"Decry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mentioned by Mrs. Sheridan in a letter dated, Blois, Nov. 16, 1743, according to the Garrick Corres, i. 17, but the date is wrongly given, as the Sheridans went to Blois in 1764: 'I have heard Johnson decry some of the prettiest pieces of writing we have in English; yet Johnson is an honourable man—that is to say, he is a good critic, and in other respects a man ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... are to material forms, As mists to the copious shower As dead calms are to tornado storms That in tropical region lower So are educational fallacies That ignore and decry as naught The value and power that ever lie In ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... and publish'd a theory of electricity, which then had the general vogue. He could not at first believe that such a work came from America, and said it must have been fabricated by his enemies at Paris, to decry his system. Afterwards, having been assur'd that there really existed such a person as Franklin at Philadelphia, which he had doubted, he wrote and published a volume of Letters, chiefly address'd to me, defending ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... presentation does from a naturalist of acknowledged character and ability and marked by a conscientiousness and candor which have not always been reciprocated we have thought it simply right to set forth the doctrine as fairly and as favorably as we could There are plenty to decry it and the whole theory is widely exposed to attack For the arguments on the other side we may look to the numerous adverse publications which Darwin s volume has already called out and especially to those reviews which propose directly to refute it. Taking various lines and reflecting ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... electricity has again come forward as a curative agent in the last ten years. Instruction in its management in disease is included in the curriculum of almost every medical school, and most physicians now own an outfit, more or less extensive, for use in ordinary practice. To decry and utterly condemn is no longer the custom of the steady-going physician, the ethics of whose cloth had been for centuries to condemn all that interfered with the use of drugs, and everything whose action could not be understood by the examples of common experience, ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... have existed, and still do exist, in a service which an honour to its country; for what institution is there on earth that is perfect, or into which, if it once was perfect, abuses will not creep? Unfortunately, others have written to decry the service, and many have raised up their voices against our writings, because they felt that, in exposing error, we were exposing them. But to this we have been indifferent; we felt that we were doing good, and we have continued. To ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... absolutely preached submission to Napoleon! The Whigs, I hear, were the Liberals of those days. The two Pitts were Tories. The greatness of England has been built up by the Tories. I do and will defend them: it is the fashion to decry them now. They have the honour and safety of the country at heart. They do not play disgracefully at reductions of taxes, as the Liberals do. They have given us all our heroes. Non fu mai gloria senza ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tortures in hell, nor was I stirred by her scorn of the stiff siege-pictures, with van der Werf offering his arm as food for the starving people, rather than surrender to the Spaniards. In spite of her distaste for the painting, however, she would not hear me decry van der Werf in favor of an obscure engineer, lately discovered as the true hero of the siege. Van der Werf should not be snatched from her by a man she chose to detest, so she argued and abused my treachery during the whole ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... principle of action and reaction brings man by degrees towards that point of comparative excellence for which God seems to have intended him. The mind of a Milton or a Shakespeare is surely not in a more unnatural condition than that of an ignorant rustic. We ought not then to decry refinement nor deem all connection of art with nature an offensive incongruity. A noble mansion in a spacious and well kept park is an object which even an observer who has no share himself in the property may look upon with pleasure. It makes him proud of his race.[116] ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... utterly useless for me to decry or ridicule his superstitions; and there was but one way to ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... predicted to me, that I should be raised to a higher fortune than my most sanguine hopes could lead me to expect." "If nothing have been foretold you but this," replied the Queen-Dauphin, smiling, and thinking of the affair of England, "I would not advise you to decry astrology; you may have reasons hereafter to offer in defence of it." Madam de Cleves apprehended the Queen-Dauphin's meaning, but knew withal, that the fortune the Duke of Nemours spoke of was not that of being ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... worked on the letter while Red Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. "I ain't attempting," says he, "to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... those magnificent gardens, modelled from the stately glories of Versailles, which it is now the mode to decry, but which breathe so unequivocally of the Palace. I grant that they deck Nature with somewhat too prolix a grace; but is beauty always best seen in deshabille? And with what associations of the brightest traditions connected with ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sums: And when he brought me his first attempt, behold, it was so. He could not construct a simple sentence, let alone putting two sentences together; while, as for a paragraph, it lay beyond his farthest horizon. In short, here was an instance ready to hand for any cheap writer engaged to decry the ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... deny God, but to discover Him anew, by freeing Him from the drift of error, superstition and dead-letterism which the centuries had accumulated about Him. Far was it from His servant's mind to wish to decry the authority of the Book of Books. This he believed to consist, in great part, of inspired utterances, and, for the rest, to be the wisest and ripest collection of moral precept and example that had come down to us from the ages. Without ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the fashion among the enemies of the new delusion to decry Mesmer as an unprincipled adventurer, while his disciples have extolled him to the skies as a regenerator of the human race. In nearly the same words, as the Rosicrucians applied to their founders, he has been called the discoverer of the secret ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... taken upon themselves a part, which seemed destined to the ministers of Religion. The hatred of the latter for philosophy was only a jealousy of trade. But, instead of endeavouring to injure and decry each other, all men of good sense should unite their efforts to combat error, seek truth, and especially to put to flight the prejudices, that are equally injurious to sovereigns and subjects, and of which the abettors themselves sooner ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... friends of the iron highway. Newspapers acrimoniously championed either side; the question was a favorite topic with debating societies; public meetings and conventions were held to uphold one method of transportation and to decry the other. The canal, it was urged, was not an experiment; it had been tested and not found wanting; already the great achievement of De Witt Clinton in completing the Erie Canal had made New York ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... and he would be singled out by wags, acquainted with his foibles, and more successful than himself in maintaining their incognito, as a capital subject to be played upon. Some, pretending not to know him, would decry his writings, and praise those of his contemporaries; others would laud his verses to the skies, but purposely misquote and burlesque them; others would annoy him with parodies; while one young lady, whom he was teasing, as he supposed, with great success and infinite humor, silenced ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... exertions he was so much exhausted as almost to faint. Nothing saved him, probably, but a sip of the wine which he took from the glass as it stood on the table. It has been much the fashion, of late years, to decry wine, and this because it is a gift of Providence that has been greatly abused. In Mark Woolston's instance it proved, what it was designed to be, a blessing instead of a curse. That single sip of wine produced an effect on him like that of magic. It enabled him soon to obtain ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... that, in his opinion, "the tragedy has lost half its beauty." Dennis has remarked, whether justly or not, that, to secure the favourable reception of Cato, "the town was poisoned with much false and abominable criticism," and that endeavours had been used to discredit and decry poetical justice. A play in which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miscarry, may doubtless be good, because it is a just representation of the common events of human life: but since all reasonable beings naturally love justice, I cannot easily be persuaded, that the observation of justice makes ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... learned half so much from all I ever read. There is )s much wit as useful knowledge. He is said to have hurt his reputation by it in France, which I can conceive, for it is almost the interest of every body there that can understand it to decry it. The other, far inferior, but entertaining,, is Hainault's "Abrege Chronologique de l'Histoire de France." It is very amusing, though very full of Frenchisms; and though an abridgment, often so minute ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... privations, continued to preach. In theology, modern philosophy, and all the sciences connected with his profession he was deeply read. For classic literature, which it is so common for the superficial to decry, he was a great advocate, and to evince his sincerity retained his knowledge of the dead languages as long as he lived. In his discourses he was neither an extempore preacher, nor did he read. He wrote out his sermons correctly, and then committing ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... ascending day-star with a bolder eye Hath lit each dew-drop on our trimmer lawn! Yet not for this, if wise, will we decry The spots and struggles of the timid Dawn; Lest so we tempt the approaching Noon to scorn The mists and painted ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... bounds of purely scientific circles, the "species question" divides with Italy and the Volunteers the attention of general society. Everybody has read Mr. Darwin's book, or, at least, has given an opinion upon its merits or demerits; pietists, whether lay or ecclesiastic, decry it with the mild railing which sounds so charitable; bigots denounce it with ignorant invective; old ladies of both sexes consider it a decidedly dangerous book, and even savants, who have no better mud to throw, quote antiquated writers to show that its ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... never without some dew on the threshing-floor—if we examine it in France, for instance, between Racine and Andre Chenier, we are obliged to recognise that it was very rarely both genuine and appropriate. The Romantic Revival, which we are beginning ungratefully to decry, did at least restore to poetry the sense of a genuine stateliness of expression, which once more gave it the requisite dignity, and made it a vehicle for the vital and the noble ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... is as well attested as any fact in psychology. Those who decry eugenics on the ground that it is impossible to establish any "standard of perfection," since society needs many diverse kinds of people, are overlooking this fact. Any plan which increases the production of children in able families of various types will thereby produce more ability ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... and the other accepting it. For the dry bones of commerce, avarice and method and need, are odious to the Valley; and we cover them up with a pretty body of fiction and observances. Thus, when it comes to buying pigs, the buyer does not begin to decry the pig and the vendor to praise it, as is the custom with lesser men; but tradition makes them ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... mid burn the wold bass-viol that I set such vallie by." Squire.—"You may hold the manse in fee, You may wed my spouse, my children's memory of me may decry." ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... which is required to it. My conversation is slow and dull; my humour saturnine and reserved: In short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company, or make repartees. So that those, who decry my comedies, do me no injury, except it be in point of profit: reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall pretend. I beg pardon for entertaining the reader with so ill a subject; but before I quit that argument, which ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... attempt to reflect on the staying powers of the race, I have not the remotest idea of pandering to conceit or vanity, to the contrary, I decry any disposition to extol and magnify whatever we are subjectively, and whatever we have achieved. The fierce conflicts we have undergone and the terrible crucible through which the cruel hand of fate promises to pass us, dispel ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... the weight of guns must depend as much on the strength and build of a man as a ship's armament does upon her tonnage; but let no man speak against heavy metal for heavy game, and let no man decry rifles and uphold smooth-bores (which is very general), but rather let him say, "I cannot carry a heavy gun," and "I cannot ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... for months—is there one can deny it? Is there any one here thinks rebellion a sin? We counted the cost—and we did not decry it, And we asked for no more than ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... fools aspiring to be knaves! The wit of cheats, the courage of a whore, Are what ten thousand envy and adore; All, all look up, with reverential awe, At crimes that 'scape, or triumph o'er the law; While truth, worth, wisdom, daily they decry— "Nothing is sacred now but villainy ". Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain) Show, there was one who held it ...
— English Satires • Various
... original text of Shakespeare were left unaltered for every English reader to understand. The numerous fry of commentators will at last explain his original meaning away."(22) This criticism was out of date by the time of Johnson and Capell. As it has long been the fashion to decry Johnson's edition, it is well to recall two statements in his Preface, which show that he had already discovered what later editors have ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... of intense bitterness, "that you, too, who six months ago seemed as reasonable a man as I ever met, have joined in the chorus of denunciators. It has become the fashion to-day, thanks to your socialists, reformers, and agitators, to decry a man because he is rich, to take it for granted that he is a thief and a scoundrel, that he has no sense of responsibility for his country and his fellow-men. The glory, the true democracy of this nation, lies in its equal opportunity for all. They take no account of that, of the fact that each ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Health Education: A Critique." A feature by Ernest Havemann in the August 8, 1960 issue of Life contains a very worthwhile article on this conference called "Who's Normal? Nobody, But We All Keep On Trying. In Dissent From 'Mental Health' Approach, Experts Decry Futile Search For An Unreal Goal." The following paragraph is taken from the ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... Koraned, For he's seized the idea (by his martyrdom fired) That all men (not orthodox) may be inspired; Yet though wisdom profane with his creed he may weave in, He makes it quite clear what he doesn't believe in, 791 While some, who decry him, think all Kingdom Come Is a sort of a, kind of a, species of Hum, Of which, as it were, so to speak, not a crumb Would be left, if we didn't keep carefully mum, And, to make a clean breast, that 'tis perfectly plain That all ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... among those who decry the Greek and Latin classics. We think it a glorious privilege to read both those grand old tongues, and that an intelligent, cultivated man who is shut out from the converse of the splendid minds of those olden times loses a part of his birthright; and therefore ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Gulliver in Lilliput! Ludicrous Nature! which at once could show A man so very high, so very low! 520 If I forget thee, Blakes, or if I say Aught hurtful, may I never see thee play. Let critics, with a supercilious air, Decry thy various merit, and declare Frenchman is still at top; but scorn that rage Which, in attacking thee, attacks the age. French follies, universally embraced, At once provoke our mirth, and form our taste. Long, from a nation ever hardly used, At random censured, wantonly ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... to be the prerogative of some self-made men not only to boast of themselves, their wives, their sons, their daughters, their houses, their horses—everything!—but to decry all methods of achievement not their own, and all successes not won by their methods. These are the self-made men who bring into disrepute all the grandeur and glorious achievement of their kind. Why must they spoil it? I implore them to assume a virtue ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... and the fish the doctor had borne the brunt of the table-talk, joking the guest on his humiliating descent from Mereside and the luxuries to a country doctor's table, and laughing at Griswold's half-hearted attempts to decry the luxuries. What word or phrase or trick of speech it was that served to stir the sleeping memories, Griswold could not guess; but it became suddenly apparent that the memories were stirring. In the midst of a half-uttered direction to the serving-maid, ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... standing, pursuit of knowledge, means of amusement, everything is taken from them. What is left? Only the consolation which their sacred religion brings. The observance of the thousand ceremonials which you decry, is to them not only a religious necessity, a God-pleasing work; it is more, it is a source of domestic happiness, a means of genuine enjoyment, a comfort and a solace. Whether these observances are needed or are superfluous in a free country like America I shall not presume ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... in less exclusive fashion, the intimate friend and adviser of Esprit, d'Andilly, and La Rochefoucauld. The letters of these men show clearly their warm regard as well as the value they attached to her opinions. "Indeed," wrote Voiture to her many years before, "those who decry you on the side of tenderness must confess that if you are not the most loving person in the world, you are at least the most obliging. True friendship knows no more sweetness than there is in your words." Her character, so delicately shaded and so averse to all violent passions, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... that which is difficult to understand is much admired by the simple-minded, who also decry pictures that tell their own story! A certain class of minds enjoy being mystified, and in consequence writers, painters, and musicians have appeared who are willing to juggle for their amusement. The simple definition given to us by the Russian writer comes like a ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... Provincial Service or by direct recruitment in India. The latter class of officers, after completing their education in India, should ordinarily go to Europe with a view to widening their experience. By this he did not wish to decry the training given in the Indian Universities, which produce some of the very best men, and he would not make the rule absolute. It was not necessary for men of exceptional ability to go to England in order to occupy a high chair. ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... quacks, never by physicians of good standing. It is purely a money-making enterprise, without consideration of the health or destruction of the people. It is popularly supposed that physicians decry these things from fear that their sale will injure regular practice. This is another error as they increase work for the doctor by aggravating existing trouble, as well as causing disease where there was ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... either never seriously consider'd, that the were thereby endeavouring to destroy their own Happiness, and overthrow her Majesty's Title to the Crown: or (if they knew what they did) presumed upon the Lenity of that Government they decry'd; which (were there no better Reason) ought to have recommended it to their Approbation, since it could patiently bear with such, as were doing all ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... how much I differ in this opinion from some ancient fathers in the Church, who arguing against the heathens, made it a principal topic to decry their philosophy as much as they could: which, I hope, is not altogether our present case. Besides, it is to be considered, that those fathers lived in the decline of literature; and in my judgment (who should be unwilling to give the least offence) appear to be rather ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... examine it in its influence on his political and social state. Though, being foreigners to us, you are in no wise entitled to interfere with the civil institutions of this country, it has become quite common for your countrymen to decry slavery as an enormous political evil to us, and even to declare that our Northern States ought to withdraw from the Confedracy rather than continue to be contaminated by it. The American abolitionists appear to concur ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... winter he had really lost his heart, or thought he had, and was repulsed. At least, in his "Dialogue on Love," written five years later, he says, "I, too, was once in love," and proceeds, after a few lines, to decry the sentiment as harmful to mankind, a something from which God would do well to emancipate it. This may have referred to his first meeting and conversation with a courtesan at Paris, which he describes in one of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... clouds floating up gladly through the blue air. Why, then, should he look askance at my book, which is no more than memories of my spring days? If the thing itself cannot be suppressed, why is it worth while to interfere with the recollection? What strange twist in his mind leads him to decry in art what he accepts in nature? A strange twist indeed, one which may be described as a sort of inverted sexuality, finding its pleasure not in the spring day, but in odd corners of ancient literature read only for the sake of passages which he declares to be disgusting, and in spying on modern ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... a too impatient view of the Art of our own time, since we can neither see the ends toward which it is almost blindly groping, nor the few perfected creations that will be left standing amidst the rubble of abortive effort. An age must always decry itself and extol its forbears. The unwritten history of every Art will show us that. Consider the novel—that most recent form of Art! Did not the age which followed Fielding lament the treachery of authors to the Picaresque tradition, complaining that they were ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ever partial to society, Nick, with a friend (another jovial fellow), Went to a Club—I should have said Society— At the "City Arms," once call'd the "Porto Bello" A Spouting party, which, though some decry it, I Consider no bad lounge when one is mellow; There they discuss the tax on salt, and leather, And change of ministers and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... few are observed to be happy, is a token of its price and value. If well formed and rightly taken, 'tis the best of all human societies; we cannot live without it, and yet we do nothing but decry it. It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out. Socrates being asked, whether it was more commodious to take a wife or not, "Let a man take which course he will," ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the sober shake the head, And drink water, boys, instead, And the foolish all strong liquors do decry; Yet the foaming glass for me, May we never, never see A friend ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... it!" interrupted Theos swiftly and with passion—"I am aware that so-called 'wise' men, rooted in narrow prejudice, with a smattering of even narrower logic, presume, out of their immeasurable littleness, to decry and make mock of the truly great, who, thanks to God's unpurchasable gift of inspiration, can do without the study of books or the teaching of pedants,—who flare through the world flame-winged and full of song, like angels passing heavenward,—and whose voices, rich with ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... an irruption of life from another world, who belong to another order, who bring other standards, and sow the seed of new and larger types; who are not the organs of the culture or modes of their time, and whom their times for the most part decry and disown,—the primal, original, elemental men. It is here, in my opinion, that we must place Whitman; not among the minstrels and edifiers of his age, but among its prophets and saviors. He is nearer the sources ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... think that our own tendency in England to reverence, our constant appeal to classical standards, is an obstacle to our intellectual and artistic progress. We are like elderly writers who tend to repeat their own beloved mannerisms, and who contemn and decry the work of younger men, despairing of the future. A nation may reach a point, like an ancient and noble dynasty of princes, where it is overshadowed and overweighted by its own past glories, and where ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... certain than that every man would be a wit if he could; and notwithstanding pedants of pretended depth and solidity are apt to decry the writings of a polite author, as flash and froth, they all of them show, upon occasion, that they would spare no pains to arrive at the character of those whom they seem to despise. For this reason we ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... of our own coin; otherwise the consent of parliament will be necessary. There is at present no such legitimated money; Portugal coin being only current by private consent, so that any one who pleases may refuse to take it in payment. The king may also at any time decry, or cry down, any coin of the kingdom, and ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... of parents, which might have been dispersed by half an hour's conversation during their lives, becomes sublimated by their deaths into a fiat the most absolute, with such results to conscientious children as those parents, had they lived, would have been the first to decry. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... salaries for high Government officials, and so reintroduce the old inequalities of wealth? What motive would they have for not doing so? What motive is possible except idealism, love of mankind, non-economic motives of the sort that Bolsheviks decry? The system created by violence and the forcible rule of a minority must necessarily allow of tyranny and exploitation; and if human nature is what Marxians assert it to be, why should the rulers neglect such opportunities of ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... respects, was above reproach. Allison had taken pains to ascertain that. But beyond that he did not let himself go; he neither allowed himself to wonder at, nor regret, her choice. He was too honest to decry in another much which he knew would not measure up to Golden Rule standards in himself. And he had a really great man's unshakable faith in his own ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... have ever heard. I sat and watched him with whole-hearted admiration. It is true that he was not doing our cause any particular good. He had forgotten that he was there to make a party speech, to decry his opponents, and crack up his friends. He was soaring away into other regions, and—most wonderful of all—he was taking his audience with him. He besought them to be men, to play the game, to think straight, to awaken to a sense of responsibility, and to remember the magnitude and responsibility ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... I acted in the interest of reason, which always suffers, when certain objects are explained and judged by a reference to other supposed laws than those of material nature—the only laws which we know in a determinate manner. It would be unfair to decry the latter philosopher, who endeavoured to harmonize his paradoxical opinions with the interests of religion, and to undervalue an honest and reflecting man, because he finds himself at a loss the moment he has left the field ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... Elliott, that this task would prove his Waterloo. "Coach Severely Handicapped by Material and Facilities," one headline read, while another had it, "Sun Now Hardly Destined to Set on Triumph for John Brown," the articles going on to decry the lamentable conditions surrounding Elliott's effort to attain a higher athletic grade. The task was regarded as beyond that of even a miracle man and John Brown was credited with having accepted ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... depreciate, discredit, underestimate, carp at, derogate from, dishonor, underrate, decry, detract from, lower, undervalue. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... been the habit of late critics to decry the merits of this famous oration, and even to charge it with being frivolous, outrageous, and bombastic, an immense accumulation of calumny and clap-trap, which the craft of Sheridan would not submit to the public ordeal, and which he has therefore left to its chance of a fantastic and visionary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... many of the written opinions which he received in reply are still in existence. The women generally find the maxims distasteful, but the men write approvingly. These men, however, are for the most part ecclesiastics, who decry human nature that they may exalt divine grace. The coincidence between Augustinianism or Calvinism, with its doctrine of human corruption, and the hard cynicism of the maxims, presents itself in quite a piquant form ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... may decry the color-prejudice of the South, yet it remains a heavy fact. Such curious kinks of the human mind exist and must be reckoned with soberly. They cannot be laughed away, nor always successfully stormed at, nor easily abolished by act of legislature. And yet they must not be encouraged by being ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... infection is not due to the vaccine or to the process of vaccination, but to the infection. Many people get unjust ideas about vaccination from just such cases. If the mother is not cleanly or neglects the vaccinated area and permits it to become infected she must not and others should not decry vaccination as a consequence. Anyone who doubts the virtue of vaccination is condemning himself; he is simply ignorant of the accumulation of evidence in favor of it and assumes a position without any possible ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... begin to decry the present and laud the past; to read with glasses, to decide from prejudice, to recoil from change, to find sense in twaddle, to know the value of health from the fear to lose it; to feel an interest in rheumatism, an awe of bronchitis; to tell anecdotes, and to wear flannel. To ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of course, no intention to decry this single-mindedness that is habitually put in evidence by the dynastic statesmen. Nor should it be taken as evidence of moral obliquity in them. It is rather the result of a peculiar moral attitude or bent, habitual to such statesmen, and in its degree also habitual to their compatriots, and ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... that the ecclesiastical policy of the Protectorate was one which it would be most inconsistent on the part of Mr. Arnold and those who hold the same view with him to decry. It was a national church (to prevent the hasty abolition of which, seems to have been Cromwell's main reason for dissolving the Barebones Parliament) with the largest possible measure of comprehension. To us the weak points of such a policy appear manifest ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... aristocracy of the kingdom—their example, guardian, and liege mistress. The stout lady in the magnificent hat and feathers was very well as a source of Ministerial embarrassment; but much as some of them pretended to decry the evidence against her that was elicited during her trial, they took especial care not to allow her anything resembling an intimacy with ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... which produced it, we can be fairly certain that its roots stretch back very far and that the mediaeval and Geonic Kabbala was the culmination and not the inception of Jewish esoteric mysticism. From the time of Graetz it has been the fashion to decry the Kabbala and to regard it as a later incrustation, as something of which Judaism had reason to be ashamed." The writer goes on to express the opinion that "the recent tendency requires adjustment. The Kabbala, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... popular Chamber in its struggles with the autocracy of the Upper House, the young Parliamentarian was equally jealous of the reasonable prerogative of the Crown, and temperate in the language he used when he had occasion to decry its abuse. He was one of the few in the Legislature who, while they recognized that the old system of government was becoming less and less suited to the genius and wants of the young Canadian community, at the same time ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... dry, uncircumstantial, and unimportant: he mentions the deaths of princes and revolutions of government, with the same phlegm and brevity as he would speak of the appointment of churchwardens. I say not this from any partiality, or to decry the simple man as crossing my opinion; for Fabian's testimony is far from bearing hard against Richard, even though he wrote under Henry the Seventh, who would have suffered no apology for his rival, and whose reign was employed ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... deny the necessity, or decry the utility, of such an education, are generally deficient in a sense of what makes good literature—they are 'word-deaf,' as others are colour-blind. All writing is a kind of word-weaving; a skilful writer ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... rivalry, constant the feuds, and unintermitting the respective criminations of the Erictho and Canidia of Pendle,[33] who had opened shops for the vending of similar contraband commodities, and were called upon to decry each other's stock, as well as to magnify their own. Each "gave her little senate laws," and had her own party (or tail, according to modern phraseology) in the Forest. Some looked up to and patronized one, and ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... facetiously asked her to choose; or should I spread them all at once? She always has too much in hand to stop to jest over trifles; she waved the tea-cloths aside, and seized her cup off Mrs Bust's tray, and went on talking shop. I don't want to decry Jessica. She's worth all the rest put together. While they gabble, she does things. If Mrs Carter (who hates the sight of her, by the way) and the rest of them would ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... at the base of the tower is dedicated to St. Stephen. The ornate decorations of the west front, added by Georges d'Amboise, are mainly of the sixteenth century and form no part of the original plan or design. It borders upon the style we have since learned to decry, but it is, at least, marvellous as to the skill with which its foliaged and crocketed pinnacles and elaborate traceries are worked. Ruskin was probably right in this estimate at least,—"The central gable is the most exquisite ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... light, the uncleanness of vice from the purity of the spirit emulating God. For only in this way is unclean lead turned into gold." (P. 75.) "If one now ventures to say that the Word of Christ or the Holy Ghost of wisdom dwells in the microcosmic heaven [i.e., in the soul of man] we should not decry the blind children of the world as godless and abandoned. [But certainly the divine spirit is, as is later averred, the rectangular stone in us, on which we are to build.] This divine spark is, however, continuous and eternal; it ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... of prosperity as is permitted to men of dark skins. There are Negro teachers in the South—the privilege of teaching in their own schools is the one respectable branch of the public service still left open to them—who, for a grudging appropriation from a Southern legislature, will decry their own race, approve their own degradation, and laud their oppressors. Deprived of the right to vote, and, therefore, of any power to demand what is their due, they feel impelled to buy the tolerance of the whites at any sacrifice. If to live ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... to most men, that after 30 years not unsuccessful practice in this great City, I should now at last forbear sending my Bills to the Apothecaries, knowing that hereby a whole Company of men interested in the World (who by their number, noise, and tricks, may be able to decry any Physician) will become my implacable adversaries, and by their private whispers of untrue tales, will endeavour to their utmost, either to keep me from any new, or shuffle me out of my fixed imployment. But ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... their Canons with a why-not; 530 (Grave Synod Men, that were rever'd For solid face and depth of beard;) Their classic model prov'd a maggot, Their direct'ry an Indian Pagod; And drown'd their discipline like a kitten, 535 On which they'd been so long a sitting; Decry'd it as a holy cheat, Grown out of date, and obsolete; And all the Saints of the first grass As casting foals of Balaam's ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... ensconce yourself snugly in coffee-houses, brothels, and beer-shops, and observe who cry out most against the cheapness of the times, the reduced five per cents., and the increasing nuisance of police regulations; who rail the loudest against government, or decry physiognomical science, and such like? These are the right sort of fellows, brother. Their honesty is as loose as a hollow tooth; you have only to apply your pincers. Or a shorter and even better plan is to drop a full purse in the public highway, conceal yourself somewhere near, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the marshy meadows with their reeds, their cat-tails, and their wide-leaved swamp-dock clusters! It had been used by the winds as a veritable dumping ground for obnoxious weeds which grew and thrived on the marly clay while every other plant despised it! Not that I mean to decry weeds—far be it from me. When the goldenrod flings its velvet cushions along the edge of the copses, or when the dandelion spangles the meadows, they are things of beauty as well as any tulip or tiger-lily. But when they or their rivals, silverweed, ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... dwell if once they flashed the fire Of being, or the doom-gift of Desire Should curse thy life, unbidden and unsought. Poor snow man with thy tattered hat awry, And broomstick musket toppling from thy hands, 'Tis well thou hast no language to decry Thy poor creator or his vain commands; No tear to shed that thou so soon must die, No voice to lift in prayer where no ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... drinks." But it is a curious fact that while the introduction of tea was accepted with equanimity by the community, the introduction of coffee was strenuously opposed for more than a decade. Poets and pamphleteers combined to decry the new beverage. The rhyming author of "A Cup of Coffee, or Coffee in its Colours," published in 1663, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... persuasively, "that you can be quite aware of the extent of the stoop. The fact is, I am, as I've tried to make you understand, a hairdresser; some might lower themselves so far as to call me a barber. Now, hairdressing, whatever may be said for it" (he could not readily bring himself to decry his profession)—"hairdressing is considribly below you in social rank. I wouldn't deceive you by saying otherwise. I assure you that, if you had any ideer what a barber was, you wouldn't ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... critics, it has been long a prevailing humour to decry one Alexander Pope. Mrs Margaret Fuller is resolved that if not first in the field against this notorious pretender, no one shall show greater hardihood than herself in the attack upon him. It is one of those occasions when, though ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... reflexions and Criticismes supported by principles, deductions and examples may contribute something to the agreeableness of the designe, and sett off a subject that of itselfe is dry and knotty enough, without making it more unacceptable by that mean and disreputed method, that hath so much decry'd the Critiques, and ordinarily hath given a disgust to a science before it hath been allow'd the least consideration, besides that didacticque way, is by no means proper in the present case, for as there is little pleasure in being taken notice of under the character of a Scholler, so the ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... the reason is perspicuous, why no French plays, when translated, have, or ever can succeed upon the English Stage. For, if you consider the Plots, our own are fuller of variety; if the Writing, ours are more quick, and fuller of spirit: and therefore 'tis a strange mistake in those who decry the way of writing Plays in Verse; as if the English therein imitated ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... are using dull coloured carpets and hangings, have your modern reproductions antiqued. If you prefer gay, cheering tones, let the painted furniture be bright. These schemes are equally interesting in different ways. It is stupid to decry new things, since every grey antique had its ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... with orange red at the base of their ray florets—have become prime favorites of late years in European gardens, so offering them still another chance to overrun the Old World, to which so much American hay is shipped? Thrifty farmers may decry the importation into their mowing lots, but there is a glory to the cone-flower beside which the glitter of a gold coin fades into paltry nothingness. Having been instructed in the decorative usefulness of all this genus by European landscape gardeners, we Americans ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... consequences that has attended the entire destruction of factitious personal distinctions in the country, which has certainly aided in bringing out in bolder relief than common, the prevalent disposition in man to covet that which is the possession of another, and to decry ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... giving throughout often a sense of extreme artificiality and of the self- consciousness usually bred of it, is but another incidental proof of this. And let no reader think that I wish here to decry R. L. Stevenson. I only desire faithfully to try to understand him, and to indicate the class or group to which his genius and temperament really belong. He is from first to last the idealistic dreamy or mystical romancer, and not the true idealist or dealer direct with ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... the better of discretion in any novel that attempts to be quite up to date with a political subject. Mrs. TWEEDALE places The Veiled Woman (JENKINS) in some vague period later than August, 1914, largely in order to decry a Government that really by now one fails to identify, and to let off sundry feminist squibs and crackers which, in view of the present position of woman suffrage, can only be described as fireworks half-price on the 6th ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... control, contributed to mar his future glory. This was the pecuniary compensation which the emancipated Catholics kneeled to present him. It is far from being intended here to disparage the offering or decry its acceptance. On the contrary, if this were the proper place, both would be vindicated with zealous pride. But the effect of the continued collection, on Mr. O'Connell's conduct and efficiency was baneful in the extreme. And it was among the most prominent circumstances ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... man is ignorant of rumors that are afloat about him. A whole town may be talking of his affairs; may calumniate and decry him, but if he has no good friends, he will know nothing about it. Now the innocent du Bousquier was superb in his ignorance. No one had told him as yet of Suzanne's revelations; he therefore appeared ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... culture, their task would have been justified. They kept the ideals of civilization from perishing in this new soil. Through those eastern windows came in, and still comes in, the sunlight to illumine the American spirit. To decry the literatures of the Orient and of Greece and Rome as something now outgrown by America, is simply to close the eastern windows, to narrow our conception of civilization to merely national and contemporaneous terms. ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... time had a great many Admirers as that Poet informs us, but at last they were entirely decry'd. And it must not be imagin'd that the Fall of these Authors, as well French as Latin, was owing to the Change of their Languages. The true Reason was, they did not know how to hit the Point ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... rabid quarters an attempt has been made to decry the views of the native rulers as emanating from petty Oriental despots, terrified by the onward march of the new Indian democracy. If so it is strange that whilst these "despots" make no secret of their attitude towards disaffection, they are equally ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... while the vast house buzzed and murmured and babbled from floor to roof. Perhaps the general note of the conversation, if it could have been tested, would have been found voluntary rather than spontaneous; but the sound was gay, and there could be no question of the splendor of the sight. We may decry our own almost as much as we please, but there is a point where we must cease to depreciate ourselves; even for the sake of evincing our superiority to our possessions, we must not undervalue some of them. One of these is the Metropolitan Opera House, where the pride of wealth, the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... makeup that we shall lament having been born too late to read these in our childhood. The information and the taste acquired by children who have read the best juvenile publications of the past ten years is perfectly amazing, and those extremists who decry the buying of any books especially written for children are nearly as nonsensical as the ones who would buy everything the ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... colony ran its varied rounds; the habits of the people were transformed with the coming of material prosperity: but the Church went on unchanged, unchanging. One may praise the steadfastness with which the Church fought for what its bishops believed to be right, or one may, on the other hand, decry the arrogance of its pretensions to civil power and its hampering conservatism; but as the great central fact in the history of New France, the hegemony ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... letter, asked me what was my subject? I told him I was giving your ladyship my notions of the Italian opera. "Let me see what they are, my dear; for this is a subject that very few of those who admire these performances, and fewer still of those who decry them, know ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... may decry the color prejudice of the South, yet it remains a heavy fact. Such curious kinks of the human mind exist and must be reckoned with soberly. They cannot be laughed away, nor always successfully stormed at, nor easily abolished ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... possess the art of giving interest even to trifles, and have a natural eloquence de plume, as well as de langue, that renders the task an easy one. It is the custom in England to decry French novels, because the English unreasonably expect that the literature of other countries should be judged by the same criterion by which they examine their own, without making sufficient allowance for the different manners and habits of the nations. Without arrogating ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... his face. For some reason that's to him like the proverbial red rag tae a bull. The last missionary tae Long Moose cam' awa wi' a lovely pair o' black eyes Sam Carr bestowed on him. I'm forewarnin' ye for yer ain good. Ye can decry material benefits a' ye like, but it'll be a decided benefit if ye ha' Sam Carr for a ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... is the 'Northern Evil' again. Oh, what a shame it is for intelligent people to decry Southern Christians in this way, and to erect their own moral sense into such ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... ecclesiastic and his friend went through all the places where Father La Combe had held his mission, to decry him and to speak against him so violently that a woman was afraid to say her "Pater" because, she said, she had learned it from him. They made a fearful scandal through the whole country; for the day after my arrival at the Ursulines of Thonon, he set out in the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... would cry down; but if you mean by the clergy, some few designing factious men, who have it at heart to establish some favourite schemes at the price of the liberty of mankind, and the very essence of religion, it is not in the power of such persons to decry any book they please; witness that excellent book called, 'A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament;' a book written (if I may venture on the expression) with the pen of an angel, and calculated to restore the true use of Christianity, ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... consultations with leading conspirators. "The poetry of politics" and poetry on paper did not go together. Meanwhile he would try his hand on prose. A controversy had arisen between Bowles and Campbell with regard to the merits of Pope. Byron rushed into the fray. To avenge and exalt Pope, to decry the "Lakers," and to lay down his own canons of art, Byron addressed two letters to **** ****** (i.e. John Murray), entitled "Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope." The first was published in 1821, the second ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... decry opera, but it is very clear that some of the energy which is now being used for opera might far better be put into the wider field of drama. Because of its very nature, opera is bound to appeal to and to reach fewer people than drama. As a force and a power for education and general uplift, ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... it would be better that I should say nothing more than this, and that I should leave myself and my character and name to your future kindness,—or unkindness,—without any attempt to win the former or to decry the latter; but you have been to me ever so good and noble that I cannot bring myself to be so cold and short. I have always felt that your preference for me has been a great honour to me. I have appreciated your esteem most highly, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... the stage, treated in the chapters on "Women and Marriage," "To a Young Gentleman Who Contemplated Marriage," but I thought the author very wise indeed, and found many other pages which were intensely stimulating. Let others decry Hamerton if they like; I owe a great deal to him; and, though I might be induced to throw "The Intellectual Life" to the Young Wolves of the Beginning of this Century, I shall always insist that "A Painter's Camp" ought to be included in every ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... I had wished solely to decry the Papal system of justice, I should not have given the report of the last trial, which seems to me far the most favourable specimen of the set I have come across. I am inclined to believe, from the meagre narratives before me, that all the criminals whose cases I have narrated ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... been as well to add that the Lollards' Bible, the book which converted England, was a literal translation from the Vulgate and not from the original tongues, which, as is well knows, Wickliffe did not understand. Those who decry the Vulgate should please to remember that, though adopted by the Popish Church, its foundation was laid before Popery existed, and that before criticising a book it is desirable to have read it. There ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... would be wrong and foolish to conceal from ourselves in the interests of "idealism" the real difficulties of the position in the special matter of revising treaties, that is no reason for any of us to decry the League, which the wisdom of the world may yet transform into a powerful instrument of peace, and which in Articles XI.-XVII.[159] has already accomplished a great and beneficent achievement. I agree, therefore, that our first efforts for the Revision of the Treaty must be made through ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... a scholar laughing. Do but think of the Mausoleum, and the Pyramids, and the monstrous sepulchres of the Indus and Ganges, which outside are mountains, and within are mines of precious stones. Ah, you have not seen the East, Jerome, or you could not decry the heathen." ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... himself at night the meaning of his victory. When the morning dawned, when once more he had to go to his work, the work which was his life, although sometimes he was inclined to decry it secretly in moments of fatigue, he asked no further questions. His business was plain before him, and it was business into which he could put his heart. Although he was not an insensitive man, he was a man of generous nature. He pushed away with an almost careless ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Hearing this, Squarcione fell into such disdain against Andrea that they were enemies ever afterwards; and in proportion as Squarcione had formerly been ever praising the works of Andrea, so from that day onward did he ever decry them in public. Above all did he censure without reserve the pictures that Andrea had made in the said Chapel of S. Cristofano, saying that they were worthless, because in making them he had imitated ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... the fashion to-day to decry the cavaliers and the wearers of "love-locks," but they had a pretty taste in art and an eye for artistic surroundings, those old fellows of the sword and cloak; a much more pretty taste than their descendants, the steam-heat and running-water ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... thrusts with pin-pricks from behind, who won't stand up to their man, but strike at him with unpaid bills. A backstairs way of discrediting a master before his servants. They never attack, never draw, merely soil and decry! Powers, lords and ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... Reason, that in the Heathen Mythology Momus is said to be the Son of Nox and Somnus, of Darkness and Sleep. Idle Men, who have not been at the Pains to accomplish or distinguish themselves, are very apt to detract from others; as ignorant Men are very subject to decry those Beauties in a celebrated Work which they have not Eyes to discover. Many of our Sons of Momus, who dignify themselves by the Name of Criticks, are the genuine Descendants of these two illustrious Ancestors. They are often led into those numerous ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... at; but it has never been proved to have been insincere. With how much more show of justice may we consider it to have been founded upon a solid and upright basis, when we recollect that his whole outward deportment spoke its truth! Those who decry him as a fanatic, ought to bethink themselves that religion was the chivalry of the age in which he lived. Had Cromwell been born a few centuries earlier, he would have headed the crusades, with as much bravery, and far better results than our noble-hearted, but wrong-headed Coeur de Lion. It was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... just now to decry the value of reading. We read, we are told, to avoid the necessity of thinking for ourselves. Books are for ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... suffering was in store for him. He learned from officious neighbors that his father was speaking ill of him. After having been proud of his son's successes, and having boasted of them everywhere, Melchior was weak and shameful enough to be jealous of them. He tried to decry them. It was stupid to weep; Jean-Christophe could only shrug his shoulders in contempt. It was no use being angry about it, for his father did not know what he was doing, and was embittered by his own downfall. The boy said nothing. He was afraid, if he said anything, of being too hard; ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... that Mr. Marvin had but one interview with his father-in-law elect, and returned so supremely disgusted, that the match was broken off. The horse-stealing story, more or less garbled, found its way through lips that pretended to decry it, yet eagerly repeated it. Only one member of the Rightbody family—and a new one—saved them from utter ostracism. It was young Mr. Ryder, the adopted son of the prospective head of the household, whose culture, manners, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... being a main part of their studies, their enemies called them Socinians. They were all very zealous against popery. And so, they becoming soon very considerable, the Papists set themselves against them to decry them as Atheists, Deists, or at best Socinians. And now that the main principle of religion was struck at by Hobbs and his followers, the Papists acted upon this a very strange part. They went in so far even into the argument for Atheism, as to publish many books, in which they ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... obloquy of all the libelers on earth. If you have met him as man with man, you have doubtless been captivated with his manners, his wit, his animation, and his accomplishments. I have known him long and well. But Europe, within a month, will decry him, as a fugitive, a fool, and a dastard. Such is popular wisdom, justice, and knowledge. A pupil of the first warrior of Prussia and of modern ages, and wanting only experience to do honour to the lessons of Frederick, he will be laughed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... that there are delightful writers still. I am not about to decry our living romancers, and certainly not to criticise them. If any man choose to maintain that there is more poetry in Tess than in the entire Barsetshire series, that Dickens could not have bettered the Two Drummer Boys ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... book, and Chapman's Homer it is? Are you bound by your Arabian bounty to a largess whenever you think of your friend? And you decry the book too. 'T-is long since I read it, or in it, but the apotheosis of Homer, in the dedication to Prince Henry, "Thousands of years attending," &c., is one of my lasting inspirations. The book has not arrived yet, as the letter always ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... devoted sex in the hearing of their champion, without pricking a lance with him in their behalf. What do you, either of you, who abuse woman in that wholesale style, know of her? Nothing—less than nothing; and yet you venture, upon your paltry experience, to lift up your voices and decry the sex. Now I do know her; and upon my own experience avouch, that, as a sex, woman, compared with man, is as an angel to a devil. As a sex, woman is faithful, loving, self-sacrificing. We 'tis that make her otherwise; we, selfish, exacting, neglectful men; we teach her indifference, and then ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... superior to the genuine English. Either way there is something wrong, and it matters little whether we elevate the composer at the expense of the public, or whether we commend the national taste while we depreciate and decry the excellence of the music or the merit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... province. He has used new materials and labor-saving devices in railway stations and place of amusements, not selfishly, but because of the appreciation of the travelling public. It is the fashion to decry labor-saving devices in the house, because they do away with that sign of pecuniary ability, the capped and aproned maid. The obvious saving of steps by the speaking-tube and telephone-call is frowned upon for the same reason. It is this attitude of society ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... abstract *Ad to adduce, adjacent, affect, accede *Ante before antediluvian, anteroom *Bi two biped, bicycle *Circum around circumambient, circumference *Cum, com, with, together combine, consort, coadjutor con, co *Contra against contradict, contrast *De from, negative deplete, decry, demerit, declaim down, intensive *Di, dis asunder, away from, divert, disbelief negative *E, ex from, out of evict, excavate *Extra beyond extraordinary, extravagant *In in, into, not innate, instil, insignificant *Inter among, between intercollegiate, interchange ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... merit's exalted 'Tis excellent sport to decry it, And trail its good name in the gutter; And that cynics, white-gloved and cravatted, Are the cream and quintessence of all ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... that he should slander me and say that I am humpbacked?" Then she discovered to him a part of her bosom, and when he saw her breasts his reason took flight from his head and his heart crave to her and he cried, "Cover it up,[FN262] so may Allah veil thee!" Quoth she, "Is it fair of any one to decry my charms?" and quoth he, "How shall any decry thy charms, and thou the sun of loveliness?" Then said she, "Hath any the right to say of me that I am lophanded?" and tucking up her sleeves, she showed him forearms as ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... A work of art may stand very far from Nature, provided its own parts are consistent. Heaven forbid that a critic should decry an author for being fantastic, so long as he ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the masses. And in our own day, those who wish to get rid of the supernatural, to enlighten religion, to economize faith, find themselves deserted, like poets who should declaim against poetry, or women who should decry love. Faith consists in the acceptance of the incomprehensible, and even in the pursuit of the impossible, and is self-intoxicated with its own sacrifices, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... some discordant dish, [59] Should shock our optics, such as frogs for fish; As oil in lieu of butter men decry, And poppies please not in a modern pie; [lxxxiii] 630 If all such mixtures then be half a crime, We must have Excellence to relish rhyme. Mere roast and boiled no Epicure invites; Thus ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... certain inevitable prejudice even at this length of time leads one to discount the valour of pilots in the German Air Service, but the names of Boelcke, von Richthofen, and Immelmann recur as proof of the courage that was not wanting in the enemy ranks, while, however much we may decry the Gotha raids over the English coast and on London, there is no doubt that the men who undertook these raids were not deficient in the form of bravery that is of more value than the unthinking valour of a minute which, observed from the right ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... benches. Nor was this rigid system relaxed in the middle of the same (xvith) century; when Roger Ascham composed his incomparable treatise, intitled the "Schoolmaster;" the object of which was to decry the same severity of discipline. This able writer taught his countrymen the value of making the road to knowledge smooth and inviting, by smiles and remunerations, rather than by stripes and other punishments. Indeed, such was the stern ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... less chance of learning to write and speak the "middling English" of popular orators and headmasters than if we had been perfect in such mysteries and ignorant of those three masterpieces. It has been the fashion to decry the eighteenth century, as young fops laugh at their fathers. But we were there in germ; and a "Professor of Eighteenth Century History and Literature" we knew his business might tell young Englishmen more of that which it is profoundly important they ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... Kuru-Plain are to-day most holy, and they are mentioned as among the holiest in the epic catalogue.[48] Soma is now revamped by a bath in a holy pool (IX. 35. 75). As in every antithesis of act and thought there are not lacking passages in the epic which decry the pools in comparison with holy life as a means of salvation. Thus in III. 82. 9 ff., the poet says: "The fruit of pilgrimage (to holy pools)—he whose hands, feet, and mind are controlled;[49] he who has knowledge, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... which these noble creatures are decoyed and murdered, equally open to the same objection? As far as barbarity goes, there is to us but little choice between the two methods; and, generally speaking, we decry them both, and most especially do not wish to be understood as encouraging the trapping of these animals, except where all other means have failed, and in cases where their capture becomes in a measure a matter of necessity. This is often the case in the experience ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... prophet, whether he announces the end of the world or foretells the dawn of a millennium. And history affords no presumption in favour of the prophet who prophesies smooth things. The prognostics of a pessimist may be as much belied by the event as the hopes of an optimist. But for one prophet to decry the predictions of another simply as prophecies is a downright absurdity. Even among rival soothsayers some regard must be had to fairness and common sense; when Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, smote Micaiah on the cheek, he struck him not on the ground that he prophesied but ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... contractors in South America took advantage of the statements in this book to depreciate the American railway system and American civil engineers, for their own private advantage in obtaining work, some Americans have been so foolish as to decry the book altogether, as traitorous to the interests of the country. Such mingled bigotry and conceit, shrinking from just criticism, would fetter all progress ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various |
