"Inferiority" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The inferiority of Burmah in respect of population, notwithstanding the superior fertility of the soil, is to be traced to the physical geography of the country. The great rivers of India flow east or west. The great rivers of the Burmese peninsula flow from north to south. The population of India could ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... round the meagre refreshment table in the entrance hall. All these government cashiers, secretaries, clerks, and superintendents—stale, sickly-looking, clumsy figures—were perfectly well aware of their inferiority. They did not even enter the ball-room, but contented themselves with watching their wives and daughters in the distance dancing with ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... some effort. As he improves in externals, he will diminish the roughness of his claim. As long as the man makes his claim with any roughness, so long does he acknowledge within himself some feeling of external inferiority. When that has gone—when the American has polished himself up by education and general well-being to a feeling of external equality with gentlemen, he shows, I think, no more of that outward braggadocio of independence ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... another and a great deal better" contains a truth, like many contradictions; a truth that was the link between Christianity and citizenship. Alone of all superiors, the saint does not depress the human dignity of others. He is not conscious of his superiority to them; but only more conscious of his inferiority than they are. ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... George Mason. They reasoned, that slavery was inconsistent with Christianity, was in conflict with the rights of man; that it was a slow poison, daily contaminating the minds and morals of their people; that, by reducing a part of their own species to abject inferiority, they lost the idea of the dignity of man, which the hand of Nature had implanted within them for great and useful purposes; that, by the habit from infancy of trampling on the rights of human nature, every liberal sentiment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... champions of freedom and the brotherhood of man open violators of divine law. If it is the will of God that the dusky children of Ham are to ever serve their brethren and ever to be reminded of their inferiority, then why not the professing Christian, the minister of the Gospel, join in the work of carrying out ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... to every other man. Destroy the equivalent, and what is left? "So God created man in his own image—male and female created he them." This is a death-blow to all claims of superiority, to all charges of inferiority, to all usurpation, ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... who had never much toleration for anything like impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of taste from herself, soon checked every endeavour at intimacy on their side by the coldness of her behaviour towards them; but Elinor, from politeness, submitted to the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... might be that the parting would represent years, and perchance many of them would never meet on earth again. The latter clause was announced with marked solemnity. The orator proceeded to state that there had been enmities, jealousies, perhaps unworthy statements made about the inferiority of the collier boy, but the question had been settled by a brilliant exhibition of physical science; both sides were well represented, and both had shown that they were worthy ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... origin, and drew forth a pocket time-table, and remarked in a wise way that he hoped Julian would "make the connection" at Derby. Lastly he predicted the precise minute at which Julian "ought" to be knocking at the front door. And both women felt their ignorant, puzzled inferiority in these recondite matters of travel, and the comfort of having an omniscient ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... Bach's principal rival was a French virtuoso, Marchand, who, an exile from Paris, had delighted the king by the lightness and brilliancy of his execution. They were both to improvise on the same theme. Marchand heard Bach's performance, and signalized his own inferiority by declining to play, and secretly leaving the city of Dresden. Augustus sent Bach a hundred louis d'or, but this splendid douceur never reached him, as it was appropriated by one of the ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... to say "scharmant" and "amuesiren". It was wrong, very wrong; and I feel my inferiority every time I come to Germany, and have to pause and think by what combination of words I can express the true Germanic functions and nature of booking offices and bicycle labels. For it was long ago: Count Bismarck was still looked ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... tip of a cat's tail on the horizon of a bed, or the roof of a tram-car on the horizon of the wall. And Edwin was eager to understand, and almost persuaded himself that he did understand; but he could not be sure. A marvellous child— disconcerting! He had a feeling of inferiority to the child, because the child had seen beauty where he had not ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... evinced a certain exultation in the very sense of that inferiority he affected to deplore; for this advanced and refined being, was she not his own all the time? Not so Giles; he felt doubtful—perhaps a trifle cynical—for that strand was wound into him with the rest. He looked at his clothes ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... themselves to a life of ease and enjoyment without falling under a real inferiority, provided they do not allow the mind to be degraded or sunk ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... be barred back at once, and song remedy the evil which song in its impurer state has done. Nor is the critic, who weighs these disadvantages, likely to pronounce a very decided judgment upon the superiority and inferiority of songs, whether in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... which is less by a third ought to be encountered. My army, O king, exceedeth that of the foe by a third. Besides, O Bharata, I know that the enemy hath many defects, while mine, O lord, are endued with many good virtues. Knowing all this, O Bharata, as also the superiority of my force and the inferiority of the Pandavas, it behoveth thee not ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... contend with British antagonists. In an undecisive skirmish which took place in July between two fleets of the first magnitude, the French admiral, D'Orvilliers, had made a practical acknowledgment of his inferiority by retreating in the night, and eluding all the exertions of the English admiral, Keppel, to renew the action. The discontent in Paris was great; the populace was severe on one or two of the captains, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... are quite full of yellow and pink blossoms. We rode through many cotton-fields, and a pretty sight they were, some good, some poor,—those belonging to the Government as a general thing showing marked inferiority ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... Johnston and the Confederate government regarding the numerical force of his army, he naturally emphasized his inferiority to Sherman in numbers as an explanation of his cautious defensive tactics and his retreating movements. The introduction into the Southern returns of a column of "effectives" as distinguished from the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... two-fold aspect of nature. She looked regretfully at the evidences of her curiosity. She had not yet gone far enough along the new path to take accurate notes of her emotions; but she had an undefined sense of her inferiority, a sense ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... The moral inferiority of Beaumont and Fletcher is well seen in such a play as A King and No King. Here Arbaces falls in love with his sister, and, after a furious conflict in his own mind, finally succumbs to his guilty ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... use, expending the remainder on the purchase of articles of 'exceeding bad quality.' A gorgeous entertainment was prepared for the savages, and the presents were given to them. The Indians took away the presents, but their missionaries had little difficulty in showing them the inferiority of the English gifts; and Philipps noted that they did not appear satisfied. 'They will take all we give them,' he wrote, 'and cut our throats next day.' At length the Indians boldly declared war against the British, an action which Philipps attributed to the scandalous ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... improvement. He beheld with complacency and exultation the eternal fabric which his hands had reared; and the curse denounced against pride has reduced the nation, which participated in his sentiments, to a state of inferiority to the present level of civilized men." The result is the same, though we say that Soliman only recognized and affirmed that barbarism was the law of ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... up by confession, the confessor feels mean and disgraced; or if both confess and forgive, both feel humbled; since forgiveness implies inferiority and pity; from which whatever is manly and womanly shrinks. Still even this is better ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... imitation was so natural and easy as dress. First, the socially ambitious led off in this imitation; then presently the less pretentious were constrained to follow their example, to avoid an apparent confession of social inferiority; till, finally, even the philosophers had to follow the herd and conform to the fashion, to avoid being conspicuous by an ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... lassies could match Peter in a blithe foursome reel or a rattling strathspey. Some, indeed, thought that good Dr. Ogilvie had a more graceful spring and a longer breath, but Peter always insisted that his inferiority to the minister was a voluntary concession to the Dominie's superior dignity. It was, however, a rivalry that always ended in a firmer grip at parting. These little festivals, in which young and old freely mingled, cultivated to perfection the best and kindest feelings ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... letters in our collection 1-14 are letters from heroines to their lovers; 15-20 are in pairs, e.g. Paris to Helen and Helen to Paris. The authenticity of these last six is doubted, partly because the title Heroides cannot apply to half of them, and also because of their inferiority in style. In the use of the epistolary form in love poetry Ovid had no predecessor, and he himself calls attention to the novelty (A.A. above). The style shows the influence of Ovid's rhetorical training: the Epistles are suasoriae in verse, and of suasoriae we know that he ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... cheek-bones, square, strong jaws, full yet firm lips, low, broad foreheads, dark eyes and hair, and a deeper, warmer red on the cheeks than on those of the rosy Swedes. The average height is, perhaps, not quite equal to that of the latter race, but in physical vigor I can see no inferiority, and there are among them many men of splendid stature, strength, and proportion. Von Buch ascribes the marked difference of stature between the Finns and the Lapps, both living under precisely the same influences of ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... Rev. Noah Worcester, whose Bible News had cost him his pulpit, to remove from New Hampshire to Boston to become its editor. Although Mr. Worcester's beliefs affiliated him with the Hopkinsians in everything except his attitude in regard to the inferiority of Christ to God, yet he was compelled to withdraw from his old connections, and to find new fields of activity. He began The Christian Disciple as a religious and family magazine, the first number being ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... trammel, of all her complete immunity from every scruple and every fastidiousness of her sex. But, for once, within sight of that noble and haughty beauty, a poignant, cruel, wounding sense of utter inferiority, of utter debasement, possessed and weighed down her lawless and indomitable spirit. Some vague, weary feeling that her youth was fair enough in the sight of men, but that her older years would be very dark, very terrible, came on her even in this hour of the supreme joy, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... which rendered their own action unavailing, both irritated and piqued the engineer. The relative inferiority which it proved was of a nature to wound a haughty spirit. A generosity evinced in such a manner as to elude all tokens of gratitude, implied a sort of disdain for those on whom the obligation was conferred, which in Cyrus Harding's eyes marred, in ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... what Herbert thought himself. But as Tom expressed it, there was something in his tone which implied a conviction of Herbert's social inferiority, which our ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... herself that she had never before known Mrs. Marchmont's viands to be seasoned with Attic salt of such high flavor. For the first time the proud and flattered belle felt, in the presence of another woman, a humiliating sense of her own inferiority. She clearly recognized that Miss Martell was far in advance of her. How could the student fail to be fascinated? Her mind was the equal of his in force, and as highly cultivated. They were congenial in their views and feelings, and of course she would ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... life miserable. If the magnificent conception of the poet's Prometheus could be lowered to any thing so trivial as a disappointed politician of the eighteenth century, its burlesque might be amply shown in a mind helplessly struggling against a sense of its own inferiority, gnawed by envy at the success of better men, and with only sufficient intellectual sensibility remaining to have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... measured more than a hundred feet from the tip of the snout to the end of the tail, and stood about thirty feet high from the ground. The European Sauropods did not, apparently, reach the size of their American cousins—so early did the inferiority of Europe begin—but our Ceteosaur seems to have been about fifty feet long and ten feet in height. Its thigh-bone was sixty-four inches long and twenty-seven inches in circumference at the shaft. And in this order of reptiles, it must be remembered, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... dogmas which Lutheranism had taken from Catholicism, Samuel was filled with admiration. His bold and sincere spirit instantly compared the doctrines which were now submitted to him, with those in the belief of which he had been bred; and, enlightened by the comparison, was not slow to acknowledge the inferiority of Judaism. He said to himself, that a religion made for a single people, to the exclusion of all others,—which only offered a barbarous justice for rule of conduct,—which neither rendered the present intelligible nor satisfactory, and left the future uncertain,—could not be that of noble souls ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the passage in his Diary for November 17, 1813. A further cause for the cold reception of 'Rokeby' was its inferiority both to the 'Lay' and to 'Marmion'. In Letter vii. of the 'Twopenny Post-bag', ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... islands. "Fanaticism may palliate, but could not conceal the utter prostration of the race." The best specimens of the race were to be found in the Southern States, in closest contact with slavery. The North does not want the negro, does not encourage his immigration. The great fact of the inferiority of the race is ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... is destined to be an artist, he usually exhibits a surprising precocity of expression at a period when as yet he has very little to express. This is another reason why the short-story, as opposed to the novel, belongs to youth rather than to age. Though a young writer may be obliged to acknowledge inferiority to his elders in maturity of message, he may not infrequently transcend them ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... original position; but self-fertilisation afterwards assumed a greater importance than it formerly possessed. Darwin emphasised the fact that "the difference between the self-fertilised and crossed plants raised by me cannot be attributed to the superiority of the crossed, but to the inferiority of the self-fertilised seedlings, due to the injurious effects of self-fertilisation." (Ibid. page 437.) But he had no doubt that in favourable circumstances self-fertilised plants were able to persist for several generations without crossing. An occasional crossing appears to be useful but not ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... at last," Lester replied with startling brightness. "I was afraid I wouldn't be. I guess I had an inferiority complex, and there was also something to live up to. You see, my dad was here with the original Clifford expedition. We always agreed that I should become a space-scientist, too. Mom went along with that—until Dad was killed, here... Well, I'm over the hump, now. You see, I'm so interested ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... thought might please the invalid. For Mainwaring, who had been early struck with Bradley's ready and cultivated intelligence, ended by shyly avoiding the discussion of more serious topics, partly because Bradley impressed him with a suspicion of his own inferiority, and partly because Mainwaring questioned the taste of Bradley's apparent exhibition of his manifest superiority. He learned accidentally that this mill-owner and backwoodsman was a college-bred man; but the practical application of that education to the ordinary ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... system of public instruction, originated by the Puritans of New England, should yet be struggling against prejudice and error. In Asia woman is degraded, and in Europe her common condition is that of apparent and absolute inferiority. When America was settled she became a participator in the struggles and sufferings which awaited the pioneers of civilization and liberty on this continent, and she thus earned a place in family, ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... a faint and controversial resemblance to the Harriet Westbrooke of daily life, the fictitious image prevented him from knowing her, until the reality broke through the poetical vision only to shock him by its inferiority or repulsiveness. As to the poor girl herself, she never had the capacity for learning to know him. In the sequel she proved to be the not unwilling slave of a petty domestic intrigue,—oppression from which he would have rescued ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... nor in Leipzig, nor in Strassburg had Goethe as yet met the man in whom he could recognise his intellectual peer. In the beginning of September, 1770, however, there came to Strassburg one who, for the first time, impressed him with a sense of inferiority. This was Johann Gottfried Herder, who, some five years Goethe's senior, had a career behind him widely different from that of the fortunate son of the Imperial Councillor of Frankfort. Born of poor parents, he had had to fight his way at every step to the distinction ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... own, even with the addition of the crew of the Betsy Allen. In consideration of this fact, he determined to fight her at a distance with his long gun. This he still kept concealed amidships, under the canvas, desiring to impress fully upon his opponent the idea of his inferiority. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... of the Orvietans who would not let Benozzo finish the work which Fra Angelico had left incomplete, is inexplicable; but we must remember that though Benozzo imitated his master's style, the inferiority of his talent was always apparent in the common types, false anatomy, and mistaken proportions of his figures. "He does not equal the master who guided him in his first years, but he follows his style as much as he ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... background of the tiny school-hospital room, with its two white beds and bare walls, but, placed in full view on the centre table, the tree was almost imposing. Standing apart from Grand'mere's primulas and cyclamen as though, conscious of its own inferiority, it did not wish to obtrude, it had looked dejected, miserable. During its sojourn at the hotel the appreciation of its meanness had troubled us. But now, in the shabby little chamber, where there were no rival attractions ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... pounds, while Cuvier's brain weighed over four pounds, giving him the advantage of more than eight ounces over our household oracle! Accidental difference in brain weight proves nothing; for you will not admit your mental inferiority to any man, simply because his head requires a larger ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... defiance of every precaution against its influence. The appearance and flavour of such articles may not be revolting to us, but if compared with the same things when fresh and well dressed, their inferiority is sufficiently obvious. Pickled salmon is a familiar instance of this kind. It is very generally relished, and often preferred to fresh salmon; yet if brought into comparison, the substance of the one ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... once produced then there is deliverance from covetous desire, for a false estimate of excellency produces a covetous desire to excel, whilst a false view of demerit produces anger and regret; but the idea of excelling and also of inferiority (in the sense of demerit) both destroyed, the desire to excel and also anger (on account of inferiority) are destroyed. Anger! how it changes the comely face, how it destroys the loveliness of beauty! Anger dulls the brightness of the eye, chokes all ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... in the case of both, as they had but a few moments before felt it regarding the one. They realized their own inferiority. The jeering and bullying ceased, and all was quiet, save the slam of the door, as new applicants now and then dropped in and joined the line. The silence became painful as the two prominent figures eyed each other. Herbert knew better than to make the first move. He waited ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... serfdom lingered in England for centuries, but hiring superseded open buying and selling of men. (The African slave trade was the work of the Elizabethan seamen, and was excused, as slavery in the United States was excused, by the Protestant Churches on the ground of the racial inferiority of ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... The gray wall of the convent was already in sight. Key felt he had achieved nothing. Except for information that was hopeless, he had come to no nearer understanding of the beautiful girl beside him, and his future appeared as vague as before; and, above all, he was conscious of an inferiority of character and purpose to this simple creature, who had obeyed him so submissively. Had he acted wisely? Would it not have been better if he had ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... be and it may not be. If you have known what perfection is in woman, it is fair to argue that inferiority cannot interest ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... performed at all, for he would have had no courage to ask civilly for anything. To his sister's friends when he was forced into their company he was boorish, simply because girls put him into such a panic of inferiority that, in self defence, he had to assert himself unnaturally. Years ago his sister had refused to make one of a theatre or concert party that included Louis; either he got drunk in the interval and rejoined them later, making them conspicuous ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... frontier both on the north and west on October 12, and next day the Transvaal flag was hoisted at Charlestown. My great inferiority in numbers necessarily confined me strategically to the defensive, but tactically my intention was, and is, to strike vigorously ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... approaching was not so easy to appraise as her unusual costume proclaimed her to be. Jane realized this; country girls are apt to make such mistakes, and even dinner gown tags on school day togs would hardly be proof positive of inferiority, Jane reflected. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... it made up to them. By the likeness of their glorified nature to the human nature of Christ, they are to be intimately associated with him forever. This, of itself, is an assurance and pledge, that their heavenly happiness will not be measured by their relative inferiority to their brethren in this world. To a benevolent mind it is a great joy to think of good people, who are deprived, in this world, of education and culture, entering upon a career of boundless knowledge, rising to the highest pitch ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... said, if the pleasant is the good, nobody does anything under the idea or conviction that some other thing would be better and is also attainable, when he might do the better. And this inferiority of a man to himself is merely ignorance, as the superiority of a ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... proper occasion. In the discharge of this trust, I will only say that I have, with good intentions, contributed towards the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable. Not unconscious, in the outset, of the inferiority of my qualifications, experience in my own eyes, perhaps still more in the eyes of others, has strengthened the motives to diffidence of myself and every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... likewise apparent. Friends of the negro are ready to confess this, but attribute it to his long and recent period of servitude. We deal with facts only. The inferiority is there, whatever be its cause; and she who would willingly curse her offspring with it, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... counsellor, and therefore, having a house of his own, had not been found in the roll of the domestic retainers and servants. He did not think of inquiring further, the more so as Randall was perfectly candid as to his own inferiority of birth to the Birkenholt family, and the circumstances under which ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and cautious Thucydides quoted without hesitation the Hymn to Apollo, the authenticity of which has been already disclaimed by modern critics. Longinus, in an oft-quoted passage, merely expressed an opinion touching the comparative inferiority of the Odyssey to the Iliad; and, among a mass of ancient authors, whose very names it would be tedious to detail, no suspicion of the personal non-existence of Homer ever arose. So far, the voice of antiquity seems to be in favour of our early ideas on the subject: let us now see ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... Provinces were at this time governed by Maurice; and that aspiring prince, sensible that his credit would languish during peace, had, on the expiration of the twelve years' truce, renewed the war with the Spanish monarchy. His great capacity in the military art would have compensated the inferiority of his forces, had not the Spanish armies been commanded by Spinola, a general equally renowned for conduct, and more celebrated for enterprise and activity. In such a situation, nothing could, be more welcome to the republic than the prospect of a rupture between James and the Catholic king; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Mme. Mauperin's uneasiness. Her feeling of constraint was certainly justified. Everything in the house to which she was going was calculated to intimidate people, to set them down, crush them, penetrate and overwhelm them with a sense of their own inferiority. There was an ostentatious and studied show of money, a clever display of wealth. Opulence aimed at the humiliation of less fortunate beings, by all possible means of intimidation, by outrageous or refined forms of luxury, by the height of the ceilings, ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... at its top, and amid the ruins a tower in excellent preservation. Sand, who was one of the most eager fighters, seeing that his side had several times been defeated on account of its numerical inferiority, resolved, in order to make up for this drawback, to fortify the tower of St. Catherine, and to retire into it at the next battle if its issue proved unfavourable to him. He communicated this plan to his companions, who received it with enthusiasm. A week was spent, accordingly, in ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... mothers that practical education involved in the exercise of the right of suffrage; if they are taught that government and politics are strange gods at whose shrines they are forbidden to worship; if they feel upon themselves the stigma of inferiority, of being incapacitated from speaking to their children about the public affairs and the interests of the nation ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... said Peter, "and the inferiority of British ideals. They never bathed in their lives, yet they ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the world has nearly outgrown the petty jealousy, the cool assumption of inferiority, the flippant criticism of her weaknesses, the insulting catering to her foibles, with which woman has been accustomed to be treated, and which have made her either the slave, the toy, or the ridicule of man; and it is getting to see that she ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fellows were seen clinging to the keel for twenty minutes, but no assistance could be rendered. Now, both of these were considered good lifeboats, but they were not self-righting. Numerous cases might be cited to prove the inferiority of the non-self-righting boats, but one more will suffice. In February 1858 the Southwold boat—a large sailing boat, esteemed one of the finest in the kingdom, but not self-righting—went out for exercise, and was running before a heavy surf with all sail set, when she suddenly ran ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... protection. They were called Belgae by the Romans; and at once pronounced the least civilized and the bravest of the Gauls. Caesar there found several ignorant and poor but intrepid clans of warriors, who marched fiercely to encounter him; and, notwithstanding their inferiority in numbers, in weapons, and in tactics, they nearly destroyed the disciplined armies of Rome. They were, however, defeated, and their country ravaged by the invaders, who found less success when they attacked the natives of the low grounds. The Menapians, a people who occupied the present ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... luxury of individuals. It is the public ornament. It is the public consolation. It nourishes the public hope. The poorest man finds his own importance and dignity in it, whilst the wealth and pride of individuals at every moment makes the man of humble rank and fortune sensible of his inferiority, and degrades and vilifies his condition. It is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue, that this portion of the general wealth ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... latitude. I judge from the temperature of the springs, as they issue from the earth, that its mean heat is 58½ degrees of Fahrenheit’s scale. The winters, however, are never severe; and at that season the fields produce a crop of wheat, while in summer they yield one of rice. The great inferiority of this country, when compared with the mountains of Europe, consists in its pasture, which is very poor. It is, however, of a more nourishing quality than the rank grass of the Tariyani; for the cattle of Chitlong are ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... organization as compared with other allied animals,—nothing of the general mode of execution,—nothing of the plan expressed in that mode of execution. Yet, with the exception of the ordinal characters, which, since they imply relative superiority and inferiority, require, of course, a number of specimens for comparison, his one animal would tell him all this as well ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... the maiden, "loveliness like mine; and if bliss failed thee because of my death, how couldst thou be allured by mortal inferiority? That first blow should have taught thee to disdain all perishable things, and aspire after the soul that had gone before thee. How could thy spirit endure to stoop to further chances, or to a childish girl, or any other fleeting vanity? ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... always recognised a certain bigness in Smith's character because of the power he had of giving himself to man, woman, and child; now she felt her own inferiority. Was she to stand babbling to him about hallucinations and gold plates? The man in him had flashed out at her, and because she was not without the heart whose whereabouts he had demanded, the flash awakened ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... among his captors and with a cheek unblanched, casting proud scornful looks upon forms and faces which might have scared the devil; for the roused Indian—cowed as is his present nature by a hard-bought conviction of his inferiority—is yet a fearful object to behold when decked in paint and plume and all his horribly fantastic ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... for the time-being, of his air of dictator and watchful ambition, a man of the world taking an enthusiastic part in the hilarity of the hour, but never sacrificing his dignity by assuming the role of chief entertainer, there grew within him a dull sense of inferiority: he felt, rather than knew, that neither the city of Mexico nor gratified ambitions would give him that assured ease, that perfection of breeding, that calm sense of power, concealing so gracefully the relentless will and the infinite resource which made this ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... one has been anything but a fourth-rate composer, it shows a natural incapacity for the highest branch of the art. In poetry and painting, where the cultivation is far rarer, greater excellence has been attained by many women. Their inferiority is certainly not so marked ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... breast four stars of different orders which he always wore with his common apparel.[4] He displayed excellent spirits, and expressed his pleasure at the prospect of giving a fatal blow to the naval power of France and Spain; and spoke with confidence of obtaining a signal victory notwithstanding the inferiority of the British Fleet, declaring to Captain HARDY that "he would not be contented with capturing less than twenty sail of the line." He afterwards pleasantly observed that "the 21st of October was the happiest day in the year among his family," but did not assign the reason of this.[5] His LORDSHIP ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... consider himself as in the situation of a translator, who does not scruple to substitute excellencies of another kind for those which are unattainable by him; and endeavours occasionally to surpass his original, in order to make some amends for the general inferiority to which he feels that he must submit. But this would be to encourage idleness and unmanly despair. Further, it is the language of men who speak of what they do not understand; who talk of Poetry as of a matter of amusement and idle pleasure; who ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... one's while. If rumor is to be believed, you have ordinarily more than your labor for your pains. You have taught me something already.... Ah, well!" she sighed, "I suppose I may as well acknowledge my inferiority—as neophyte to hierophant. Master!" She courtesied low. "I beg you proceed and let thy cheela profit through observation!" And a small white hand gestured significantly toward the collection of burglar's tools,— drills and chisels, skeleton keys, putty, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... convert you into an advocate for the elevation of the sex. You sustain the old cry—the inferiority of ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... threatenings to the grazing-periods. He became aggressive on the march. Though less free to give battle here, which was possibly his reason, he would frequently jockey close, and either flash his head around with teeth snapping, or else, as if to make Pat feel inferiority, would plunge forward to a point immediately in front, and in this position fling back choking dust or gravel. At such times the round-faced man, the white's master, would drag him away mightily, or, if he was not quick enough, ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... are divided on this question of coffee-coating. The best thought of the trade is undoubtedly opposed to the practise when it is done to conceal inferiority or abnormally to reduce shrinkage. Some New York coffee roasters, who made a thorough investigation of the matter, found coating coffee with a wholesome material not injurious and the coated coffee better in the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... suggest "A School History of the Negro Race" to be placed in our public schools as a text book. The general tone of all the histories taught in our public schools points to the inferiority of the negro and the superiority of the white. It must be indeed a stimulus to any people to be able to refer to their ancestry as distinguished in deeds of valor, and particularly so to the colored people. ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... however, Douglas had a certain advantage, for Lincoln found the difficulty which candid minds still find in applying the principle of equality to races of unequal strength. Douglas plainly declared that ours is a white man's government. Lincoln admitted such an inferiority in negroes as would forever prevent the two races from living together on terms of perfect social and political equality, and if there must be inequality he was in favor of his own race having the superior place. He could only contend, therefore, for the negro's equality ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... recognized, or admitted, his inferiority; had he not demonstrated to the world, that he, John Burrill, sometime mill worker, and overseer, was a man of parts, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... brought about her. In reality, Olive was distinguished and discriminating, and Adeline was the dupe of confusions in which the worse was apt to be mistaken for the better. She talked to Ransom about the inferiority of republics, the distressing persons she had met abroad in the legations of the United States, the bad manners of servants and shopkeepers in that country, the hope she entertained that "the good old families" would make a stand; but he never suspected that ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... was not so much dislike he felt, as an uneasy sentiment of inferiority. However well he himself had got on in the world, he yet grudged the reputation of a man whom he had remembered a wayward, inexperienced boy: he did not love to hear any one praise Maltravers. He fancied, too, that this feeling was ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he lost his self-mastery, he also seemed to lose his self-respect. He mingled with the depraved, and carried the consciousness of his inferiority into all ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... command a number of cannons, machine guns, airships, and other mechanical contrivances equal to that of the probable opponent; it is foolish initiative to strain every nerve to be abreast with the enemy in all material domains. This idea leads to a certain spiritual servility and inferiority. ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... testimony, full of grandeur, full of pity, is borne to the demands of his own nature, by the poor clansman, the poor partisan, who rejoices in the glory of his chief! The poor and the low find some amends to their immense moral capacity, for their acquiescence in a political and social inferiority.[73] They are content to be brushed like flies from the path of a great person, so that justice shall be done by him to that common nature which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged and glorified. They sun themselves in the great man's light, and feel it to be their own element. They cast ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Chestnut, remarkable, like the Oak, for its broad extent of shade. In some parts of the country it is one of the most common standards in the field and pasture, having been left unmolested on account of the value of its fruit and the comparative inferiority of its timber. The foliage of this tree is dense and flowing, and peculiar in its arrangement. The leaves are clustered in stars of from five to seven, on short branches that grow from one of greater length. Hence, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... impossible; but back of all your bravado and swagger and rudeness and complaint of neglect because of your color, you realize that you cannot measure up. You know you belong to a different race, most of whose members are daily giving evidences of inferiority; and you are sure that ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... even including his own, under a kind of dry light. Such is Lady Clarinda, who regards all the crotcheteers of Crotchet Castle with the same benevolent amusement; such Mr. McBorrowdale, who, when he is requested to settle the question of the superiority or inferiority of Greek harmony and perspective to modern, replies, "I think ye may just buz that bottle before you." (Alas! to think that if a man used the word "buz" nowadays some wiseacre would accuse him of vulgarity or of false English.) The general criticism in his work is always sane and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... talk of vanished illusions; and, for want of something better, allowed himself to be carried away, and to lead the ordinary university life. He evidently only did what others did; but he was made of different materials; and while they thought this dissipation very natural, and, tranquil in their inferiority, believed themselves innocent, he alone disapproved of his own conduct and blamed it. The better to escape all this, he went in search of forgetfulness amid the fresh breezes of ocean, across the Pyrenees, among the ruins of ancient civilization. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... seeking success in many different directions, have failed to find it in a single one. Even when we contrast his recorded words with the sayings of those whom the world calls great—statesmen, orators, authors—his inferiority is hardly apparent. He saw into the heart of things, both human and divine, far deeper than most men. He had an extraordinary facility for grasping the essential and discarding the extraneous. His language ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... little because it gave him a sense of inferiority to a rival. He believed, against his will, that Maurice Levy could have successfully eaten chocolate-creams, licorice sticks, lemon-drops, jaw-breakers, peanuts, waffles, lobster croquettes, sardines, cinnamon-drops, watermelon, pickles, popcorn, ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... America then found themselves, in the presence of European adventurers, in that state of pusillanimous inferiority in which had been, at the period of the conquest, the subjects of the Incas and Montezuma before the soldiers of Cortez and Pizarro. The time was not already far passed, when a few bands of freebooters, from France, ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... tone of voice, and an expression of countenance that gave them perhaps their chief effect, took even the hardened nature of Houseman by surprise; he was affected by an emotion which he could not have believed it possible the man who till then had galled him by the humbling sense of inferiority, could have created. He extended his ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... began the usual parading prelude, which, upon all occasions, he thought necessary, in order to enhance the value of his interposition, remind her of her inferiority, and impress her with a deeper sense of the honour which his guardianship conferred upon her after which, he proceeded to make a formal enquiry whether she had positively dismissed Sir ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... and improvidence. Each party expects from the other something more than is expressed or implied in the covenant between them. The workman, asserting his equality and independence, claims from his employer services which only inferiority can legitimately demand; the master, tacitly and in his heart denying this equality and independence, repudiates claims which only the validity of this plea of equality and independence can effectually ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... ways, Paul," said Jimmy, who had a great admiration of Paul, notwithstanding the discovery of his artistic inferiority. ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... in the simplest, prettiest white could look almost angelic. No, angelic was hardly the word. Perhaps charming suited her better. Beyond doubt she was beautiful, with a willowy, wild grace which could not but arrest attention, and all the other girls immediately owned to a sense of inferiority in her presence. But Irene was so endowed with nature's grace that she could not do an awkward thing; and then the child who accompanied her, the small unimportant child, was as beautiful in her way as Irene was in hers. So charming a ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... naturally tend to enlarge their stock of ideas, and to furnish new materials for the exercise of their reason. Comparing themselves with their visitors, they cannot but be struck with the deepest conviction of their own inferiority, and be impelled, by the strongest motives, to strive to emerge from it, and to rise nearer to a level with those children of the Sun, who deigned to look upon them, and left behind so many specimens of their generous and humane attention. The very introduction ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... from it. Many would be willing to perform these labors, but they are not willing to place themselves in a situation where their self-respect is hourly wounded by the implication of a degree of inferiority which does not follow any kind of labor or service in this country but ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... stead: must not the Napoleons govern these? And, if you admit inequality to be in birth, then that inequality is the very ground of the reason why the Napoleons must govern the ant-catchers and lizard-eaters. Remove these, and put in their place an importation of African negroes. Do you admit their inferiority by "CREATION?" Then the same control over them must be the irresistible fact in common sense and Scripture of God. The Napoleons must govern. They must govern without asking "consent,"—if the inequality be such that ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... this incident I am tempted to laugh; and then it occurs to me that had Tad been a negro boy, not the son of a President, and so difficult to instruct, he would have been called thick-skulled, and would have been held up as an example of the inferiority of race. I know many full negro boys, able to read and write, who are not older than Tad Lincoln was when he persisted that A-p-e spelt monkey. Do not imagine that I desire to reflect upon the intellect of little Tad. Not at all; he is a bright ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... panelled with well-varnished wainscot, and adorned with the grim portraits of Sir Robert Hazlewood's ancestry. The visitor, who had no internal consciousness of worth to balance that of meanness of birth, felt his inferiority, and by the depth of his bow and the obsequiousness of his demeanour, showed that the Laird of Ellangowan was sunk for the time in the old and submissive habits of the quondam retainer of the law. He would have persuaded himself, indeed, that he was only humouring the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... duty, he condescends to come once a week to his mother's house, is entitled to say whatever he pleases, and should on no account be contradicted by any one. Lucy no doubt had a lover,—an authorised lover; but perhaps that fact could not be taken as more than a balancing weight against the inferiority of her position as a governess. Lady Fawn was of course obliged to take her son's part, and would scold Lucy. Lucy must be scolded very seriously. But it would be a thing so desirable if Lucy could be induced to accept her scolding ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... dress surpassed only by their plain living. There was no wealth except that of fields and flocks, their money consequently was debased and almost worthless. The social distinctions of noble and peasant survived only in tradition, and all classes intermingled without any sense of superiority or inferiority. Elegance of manner, polish, grace, were unsought and existed only by natural refinement, which was rare among a people who were on the whole simple to boorishness. Physically they were, however, admirable. All visitors were struck by the repose and ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... to the elephant, with no other weapon than the sword; the lion and the rhinoceros fell alike before the invincible sabres of these mighty hunters, to whom as an old elephant-hunter I wished to make my salaam, and humbly confess my inferiority. ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... of his day should have utterly ignored the supposed inferiority of the less wealthy section of the school, and looked on worth and high character as none the worse for being clothed in a coarse serge gown, is a fact seemingly trivial to ordinary readers, but very noticeable ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Wuerzburg, all of them living in the middle of the thirteenth century, were more fertile than Hartmann von Aue and Gottfried von Strassburg. They complain, however, that no one took notice of them, and they are evidently conscious themselves of their inferiority. Lyric poetry continued to flourish for a time, but it degenerated into an unworthy idolatry of ladies, and affected sentimentality. There is but one branch of poetry in which we find a certain originality, the didactic and satiric. The first beginnings of this new kind of poetry ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... held her by the sleeve looking down at her, and she, half turned, was looking up at him, this was the battle she was fighting. Hitherto her impulse had been to run away from the scorn of her inferiority; now she was asking herself what would happen if she took up its challenge and fought it on its own ground. What if I do? was the way the question framed itself, but ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... test case had arisen over the Territorial Act, which was not extended to Ireland, any more than the Volunteer Acts had been. We had voted against Lord Haldane's Bill on the express ground that it put Ireland into this status of inferiority and withheld from Irishmen that right to arm and drill which was pressed upon Englishmen as a patriotic duty. We had explicitly declared then in 1907 that our influence should and must be ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... whose intellectual equal he knew himself to be, roused him the more because he felt it to be in a sense justified. America by rebellion had risen to manhood; was Nova Scotia by loyalty to be doomed to inferiority? At first independence attracted him, but by the date of his letters to Grey he had come to believe in 'annexation to our mother country' as a better choice, though he reiterated that independence would be preferable to the indefinite endurance of ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... inferior to that of nations who have, it is true, no taxes for public works, but who likewise have no public works. And here we see why (even while we accuse internal taxes of being a cause of industrial inferiority) we direct our tariffs precisely against those nations which are the most taxed. It is because these taxes, well used, far from injuring, have ameliorated the conditions of production to these nations. Thus we again arrive ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat |
