"Depreciatory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sterne, beyond question, prided himself more highly than upon any other of his gifts. He preferred, we can plainly see, to think of himself, not as the great humourist, but as the great sentimentalist; and though the word "sentiment" had something even in his day of the depreciatory meaning which distinguishes it nowadays from "pathos," there can be little doubt that the thing appeared to Sterne to be, on the whole, and both in life and literature, ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... further it by such a notice, written with that observable and characteristic duplicity, that to poor gross stupid Powell it shall look like an admiring 'Oh, fie—so clever but so wicked'!—a kind of D'Orsay's praise—while to the rest of his readers, a few depreciatory epithets—slight sneers convey his real sentiments, he trusts! And this he does, just because Powell buys an article of him once a quarter and would expect notice. I think I hear Chorley—'You know, I cannot praise such a book—it is too bad'—as if, as if—oh, it makes one sicker than having ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... old Wardle's remark? Most significant of Trundle's status. "Don't be frightened," he said, "it's only Trundle there and Bella." "Only Trundle there," i.e., only that poor insignificant thing there! No more depreciatory words could be chosen, or put into the mouth of an honest country gentleman. I am certain that old Wardle gave his child reluctantly to this soft sort of fellow—"Only Trundle there!" Then for the ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... of the Italians in the sphere of the natural sciences, we must refer the reader to the special treatises on the subject, of which the only one with which we are familiar is the superficial and depreciatory work of Libri. The dispute as to the priority of particular discoveries concerns us all the less, since we hold that, at any time, and among any civilized people, a man may appear who, starting with very scanty preparation, is ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... abasement of mind with which the men of that day accepted the foreign estimate upon works written here, which had been read by themselves, but which it was clear had not been read by the critics whose opinions they echoed. Even the meekness with which they submitted to the most depreciatory estimate of themselves was outdone by the anxiety with which they hurried to assure the world that they, the most cultivated of the American race, did not presume to have so high an opinion of the writings of some one of their ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... in the people and the things one likes. You like a person; and he is good. That seems the whole case. You do not go into exceptions and reservations. I remember how indignant I felt, as a boy, at reading some depreciatory criticism of the "Waverley Novels." The criticism was to the effect that the plots generally dragged at first, and were huddled up at the end. But to me the novels were enchaining, enthralling; and to hint a defect in them stunned one. In the boy's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... one of several of Boswell's depreciatory mentions of Goldsmith—which may well irritate biographers and admirers—and also those who take that more kindly and more profound view of Boswell's own character, which was opened up by Mr. Carlyle's famous article on his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rash utterances in which the Bishop of Durham indulges throughout these volumes; for assuredly it is the very extravagance of folly to tax Jerome with "extreme ignorance of early Christian literature." Those who are acquainted with his writings will decline to subscribe any such depreciatory certificate. He was undoubtedly bigoted and narrow-minded, but he had a most capacious memory; he had travelled in various countries; he had gathered a prodigious stock of information; he was the best Christian scholar ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... of those all-engrossing persons to whom any other man's success seems a personal loss, if not downright robbery, felt a jealous pang. With his eyes on his plate he took advantage of his position by the hostess to murmur some depreciatory remarks upon the pretty young fellow, unfortunately so much disfigured by his mother's nose. He made merry over his duel, his wound, and his reputation in the fencing-room, the kind of bubble which bursts at the first prick of a real sword. ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... that grudging, depreciatory tone of voice which, for some inexplicable reason, so many Englishmen use when speaking of their own property; "she is not bad, for her size. But a knot or two more would be welcome, just now; for we are late ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... brokers") are the two lowest rungs of the ladder. Now, the bailiff's man is an outsider, an adventitious minister of justice, appearing to see that judgment is executed; he is, in fact, a kind of inferior executioner employed by the county court. But the word "lawyer" (homme de loi) is a depreciatory term applied to the legal profession. Consuming professional jealousy finds similar disparaging epithets for fellow-travelers in every walk of life, and every calling has its special insult. The ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... to the question. But it became a nestling centre for the skiey flock of dreams, and for really temperate soundings of her capacities, tending to the depreciatory. She could do little. She entertained the wish to work, not only 'for the sake of Somebody,' as her favourite poet sang, but for the sake of working and serving—proving that she was helpfuller than a Countess of Ormont, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Dutton explored the country at the back of Fowler's Bay. Forty miles to the north they saw treeless, grassy plains stretching far inland, but could find no permanent water. Warburton afterwards reported in depreciatory terms of this region; but Delisser and Hardwicke, who also visited it, stated that it would make first-class pastoral country if only surface water could be obtained. During the whole of Warburton's career, his judgment of the pastoral value ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... cheeks are oftentimes bedew'd.' Of the narrative poems of his friend, well executed as he considered them, and of the mainly external action of imagination or fancy in which they deal, I have certainly heard him pronounce a very depreciatory opinion; whether I ever heard him use the hard words attributed to him, 'I would not give five shillings for a ream of them,' I cannot now assert, but if used, they were said in reference to the nobler ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... thoughtful part of mankind, the only intelligible clue to the several books of Holy Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation! Hence "the marginal references to the English Bible," (to which Mr. Jowett devotes a depreciatory half page,) so far from being the dangerous or useless apparatus which he represents, we hold to be an instrument of paramount importance for eliciting the true meaning of Holy Writ.—In a word, he is reasoning about the Bible on the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... interposed with a parenthesis of his own depreciatory of the Spaniards, whom he loathed and despised. He had fought against them in the war of 1839-1860, and the Shereef had also headed his countrymen, and had shown great courage and coolness in action. ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... depreciatory talk had opened ampler vistas, and the pioneer blood in Undine would not let her rest. She had heard the call of the Atlantic seaboard, and the next summer found the Spraggs at Skog Harbour, Maine. Even now Undine felt a ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... "immoral." When, therefore, the ethnographers apply condemnatory or depreciatory adjectives to the people whom they study, they beg the most important question which we want to investigate; that is, What are standards, codes, and ideas of chastity, decency, propriety, modesty, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... drawing-room floor owed some of their most fortunate inspirations in sight-seeing to the suggestions of the landlord, whose apartments I would in no wise leave to depreciatory conjecture. There was, indeed, always a jagged wound in the entry wall made by some envious trunk; but there was nothing of the frowziness, the shabbiness of many of those houses in the streets neighboring Mayfair where many ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... whisperings, however, non-committal, and so worded that a triumphantly blazoned "I told you so!" or a depreciatory and horrified: "You misunderstood me, dear," hung upon the pending verdict of ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... with having two voices, like Caliban's monster. Lord CURZON flatly declined to accept the suggestion that Cabinet Ministers were collectively responsible for one another's speeches—"they had far more serious things to think of." The phrase seems a little depreciatory, but as Mr. LLOYD GEORGE, according to his candid colleague, is "constitutionally an optimist" he will no doubt make the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... intercourse with their mother earth. Mr. Thornburgh, who had come to the valley only a few years before from a parish in one of the large manufacturing towns, and who had no inherited interest in the Cumbrian folk and their ways, had only a very faint idea, and that a distinctly depreciatory one, of what these mythical predecessors of his, with their strange social status and unbecoming occupations, might be like. But there were one or two old men still lingering in the dale who could have told him a great deal about them, whose memory went back to the days ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fascinating qualities which we have been spoiled into expecting by some recent English and French examples of historical composition, we can give him the praise of being fair-minded, sensible, and clear. If he anywhere shows prejudice, it is in his somewhat depreciatory estimate of the Normans, whom he rather gratuitously supposes to have acquired civilization and the love of art from the Saxons,—a supposition at war with probability as well as fact. If anything distinguished the Norman from the Saxon, it was his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... emulate...He often alluded to it as a valued discipline, and added that even the 'hateful' work of digging out synonyms, and of describing, not only improved his methods but opened his eyes to the difficulties and merits of the works of the dullest of cataloguers. One result was that he would never allow a depreciatory remark to pass unchallenged on the poorest class of scientific workers, provided that their work was honest, and good of its kind. I have always regarded it as one of the finest traits of his character,—this generous appreciation of the hod-men ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin |
