"Discreditable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in letting a wandering and characterless and scandalous American load him up with deceptions of so transparent a character that they ought not to have deceived the house cat. On the other hand, he was remorselessly severe upon me for beguiling him, by studied and discreditable artifice, into bragging and boasting about his poor game in the presence of a professional expert disguised in lies and frauds, who could empty more balls in billiard pockets in an hour than he could empty into a basket in ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... had denounced, in bringing to justice the criminals whom he had not been allowed to reach. We recollect that the new Viceroy was exposed to a storm of unpopularity so violent and outrageous, that the public readily forgot the discreditable folly of his original enterprise, and honoured the resolution and dignity with which he discharged the laborious duties of ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... was really talented, and had he possessed any manly attributes, or even the ordinary honorable instincts of mankind, there is little doubt he would have been a popular favorite. But he had made his mark, and it was a rather grimy one. From earliest youth he had been guilty of discreditable acts that had won for him the contempt of all right-minded people. That he was still accepted with lax tolerance by some of the more thoughtless matrons of the fashionable set was due to his family name. They could not forget that ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... his temper bitterly malignant, and his nervous system timid and cowardly. The concealment of his name at the time when he wrote was the effect of dishonest fear. The perpetuation of it could only proceed from the consciousness that the disclosure of his person would be discreditable to his fame. The object of Junius, when he began to write, was merely to overthrow the administration then in power. He attacked them in a mass and individually; their measures, their capacities, their characters public and private; charged them with every crime and every vice. Afterwards, he ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... the "rule of the majority" as a political system is established. It is in essence nothing but the discredited and discreditable principle that "might makes right"; but early in the life of a republic this essential character of government by majority is not seen. The habit of submitting all questions of policy to the arbitrament of counting noses and assenting without question ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... his back on his prospects to become a horse dealer. If we decline altogether to sanction this new act—I won't say, of insanity, I will say, of absurdity—on his part, it is impossible to predict to what discreditable extremities he may not proceed. We must temporise with Alfred. In the meantime I shall endeavor to obtain some information respecting this young person—named Miller, I think you said, and now resident ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... an estate, and I have succeeded in what I undertook, while a number of other persons with similar opportunities have failed. I do not say this for the sake of boasting, but simply as a fact which is certainly not discreditable." ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... spite of his hunger, he was overwhelmed with confusion at having actually attempted to steal, and been caught in the act. He was by no means a model boy; but apart from anything which he had been taught in the Sunday school, he considered stealing mean and discreditable, and yet he had been led into it. What would his friends at home think of it, if they should ever hear of it? So, as I said, he stood without a word to say in his defence, mechanically replacing the pies ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... he said, "since I found that scrap in old Thomas' pocket. It bears out the statement that the woman with the child, and the woman who quarreled with Armstrong, are the same. It looks as if Thomas had stumbled on to some affair which was more or less discreditable to the dead man, and, with a certain loyalty to the family, had kept it to himself. Then, you see, your story about the woman at the card-room window begins to mean something. It is the nearest approach to anything tangible ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... as Basle is from Coire. We hold no such discreditable doctrines. I challenge the world to show a state that possesses a fairer set of maxims than ourselves, and we even endeavor to make our practice chime in with our opinions, whenever it can be done in safety. No in these particulars, Berne is a paragon of a community, and ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... absence of the novel. In life people pleased themselves irregularly enough: in literature they could not get out of the idea that they ought to be instructed, that it was enough to be instructed, and that it was discreditable to ask for more. Even the poet was allowed to delight grudgingly and at his peril; was suspected because he did delight, and had to pay a sort of heavy licence-duty for it, in the shape of concomitant instruction to others and good ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... diminished will soon bring us into total ruin and disgrace. The public creditors and the taxpayers are alike interested in an honest administration of the finances, and neither class will long endure the large-handed robberies of the recent past. For this discreditable state of things there are several causes. Some of the taxes are so laid as to present an irresistible temptation to evade payment. The great sums which officers may win by connivance at fraud create ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... of the Republicans in seating the Taft delegates was vigorously denounced by Roosevelt. He declared that the convention had no claim to represent the voters of the Republican party; that any candidate named by it would be "the beneficiary of a successful fraud"; and that it would be deeply discreditable to any man to accept the convention's approval under such circumstances. The bitterness of his followers was extreme. On July 8, a call went forth for a "Progressive" convention to be held in Chicago ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... benevolent spirit of an ancestor in the act of stroking a particular quail, upon whose chances he accordingly placed all he possessed. Doubtless evil spirits had been employed in the matter; for, to this person's great astonishment, the quail in question failed in a very discreditable manner at the encounter. Unfortunately, this person had risked not only the money which had been entrusted to him, but all that he had himself become possessed of by some years of honourable toil and assiduous courtesy as a professional witness in law ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... of Henry VIII., Catharine, and Anne Boleyn. "Bluff King Hal," although a well-loved monarch, was none too good a one in many ways. Of all his selfishness and unwarrantable acts, none was more discreditable than his divorce from Catharine, and his marriage to the beautiful Anne Boleyn. The King's love was as brief as it was vehement. Jane Seymour, waiting maid on the Queen, attracted him, and Anne Boleyn was forced to the block to make room ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... declamation *Claudo, clausum close, shut conclude, recluse, cloister, sluice Cognosco (see Nosco) *Coquo, coxi, coctum cook decoction, precocious *Cor, cordis heart core, discord, courage Corpus body corpse, incorporate Credo, credituin believe creed, discreditable Cresco, cretum grow crescendo, concrete, accrue *Crux, crucis cross crucifix, excruciating Cura care curate, sinecure Curro, cursum run occur, concourse *Derigo, directum direct dirge, dirigible, address *Dexter right, right hand ambidextrous, dexterity Dico speak, say abdicate, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... One fact is the discreditable condition of the streets of Washington during and after the civil war. The care of these was left entirely to the local municipality. Congress, so far as I know, gave no aid except by paying its ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... his book. He hung on reviews; he asked for it in bookshops, and expressed astonishment and contempt when they had not got it. And it was, after all, nothing to make a song about, Jane thought. It wasn't positively discreditable to its writer, like most novels, but it was a very normal book, by a very normal cleverish young man. Johnny wasn't sure that his publishers advertised it as much as ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... aloud, "I don't honestly think there can be any method, creditable or discreditable, that I haven't tried." Peter flung the one-sided interview into the wastepaper-basket, and slipping his notebook into his pocket, departed to drink tea with a lady novelist, whose great desire, as stated in a postscript to her invitation, was to ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... a residential faster. My schedule is disrupted; my family life suffers; my personal health suffers. No amount of mere money could pay for this. And then some of these people go and waste all my help to accomplish some discreditable secret agenda that they have never really ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... while the members showed an inclination to support Burr, as at least a Northerner, rather than Jefferson. But better judgments ruled, and finally Jefferson was awarded the place which he had in fairness won. The last weeks of Federalist rule was filled with a discreditable effort to save what was possible from the wreck. New offices were established, including a whole system of circuit judgeships; and Adams spent his time up to the last hour of his term in signing commissions, stealing away in the early morning in order ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... Another discreditable feature is, that, for a like reason, they are incapable of carrying on any war. Either they arm the multitude, and then they are more afraid of them than of the enemy; or, if they do not call them out in the hour of battle, they are oligarchs indeed, few to fight as they are few to rule. ...
— The Republic • Plato
... nowise fascinating, either in face or manner. He made no bid for her attention. Yet during the half hour he sat there, Stella's mind revolved constantly about him. She recalled all that she had heard of him, much of it, from her point of view, highly discreditable. Inevitably she fell to comparing him ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... hopes that they would not now oppose my going to the King my husband; that now, by the peace, the chief objection to it was removed, and if I delayed going, in the present situation of affairs, it might be prejudicial and discreditable to me. Both of them approved of my request, and commended my resolution. The Queen my mother added that she would accompany me on my journey, as it would be for the King's service that she did so. She said ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... However plausible may be the arguments which in this or that case may be adduced for concealment, the common instinct of mankind, which rarely errs in such matters, always conceives a suspicion that it is dictated by secret and discreditable motives; and that he who screens manifest guilt from exposure and punishment makes himself an accomplice in the wrong-doing, if he was not so before. But, though Louis judged rightly for his own and his queen's character in bringing those ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Nevertheless I could detect a serious side to my companion's mood, especially when he spoke once more of Teddy Garland, and told me that he had cabled to him also before leaving Carlsbad. And I could not help wondering, with a discreditable pang, whether his intercourse with that honest lad could have bred in Raffles a remorse for his own misdeeds, such as I myself had often tried, but always ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... are daily more and more shocked by the scandal of his personal fortune." Colonel Boyer was chief of the staff to Bazaine in Mexico, and is mentioned in the correspondence between the two Generals Douay as being mixed up in these discreditable transactions; and he was afterwards, as General Boyer, concerned, it may be remembered, in the Regnier affair at Metz, when General Bourbaki was sent out under a pass from the Prussians on a fool's errand to the Empress Eugenie, there being some treasonable plot behind. This is ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... did not approve discreditable marriages; but, on the other hand, it did not actively interfere with a Service man's private affairs. A good officer might make his way in spite of an unfortunate marriage. There were worse instances in the "Indian Civil" than his. But he was certain, at any rate, he would ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... given. The key was left in the tap of the cider-barrel, instead of being carried in a pocket. And finally the tranter had to stand up in the room and let his wife wheel him round like a turnstile, to see if anything discreditable ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... chosen profession Marie Gessler found nothing discreditable. Of herself her opinion was not high, and her opinion of men was lower. For her smiles she had watched several sacrifice honor, duty, loyalty; and she held them and their kind in contempt. To lie, to cajole, to rob men of secrets they thought important, and of ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... from one of the English damsels whom M. Guy de Maupassant dislikes so much, is written in such French as the lady could muster. It explains that recurrent mystery, WHY ENGLISHWOMEN ABROAD SMELL OF GUTTA-PERCHA. The reason is not discreditable to our countrywomen, but if M. de Maupassant asks, as he often does, why Englishwomen dress like scarecrows when they are on the Continent, Miss Harriet ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... "the struggle for material prosperity," not a high disdain of the strife which goes on not less in Europe than in America, and must, of course, go on everywhere as long as competitive conditions endure, but is the result of chances and preferences which mean nothing nationally calamitous or discreditable. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the only passage in Burchard's diary where Lucretia appears in an unfavorable light; nowhere else has he recorded anything discreditable to her. The accusations of the Neopolitans and of Guicciardini are not substantiated by anything in his diary. In fact we find corroboration nowhere unless we regard Matarazzo as an authority, which he certainly was not. He states that Giovanni Sforza had discovered that ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... by this time consummate, but I must content myself with noting but a few of its features. Mrs. Penniman's own share in it was a singular sentiment, which might have been misinterpreted, but which in itself was not discreditable to the poor lady. It was a romantic interest in this attractive and unfortunate young man, and yet it was not such an interest as Catherine might have been jealous of. Mrs. Penniman had not a particle of jealousy of her niece. For herself, she felt as if she were Morris's ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... contingencies a mediating power steps in, and brings things to an equilibrium."[25] These great and obvious advantages of the new tariff, the opponents of Ministers, and especially their reckless and discreditable allies called the "Anti-corn-law League," see as plainly as we do; but their anxious aim is to conceal these advantages as much as possible from public view; and for this purpose they never willingly make any allusion to the tariff, or if forced to do so, underrate its value, or grossly misrepresent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... that, within a space of four or five years, he avenged all the insults that had been lavishly flung upon her by every country in Europe throughout a long, disastrous, and most perplexing civil war. Gloriously did he retrieve the credit that had been mouldering and decaying during two weak and discreditable reigns of nearly fifty years' continuance—gloriously did he establish and extend his country's authority and influence in remote nations—gloriously acquire the real mastery of the British Channel—gloriously ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... account in John is not wholly false, I think the reply in every case discreditable. If literal, it all but indicates wilful imposture. If mystical, it is disingenuously evasive; and it tended, not to instruct, but to irritate, and to move suspicion and contempt. Is this the course for a religious teacher?—to ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... and let us now hear what he has to say. As if he himself were entirely unconcerned in the matter, instead of having been the chief culprit, he speaks of "cool effrontery;" "magisterial assumption, towards a parcel of naughty boys caught in their naughtiness;" "most discreditable;" "the epithet outrageous is hardly too strong." Here his breath fails him, and, fortunately for me, the climax ends. And this, we are asked to believe, is not loud and boisterous but gentle and calm: it is in fact "the language ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... of that experience is told in another chapter. In 1906, there came one of the most deplorable experiences in the history of the island, the first and only discreditable revolution. The causes of the experience are not open to our criticism. Our own records show too much of precisely the same kind of work, illegal registration, ballot box stuffing, threats and bribery. The first election in the new Republic ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... side. He has some discreditable ways, though he has not a monopoly of them, because he cannot get entirely rid of vexatious Christian competition. We have seen that he seldom transgresses the laws against crimes of violence. Indeed, his dealings with courts are ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... maintained its legality; for when, on the 9th of March, Mr. Francis moved a resolution for expunging that of the 8th of June preceding, by which it was authorised, he was left in a minority of one hundred and thirty-seven against one hundred and forty-two. It is said that Mr. Pitt engaged in this discreditable affair from the conviction, that, within a reasonable time, a decided majority of legal votes would be substantiated in favour of Sir Cecil Wray; but it would rather appear that it was from the enmity which he bore to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... it were a compromise, what is there in compromise that is discreditable either to men or to nations? This very charter of government under which we live was created in a spirit of compromise and mutual concession. Without that spirit it never would have been made, and without a continuance of that spirit it will not be ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... after all, what was to be done? Jackeymo was much too proud to exhibit his person, to the eyes of the Squire's butler, in habiliments discreditable to himself and the Padrone. In the midst of his perplexity the bell rang, and he ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... would reply, "You ass." And then. "I'm never going to tell her." "You ass," again. After all, it was not a practical question; Agnes would never hear of his fall. If his friend had been, as he expressed it, "labelled"; if he had been a father, or still better a brother, one might tell him of the discreditable passion. But why irritate him for no reason? Thinking "I am always angling for sympathy; I must stop myself," he hurried ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... perpetual curacy or vicarage, worth at that time only 35 per annum! forming one of the discreditable anomalies of the church, in the division of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Ab hacked from a low-limbed tree a branch as thick as his finger and about a yard in length, and, first trimming it, bent it as Bark had bent the twig and tied a strong sinew cord across. It was a not discreditable bow, considering the fact that it was the first ever made, though one end was smaller than the other and it was rough of outline. Then Ab cut a straight willow twig, as long nearly as the bow, and began repeating ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... of it, I think," he retorted; "the other you would have sold to whichever spy of the Danish or Russian Governments happened to have employed you in this discreditable business." ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... evidence in a popular and exciting case of adultery and murder. The one figure on the stage of this author which stands out sharply defined in our recollection against a background of undistinguished shadows is the figure of the adulterer and murderer. This most discreditable of Browns has a distinct and brawny outline of his own, a gait and accent as of a genuine and recognisable man, who might have put to some better profit his shifty spirit of enterprise, his genuine capacity of affection, his burly ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... ask you touches a delicate subject, perhaps," Janet continued, reluctantly. "You may feel that I'm pushing in where I'm not concerned. But if Mr. Sorenson has done anything discreditable—if he has acted in a way to make me ashamed when I know, then it becomes a matter affecting my happiness too. I would never marry a man who had done something dishonorable, for if I did so knowingly I should be ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... the club what the lower orders are, could I doubt that this was some discreditable love affair of William's? His solicitude for his wife had been mere pretence; so far as it was genuine, it meant that he feared she might recover. He probably told her that he was detained nightly in the club ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... don't quite like the idea of a projected marriage with my daughter, Miss de la Molle of Honham Castle, being hushed up as though there were something discreditable about it, but still there may be peculiar circumstances in the case which would justify me in consenting to that course. You are both old enough to know your own minds, and the match would be as advantageous for you as it could be to us, for even now-a-days, family, and ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... my laws, these sacred rites repelled Hannibal from the walls, and the Senones from the capitol. Have I been reserved for this, that when aged I should be blamed? I will consider what it is thought should be set in order, but tardy and discreditable is the reformation of ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... ill-feeling towards him, and disgust at the king's outrageous bribery. I never cease advising and instigating Pompey—even frankly finding fault with and admonishing him—to avoid what would be a most discreditable imputation.[437] But he really leaves no room for either entreaties or admonitions from me. For, whether in everyday conversation or in the senate, no one could support your cause with greater eloquence, seriousness, zeal, and energy than he has done, testifying in the highest terms ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... a strange and discreditable incident. Patriots, revolutionists, who on the whole would serve human progress, have yet, as have we all, dark spots and seamy sides. Bacon's parties of workmen were threatened, hindered, driven from their task by Berkeley's guns. Bacon had a curious, unadmirable idea. He sent horsemen ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... trouble to realise my motives. One doesn't explain such things to the world in general, but I want you to understand. If one man less admirable than another; if his friends and his entertainments are inclined to become rowdy and discreditable, does he need help less, or more? Vernon and other men of his kind consider that they do their duty by leaving such a man severely alone. I find mine in being with him— just—as much—as ever I can!" She emphasised the words by ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... now and then, amusing too; unlikely to afford him serious reflections. The recent endeavours of his journal to whip the Government-team to a right-about-face were annoying, preposterous. Dacier had admitted to Diana that Tonans merited the thanks of the country during 'the discreditable Railway mania, when his articles had a fine exhortative and prophetic twang, and had done marked good. Otherwise, as regarded the Ministry, the veering gusts of Tonans were objectionable: he 'raised ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Chevalier's; not so much, however, considering that one writer was before, while the other was behind the scenes. The two narratives combined complete the history of the Jersey mint—a history evidently discreditable to certain personages, and therefore never intended to meet the public eye. Even the unsophisticated chronicler is intuitively aware that some mystery attaches to the transaction, which prevents him from writing with ...
— The Coinages of the Channel Islands • B. Lowsley
... before the crowd had fully realised his advent over the trees. An elderly and apparently intoxicated peasant in a shiny black hat, and carrying a large crimson umbrella, caught sight of it first as it trailed past him, and was seized with a discreditable ambition to kill it. He pursued it, briskly with unpleasant cries. It crossed the road obliquely, splashed into a pail of milk upon a stall, and slapped its milky tail athwart a motor-car load of factory girls halted outside the town gates. They ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... respite given to the slave-trade to feed and foster it, there began, with 1787, that system of bargaining, truckling, and compromising with a moral, political, and economic monstrosity, which makes the history of our dealing with slavery in the first half of the nineteenth century so discreditable to a great people. Each generation sought to shift its load upon the next, and the burden rolled on, until a generation came which was both too weak and too strong to bear it longer. One cannot, to be sure, demand of whole nations ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Legislature passed two very discreditable bills which would have been made positively infamous if it had not been for the active opposition of a few friends of liberty. One of these bills was designed to add to the stringency of the present obstructive ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... it—"two commodores and no Cochrane." Finding that Admiral Blanco would not listen to this, they persuaded one or two of the inferior ministers—whose jealousy it was not difficult to excite—that it was dangerous and discreditable to a republican Government to allow a nobleman and a foreigner to command its navy, and still more so, to allow him to retain his title; the object being to place Admiral Blanco in the chief command, with myself as his second—by ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... naturalist, "the Linne of France," was buried as one forgotten and unknown. We read with astonishment, in the account by Dr. A. Mondiere, who made zealous inquiries for the exact site of the grave of Lamarck, that it is and forever will be unknown. It is a sad and discreditable, and to us inexplicable, fact that his remains did not receive decent burial. They were not even deposited in a separate grave, but were thrown into a trench apparently situated apart from the other graves, and from which the bones of those thrown there were removed every five years. They ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... of man? Or why has it been said that creation ex nihilo—an absolutely first act of causation, is inconceivable by us, but from the impossibility of finding in human power an exact type of Divine power? To attribute discreditable motives to an opponent, even to account for unquestionable facts, is usually considered as an abuse of criticism. What shall we say when the facts are fictitious as well as the motives? With regard to Mr. Mansel, ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... his fanatical hatred of Russia, Carp rejoiced in her ally's defeat—albeit that country was his own—and Marghiloman remained in Bukarest to curry favour with its conquerors, and ultimately to become for a brief and discreditable period the Premier whom the Germans imposed on Rumania after the Treaty of Bukarest. Meanwhile the patriotic parties rallied round the ministry at Jassy and formed a ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... Academy; and hundreds of other distinguished men commenced their career in business no more respectable; but not one of them felt that dignity was compromised by their humble vocation. They believed that honor crowned all the various branches of industry, however discreditable they might appear to some, and that disgrace would eventually attach to any one who did not act well his part in the most popular pursuit. Like them, Nat was never troubled with mortification on account of his poverty, or the humble work he was called upon ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... against truth and honesty. The forgeries of charters, bulls, and legal instruments of all kinds for the glorification of a monastery by its members was at least condoned only too frequently. It can hardly be doubted that the scriptorium of many a religious house must have been turned to very discreditable uses by unscrupulous and clever scribes, with the connivance if not with the actual knowledge of the convent, for such things were not done in a corner. If the forgeries succeeded—and that they often did succeed we know—the monastery got all the advantage of ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... memory. He was a writer of anti-clerical romances and the editor of an anti-clerical newspaper—legitimate occupations in one sense, but in this instance too frequently connected with literary methods of a gravely discreditable kind. A catalogue of the defunct Libraire Anti-Clericale is added to one of the romances, and advertises, among other productions from the same pen, the following contributions made by Leo Taxil to the literature of sacrilege and scandal:—1st, a Life ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... idle and dissipated circles. Her character was not unknown to me. There was nothing in her features or air to obviate disadvantageous prepossessions. I sought not her intercourse; I rather shunned it, as unpleasing and discreditable, but she would not be repulsed. Self-invited, she made herself my frequent guest; took unsolicited part in my concerns; did me many kind offices; and, at length, in spite of my counter-inclination, won ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... give more thought to it; they crave more of it in their immediate surroundings. The average man, at least in England and America, takes a sort of bovine pride in his anaesthesia to the arts; he can think of them only as sources of tawdry and somewhat discreditable amusement; one seldom hears of him showing half the enthusiasm for any beautiful thing that his wife displays in the presence, of a fine fabric, an effective colour, or a graceful form, say in millinery. The truth is that women are resistant to so-called ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... during the last century, and in our own land, matrimony has been so much esteemed, notably by women, that it has come to be regarded as in some sort discreditable for them to remain single. Old maids are mentioned on every hand with mingled pity and disdain, arising no doubt from the belief, conscious or unconscious, that they would not be what they are if they could help it. Few persons ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... candidate of the Lopez and Fletcher quarrel. If Mr. Fletcher had insulted the other man's wife, surely he could not be a proper member for Silverbridge. And then the row was declared to have been altogether discreditable. Two strangers had come into this peaceful town and had absolutely quarrelled with sticks and whips in the street, calling each other opprobrious names. Would it not be better that they should elect their own respectable townsman? All this was nearly effective. But, in spite of all, Arthur Fletcher ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... teachings still humbly received by the mass of Christians. The common distrust with which the natural operations of reason are regarded in the Church, the extreme reluctance to accept the conclusions of mere reason, seem to us discreditable to the theological leaders who represent the current creeds of the approved sects. Many an influential theologian could learn invaluable lessons from the great guides in the realm of science. The ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... which she had lubricated her conscience withal, regarding her desires and intentions, were shown up at precisely their true value, and a very discreditable spectacle they made. Nothing is more exasperating after a failure than to be stared out of countenance by the unworthy means we have employed. During her progress up-stairs to the dressing-room, and brief stay there, Cornelia had ample leisure to review ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... for only a few years, and her other endocrine influences are still dormant. She breaks off her engagement to Captain Caleb Williams on the eve of her wedding because she is informed of the episodes of a sex affair he was involved in on his last voyage, under circumstances not discreditable to him. The next act shows her thirty years later when, as an elderly spinster, she is passing through the climacteric, and is in the state of sexual hyperesthesia some women are afflicted with before the menopause. It is as if the ovaries and the accessory sex internal secretions ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... coloured person or bastard, nor persons of public bad conduct, or those who have had a discreditable criminal sentence passed on them, nor any non-rehabilitated bankrupts or insolvents whatsoever shall be eligible as ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... cropped out here and there on his hardy body; his coat was distantly suggestive of a collie; his tail of a terrier. But something of width between the patient eyes and bluntness in the scarred muzzle spoke to a tough and hardy ancestor in his discreditable pedigree, as though a lady of his house had once gone away with a bulldog. His part in the company was to do tricks outside beerhouses. When the Signor's strumming had gathered a little ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... days between the repudiation and the approbation of Luther is not discreditable to him. It is the tragic defect running through his whole personality: his refusal or inability ever to draw ultimate conclusions. Had he only been a calculating and selfish nature, afraid of losing his life, he would long since have altogether forsaken Luther's ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... (conjecturally) dates his decease at least a year earlier?[1] It is not a mere conjecture as, on March 3, 1693, Barbezieux begs Saint-Mars to mention his Protestant prisoners under nicknames. There are THREE, and Malzac is no longer one of them. Malzac, in 1692, suffered from a horrible disease, discreditable to one of the godly, and in October, 1692, had been allowed medical expenses. Whether they included a valet or not, Malzac seems to have been non-existent by March, 1693. Had he possessed a valet, and had he died in ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... a few words to say to you before work commences, boys, and I regret to say they are not of a very pleasant character. A most discreditable act—a criminal act—has been committed since we last met in this hall. This desk"—he turned from the boys to the desk, and brought his hand down upon it sharply—"has been forced open during the night, and five pages torn from the Black ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... for Mr Lammle, Twemlow politely intimates (though greatly shocked), to have one always beside him who is attached to him in all his fortunes, and whose restraining influence will prevent him from courses that would be discreditable and ruinous. As he says it, Mrs Lammle leaves off ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... France, and to bring about a union with England. Till the emergence of the religious question the English party in Scotland consisted of traitors and mercenaries, and their efforts to strengthen English influence form the most discreditable ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... cordially, and Mr. Warbeck went off in a hansom. Thomas Bird, changing his mind about the tram, walked all the way home, and with bent head. One would have thought that he had just done something discreditable. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... her own right comfortably well-to-do. But, despite the exiguous nature of my own resources, it was not the money question which impressed me most in this connection, but rather the fact that, while my only acquaintances in London were of a more or less discreditable sort, Constance seemed to have friends everywhere, and these in almost every case people of standing and importance. Her army friends were apt to be generals, her political friends ex-Ministers, her journalistic ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... direct such concerns. He wants to begin at the top, for manual labor is held to be discreditable, and he would never defile his hands by the apprenticeship which the architects, engineers, and manufacturers of England cheerfully undergo; and he would be aghast to learn that the leading names of industrial enterprise in England belonged ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... giving them the history of the discreditable ways in which one du Tillet (a stockbroker then much in favor) had laid the foundations of his fortune; all the ins and outs of the whole disgraceful business were accurately put before them; and the ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... and the saying was repeated the next day with shameless mirth as the best joke of the season. For the wood for the library had had a history distinctly discreditable and as distinctly ludicrous, at which Hillsboro people laughed with a conscious lowering of their standards of honesty. The beginning had been an accident, but the long sequence was not. For the first time in the history of the ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... did not accept the invitation of her brother to undertake the charge of his household without due consideration. She by no means left out of view the contingency of his possible future marriage; but she trusted largely to her own influences in making it such a one, if inevitable, as should not be discreditable to the family name. And under such conditions she would retire with serene contentment to her own more private sphere of Canterbury,—or, if circumstances should demand, would accept the position of guest in the house of her brother. Nor did she leave out of view her influence in the training ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... lost—that, namely, to the people against Metellus, in which, no doubt, he put forth all that he had intended to say when Metellus stopped him from speaking at the expiration of his Consulship; the second, against Clodius and Curio, in the Senate, in reference to the discreditable Clodian affair. The fragments which we have of this contain those asperities which he retailed afterward in his letter to Atticus, and are not either instructive or amusing. But we learn from these fragments ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... that he married Periboea the mother of Ajax and also Phereboea and Iope the daughter of Iphikles: and, as has been told already, it was on account of his love for Aegle the daughter of Panopeus that he deserted Ariadne, which was a shameful and discreditable action. And in addition to all this he is charged with carrying off Helen, which brought war upon Attica, and exile and destruction on himself; about which we shall speak presently. But, though many adventures were undertaken by the heroes of those times, Herodorus is of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... random, there should be a touch from Tennyson's "Two Voices?" And what if imitations, nay, caricatures, be found in almost every page? Is not the explanation simple enough, and rather creditable than discreditable to Mr. Smith? He takes as his models Shelley, Keats, and their followers. Who is to blame for that? The Glasgow youth, or the public taste, which has been exalting these authors more and more for the last twenty years as the great poets of the nineteenth century? If they ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... held to try the Templars in the other lands where they had also been seized. In England, the confessions of the knights tortured in France were employed as evidence, together with the witness of begging friars, minstrels, women, and discreditable persons; and on the decision of the Council of Vienne, the poor knights confessed, as well they might, that their order had fallen under evil report, and were therefore pardoned and released, with the forfeiture of all their property ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... empowering any three of his suffragans to commit, in his name, and as his delegates, the sins which he did not choose to commit in person. The reproaches of all parties soon made him ashamed of himself. He then tried to suppress the evidence of his fault by means more discreditable than the fault itself. He abstracted from among the public records of which he was the guardian the instrument by which he had authorised his brethren to act for him, and was with difficulty induced to give ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... shore, on the alert to detect the departure of the fugitives, but, from some cause or other, failed to do their duty, and they must have been quite a way off at the time the Mohawk put out his awkward scow. The party on shore were angry because of the failure, which was certainly a discreditable one, and they were very ready to accuse their comrades of being "squaws" on the war-path. The accused were equally ready to charge the others with being "old women" for permitting the whites to land under their noses, and to reach cover again. It would be hard to say which ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... limitations, of virtually acting as censors. The newspapers, whatever their pretensions, make no attempt to antagonize the powers from whom so large a portion of their revenue comes. It is a standing rule in newspaper offices in the cities, that not a specific mention of any unfavorable or discreditable matter occurring in department stores, or affecting the interests of the proprietors of those stores, is allowed to get into print. Thus it is that the general public are studiously kept in ignorance of the abominations incessantly going on ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... have liked Sothern, with his wonderful hands and blue eyes, Sothern, whom every one found so fascinating and delightful, I cannot say, and I record it as discreditable to me, not to him. It was just a case of "I do not like thee, Dr. Fell." I admired him—I could not help doing that—but I dreaded his jokes, and thought some ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... prisoner was free, as soon as Mme. Acquet had given up all her secrets as the price of her lover's liberty, it only remained to secure him again, and the means employed to gain this end must have been somewhat discreditable, for in the reports sent to the Emperor, who was daily informed of the progress of the affair, things were manifestly misrepresented. The following facts cannot be questioned: Le Chevalier had found in Paris "an impenetrable retreat where he could boldly defy ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... among the Indians as to the manner in which this plant was first bestowed upon mankind, is extremely whimsical, somewhat discreditable, and withal of such a nature as to preclude the propriety of our introducing it in this place to the acquaintance of our readers. But writers are not wanting who have carried the original of tobacco into the Grecian fabulous ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Earl knew the real concealed author, and the secret of the pseudonym. But of the hypothesis of such a choice of a pseudonym, enough has been said. Whatever happened, whatever the Earl knew, if it were discreditable to be dedicated to by an actor, Southampton was discredited; for we are to prove that all in the world of letters and theatre who have left any notice of Shakespeare identified the ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... attending the funeral. Homage to her days of gallant exertion in poverty was most welcome and touching to the young people; but their uncle, without taste to understand it, wishing to forget her labours, and fancying them discreditable to a daughter of the Dynevors, received the proposal like an indignity; and but for Fitzjocelyn's mediation and expostulations, it would have been most unsuitably rejected. He was obliged to take the answer into his own hands, since Oliver insisted that his mother ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Many years afterwards, Sydney Smith wrote to his brother, that "a working senator should lead the life of an athlete." But supposing the fact still true, that an average red man can run, and an average white man cannot,—who does not see that it is the debility, not the feat, which is discreditable? Setting aside the substantial advantages of strength and activity, there is a melancholy loss of self-respect in buying cultivation for the brain by resigning the proper vigor of the body. Let men say what they please, they all demand ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... By sight undazzled with the glare of praise, Who shall be named—in the resplendent line Of sages, martyrs, confessors—the man Whom the best might of conscience, truth and hope, For one day's little compass, has preserved From painful and discreditable shocks Of contradiction from some vague desire Culpably cherished, or corrupt relapse ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... speech of Mr. Jeremiah Dyson, M.P. for Weymouth, and a Commissioner of the Treasury: "Jeremiah Weymouth, the d——n of the kingdom, spoke as follows." And it may seem that the Opposition (for the affair was made a party question) can hardly be acquitted of a discreditable indifference to the dignity of the House in supporting a resolution of Colonel Barre, that "Jeremiah Weymouth, the d——n of this kingdom, is not a member of this House." On which the previous question was moved by the ministers, and carried by 120 to 38.—Parliamentary History, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... there was something uncongenial and degrading in being compelled to associate with them. Nor, though he had already sufficient strength of character to learn to do his work well, did he ever regard the work itself as anything but unsuitable, and almost discreditable. Indeed it may be doubted whether the iron of that time did not unduly rankle and fester as it entered into his soul, and whether the scar caused by the wound was altogether quite honourable. He seems to have felt, in connection with his early employment in a warehouse, a ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... is deficient: the deficiency, indeed, is not discreditable to him. It was the inevitable effect of circumstances. It was in the nature of things necessary that, in some part of its progress through political science, the human mind should reach that point which it attained in his time. Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps. The axioms of an English ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Hotel Metropole, even more ragged and discreditable-appearing than I was when you saw me this morning," he resumed, "the proprietor's wife asked me where I'd been. I told her I had been on a trip to hell, and the farther that experience is behind me the stronger my conviction that I defined ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... officers and agents from arbitrary exactions. In whatever aspect considered, the practice of making levies for party purposes upon the salaries of officers is highly demoralizing to the public service and discreditable to the country. Though an officer should be as free as any other citizen to give his own money in aid of his opinions or his party, he should also be as free as any other citizen to refuse to make such gifts. ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... She found discreditable motives for everyone who would not take her at her own estimate of herself. She detested Clutton. She told Philip that his friend had no talent really; it was just flashy and superficial; he couldn't compose a figure to save ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... at first, seem discreditable to Washington, as exhibiting the mighty strength of his passions when aroused. But upon mature consideration it does him great honor, affording equal evidence of his power of self-control, his public spirit, his disinterestedness, and ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the learned had a large family and small means. He stated his case to a great man, who entertained a favorable opinion of his character. This one turned away from his solicitation, and viewed this prostitution of begging as discreditable with a gentleman of education. If soured by misfortune, present not thyself before a dear friend, for thou may'st also imbitter his pleasure. When thou bringest forward a distress, do it with a cheerful and smiling face, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... staring wooden faces waiting to hear her try and persuade them to contribute to the alleviation of the urgent needs of the Hampstead poor, each one convinced that they needed contributions themselves. She looked as though she were hiding something discreditable but delightful. Certainly her customary clear expression of candor was not there, and its place was taken by a kind of suppressed and frightened pleasedness, which would have led a more worldly-minded audience to the instant conviction of ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... vessel of water and seeing whether they will meet. The truth is probably that they are too backward ever to have had recourse to the Brahman priest, but now, though they still apparently have no desire for his services, they recognise the fact to be somewhat discreditable to themselves, and desire to explain it away by the story already given. In Hoshangabad the bride still goes to the bridegroom's house to be married as among the Gonds. A bride-price is paid, which consists of four rupees, a khandi [459] of juari or ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... man's tongue. However, there were many reasons for the anomaly. Caroline of Brunswick was the Queen until she should be proved unworthy to bear the title. Her quarrel with the King had long made her notorious. Though the story reflected little credit on her, it was so utterly discreditable to him that it raised up friends for her where they might have been least expected. His unpopularity rendered her popular. Her name became the rallying-cry for a great political faction. The mob, with its usual headlong, unreasoning appropriation of a cause and a person, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... natures into a desperate situation seems like putting tartaric acid into soda and water—they sparkle up and froth. It certainly was so with Dennis O'Moore; and if Alister could hardly have been more raven-like upon the crack of doom, the levity of Dennis would, in our present circumstances, have been discreditable to a paroquet. ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the West ended, as it began, in a carnival of butchery. Treacherous attacks, massacres, burnings, and pillagings were everyday occurrences, and white men were hardly less at fault than red. Indeed the most discreditable of all the recorded episodes of the time was a heartless massacre by Americans of a large band of Indians that had been Christianized by Moravian missionaries and brought together in a peaceful community ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... more myself," he went on. "It produces a kind of mutual confidence and that sort of thing. I hardly feel inclined to explain the cause of this improvement yet, Frank; but you may take my word that there is nothing in the least discreditable about it. In fact, when one comes to think of it, there's nothing so very extraordinary either. It's a perfectly sound scientific idea, perfectly sound; so you can make your mind at ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... Van Heigens had a blue daffodil then, and Julia went to them for some purpose besides earning a pittance as companion. She had not taken a blue daffodil; she said so; she also said at another time she had failed in the object of her coming and that failure and success would have been alike discreditable. Poor Julia! And now here was some one in Norfolk exhibiting a daffodil of mixed blue and yellow called, by a strange coincidence, "The Good Comrade." Of course, it was only a coincidence and yet, when reason is not helping as much as it ought, one is inclined ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... long since ceased to be considered disgraceful, or even discreditable, among the patrician order in Rome before the soldiers ventured to break their oaths of allegiance. Military service had, from the ignorance and selfishness of this order, been rendered extremely odious ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... matter of fact, his own plays are strewn with classic transcriptions; and though he evidently plumed himself on his power of "invention"[108] in the matter of plots—a faculty which he knew Shakspere to lack—he cannot conceivably have meant to charge his rival with having committed any discreditable plagiarism in drawing upon Montaigne. At most he would mean to convey that borrowing from the English translation of Montaigne was an easy game as compared with his own scholar-like practice of translating from the Greek and Latin, and ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... confidence placed in her if she makes a discreditable use of any information coming to her through her association with her husband's family. There are skeletons in every closet, and she may not tell even her own mother of what she has seen in the other house. A single word breathed against ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... on coming to his assistance, was beaten so severely that her skull was fractured, while an aged female—stated to be in her ninety-seventh year—was not only roughly handled, but also beaten. A most discreditable episode indeed, in a land formerly renowned for respect for womanhood, and for the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... The houses are a little too good for artisans, too small and too silent to be the abode of various lodgers, and too mean for clerks who live on salaries. They are as dull-looking as Lethe itself, dull and silent, dingy and repulsive. But they are not discreditable in appearance, and never have that Mohawk look which by some unknown sympathy in bricks and mortar attaches itself to the residences of ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... world, and overruns with small jokes and stories, many of which he claims were told him by President Lincoln. From this we might infer that the President has very little to do but entertain and amuse gentlemen, who apply to him for appointments, with conversation so coarse that it would be discreditable to a ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... from the idea of Peele's vagabondism given by the untrustworthy "Jests." The slander on Queen Eleanor was pretty certainly supplied to him by an older ballad. There is little or nothing else in Peele's undoubted writings which is at all discreditable. His miscellaneous poems show a man by no means given to low company or low thoughts, and one gifted with the truest poetic vein; while his dramas, besides exhibiting a greater command over blank verse than any of his predecessors and than any except Marlowe of his contemporaries can ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... during those three years had he shown a disposition to hark back on his old discreditable ways, and that was the result of a casual meeting with Gus one summer during the holidays, with whom, he afterwards confessed to Charlie, he was induced to forget for a time his better resolutions in the snares of a billiard-room. But the backsliding was ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... not strictly beautiful. Her eyes were a trifle large, and their lashes longer than they need have been. An anarchy of small curls was her chevelure, a dark upland of misrule, every hair asserting its rights over a not discreditable brow. For the rest, her features were not at all original. They seemed to have been derived rather from a gallimaufry of familiar models. From Madame la Marquise de Saint-Ouen came the shapely tilt of the nose. The mouth was a mere replica of Cupid's bow, lacquered scarlet and strung ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... of Thucydides, and hence was known as "the little Thucydides." As an historian he is deficient in conscientiousness and candour; he appears as a partisan of Dionysius, and seeks to throw a veil over his discreditable actions. Still he belongs to the most important of ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... was idle and had no power of will. The brain, to be sure, must obey its own laws; it recognizes neither the exigencies of life nor the voice of honor; a man cannot write a great book because a woman is dying, or to pay a discreditable debt, or to bring up a family; at the same time, there is no great talent without a strong will. These twin forces are requisite for the erection of the vast edifice of personal glory. A distinguished genius keeps his brain in ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... imposts which had been repealed in the time of Galba, he imposed new and onerous taxes, augmented the tribute of the provinces, and doubled that of some of them. He likewise openly engaged in a traffic, which is discreditable [758] even to a private individual, buying great quantities of goods, for the purpose of retailing them again to advantage. Nay, he made no scruple of selling the great offices of the state to candidates, and pardons to persons under prosecution, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... which he was regarded makes it difficult to form any just estimate of his character. Where he had no temptation to do injustice he seems to have been a very good judge; but he had no hesitation in doing gross injustice by detestable methods, for wholly discreditable reasons. He is not seen quite at his worst in Alice Lisle's trial, because she was probably guilty and Dunne was a liar; nor is he seen at his best as a cross-examiner, because he had very good material to go on. He has been unfortunate in ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... Pemberley, and Lady Anne, could not have appeared with propriety in a different manner. I am excessively attentive to all those things. You must send John with the young ladies, Mrs. Collins. I am glad it occurred to me to mention it; for it would really be discreditable to you to let them ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... modern spirit of our type, was old-fashioned in some respects, had an immense and beautiful conception of women and their purity, and carried his prejudices against, what we call smart society, to such an extent that, if a man or woman of his set was divorced in circumstances discreditable to themselves, he would cut ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... Hester was thinking too of the nurses, the doctors, the lodgings at Torquay, the motor, the endless flowers and books!—all provided, practically, by Farrell, aided and abetted by Bridget's readiness—a discreditable readiness, in the eyes of a person of such Spartan standards as Hester Martin—to avail herself to any extent of other people's money. The patient was not to blame. Even in the worst times of her illness, Nelly had shewn signs of distress ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... To a discreditable alien source has been traced the scandalous rumour that the disappearance of the summit of Mont Blanc is due to certain admirers of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE, who wished to present their hero with something in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... once Cranmer's chaplain, held his see. As the author of "On Politique Power" (1558), where he pleads that "it is lawful to kill a tyrant," and uses some very immoderate language, Poynet may be remembered, but as an ecclesiastic he has left only a discreditable record in his short term of office. He died in 1556 in Germany, whither he had retired ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... life, his past would be of little moment; in the glare of a political career, one's antecedents are public property, and too great a reserve in regard to one's past is regarded as a confession of something discreditable. Frank, too, knew the secret—a good, faithful fellow, even where there was no obligation of fidelity; he ought to do something for Frank to show their appreciation of his conduct. But what assurance was there that Frank would always be discreet about the affairs of others? Judge Straight ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Emerson. We have heard much of late of the uses of the imagination in science. It is high time to urge the use of a little imagination in philosophy. The unwillingness of some of our critics to read any but the silliest of possible meanings into our statements is as discreditable to their imaginations as anything I know in recent philosophic history. Schiller says the true is that which 'works.' Thereupon he is treated as one who limits verification to the lowest material utilities. ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... another for the platform. Prejudices are pandered to in public, which in private are despised. Pretended conversions—which invariably jump with party interests are more sudden; and even hypocrisy now appears to be scarcely thought discreditable. ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... more excellent way than by singing. Wherefore deacons and prelates, whom it becomes to incite men's minds towards God by means of preaching and teaching, ought not to be instant in singing, lest thereby they be withdrawn from greater things. Hence Gregory says (Regist. iv, ep. 44): "It is a most discreditable custom for those who have been raised to the diaconate to serve as choristers, for it behooves them to give their whole time to the duty of preaching and to taking charge ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... to tell her how, in searching these papers, among a heap of discreditable letters he had lighted upon two or three, pure as white lilies found lying upon a refuse heap, signed ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... skeptical about that San Salvador story. A wise course. Never decide till both sides have been fairly presented. 'He that judgeth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him,' said the wise man. Occasionally his after-judgment is equally discreditable. That is a thousand times worse. Exit Clio. Enter—well!—Geographia. My young friend, what celebrated city has the honor of concentrating the laws, learning, and literature of Massachusetts, to wit, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... retreated across the frontier at the first show of resistance. It is significant that these bands were in nearly all cases led by Montenegrins, a fact which indicates the decline of that spirit of military adventure to which the Haiduks of old (robbers) could at least lay some claim. Discreditable as these proceedings ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... should be. What is all this disturbance that has been going on, and how came you to allow a stranger to be so disgracefully ill-treated? What would have happened if he had suffered serious injury while a suppliant in our house? Surely this would have been very discreditable to you." ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... are, I think, a great number of men and women who would go unflinchingly to the stake in vindication of a principle, whose resolution, somewhere in the course of a long, solitary, and indefinite imprisonment, would break down into a discreditable compromise of opinions for which they ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Lucchese, whom the lady had alluded to, and who, by his pleadings at the papal court, in favour of the Uzcoques, had earned himself the honourable cognomen of Ambassador de Ladri, or the Thieves' Envoy. He had expiated his discreditable intercession by a sojourn in the prisons of the Inquisition, which did not, however, present his being in high favour with the Archduke Ferdinand, at whose court he filled the triple office of theologian, confessor, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... North. "I was thinking of you when Brockett came to tell me you were here. Won't you go away from Mount Hope? I want you to forget,—no—" for she was about to speak; "wait until I have finished;—even if I am acquitted this will always be something discreditable in the eyes of the world, it's going to follow me through life! It is going to be hard for me to bear, it will be doubly hard for you, dear. I want your father to take you away and keep you away until this thing is settled. I don't ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... home; and they were the best of friends from that day forth. I don't say it's a discreditable story, you observe," continued Mr. Gottesheim; "but it's droll, and that's the fact. A man should think before he strikes; for, as my nephew says, man to man was the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of as supper. One man after another declined to attend, one saying: "I pray thee have me excused"; another: "I cannot come." The matters that engaged the time and attention of those who had been bidden, or as we would say, invited, to the feast, were not of themselves discreditable, far less sinful; but to arbitrarily allow personal affairs to annul an honorable engagement once accepted was to manifest discourtesy, disrespect and practical insult toward the provider of the feast. The man who had bought a field could have ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage |
