"Deprecation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not of business that I come to kiss the Senora's hand to-day," he replied, with a melancholy softness; "it is as her neighbor, to put myself at her disposition. Ah! what have we here fit for a lady?" he continued, raising his eyes in deprecation of the surroundings; "a house of nothing, a place of winds and dry bones, without refreshments, or satisfaction, or delicacy. The Senora will not refuse to make us proud this day to send her of that which we have in our poor home at Los Gatos, to make her more complete. Of what shall it be? Let ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Her happiness began to falter and darken like departing sunbeams. She remained for a space uncertain of herself, knowing neither what was needed nor what was best; then she spoke with resolute deprecation: ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... waved a deprecation with his maimed hand, and even smiled faintly. "I knew you'd say that. I knew what you'd think about it, but it's all the same now. I did it for you and Safie! I knew I was in the way; I knew you was the man she orter had; I knew you ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of one inscription might be best left to counteract the influence of the other. I know that with regard to the priests you experience some such effect from the atrocious attacks in the chief satirical paper of Rome, The name of this paper was given me, with a deprecation not unmixed with recognition of its cleverness, by an Italian friend whom I was making my creditor for some knowledge of Roman journalism; and the sole copy of it which I bought was handed to me with a sort of smiling abhorrence by the kindly old kiosk woman whom I liked best to ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... unknown to geometry, are going out of the rural landscape. And when they are gone, they will be missed more than the amateurs of agricultural artistry imagine at the present moment. What some one has said of the peasantry, may be said, with almost equal deprecation, of these picturesque tit-bits ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... show of deprecation. He said he did not think the story would bear immediate repetition, or was even worth telling once, but, if we had nothing better to do, perhaps we might do worse than hear it; the most he could say for ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... the epistle, was too severe for his cousin's digestion. Some reflections upon the Dutch allies, and their behaviour in the war, were omitted, as tending to reflect upon King William; and the whole piece, to avoid the least chance of giving offence, was subjected to the revision of Montague, with a deprecation of his displeasure, an entreaty of his patronage, and the humiliating offer, that, although repeated correction had already purged the spirit out of the poem, nothing should stand in it relating to public affairs. without Mr. Montague's ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... a gesture as of deprecation; but Aunt Jane let her go without remonstrance, merely saying ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sisters echoed "Compliment!" in various tones of deprecation, and Josephine added a meaning little laugh for her own share, for which Edgar gave her a kiss, and said in a bantering kind of voice, "Now, Joseph! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... unpretentious men on earth; utterly simple and honest—he would not even let anyone praise him. When some one called him "good Master," he answered, quickly, "Why callest thou me good? There is none good save one, that is, God." But this simplicity has been taken with deprecation by his church, which persists in heaping compliments upon ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... raised his hand in deprecation, but seemed unable to reply. Mirande, gazing pitilessly at him, presently read his silence aright, and an expression of cruel ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... furred robe, and falling collar. But even through the disguise of a studio 'costume,' the finely-perceptive genius of Reynolds has managed to suggest much that is most appealing in his sitter's nature. Past suffering, present endurance, the craving to be understood, the mute deprecation of contempt, are all written legibly in this pathetic picture. It has been frequently copied, often very ineffectively, for so subtle is the art that the slightest deviation hopelessly distorts and vulgarizes what Reynolds has done supremely, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... clever who could have slipped in a sentence, or even have edged in a word, when Mistress Winter had pulled out of her wrath-bottle that cork which was so seldom in it, as Agnes Stone knew to her cost. Nor was it the girl's habit to excuse or defend herself. Mistress Winter's deprecation of that proceeding was merely a flourish of rhetoric. So Agnes, as usual, let the tempest blow over her, offering no attempt to struggle, but only to ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... with you, I think we have some in very good taste. I know not in what dramatic work the facetious frenchman has discovered the introduction of his satanic majesty under the influence of a cold, and receiving, as he enters, the usual deprecation on such occasions. I rather suspect that the adventures of Punch, and his fickle lady, who are always attended by a dancing demon, have afforded the ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... enrolment in 1868. Many of them failed to realize the necessities of the case. There was no great wave of patriotism sweeping through the country. The German danger was not yet generally apparent. Further, many upholders of the Imperial authority shook their heads in deprecation of this scheme of enrolling and arming so many young men, who might suddenly blossom into revolutionaries and turn their weapons against the ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... In the Jewish quarter, though Rembrandt lived in it, interest had been limited to the guldens earned by dirty old men in sitting to him. What ardor, too, for the newest science, what worship of Descartes and deprecation of the philosophers before him! And then the flavor of romance—as of their own spices—wafted from the talk about the new Colonies in the Indies! Good God! had it been so wise to quench the glow of youth, to slip so silently to ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... she said with slightly acidulous deprecation, "but thanks to the Blessed Virgin and your Reverence's teaching, the text is but gibberish to me and I did but ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... her hands and eyes in holy horror and deprecation. "A rocking-horse, Mr. Coventry," said she; "what an injudicious selection! (Aunt Deborah likes to round her periods, as the book-people say.) The child is a sad tomboy already, and if you are going to teach her to ride, I won't answer for the ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... the text-book of the men who made the French Revolution, and if the success of the Revolution is due to the teaching of Rousseau more than to that of any other French philosopher, the crimes and mistakes of the Revolution are directly to be traced to his influence, and this in spite of Rousseau's deprecation of violence.[73] ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... makes of the term human nature is significant. It is used in varied contexts with the most divergent implications but always by way of explanation of behavior that is characteristically human. The phrase is sometimes employed with cynical deprecation as, "Oh, that's human nature." Or as often, perhaps, as an expression of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... may seem to some of you to throw our compass overboard, and to adopt caprice as our pilot. Skepticism or wayward choice, you may think, can be the only results of such a formless method as I have taken up. A few remarks in deprecation of such an opinion, and in farther explanation of the empiricist principles which I profess, may therefore appear at this point to be ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... all deprecation, I insisted on the explanation she had evaded in public. "I guess," I said, "as much as you can tell me about 'the four.' I have borne too long with those who have made your life that of a hunted therne, and rendered myself anxious and restless every ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... explained the flapper in pleased deprecation. "It's just a little old rag. What's ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... no new expressman," returned the driver in scornful deprecation of his interlocutor's ignorance. "He only took Hill's place from Montezuma. He's the new kid reviver and polisher for that University you're runnin' here. I say—you fellers oughter get him to tell you ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... generally believe in the existence of a Spirit of Evil, and occasionally pray to him in deprecation of his wrath. They do not doubt his inferiority to the Great Spirit, but they believe that he has the power to inflict torments and punishments upon the human race, and that he has a ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... married woman, Mrs. Daney," The Laird began, with old-fashioned deprecation for the blunt language he was about to employ, "you'll admit that the child wasn't found behind one of old Brent's cabbages. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... into the corner by the door with his eyes on Dolly's, and made a conscience-stricken attempt to sit up and wave one paw in deprecation, doubtless prepared with a plausible explanation of his singular appearance, which much resembled that of 'Mr. Dolls' returning to Jenny Wren after ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... If Crane had not been quite so strong, quite so full of unexpressed power, he would have rebelled at the assertion that he had stuck Porter; but he answered, and his voice struggled between asperity and deprecation, "There ain't no call for me to give that stable any pointers; Porter put it to me pretty straight that the horse ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... clucking with his tongue in deprecation of this painful episode, moves to the chair just vacated by the Archbishop and stands behind it with folded palms, looking at the President. The Accountant General shakes his fist after the departed visitors, and bursts into savage ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... damaging attempts at creative work. But with the ending of this winter of 1864-65, the spring began to bring him a renewal of dreams and aspirations too vivid and too strong to be written off by any fury of exercise, work, or self-deprecation. Melodies of long ago began to ring again in his ears. Old bits of harmonization, half forgotten, returned upon him with new meaning in their crude successions. Vague ideas grew clear. And there was a turmoil within him which he recognized, instinctively, as the creator's imperative ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... him[FN225] tidings to that effect." And she responded to him with fairest response and tenderness of terms and gem-like verse. Then she took her ink-case and paper and a brazen pen and would have written but he forbade her, saying by way of deprecation "This be not the right rede! An thou return a reply my slaves will take it and will bear it to my native country and will inform the folk of all our adventure: 'tis better far that I fare to them myself and greet them and going with them to my own country satisfy ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... door opened and there came in a youth of seventeen, tall and well-built, with clothing that testified to an encounter alike with brier and bog. The hound Bran followed him. He blinked at the lights and the fire, then with a gesture of deprecation crossed the hall to the stairway. ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... lachrymose deprecation of this treatment). Is that becomin' language for a clergyman, James?—and you so ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... Sahara and beat that abode of mental depression without an effort. So far as the eye could reach there was no habitation to break the line of horizon. A few stunted fir-trees, standing in a position of permanent deprecation, with their backs turned, as it were, to the north, stood sparsely on the plain. The grass did not look good to eat, though the Cossack horses would no doubt have liked to try it. The road seemed ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... naturally punctuated by visits to the Polish "bar" and cafe. At these it came as somewhat of a surprise to have tips refused. I paid for my dinner and added the customary ten per cent. The waiter drew himself up and waved his hand in deprecation. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... no use, Peak,' said Sir John, raising his hand in deprecation of his delivering any message; 'I am not at home. I cannot possibly hear you. I told you I was not at home, and my word is sacred. Will you never do ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Miss Birdseye's relaxed voice had tinkled down to her from the hall over the banisters, with much repetition, to secure attention. She was a plain, spare young woman, with short hair and an eye-glass; she looked about her with a kind of near-sighted deprecation, and seemed to hope that she should not be expected to generalise in any way, or supposed to have come up for any purpose more social than to see what Miss Birdseye wanted this time. By nine o'clock twenty other persons had arrived, and had placed themselves in ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... which they were mending between them, opened wide mouths and became immovable save for the whites of astonished rolling eyes. Then, and this exceeded all precedent, Richard Mivane clutched his valued peruke and, with an inward plaintive deprecation of the extremity of this act of desperation, he cast it upon the hat, and looked around, bald, despairing, ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... in startlement and the feeling that there was something uncanny about her, but as the deep eyes met his own and the pretty mouth smiled at him from beneath the glinting pale halo of her hair, he drew his breath in a long sigh of appreciation and admiration. His wife, looking at him with some deprecation, as though fearing an adverse judgment, smiled as his evident conquest became apparent. Standing near him the two boys stared and stared, something like ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... younger voice and more experience in such matters will make it a good thing for us all if he will take the family prayers whenever he is at home." As he concluded with faltering voice, Amos began to remonstrate in words of earnest deprecation; but his father stopped him, and, laying his hand on his shoulder, kindly said, "Do it to please me, and to please us all, dear boy." Then, turning to Walter, with every shade removed from his countenance, he asked, "And what ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... which surprise was tempered by a feeling almost tender, crossed her lips and immediately vanished. She shook her head as if in deprecation of the passion my words evinced, and was about to dismiss me, when she suddenly changed her mind and seized upon the aid I had offered, with a fervor that roused my sense of chivalry and deepened what might have been but a passing fancy into ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... were bright and episodical, and Sherringham trod them good-humouredly enough and not too fast, leaning a little to talk with Miriam as he went. Their pace was regulated by her mother's, who advanced on the arm of Gabriel Nash (Nick Dormer was on her other side) in refined deprecation. Her sloping back was before them, exempt from retentive stillness in spite of her rigid principles, with the little drama of her lost and ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Light. I had been a little troubled with the idea that, perhaps, I might not be able to manage the matter, after all; but, almost to my joy, I found old Barry complaining of his rheumatism, hobbling about, and looking wrathfully up the winding stairs, in surly deprecation of his approaching ascent. Upon which I seized the favorable opportunity, and, while relieving him, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... of 1 oz., the other coins being in proportion. In 1799, eighteen pennies were struck out of the pound of metal, but the people thought they were counterfeit, and would not take them until a proclamation ordering their circulation, was issued December 9th. They became used to a deprecation of currency after that, and there was but very little grumbling in 1805, when Boulton was ordered to divide the pound of copper into 24 pennies. The machinery of Boulton's mint, with the collection of dies, pattern coins, tokens, and medals, were sold ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... listening to the nearing jingle that accompanied his footsteps, her hands clasped involuntarily against her breast in rigid tension. And when she saw his face through the dusk, saw the courteous deprecation of it, the solicitous sympathy, she did not need his words to tell her that it ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... inclined to deprecation, when every other reason for it was finally removed by her assiduous son she once more sought out and firmly laid hold of the departed Twist, and hung her cherished unhappiness up on him again as if he were a peg. When the novelty of having a great many bedrooms ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... to repair the error was to boldly throw off the transparent disguise. The presence of the two stranger captains was still a restraint upon him. At length he cast his eyes upon Captain Reud, and putting into his countenance the drollest look of deprecation mingled with fun, said plaintively, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... of the hours they had spent together in Skagway. Therefore, if Alan had believed her dead when they went ashore at Cordova, a few hours after the supposed tragedy, it must have been she who jumped into the sea. He shrugged his shoulders in deprecation of his failure to discover this amazing fact in his association ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... exhausted herself in a flood of deprecation, the gist of which was that she had only said and believed what she had heard from every creature in the town; but Salve was unappeasable, and slinging his chest over his back with a rope, he went down with it to the quay, with the intention of chartering a boat to take him over to his father. ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... Boiler-makers' Union," and talked of the inevitable collapse. But who ever heard of a city built by people of his way of thinking? And there was Josie Trescott, with her agreement on broad lines with the General, and her deprecation of the giving of fortunes to people who had not earned them; but Josie was only a woman, who, to be sure, knew more of most matters than the rest of us, but could not have any very valuable knowledge of the prospects ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... which he discerned presently to be the goblin his nurse had used to frighten him in his infancy; then the face of his uncle, the elder Jonathan Gay, with his restless and suffering look; and after this the face of Kesiah, wearing her deprecation expression, which said, "It isn't really my fault that I couldn't change things"; and then the faces of women he had seen but once, or passed in the street and remembered; and in the midst of these crowding faces, the scarred and ravaged face of an old crossing-sweeper on a windy corner ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... noiselessly into the dining-room and took his place at the table. He always moved quietly, a look of gentle deprecation on his face as much as to say: "Really, you know, I can't help being here: if you will just overlook me this time, by and by you won't notice I'm there at all!" That was how he went through life, ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... in itself misleading. When I use it of these savages it simply means libations of sake, waving bowls and waving hands, without any spiritual act of deprecation or supplication. In such a sense and such alone they worship the sun and moon (but not the stars), the forest, and the sea. The wolf, the black snake, the owl, and several other beasts and birds have the word kamoi, god, attached to them, as the wolf is the "howling god," ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... attitude toward herself. He was the first man since the scapegrace cousin who had neither feared nor yet provoked her sharp tongue. While he relished her wit, it had always been with an unspoken deprecation of its cutting edge. He gave her a queer feeling of having allowances made for her—a condescension that in anybody but this big, likable boy she would have requited with sarcasm. But against him the ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... his simple visitors had no answer, and they simply looked at each other in decent deprecation; but their confusion was speedily covered by the return of the young girl with two large bunches of roses—one of them ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... he would have worked half a day for if it could have been obtained so. It was eloquent, it was brilliant, it was tender; it carried a fiery appeal against the truth of his words, and at the same time a most moving deprecation of his acting in consonance with them. She dared not speak plainer, and she could not have spoken plainer, if she had talked for an hour. Lawrence would have urged further his view of the subject, but that look stopped him. Indeed, the beauty of it put for the moment the occasion of ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... tell her the truth. And yet they were not all of it; her hearing the rest would depend upon the way she received this. She received it not only, as Rowland foresaw, without a shadow of coquetry, of any apparent thought of listening to it gracefully, but with a slight movement of nervous deprecation, which seemed to betray itself in the quickening of her step. Evidently, if Rowland was to take pleasure in hearing about her, it would have to be a highly disinterested pleasure. She answered nothing, and Rowland too, as he walked beside her, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... began in uncertain protest. None heeded him. The prisoner sighed and moved a shoulder in a half-shrug as of deprecation. "No, signorina," he said ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Home Rule. Even after giving this memorable answer in East Fife Mr. Asquith, speaking at Bury St. Edmunds on the 12th of December, declared that "the sole issue at that moment was the supremacy of the people," and he added, in deprecation of all the talk about Ireland, that "it was sought to confuse this issue by catechising Ministers on the details of the next Home ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill |
