"Contumely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bourn to which you can draw nigher,—except that bourn which, in such circumstances, the traveller must surely regard as simply the end of his weariness! But there is nothing to which humanity cannot attune itself. Men can live upon poison, can learn to endure absolute solitude, can bear contumely, scorn, and shame, and never show it. Carry Brattle had already become accustomed to misery, and as she walked she thought more of the wretchedness of the present hour, of her weary feet, of her hunger, and of the nature of the rest which she might purchase for herself at some poor wayside inn, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... denunciations. In that seat she had to remain during the forenoon service. She returned home alone, and had to come back alone to her solitary seat in the afternoon. All day no one dared speak to her. She was as much an object of contumely as the thieves and smugglers whom, in the end of last century, it was the privilege of Feudal Bailie Wood (as he was called) to whip ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... yet I should never be, in the language of the market, one shilling the better for her. Her father, a man of low birth, and having, perhaps, in spite of his wealth, suffered from the proud man's contumely, has determined to ennoble his family by means of his only child, and she is not to enjoy his fortune unless she marry one who has a title. If she unites herself with any man, below the rank of a baron's son, he swears she shall never see the colour of sixpence of his money. I understand ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... gentle dealings toward you. I have endeavored to persuade you, I have expostulated with you, and made all reasonable offers to induce you to acquiesce peaceably in your fate, which I would have made an honorable and enviable one; but you have treated all my kindness with contumely and misconstrued my forbearance into cowardice. Now you must ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... are we so exquisitely alive to the aspersions of England? Why do we suffer ourselves to be so affected by the contumely she has endeavored to cast upon us? It is not in the opinion of England alone that honor lives, and reputation has its being. The world at large is the arbiter of a nation's fame: with its thousand eyes it witnesses a nation's deeds, and from their ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... darlings' when I spoke of them." Here the poor mother sobbed, almost overcome by the contumely of the expression used towards ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... were the case that the Jesuits excited feelings of hatred in their neighbours, yet they certainly had the gift of attaching to themselves the Indians' hearts. No institution, condemned with contumely and thrust out of a country where it had worked for long, its supposed crimes kept secret, and its members all condemned unheard, could have preserved its popularity amongst the descendants of the men with whom it worked, after more than one hundred years have ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... deserted by envious dissent, and undermined by stealthy infidelity. The good institutions, which had made our country glorious, and the name of English Gentleman the proudest in the world, were left without defence, and exposed to assault and contumely from men to whom no sanctuary was sacred, for they believed in nothing holy; no history venerable, for they were too ignorant to have heard of the past; and no law was binding which they were strong enough to break, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... For he had not consulted the Committee because it had refused the extension of powers, and his action that day had been to appeal to the Convention against them. The Club, divided at first, went over to him, gave him an ovation, and expelled Collot and Billaud-Varennes with violence and contumely. Robespierre, encouraged by his success, exhorted the Jacobins to purify the Convention by expelling bad men, as they had expelled the Girondins. It was his first appeal to the popular forces. Coffinhal, who was a man of energy, implored him to strike at once. He ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... who turned king's evidence against M'Lane, the reward was far different. Blood-money failed to solace him for the contumely heaped upon him; and, according to the historian Garneau, he was so overcome by public contempt that after some years he was reduced to begging his bread in the streets ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... counsel, and to lead gently and with dignity from error into rectitude. Instead of this they fell upon the flock like irritated schoolmasters who find their pupils in mutiny. They became angry and dominative; and the more they thus exhibited themselves, the more scorn and contumely they encountered. Meanwhile two trading sloops arrived in the harbor with a small stock of provisions; but the supply was inadequate; so five hundred of the party were ordered ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Fresh bleeding from the sword of Rome, and still trembling at her anathema, the reformed churches were little likely to remember any of her benefits, or to regard any of her teaching. Forced by the Romanist contumely into habits of irreverence, by the Romanist fallacies into habits of disbelief, the self-trusting, rashly-reasoning spirit gained ground among them daily. Sect branched out of sect, presumption rose over presumption; ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... deceived. In his reply to Swift he simply remarks: "You need not be concerned: I will engage you will lose nothing by that paper." Swift, however, lost more than the Archbishop thought; for "that paper" led to his severance from the Whigs, and, in after life, to much contumely cast on his character for being a political renegade. Because "he was not Whig enough;" because he would not forsake his Church for his party, critics and biographers have thought fit to make little of him, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... concerned. For it is precisely these political sins which revenge themselves so deeply on our sea interests and our fleet. Had the strengthening of the fleet not been refused me during the past eight years of my Government, notwithstanding all appeals and warnings—and not without contumely and abuse for my person—how differently could we not have promoted our growing trade and our ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... astonished themselves. They knew not their own strength. Now they are taking fresh heart, determined to hold out to extremity. The Separatists—for the Corkers are Separatists au naturel—are somewhat disconcerted, and try to minimise the effect of the meeting by sneering and contumely; but it will not do. They affect hilarity, but their laughter is not real. Perhaps nothing shows the shallowness of men more than the tricks they think sufficient to deceive. And then the leaders are accustomed to a credulous public. The ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... food as dangerous to come by as bear's venison, father," answered Rose, bitterly, still on fire with the idea that the monk treated her nation with suspicion and contumely. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the most honoured of the guests! He now gazed upon the splendours of this third marriage ceremony, by far the greatest poet of his age, but a homeless vagrant, a reputed maniac, treated with neglect or contumely on every side! No wonder that his cup of misery, which had previously been filled to the brim, overflowed with this last and crowning insult; and, scarce knowing what he did, he broke forth into the most ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Brutus and Cassius, and at the head of several legions marched without opposition through Macedonia into Asia Minor. Here C. Trebonius had already arrived. But he was unable to cope with Dolabella; and the latter surprised him and took him prisoner at Smyrna. He was put to death with unseemly contumely in Dolabella's presence. This was in February, 43; and thus two of Caesar's murderers, in less than a year's time, felt the blow of retributive justice. When the news of this piece of butchery reached ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... accursed thing. Presently he stood free, and barks of approval at once went up from his judges. He had come through his ordeal, and was once more a dog among dogs. Great was the rejoicing among his friends, and the occasion having been duly celebrated by joint destruction and contumely of the offending garment, Teddy and he returned ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... onerous forms of feudal bondage. The scorn of the semi-barbarous military aristocracy for these their abject dependants, rendered the act of likening any person to this class of people a mark of the greatest contumely; the same scorn led them to ascribe to the same people all manner of hateful qualities, which doubtless also, in the degrading situation in which they were held, were often not unjustly imputed to them. These circumstances combined to attach to the term ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... desire to keep her. And she had announced her own feelings in the matter! She was in the Noda—the girl who had stepped out of his life never to enter it again, so he had feared in his lonely ponderings. He was in the mood of a real man at last! He was resolved to take no more of Echford Flagg's contumely. He was heartsick at the thought of starting north and leaving her in the tavern, to be the object of attentions such as that cheap drummer man bestowed when he passed them ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... and ate a hearty breakfast, while the men watched us. And as we ate, Tish held the moving-picture business up to contumely and scorn. ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... other inclined to show him mercy, and after infinite wrangling between the factions, he was suddenly killed by a blow from a tomahawk as he was entering a long-house, to attend a feast to which he had been invited. His body was treated with contumely, and his head affixed to a post of the palisades of the village. He was the first martyr who suffered death at the ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... calumny, and put up with the rudeness of the rabble." He replied: "O my friend, withdraw the hand of reproach from the skirt of my fatality, for I have frequently reflected on this advice which you offer me, and find it easier to suffer contumely on his account than to forego his company; and philosophers have said: 'It is less arduous to persist in the labor of courting than to restrain the eye from contemplating a beloved object':—Whoever devotes his heart to a soul deluder puts his beard or reputation into the hands of ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Charles V. with having lent himself, as a docile instrument, to the intolerant devices of the clergy. Charles was never the sincere friend of the court of Rome. On the contrary, no Christian monarch ever treated that court with greater contumely, or in a manner more hostile and effectively prejudicial to its prosperity and influence. The war which he made against the Pope, and which terminated by the invasion of Rome itself, involved that court ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... he was sensitive to a degree; denunciation or malice, begotten of envy that Johnson would have passed unheeded, wounded him to the quick. "The insults to which he had to submit," Thackeray wrote with a quick and warm sympathy, "are shocking to read of—slander, contumely, vulgar satire, brutal malignity perverting his commonest motives and actions: he had his share of these, and one's anger is roused at reading of them, as it is at seeing a woman insulted or a child assaulted, ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... terminated by a general alarm, and the appearance of Prahasta, his general, to announce that Lanka is invested. Angada comes as envoy from Rama, to command Ravana to restore Sita and prostrate himself and his family at the feet of Lakshmana. Ravana, enraged, orders some contumely or punishment to be inflicted upon him. He orders him to be shaved. Angada puffs his hair out with rage. The monkey tells Ravana, if he were not an ambassador, he would tear off his ten heads, and he then springs away; the tumult increases, and Ravana ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... his hand, and giving them back to the clerk, with a contemptuous gesture, said, loud enough to be heard by everyone there, "No!—a thousand times no!" Had the customer been a swindler he could not have been treated with greater insult and contumely. It was a fortunate thing for the bank when Mr. Barney became manager. From that time the bank has assumed its proper position. Under its new designation of the "Birmingham and Dudley District Banking Company" it has taken rapid ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... Buttons were not allowed to approach him. The defection of the brilliant scholar having been brought to the vicar's notice, he ventured to call one Saturday afternoon on the Buttons, but such was the contumely with which he was received that the good man hastily retreated. In lung power he was outmatched. In repartee he was singularly outclassed. He then sent the superintendent of the school, a man of brawn and zeal, to see what muscular Christianity could accomplish. But ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... action of the Evangelical Alliance may be discerned certain very impressive facts. It averted its eyes from its ancient antagonist—that antagonist which had so recently loaded the Reformation with contumely and denunciation—it fastened them, as the Vatican Council had done, on Science. Under that dreaded name there stood before it what seemed to be a spectre of uncertain form, of hourly-dilating proportions, of threatening aspect. Sometimes the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... that Ninigi dismissed her with disgust, thus provoking the curse of the Kami of mountains, who declared that had his elder daughter been welcomed, the lives of the heavenly sovereigns** would have been as long as her name suggested, but that since she had been treated with contumely, their span of existence would be comparatively short. Presently Brilliant Blossom became enceinte. Her lord, however, thinking that sufficient time had not elapsed for such a result, suspected her of infidelity ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... it lost you, its dearest only friend, its noblest feelings were extinguished: my crime has been my punishment, for it has brought on me nothing but remorse and misery: still is my fame untainted by the world, and I will never court its contumely. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... the risk of losing, And losing love is as one's life were riven; It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using To cede what ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... relationship between the two. He loves the land that bore him—and so did most of the great spirits recorded in history. His own mental cultivation, while it yields him personal enjoyment, teaches him not to treat with contumely inferior men. Though he has courage to protect his honour, he is not deficient in conscience to feel for the consequences; and when opportunity offers the means of amende, it is embraced. In a word, I wish it to be believed ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... think that the party to which he belongs should go immediately into a hospital of a different kind, and which I shall not mention." This refined irony was a very gentle specimen of the insult and contumely which was poured upon Cobden and Mr. Bright at ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... has a reputation, not confined to Ireland, as an able, fearless, and vigorous land agent, the best type of a much abused class of men who have endured contumely and faced dangers, by day and night, in order to protect the rights of property ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... he had been for years a nominal prisoner, he was very anxious that the terrible strain of waiting upon the slow proceedings of the tribunal should be relieved. At last the end came after weary years of controversy, in which Hastings had been loaded with more contumely and lauded with more extravagance than it were possible to conceive him good enough or bad enough to deserve. Finally, in the April of 1795, Warren Hastings was acquitted by a large majority on ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... For in that sleepe of death, what dreames may come, When we haue shuffel'd off this mortall coile, Must giue vs pawse. There's the respect That makes Calamity of so long life: For who would beare the Whips and Scornes of time, The Oppressors wrong, the poore mans Contumely, The pangs of dispriz'd Loue, the Lawes delay, The insolence of Office, and the Spurnes That patient merit of the vnworthy takes, When he himselfe might his Quietus make With a bare Bodkin? Who would these Fardles beare To grunt and sweat vnder a weary life, But that the dread of something ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... a Son whose life had become his terror. To one man, NAME had been an idol; to the other, NAME had been a weed cast away into the mire. To the one man, unjoyous, evanescent glory—to the other, a shame that had been borne with a sportive cheerfulness, dashed into sorrow only when the world's contumely threatened to despoil Affection of its food. But there was something akin in their joint experience of earthly vanities;—so little solace in worldly honours to the triumphant Orator—so little of misery to the vagrant Mime while his conscience mutely appealed to Heaven from the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the thousand recollections of former professions awakened in the minds of every applauder of his apostacy. Let him have a Toole to give bold utterance to the toasts which, in former years, would have called forth his contumely and indignation, and which, even now, he dare only whisper, lest the echo of his own voice should be changed into a curse. Let him have wine, that his blood may riot through his veins and drive memory onward. Let him have wine, that when the hollow cheers of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... brethren to their southern neighbours, and thus easily and profitably removed slavery from their borders,—for those, I say, to turn round and preach a crusade for the emancipation of the negro, in homilies of contumely, with the voice of self-righteousness, exhibits a degree of assurance that cannot be surpassed. Had they known as much of human nature as of the laws of profit and loss, they might have foreseen that in every ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... such protracted periods. When we recollect that such is the vehemence of party feeling produced by these disastrous combinations, that it so far obliterates all sense of right and wrong as generally to make their members countenance contumely and insult, sometimes even robbery, fire-raising, and murder, committed on innocent persons who are only striving to earn an honest livelihood for themselves by hard labour, but in opposition to the strike; and that it induces twenty and thirty thousand persons to yield implicit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Don Hermoso that he had on a certain occasion paid him and his family the compliment of proposing for the hand of Dona Isolda, and that the Don had seen fit to reject the proposal with scorn and contumely; yet such, he said, was his generous and forgiving nature that he was quite willing not only to overlook that affront, but also to secure the pardon of Don Hermoso and his family for their treason to the Spanish Government, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... as necessarily atheistic; but it is not less true that it has been made use of as a weapon of offence by irreligious writers, and has been again and again, especially in continental Europe, thrown, as it were, in the face of believers, with sneers and contumely. When we recollect the warmth with which what he thought was Darwinism was advocated by such a writer as Professor Vogt, one cause of his zeal was not far to seek—a zeal, by the way, certainly not "according to knowledge;" for few conceptions could have been more ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... last half century it is difficult to reach a common ground for argument. What is to be the criterion of taste if all the multiform exhibitions of it which passed muster from 1840 to 1890 are now to be swept away with contumely? Perhaps indeed it is only among those extravagant romanticists who are trying to raise entirely new ideals, unrelated to any existing forms of art and literature, that we find a denial of all merit to the Victorian masters. Against this caricature of criticism, this Bolshevism, it would be ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... is an allusion to his own love, the adjective 'despised' is significant. But I doubt the allusion. The other calamities mentioned by Hamlet, 'the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes,' are not at all ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... horrible scare. We decried our officers—who had done nothing—and listened to the fascinating Donkin. His care for our rights, his disinterested concern for our dignity, were not discouraged by the invariable contumely of our words, by the disdain of our looks. Our contempt for him was unbounded—and we could not but listen with interest to that consummate artist. He told us we were good men—a "bloomin' condemned ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... discovery and wrath were all as one save that only the discovery and wrath meant her. She saw how for two days and nights he had been putting this and that and this and that and this and that together until he had guessed her out. Sternly in his eyes she perceived contumely withholding itself, yet even while she felt the done-for cry heave through her bosom, and the floor fail like a sinking deck, she clung to her stage ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... natural sense of justice would generally have armed me a hundred fold for retaliation; but at present, chiefly, perhaps, because I had no effectual ally, and could count upon no sympathy in my audience, I was mortified beyond the power of retort, and became a passive butt to the lady's stinging contumely and the arrowy sleet of her gay rhetoric. The narrow bounds of our deck made it not easy to get beyond talking range; and thus it happened, that for two hours I stood the worst of this bright lady's feud. At length the tables turned. Two ladies appeared ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... long as he kept from taking too much drink he was not only a source of pleasure to himself, but in his way entertained other people. Of course the sailors here, as always, told their experiences to each other when they met, and incidentally their owners came in for a share of contumely such as "God-forsaken robber," or "scrape-backed thief who was not fit to carry guts to a bear," and other ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... proffers of peace rejected by England with contumely and scorn, and declined by Austria, now prepared, with his wonted energy, to repel the assaults of the allies. As he sat in his cabinet at the Tuileries, the thunders of their unrelenting onset came rolling in upon his ear from all the frontiers of France. The hostile ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... the master-cook, Ruus showed so much disobedience, and raised the anger of his superior to such a pitch, that he received chastisement severely for his contumely. At this Ruus felt wroth; and, having previously placed a cauldron of water on the fire, and perceiving the water boiled, he seized, in the apparent frenzy of the moment, the master-cook by his ankle and the nape of his neck, and thrust him head foremost ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... counsel at its own charge. But the most important consequence, resulting from this legislative investigation, was the remedial laws frequently attendant on it. "And our ancestors," says Blancas, "deemed it great wisdom patiently to endure contumely and oppression for a season, rather than seek redress before an inferior tribunal, since, by postponing their suit till the meeting of cortes, they would not only obtain a remedy for their own grievance, but one of a universal and ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... came it was still in its vitality. Nay, as we saw, it is alive, or in a sort of mock life, among us at this very day. But even those who retained their imperfect belief had received into their canon a book which treated it with contumely and scorn, so irresistible was the lofty majesty ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... rectify yourself on this thing called "patriotism?"' Do you wish to give the soldier back his job who presents to you a meritorious case? We give you a chance. If you do not take it we will publish this thing and you will go down to contumely and stultification." ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... Great Architect, Superb Chemist Love! The heart that entertains thee Grows lofty in spirit gentleness, E'en tho' thou deignst to make it but Thy workshop. So Janishkisgan Knew thee. Fearing only to prove Unworthy of her august guest, She walked in the midst of scorn, Contempt, contumely, sneers and stern Displeasure, with that forbearance And kindly dignity, which re-won Her friends, despite themselves; so that At last they gave her pitying peace, And listened with their heart-strings tuned To life's better ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... our memory when human flesh in this our free America was sold at auction. In those days a few earnest men dreamed of a time when our flag should no longer unfurl itself over a slave. Inspired by this great vision they bore the persecution and contumely of their fellows. In season and out of season they preached their glorious gospel of immediate and unconditional emancipation. Wild visionaries they, incendiaries whose very writings, like the heresies of old, must be consigned to the flames; impracticable enthusiasts, seditious citizens. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... his disciples he was only twenty-six years old, yet he did not hesitate to pit himself against men who were regarded as the most eminent painters and critics of France; and although (even as in the Dreyfus case) the only immediate result of his campaign was to bring him hatred and contumely, time, which always has its revenges, has long since shown how right he was in forecasting the ultimate victory of Manet ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... what may so prove," said Mr. Belamour, when the greetings had passed. "I have discovered how our fugitive passed the early part of the Sunday;" and he related how he had elicited from the Mistresses Treforth that they had seen her and driven her away with contumely. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... if they failed to come up to the public expectation. In truth, they occupied trying positions; being regarded by many as aliens and mercenaries. "Mens conscia recti" will support us under many trials; but it does not furnish armor of proof against the "poor man's scorn, the proud man's contumely." ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... reflection and to masculine exertion. Every Telemachus should have his Mentor.—But through the whole it is necessary that the spirit of the pupil should not be broken, and that he should not be treated with contumely. Stripes should in all instances be regarded as the last resort, and as a sort of problem set up for the wisdom of the wise to solve, whether the urgent case can arise in which it shall be requisite to have recourse ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... newsboys, and everything and every one were every one's business. All things, with him, referred themselves to print, and print meant simply infinite reporting, a promptitude of announcement, abusive when necessary, or even when not, about his fellow-citizens. He poured contumely on their private life, on their personal appearance, with the best conscience in the world. His faith, again, was the faith of Selah Tarrant—that being in the newspapers is a condition of bliss, and that it would be fastidious to question the terms of the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... Touching them, he signed to them to arise, and when they stood erect he pointed to the abyss, and gathering a handful of dust he threw it despitefully into the well of fire, and afterwards spat into the depths. This show of scorn and contumely greatly overawed the people, and (as was made known afterwards) they looked on the Sea-farers as strong gods, merciful ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... meetings I attended. Ill repute quickly attended her, and she became branded as a witch. Her aged mother closed her doors upon her, and those who would have gone miles to meet her, now avoided her. Bess heeded this little. She was of a nature to repay the world's contumely with like scorn, but when her child was born the case became different. She wished to save it. Then it was," pursued Demdike, vehemently, and regarding the abbot with flashing eyes—"then it was that I was again mortally injured by you. Then your ruthless decree to the clergy went forth. My ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and may its attribution to the supposed framer of the Gunpowder Plot only have been the accidental appropriation of an earlier term of popular reproach, and which had become so since the conversion of the nation to Christianity? This naturally heaped contumely and insult upon every thing relating to the Druids, and the heathen superstitions of the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... ten months, is brigadier-general in command of the town of Charlestown and Harper's Ferry. By order of his superior officers, he had the satisfaction of finding it his duty, with his own right hand, to put the torch to that very hotel into which he had been followed with insult and contumely, as the friend of John Brown; and when his brigade was under orders to destroy all the buildings of that neighborhood, with reverential care he bade the soldiers stop to spare that engine house that once sheltered the old hero. I do ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... she is," exclaimed the lady, "to run away from my house in this fashion, and treat me with such contumely, and then to order me to send her her fine clothes to deck herself for the eyes ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... his memory, in the supply of moist sugar at tea-time. This grocer being a bachelor and not a man who looked upon the surface for beauty, had once made honourable offers for the hand of Berry, which Mrs Pipchin had, with contumely and scorn, rejected. Everybody said how laudable this was in Mrs Pipchin, relict of a man who had died of the Peruvian mines; and what a staunch, high, independent spirit the old lady had. But nobody said anything about poor Berry, who cried for six weeks (being soundly rated by her ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... worked as much damage as the asceticism of the middle ages. A good healthy body is the first requisite everywhere; and to keep it so, every one's first duty. When men began to consider the body a poor, vile thing, to be treated with contumely, and fed with what would just sustain life, they offered an outrage to the highest work of God. When people think it is no matter what they eat, and that no pains need be taken in the preparation, they have made a big lapse toward heathenism. Confusion of the physical senses leads ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... tolerated—in rising to reply; in retorting with insolence; in lecturing and reprimanding the Senate through their representative officer; in repelling just scorn by false scorn; in riveting his past offences; in adding contumely to wrong. Never more must this be repeated. Neither must the Whig policy be repeated of bringing Mr O'Connell before a tribunal of justice that had, by a secret intrigue, agreed to lay aside its terrors.[31] No compromise now: no juggling: no collusion! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... with Phocion, Demosthenes with Cicero, Brutus with Dion—the Dion whose history inspired the poem of Wordsworth. Greek republicanism, too, had its fatal hour; but we do not pour scorn and contumely on those who strove to prolong the life of Athens beyond the term assigned by fate. The case of Athens, a single independent state, was no doubt different from that of Rome with so many subject nations ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... upon thee, since thy beauty first rose upon my presence like a star bright with my destiny, in the still sanctuary of my secret love, thy idol has ever rested. Then, then, I was a thing whose very touch thy creed might count a contumely. I have avenged the insults of long centuries in the best blood of Asia; I have returned, in glory and in pride, to claim my ancient sceptre; but sweeter far than vengeance, sweeter far than the quick gathering of my sacred tribes, the rush of triumph and the blaze of empire, is ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... therefore prepared to descend the hill. My position as President of the Republic did demand a certain amount of personal dignity; and how was I to uphold that in my present circumstances? "Jack," said I, "it is the sign of a noble mind to bear contumely without petulance. Since our horses have gone before us, and Crasweller and the crowd have gone, we will follow them." Then I put my arm within his, and as I walked down the hill, I almost took joy in thinking that Crasweller had ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... has been too common in actions of this kind, for the defendant to treat with contumely the humble situation of the injured prosecutor. I do not apprehend much from any such attempt in this cause. I acknowledge, gentlemen, that my client is a very humble individual, but he is a respectable and an honest man, by trade a carpenter. I see, gentlemen, on your countenances, that his ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... brightly conspicuous, and in them, if wisely appealed to, lies the strongest hope of amity between the two races whose destiny seems bound up together in the Western world. Even a dumb brute can be won by kindness. Surely it were worth while to try some other weapon than scorn and contumely and hard words upon people of our common race,—the human race, which is bigger and broader than Celt or Saxon, barbarian or Greek, Jew or Gentile, black or white; for we are all children of a common Father, forget it as we may, and each one of ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... consider, through the certain hatred of some, how much a man's innocency may be endangered by an uncertain accusation; you will, I doubt not, so begin to hate the iniquity of such natures, as I shall love the contumely done me, whose end was so honourable as to be wiped ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... left her but revilings. She poured upon him a torrent of contumely, reproaching him for his baseness, his cowardice, his treachery in tracking her hither, like a spy, to overhear a confession that should have been sacred with him of all men. Whatever that confession ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... College, which the philosophy of the sans-culottes (prouder by far than all the Garters, and Norroys, and Clarencieux, and Rouge-Dragons that ever pranced in a procession of what his friends call aristocrats and despots) will abolish with contumely and scorn. These historians, recorders, and blazoners of virtues and arms differ wholly from that other description of historians who never assign any act of politicians to a good motive. These gentle historians, on the contrary, dip their pens in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... no more popular man in the House of Commons than he who seven years ago" (it was only five) "was hooted and howled at, and was for many succeeding months the mark of contumely and scorn in ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... all along a youthful impetuosity sadly out of place in one of his years and standing. The offender's plea that he had thought it best to strike while the iron was hot only exposed him to further contumely. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... savage atrocity. Not long afterwards the king of Ammon died, and David sent an embassy of condolence to Hanun his successor. Hanun suspected in this a sinister design,—a suspicion we can readily understand if David had already, as is probable, subjugated Moab,—and with the utmost contumely sent back the messengers to their master forthwith, at the same time making preparations for war by entering into alliance with various Syrian kings, and particularly with the powerful ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... mentions her name to a friend. And to this resolve he steadily adhered during the troublous weeks that followed, when he was called on to pay the last honours to his Elector, to rouse men to the sanguinary contest with the peasants, and to hear contumely and reproach heaped upon his stirring words. Besides writing to the Cardinal Albert himself, recommending him to marry, he sent a letter also on June 3 to his friend Ruhel, who held office as one of his advisers, saying, 'If my marrying might serve ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... him to be their determined foe. He narrated to the savages, clearly and briefly, the wrongs which had been done them, as well as himself, by the whites; how, as the ally and friend of the red-man, he had been cursed, defied and treated with much contumely, by those here present; how their friends had followed and slaughtered his braves; how the whites were every day becoming stronger and more aggressive; how that, unless speedily exterminated, they would presently drive the red-men from their hunting grounds, burn their wigwams, and murder ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... you, alas! too soon will mingle, and which will regard even me as—no matter what!—it shall not scorn me as your bride. I will not bring shame and reproach upon you. Oh! if for me, dear Luke, the proud ones of the earth were to treat you with contumely, this heart would break with agony. For myself, I have pride sufficient—perchance too much. Perchance 'tis pride that actuates me now. I know not. But for you I am all weakness. As you were heretofore, I would have been to you ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... I said, they fell in controversy: My son, not like a husband, gave her words Of great reproof, despite, and contumely, Which she, poor soul, digested patiently; This was the first time of their falling out. As I remember, at the selfsame time One Thomas, the Earl of Surrey's gentleman, Din'd at ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... more prosperous undergraduates was not suitable for the seed they tried to sow. When they distributed tracts, dropping them at night into good men's letter boxes while they were asleep, their tracts got burnt, or met with even worse contumely." For Ernest Pontifex "they had a repellent attraction; he disliked them, but he could not bring himself to leave them alone. On one occasion he had gone so far as to parody one of the tracts they had sent round in the night, and to ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... had been extraordinarily generous. A lump rose in her throat as she thought of him. But the de Vignes, all those wedding guests who were to have honoured the occasion, they would all look upon her with contumely for evermore. No wonder her mother was enraged against her! No wonder! No wonder! She would never have another chance of holding up her head in such ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... Chryseis, the daughter of Chryses, a priest of Apollo, the other Briseis; the former had fallen to the lot of Agamemnon, the King of the Greek host, the latter to Achilles his bravest follower. Chryses, father of Chryseis, went to Agamemnon to ransom his daughter, but was treated with contumely; accordingly he prayed to the god to avenge him and was answered, for Apollo sent a pestilence upon the Greeks which raged for nine days, destroying man and beast. On the tenth day the chieftains held a counsel to discover the cause of the malady. At it Chalcas the seer before revealing the ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... the presence of kindness he was powerless. He lived life to its fullest, and paid the penalty with shortened years. He expressed himself without reserve—being emancipated from superstition and precedent. And the man who is not dominated by the fetish of custom is marked for contumely by the many. Custom makes law, and the one who violates custom is "bad." Yet all respectable people are not good; and all good people are not respectable. If you do not know this ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... withheld by the inscrutable wisdom of Providence. Wah-ta-Wah, indeed, knew that in many tribes the mentally imbecile and the mad were held in a species of religious reverence, receiving from these untutored inhabitants of the forest respect and honors, instead of the contumely and neglect that it is their fortune to meet with among the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... her solicitations to her son, that he would dismiss his minister. Louis, it appears, made a promise to that effect; a reluctant promise, given to get rid of her importunity. Mary calculated too securely upon his keeping it; she broke forth in bitter contumely against Richelieu; deprived him of his superintendence over her household, and treated Madame de Combalet, the cardinal's niece, who had sunk on her knees to entreat her to moderate her anger almost with insult. The ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... religion. By that date (1898) the times seemed ripe for its reception. The word 'pragmatism' spread, and at present it fairly spots the pages of the philosophic journals. On all hands we find the 'pragmatic movement' spoken of, sometimes with respect, sometimes with contumely, seldom with clear understanding. It is evident that the term applies itself conveniently to a number of tendencies that hitherto have lacked a collective name, and that it ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... considered himself at liberty to let off his rusty old blunderbuss, and there was a constant peppering. But my veil never lowered its colors nor curtailed its resources. Alas! what ridicule and contumely failed to effect, destiny accomplished. Softness and plenitude are no shields against the shafts ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... front fighting against Serbia, might be dismissed as a folly on the part of the crowd if it were not so characteristic of the whole Magyar administration. The "subject nationalities" were to be enrolled in the Magyar host and treated, at the same time, with contumely. At Ver[vs]ac Dr. Slavko Mileti['c],[104] son of the famous patriot, was suspected not only of cherishing Serbian sympathies, which was natural, but of committing a felony. The authorities believed that in his medical capacity he was exempting ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... very peasants who had been most active in wrangling with him over the hay, some whom he had treated with contumely, and who had tried to cheat him, those very peasants had greeted him goodhumoredly, and evidently had not, were incapable of having any feeling of rancor against him, any regret, any recollection even of having tried to deceive him. All that was drowned in a sea of merry common labor. God ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... descended to the Quadrangle, with a sense of defeat, rebuff, contumely, rage, but quite sprightly said to Harris, waiting beyond the Gateway: "Well, boy, how can we make a night of it? I ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... in that fashion were he not quite woebegone and down-hearted; and not without reason, for the Earl had dismissed him with contumely not once but a dozen times. Medenham saw that his retainer would be more muddled than ever if he realized that Mrs. Devar had intercepted the telephone message, so he slurred over that element of the affair, and Dale quickly enlightened him as to the course taken by events after the departure ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... in his father's car, he thought with a certain contumely of the younger Ventnor girl, whom he had been wont to consider pretty before he knew Phyllis. And seated next her at dinner, he quite enjoyed his new sense of superiority to her charms, and the ease with which he could chaff and be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Infidelity are classic accusations. The gentle Burne-Jones was stoutly denounced by his enemies as a Pagan Greek. I think he rather gloried in the contumely, but fifty years earlier he might have been visited by a "lettre de cachet," instead of a knighthood; for we can not forget how, in Eighteen Hundred Fifteen, Parliament refused to pay for the Elgin Marbles because, as Lord Falmouth put it, "These ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... there will be suffering, which will dog your progress; aye, and the greater your talent, so much more will be jealousy of it, from those, at least, so on the alert to decry that which they cannot create; so much more will be contumely; so much more will be innuendoes which can not be met openly, as they certainly will not be in the slimy words and manner of utterance of bitter heartlessness, that is to say, if you be made of that stuff which ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... and the kind friends who had given him letters to the Presbyterian clergymen at New York and Princeton, had figured without their host. Young Hamilton knew all that Nevis had in store for him: he knew its littleness, its contumely and disgrace, and in the secret recesses of his own strong heart he had slipped the cable that held him to the past. No more remittances from home; no more solicitous advice; no more kind, loving ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... it would try anybody to be doing the best he could, offering every kindness he could think of, only to have it rejected with contumely and . . . Oh, well, let it go; it's no matter—I'll talk to the doctor. Is that satisfactory, or are you going ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... leave your heart, and anger too, And let me show you how a father loves. I pledge my head you do not know the names. I have them here—and I will tell you them. To-morrow then you may in the Divan Put him to shame and contumely, and see His anguish and his torture call for death, Because with you he loses all he loved. And only one thing do I crave: when you Have fed your vengeance on him to the full, Reach him your hand and be his willing wife. Swear ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... italics are the present writer's; but the words as they stand would indicate that he did not yield his view of the matter in general, nor leave hearers under any doubt as to how far he could safely be treated with contumely or slight. There can be little doubt that the substantial result was to strengthen his position in the exacting duty that lay before him in the ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... his wicker chair, giving me time to realise the sudden change in my fortunes. Then only did I understand. I saw myself for a desolate moment, cast motherless, rudderless on the wide world where art and scholarship met with contumely and undergrown youth was buffeted and despised. My gorgeous dreams were at an end. The ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... seat. That he would certainly lose his own, he was quite convinced. He might lose it by undergoing an adverse petition, and paying ever so much more money,—or he might lose it in the manner that Mr. Trigger had so kindly suggested. In either way there would be disgrace, and contumely, and hours of the agony of self-reproach in ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... missionaries to solicit them. And we have seen Mr. O'Connell, the "irresponsible master" of millions of ragged serfs, from whom, poverty stricken as they are, he contrives to wring a splendid privy purse, throw back with contumely, the "tribute" of his own countrymen from this land of "miscreants." These people may exhaust their slang, and make blackguards of themselves, but they cannot defile us. And as for the suggestion to exclude slaveholders from your London clubs, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... could heap upon him seemed nearly adequate to the occasion. They despised him; they loathed him; they said and believed that he was false, selfish, designing, a traitor, an apostate, that he had run away from a failing cause, that he had sold himself. The language of contumely was exhausted in vain efforts to describe his baseness. Not even yet has the echo of the hard names which he was called quite died away in the land; and there are still families in New England with whom his dishonest tergiversation remains a ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... at stake Fighting like devils for conciliation Finish in sorrow what you have begun in folly Gardez vous des femmes, and more especially if they be Irish Green silk, "a little off the grass, and on the bottle" Had a most remarkable talent for selecting a son-in-law Had to hear the "proud man's contumely" Half pleased and whole frightened with the labour before him Has but one fault, but that fault is a grand one Hating each other for the love of God He first butthers them up, and then slithers them down He was very much disguised in drink How ingenious is self-deception ...
— Quotes and Images From The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer • Charles James Lever
... against them. Zeno wrangled. Why need I mention Albutius? Nothing could be more elegant or humane than Phaedrus; yet a sharp expression would disgust the old man. Epicurus treated Aristotle with great contumely. He foully slandered Phaedo, the disciple of Socrates. He pelted Timocrates, the brother of his companion Metrodorus, with whole volumes, because he disagreed with him in some trifling point of philosophy. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... birthday, stood two men who typified the future and the past. As at Donelson, a trick of Fortune's had delivered one comrade of old into the hands of another. Now she chose to kiss the one upon whom she had heaped obscurity and poverty and contumely. He had ceased to think or care about Fortune. And hence, being born a woman, she ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and decorations. Moreover, Bertheroy, with his position as an official savant and member of the Institute, showed some courage in thus venturing to call on one whom so-called respectable folks regarded with contumely. And on this occasion, Guillaume at once understood that it was some feeling of curiosity that had brought him. And so he was greatly embarrassed, for he hardly dared to remove the papers and plans which were lying on ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... contumely, Cold inhumanity, Burning insanity, Into her rest,— Cross her hands humbly, As if praying dumbly, Over her breast! Owning her weakness, Her evil behavior, And leaving, with meekness, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... it is a point of honor for the successive classes to treat each other with contumely. The feud between freshman and sophomore goes on automatically. Only when one has become a senior may he, without losing caste, recognize a freshman as a youth of promise, and admit that a sophomore is not half bad. Such disinterested criticism is tolerated because it is evidently the ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... Barbarossa, a great man of action if one ever lived, we find no trace of devoted adherents on that high plane of command we have indicated in the cases cited above. That he had devoted followers enough is absolutely certain, but of high officers we very seldom find a trace, and these he treated with contumely and offence on many occasions; witness the treatment meted out to Hassan and to Venalcadi. There is practically no trace of his domestic life to be found, we cannot discover that he possessed any intimate friend. There ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... him fiercely, and could he have found a single face that expressed contumely, he would have been prompt to quarrel with its owner; but meeting everywhere with looks of sobriety, and occasionally of commiseration, he very deliberately seated himself by the side of the hunter, and, placing his legs in the two vacant holes of ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... seven more to read. CHAPLIN began to wish GOSCHEN or OLD MORALITY would go and fetch him glass of water. Cries from crowd grew louder. At last CHAPLIN, looking up, beheld, through astonished glasses, Opposition indulging in roar of contumely. Wouldn't have taken him more than quarter of an hour or twenty minutes to finish his few remarks, and yet a lot of miserable Members who didn't know a fox from a hare wouldn't let him go on! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... Edinburgh, his "irascible humour" never went so far as this, "the contumely of condescension" must have entered pretty deeply into the soul of the proud peasant when he made the following memorable entry in his diary, on the 9th April, 1787. After some remarks on the difficulty of true friendship, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... occurred what is here termed "Judas Iscariot Day," when the concentrated vengeance of the Christian world is supposed to be visited upon the vile betrayer of his Master. The whole object of the occasion is to heap contumely, derision, and dishonor upon the name of Judas. Extensive preparations are made a week or more before the special day. The town presented an appearance similar to the Fourth of July in the United States. The streets were full of temporary booths, and ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... to raise his spirits. My mother's advice coincided with my own feelings. I allowed the count a secret interview, and he had permission to ask my father for my hand. He did so in fear and trembling. He was dismissed with scorn and contumely. My mother and I then used all our influence to turn my father, and—I was married to Count ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... me into her good graces again. Since my doings offended Amphitryon, and this love affair of mine lately occasioned his guiltless self some consternation, it is turn about now, and my guiltless self has to suffer for the scorn and contumely ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... all is mystery, mystery, mystery; we know not whence we came, nor why; we know not whither we go, nor why we go. We only know we were not made in vain, we only know we were made for a wise purpose, and that all is well! We shall not be cast aside in contumely and unblest after all we have suffered. Let us be patient, let us not repine, let us trust. The humblest of us is cared for—oh, believe it!—and this fleeting ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... George Cruikshank belongs in any way to the species known as "Fossil Tories." He is rather a fossil Liberal. He was a Whig Radical, and more, when the slightest suspicion of Radicalism exposed an Englishman to contumely, to obloquy, to poverty, to fines, to stripes, to gyves, and to the jail. He was quite as advanced a politician as William Cobbett, and a great deal honester as a man. He was the fast friend of William ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... court, and the validity of the disputed laws was sustained by its judgment. The signal spectacle of the court, which had judged over Congress and the Secretary, now judging over itself, gave rise to much satire on one side and the other, and to some coarseness of contumely as to the motives and the means of these eventful mutations in matters, where stability and uniformity are, confessedly, of the highest value to the public interests, and to the dignity ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts
... the minds of those for whom they were intended. When they distributed tracts, dropping them by night into good men's letter boxes while they were asleep, their tracts got burnt, or met with even worse contumely; they were themselves also treated with the ridicule which they reflected proudly had been the lot of true followers of Christ in all ages. Often at their prayer meetings was the passage of St Paul referred ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... bitterness, of the "peril to safety and honour" from her behaviour. If she had indeed contemplated the surrender of the cities to Parma, that plan was frustrated. Still she stormed at Burghley and Walsingham, flatly and with contumely refused to ratify Leicester's arrangement, and continued to keep back the pay of the troops. Parma, though he too was starved in men and money by Philip, continued inch by inch to absorb the revolted territory. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... alive in front of his house'; and he could deal no less drastically with hypocrisy. When a professional beggar fell on his knees at the Rectory gate and pretended to pray, he was at once ejected by the Rector with every mark of indignation and contumely. But the weak and suffering always made a special appeal to him. Though it was easy to vex and exasperate him, he could always put away his own troubles in presence of his own children or of any who needed his help. He had that intense ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... governor-general himself be able to stand fast? Had not a man better temporize a while, and see what Ex-Governor-general Casa Calvo and Trudeau were going to do? Would not men who sacrificed old prejudices, braved the popular contumely, and came forward and gave in their allegiance to the President's appointee, have to take the chances of losing their official positions at last? Men like Camille Brahmin, for instance, or Charlie Mandarin: suppose Spain or France ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... where his strength lay, had managed to get a party to support him. The contract to hunt the country had been made with him in last March, and was good for one year. Having the kennels and the hounds under his command he did hunt the country; but he did so amidst a storm of contumely ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... of the country are to be found that race of persons known to the original natives as Gavaches: the word is one of contempt, taken from the Spanish; and the habit of treating these people with contumely, which is not even yet entirely worn out, comes from an early time: that is to say, so long ago as 1526; at which period a great part of the population on the banks of the Drot, and round La Reole and Marmande, was carried off by an epidemic; so that the country was completely desolate; and ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... be received in audience by the Emperor. On this occasion the Socialists forbade their representative to go, and the Emperor, therefore, refused to receive any of them. As usual, they played into his hands. Hans bleibt immer Hans, and on this occasion his vulgar hack of good manners only brought contumely upon the whole Reichstag, and left the Emperor as the outstanding dignified figure in the controversy. Such behavior is not calculated to invite confidence, and not likely to induce this enemy-surrounded nation to put its destinies in such hands, not at any rate ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Henry III., a refugee at Bordeaux, deserted by the English and plundered by the Gascons. "Hold! hold! said Louis; "turn him not into ridicule, and make me not hated of him by reason of your banter; his charities and his piety shall exempt him from all contumely." The Count of La Marche lost no time in asking for peace; and Louis granted it with the firmness of a far-seeing politician and the sympathetic feeling of a Christian. He required that the domains he had just wrested ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... lords of Germany, while the German princes vied with each other in acts of servility and submission to the arrogant Frenchmen. And it was the apathy of the average German, as Hoelderlin conceived it, toward these and other national indignities, that caused him to put such bitter words of contumely into the mouth of Hyperion: "Barbaren von Alters her, durch Fleiss und Wissenschaft und selbst durch Religion barbarischer geworden, tief unfaehig jedes goettlichen Gefuehls—beleidigend fuer jede gut geartete Seele, dumpf und harmonielos, wie die Scherben ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... me to believe you?' Widdowson cried with savage contumely. He had just loosed his hold of her, and she was upright again before him, her eyes flashing defiance, though every muscle in her frame quivered. 'When did your lies begin? Was it when you told me you had been ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... "charity-boys" were gone, as in contumely we called them—"If you break my bag on my head," said one, "how will feed thence to-morrow?"—and after old Cop with clang of iron had jammed the double gates in under the scruff-stone archway, whereupon are Latin verses, done in brass of small quality, some of us who were not hungry, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there 's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... is no malice to resist a more conciliatory mode of settlement, and where it is difficult to imagine any deliberate insult except such as is palliated by intoxication—conceding this, I have yet supposed it possible that cases may arise, with circumstances of contumely and outrage, growing out of deep inexorable malice, which cannot be redressed, as things now are, without an appeal to the voye de fait. 'But this is so barbarous an expedient in days of high civilisation.' Why, yes, it labours with ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... type occurs in Monsieur Beaucaire, where the supposed hairdresser is on the point of being ejected with contumely from the pump-room at Bath, when the French Ambassador enters, drops on his knee, kisses the young man's hand, and presents him to the astounded company as the Duc d'Orleans, Comte de Valois, and I know not what ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... would not be complete without your contumely," sobbed Rudolf. "I came here so cheerful and ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... and mine are the same,—as should be hers. We must forget ourselves while we save the family. Do not I bear all? Have not I borne everything—contumely, solitude, ill words, poverty, and now this girl's unkindness? But even yet I will not give it up. Take the property,—as ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... it to the Negro all that sensitiveness which is accorded to refined people wherever found, and naturally he recoils from rebuffs, insults, and contumely, and holds himself aloof more and more only as business demands contact. He has no growing reason to revere the whites as a mass, and if nations are proverbially ungrateful, what more can be expected of individuals, no matter how much fine theorizing ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... not dare get up and say that it was not to be permanent. Later in the day, having received instructions from the Chancellor, he did get up and say so. The next day Brougham introduced the subject in the House of Lords, and attacked Sugden with all the sarcasm and contumely which he could heap upon him, comparing him to 'a crawling reptile,' &c. Not one of his Tory friends said a word, and, what is curious, the Duke of Wellington praised Brougham for his disinterestedness, and old Eldon defended the place. The following day ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... nor can we so describe her. She was most unfortunate, but not innately vicious; we may say so without danger to others. Neither the circumstances of her life or death hold out temptations to follow her example. She endured vexation and contumely enough, during the most brilliant period of her life, to embitter even a less sensitive spirit than hers. The deep and earnest love she bore the worthless king, must have been a sore scourge to her own heart. The very piety of her nature, overcome as it was by circumstances, and the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... she cried, "how can you thus shame me? You must know with what unmerited scorn and contumely Reuben was treated by poor mother when it was we who were rich and they who were (in her belief, at least) poor. She would scarce let him cross the threshold of our house. I have tingled with shame at the ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... intellect and profane the Hebrew religion to conceive Samson as anything but the man that the Bible says he was; while to make of him, as Ignaz Golziher suggests, a symbol of the setting sun whose curly locks (crines Phoebi) are sheared by Delilah-Night, would bring contumely upon one of the most beautiful and impressive of Nature's spectacles. Before the days of comparative mythology scholars were not troubled by such interpretations. Josephus disposes of the Delilah episode curtly: "As for Samson being ensnared by a woman, that is to be ascribed ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the other, resuming his seat by the table and wiping the cards which had been splashed by the wine.' Had the comparison been made by an officer of Louis's guard for the purpose of contumely and braggadocio, it would then indeed have become us to venture a passado. But when spoken by an Englishman of ripe experience it becomes a matter of instructive criticism, which should ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... laziness, his excesses, his lies, his deceptions, his bad faith, his truculence, his improvidence, his shameful waste and ruin of his life and hers. She doubted whether he realized his baseness and her wrongs, but if he could not read them in her silent contumely, she was too proud to recite them to him. She had never complained, save ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... evacuation by our doomed people of the cantonments wherein for two months they had undergone every extremity of humiliation and contumely, was begun on the dreary winter morning of January 6th, 1842. Snow lay deep on plain and hill-side; the cruel cold, penetrating through the warmest clothing, bit fiercely into the debilitated and thinly clad frames of the sepoys and the great horde of camp followers. ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... go to see How it is with dear Jesus: It were a pity on a good man So much contumely to be cast. If he were a bad man, his fellow Could not in any way Truly have such great grace, To ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous |
