy, that sees no remedy for human depravity save in God alone, it was still farther off from belonging to the school of the pessimists, of La Rochefoucault ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... in such a contemptuous way that I coloured up again, and felt as if I should have liked to cry, "You sha'n't see them to make fun of my work." But by that time we were at the tool-house door, and just inside was my cabinet full of drawers that uncle had let the carpenter ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn

... day—and we can do very little save wait for this young man to declare himself. We are the puppets with whom he plays. It rests with him whether our names are written upon the scroll of fame or whether our administration is dismissed in half a dozen contemptuous words by the coming historian. It rests with him whether our friend Bransome here shall be proclaimed the greatest Foreign Minister that ever breathed, and whether I myself have a statue erected to me in Westminster Yard, which shall ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... for her, in the half contemptuous tone she was wont to assume on such occasions. "I warn you, Ralph, to get all the enjoyment you can out of the present, for Abbie intends to keep you with her entirely after she has a home of her own—out of ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)

... contemptuous rage; the man before him was more mercenary and wicked than he thought could be possible. He buried both his sons almost at the same hour, but he still found time and opportunity to inquire about the legacy for which he had made so ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... If people were good citizens and loyal subjects, it was all the same to her whether they went to church or to mass. Had it been possible to adopt and apply in the sixteenth century the modern doctrine of contemptuous indifference to sectarian quarrels, there was not one of her subjects more capable of appreciating and acting upon it than the great Queen herself. But in that case she would have estranged her friends without conciliating her opponents. She would have forfeited her throne and ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... cried Richard Bassett with contemptuous amazement. Even his melancholy forebodings had not gone that length. "And what ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... its mordant moods, and amazes you by its saturnine estimate of your merits. This man was perhaps a little out of harmony with the garments of chivalry, and a trifle complacent and vain at the time. But the photograph of him is so cynical and contemptuous, so merciless in its exposure of his element of foolishness, that we may almost fancy the spook of Carlyle had got mixed up with the chemicals upon the film. Yet it never really dawned upon him until he had distributed this advertisement of his little weakness far and wide, ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... certainly," I rather resentfully replied. The somewhat contemptuous emphasis he laid on the word you slightly ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... Public," said my mourning genius; "are you better than other men?" So I sneaked back to seat No. 3,671, amid the contemptuous and reproachful looks and sneers of my more respectable neighbors, who had sat where they were told to do. We must be through in a moment, and perhaps Fausta would be late also. If only the Astor would keep open after ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... compartment in which they had been undisturbed since leaving Wells, she studied her companion through half-closed eyes. Julian was reading an article in one of the Reviews and remained entirely unconscious of her scrutiny. His forehead was puckered, his mouth a little contemptuous. It was obvious that he did not wholly approve of what he ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... mouse is regarded with contemptuous annoyance as a petty but persevering thief; while the rat commits his grosser depredations in an atmosphere tinged with horror. Out here it is different, for we are perforce neighbours. Indeed, we bipeds ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various

... been told that she was Arithelli the circus-rider, who had sat silently upon the deck of his yacht dressed in gaudy raiment, and indifferent almost to stupidity, then his smile would have been contemptuous instead of tolerant. He was interested too in the unknown woman's champion. Something in Vardri's attitude of courteous defiance appealed to him by the law that will attract strongly one man's mind to another, diverse in every way. He could see that Vardri was plainly consumptive, ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... up his head at the sound. It was a gesture openly contemptuous. "Can't you guess?" ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... one. And when partings come, as come they must in life until death brings the last, it is always the man who leaves, and the woman who is left, even though in plain fact it be the man that stays behind; and we men feel a little contemptuous pity for one who seems to cry out after the woman he loves, asking why she has left him, and beseeching her to come back to him, but our compassion for the woman in like case is always sincere. In such small things ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... followed by a silence so profound that the moaning of the wind on the mountain-side was distinctly heard. A well-built man, with a mask that scarcely concealed his heavy mustachios, who had been standing with his back to the orator in half contemptuous patience, faced around suddenly and made a step forward as if to come between the questioner and questioned. A voice from the ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte

... cut short his henchman's speech. "I've stopped the mouths of people who have dared to meddle with you, my dear Francois," he said; "and this is the way you pay your debts? You use a contemptuous nickname in speaking of a woman to whom I ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... subjects, and (what was yet more delicate) to pay for my present. Nothing shows the king in a more becoming light than the fact that I succeeded. He demurred at the principle; he exclaimed, when he heard it, at the sum. "Plenty money!" cried he, with contemptuous displeasure. But his resistance was never serious; and when he had blown off his ill-humour—"A' right," said he. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... humble man, as years roll on, becomes more and more noble, and the proud man becomes more and more low-minded; and finds that pride goes before a fall in more senses than one. Yes. There is nothing more hurtful to our own minds and hearts than a domineering, contemptuous frame of mind. It may be pleasant to our own self- conceit: but it is only a sweet poison. A man lowers his own character by it. He takes the shape of what he is always looking at; and, if he looks at base and low things, he becomes base and low himself; just ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... poor devil of an author in his garret, snapping his fingers at the critics. "No beggar," wrote Pope, "is so poor but he can keep a cur, and no author so beggarly but he can keep a critic." And, after all, abuse is pleasanter than contemptuous and silent neglect. I do honestly believe, that, if it were not for a little too much false modesty, every author, and especially the poets, would boldly and publicly anticipate posthumous fame. Do you think that Sir Thomas Urquhart, when he wrote his "[Greek: EKSKUBALAURON], ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... hope was entertained that the king would adopt the conduct and institutions of his grandfather. Accordingly, the Latins, with whom a treaty had been concluded in the reign of Tullus, gained fresh courage; and, after they had invaded Roman territory, returned a contemptuous answer to the Romans when they demanded satisfaction, supposing that the Roman king would spend his reign in indolence among chapels and altars. The disposition of Ancus was between two extremes, preserving the qualities ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius

... humiliating particulars. It was not to her a source of joy, or sympathy, or solace. She foresaw for her child only a future of degradation. Having a strong, clear mind, without any imagination, she believed that she beheld an inevitable doom. The tart remark and the contemptuous comment on her part, elicited, on the other, all the irritability of the poetic idiosyncrasy. After frantic ebullitions, for which, when the circumstances were analysed by an ordinary mind, there seemed no sufficient cause, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... of that incipient box-maker, who, Angelina informed me, goes to kindergarten in a free hack along with a crowd of other babies. But Angelina, bless her soul! is down on the kindergarten. She says, with a pout and a contemptuous shrug, "they don't teach you're kid nothing but nonsense, just cutting up little pieces of paper and singing fool songs and marching to music." Angelina admitted, however, that her bambino was supremely happy ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... eloquent counsel. Well, gentlemen, if Mrs. Stiles is not a woman, what is she? Is she a white elephant? Is she a female suffragist? which, I have heard, is neither man nor woman." (Immense laughter in court, indignation in the cheeks of Mrs. Tarbell, a lofty and contemptuous frown on the forehead of Mrs. Pegley.) "Gentlemen, with the greatest possible respect for Mrs. Stiles, whose painful sufferings I greatly deplore, and to whom I wish to tender my entire sympathies; with, too, the greatest respect for my friend ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... Christianity like that, any more than a man need to care for a tame tiger that has had its claws pared? If the world can put a hook in the nostrils of leviathan, and make him play with its maidens, it will substitute good-nature, half contemptuous, for the hostility which our Master here predicts. It was out-and-out Christians that He said the world would hate; the world likes Christians that are like itself. Christian men and women! be you sure that you deserve the hostility ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... spent in reading Scripture. A few questions, or a remark in the course of a secular lesson, often shows them what is the most important of all matters in our minds. Nothing positively controversial is taught; that is to say, no contemptuous expressions about the religion of any of the children are allowed, and the plainest truths of the Gospel specially set forward; but occasionally something comes into the lesson which shows to an intelligent learner the vanity of ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... especially the broad, measured walk of Paganini. "Does it not seem," said he, "as if he had the iron cross-pole still between his legs? He has accustomed himself to that walk forever. See, too, in what a contemptuous, ironical way he sometimes looks at his guide when the latter wearies him with his prosaic questions. But he can not separate himself from him; a bloody contract binds him to that companion, who is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... is not like the Sinn Feiners, who, according to "T. P.," are so contemptuous of the Bill that they have never read a line of it. Parts of his speech, and particularly his peroration, seemed far more suitable to a Coercion Bill than to a measure which is designed, however imperfectly, to grant Home Rule to Ireland. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various

... labour, and yet couched in a violently controversial tone. Violent as it was, an editorial note witnesses that it was modified. It must have covered Pawkins with shame and confusion of face. It left no loophole; it was murderous in argument, and utterly contemptuous in tone; an awful thing for the declining years ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... urging them, rendered the scene inexpressibly touching, and must have moved any but a heart of adamant. Such a one was that of Baltasar, who stood with bent brow and a sneer upon his lip, cold, contemptuous, and relentless. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... splendid fellows—he was forced to admit that three of them were hardly better than thugs, cheap muckers with fine bodies. Then there were the snobs, usually prep school men with more money than they could handle wisely, utterly contemptuous of any man not belonging to a fraternity or of one belonging to any of the lesser fraternities. These were the "smooth boys," interested primarily in clothes and "parties," passing their courses by the aid of tutors or fraternity brothers ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... did not wait for him to finish; he threw the troop book on the table and stared at Tom in angry amazement. "All right," he said, "let it go at that. Now we know where you stand. Thanks, we're glad to know it," he added in a kind of contemptuous disgust. "Ever since you got back from France I knew you were sick and tired of us—I could see it. I knew you only came around to please Mr. Ellsworth. I knew you forgot all about the troop. But I didn't think you'd put one like that over on us, I'll be hanged if I did! You mean to tell me you ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... experience of what such a man could do to them, within the law and beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even an eye was raised. Among the men, not one. But the woman who stood knitting looked up steadily, and looked the Marquis in the face. It was not for his dignity to notice it; his contemptuous eyes passed over her, and over all the other rats; and he leaned back in his seat again, and gave ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... make the necessary arrangements for staying with my father, whose illness appeared to have lost suddenly its worst symptoms. As soon as she was gone he regarded me with a look half angry, half contemptuous. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... consternation she had flung herself defiantly back into the chair and directed a most contemptuous gaze at all the desirable young men of her ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... destructive vice, for the promotion of virtue, and the enforcement of religion, ought, at least, to be calmly and particularly considered; that the laudable endeavours of the commons ought not to be discouraged by a precipitate and contemptuous rejection of the measures which they have formed for the attainment of a purpose so important, is, indeed, a specious and plausible method of persuasion; but, my lords, it can affect only those who come to deliberate upon this bill ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... half contemptuous; he had already shown that he considered the Canadian what he would have called an outsider; but he was willing to make ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... honest Simon Wagstaff's pleasantries, which had served merry ladies and gentlemen so long before that charming compiler, with his 'Large Table Book,' took the matter in hands. And I feel, I confess, a queer sort of a thrill, not at all contemptuous—neither altogether sad, nor altogether joyous—but something pleasantly regretful, whenever one of those quaint and faded old servants of the mirth of so many dead and buried generations, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... revolution was at its outset engineered at Boston, and was immediately determined by the quarrel between Great Britain and Massachusetts. In the events which led to the revolution the British government appears to have shown a short-sighted insistence on legal rights and a contemptuous disregard of the sentiments and opinions of the colonists; the revolutionists generally a turbulent, insolent, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... for that," said Licorice, with a short, contemptuous laugh. "Thou shouldst have said that a year ago, and have kept the child ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... only three positions where the Shah was nominally paramount, when the fugitive Dost was still within its borders, when intrigue and disaffection were seething in every valley and on every hill-side, and when the principality of Herat maintained a contemptuous independence. Macnaghten might avow himself convinced of the popularity of the Shah, and believe or strive to believe that the Afghans had received the puppet king 'with feelings nearly amounting to adoration,' but he did not venture to support the conviction he avowed by advocating ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... young man, one whom, from her years in the Bad Lands as the White Moll, she recognized as a hanger-on at a gambling hell in the Chatham Square district, came toward her, plowing his way, contemptuous of obstructions, out of ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... the time they were rejected, and therefore could not have been forged, a century after that period. I am not conscious of any wish to weaken the force of Mr. English's arguments, by affecting to speak of them in contemptuous terms, I would, as I have, answered them fairly, or not at ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English

... sacrifice'; and he, harsh tongued, Bending a brow upon her rough as rock, With eyes that struck like steel, seeking to break Or snare her with a sudden stroke of fear: 'Art thou a Christian?' and she answered, 'Yea, I am a Christian!' In brow-blackening wrath He motioned a contemptuous hand and bade The lictors scourge the old man down and forth With rods, and as the cruel deed was done, Perpetua stood white with quivering lips, And her eyes filled with tears. While yet his cries Were mingling with the curses of the crowd, Hilarianus, calling name by name, Gave sentence, and ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... replied the Colonel indifferently, fixing a contemptuous glance upon some stone mullions of ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... prayers, psalms, reading, and the word of God." Yet these things are no excuse, and he proves this, as regards each in particular. For in the first place, as to prayer, he says: "One prayer of the obedient man is sooner granted than ten thousand prayers of the contemptuous": meaning that those are contemptuous and unworthy to be heard who work not with their hands. Secondly, as to the divine praises he adds: "Even while working with their hands they can easily sing hymns to God." Thirdly, with ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas



Words linked to "Contemptuous" :   contempt, disrespectful, scornful, contemptuousness, disdainful, insulting



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