"Discreditable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the place in embarrassment and confusion, something stronger than her natural discretion and delicacy held her where she stood. For Julia had not come here for the purpose of meeting Mark. She had come with a purpose less personal: something, Juliet felt convinced, that was in some way vaguely discreditable, and at the same time menacing. It could be for no harmless reason that she had taken this secret, dangerous ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... him select a beer barrel, for thereby hung a tragic tale. He and his twin-brother had been adopted from infancy by the Sergeants' Mess and had lived in peace and plenty—in fact in too much plenty, for I regret to say that Daisy's brother died of drink from having formed the discreditable habit of emptying all the dregs of the Sergeants' beer mugs into his own inside. However, he was granted military obsequies, which were so successfully performed that an account of them found its way into one of the daily ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... and on every 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 ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... visit to the fortune-teller, but she had been taught, as are so many Englishwomen of her type, to regard everything savouring of superstition as not only silly and weak-minded, but also as rather discreditable. ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... 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 ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... remember that at this point of the case, when the Rev. Faker was called, there was nothing to cross-examine about. I knew nothing of the parties, the witnesses, the solicitors, or any one except my learned friends. It would not have been discreditable to my advocacy if I had submitted to a verdict. I will, therefore, give the points of the questions which elicited the truth from the Christian warrior; and probably the non-legal reader of these memoirs may be interested ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... Europe, and even in England. There, not only are artists and men of letters honoured when they are successful—they are, of course, honoured at that stage in America; but the pursuit of literature and art is one which a young man need not feel it discreditable to adopt. The contemporaries of a brilliant youth at Oxford or at Cambridge do not secretly despise him if he declines to enter business. The first-class man does not normally aspire to start life ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... 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 ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... I all along supposed. Indeed, the division of the Democratic party on precisely the same question that separated the Republican party from the Democratic party made its defeat certain. The success of the Republicans has saved the country from a discreditable scramble in the House. The disorders of the last winter, and the fear of their renewal, have, without doubt, induced a good many citizens to vote for the Republican ticket. With a pretty good knowledge of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... 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 ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... might have been a bedizened citizen's wife craning her neck over a gutter swollen by the rain. But the hour was not unpropitious for the indulgence of some discreditable whim. Earlier, he might have been detected; later, he might find himself cut out. Tempted by a glance which is encouraging without being inviting, to have followed a young and pretty woman for an hour, or perhaps for a day, thinking ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... might, 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
... to show that persecution was less severe than had been once believed, and they have slowly learned that they can afford to concede the validity of all the secondary causes assigned by Gibbon and even of others still more discreditable. The fact is, as the historian has again and again admitted, that his account of the secondary causes which contributed to the progress and establishment of Christianity leaves the question as to the natural or supernatural origin of Christianity practically ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... showed himself indeed a "sumner," as it was called of yore. Which cost me many a bitter hour and much sorrow, for there was hardly a soul whom I knew, except my mother, to whom an Abolitionist was not simply the same thing as a disgraceful, discreditable malefactor. Even my father, when angry with me one day, could think of nothing bitterer than to tell me that I knew I was an Abolitionist. I kept it to myself, but the reader can have no idea of what I was made to suffer for years in Philadelphia, where everything ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... day, says 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. Dewey says truth is what gives 'satisfaction.' ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... years' 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 exceptional ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... 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 to free-born Romans; and they frequently ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... odious and unjust, between themselves and other prisoners, the Indians would have been greatly wanting in self-respect had they accepted it. It is a provision disgraceful to the statute book of the State, and discreditable to the civilization of the age. Yet two tribes, the Chappequiddick and the Christiantown, were made subject to the provisions of this law, without the power to accept or reject it, and are governed by it ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... 23,140; W.H. Greening, 22,881; and W. Warlow, 19,193. This election was fought with all the rancour of a political contest, Tory and Liberal being pitted against one another in the name of religion, the Book of Books being dragged through the mire of party warfare in the most outrageous manner, discreditable to both sides, and especially so to those teachers of the Gospel, who delighted in the almost blasphemous alliterations of "Bible and beer," "gin and Jesus," &c., so freely bandied about. The Liberal party this time gained the ascendancy, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... behalf of their own 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. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... admitted desire to sacrifice themselves for the Larger Good. This desire was gratified—not in the way they hoped for, of course, but nevertheless in a way that must have given any impartial observer a feeling of profound, if discreditable, satisfaction. ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... pretence until this session. His own Nebraska bill, of last session, rejected it. It is a sheer afterthought. To declare the prohibition inoperative, may, indeed, have effect in law as a repeal, but it is a most discreditable way of reaching the object. Will the people permit their dearest interests to be thus made the mere hazards of a presidential game, and destroyed by ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... the war must be carried into the enemy's country. Speug declared his conviction in the vernacular of the school, which is here translated into respectable language, that the Bailie was a gentleman of doubtful birth and discreditable pedigree, that his conduct as a boy was beyond description, and that his private life was stained with every vice; that his intellect would give him a right to be confined in the county asylum, and that he had also qualified ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... 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 ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... between two fires. This he did (B); but as soon as Bankert—the same who had manoeuvred so judiciously at Solebay the year before—saw the danger, he put his helm up and ran through the remaining twenty ships of D'Estrees' squadron with his own twelve (C),—a feat as creditable to him as it was discreditable to the French; and then wearing round stood down to De Ruyter, who was hotly engaged with Rupert (C'). He was not followed by D'Estrees, who suffered him to carry this important reinforcement to the Dutch main attack ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... a Lightfoot had a sister, and in respect of her, there's no doubt about it that something discreditable might have been laid to James. For once in his life, he acted like a fool, and he wrote the girl a pile of letters. This fellow Lightfoot got hold of 'em, and he's made James pay through the nose ever since. Now the girl's dead, ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... like to be two or three times as high. Under these circumstances building a one-story house would be likely to prove a flying-not in the face of Providence, but, what is reckoned more dangerous and discreditable—flying in the face of custom. Humility isn't popular in ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... Jaqueline, Ricardo's conduct would have been blazed abroad, England would have been irritated. It is true she cannot get at Pantouflia very easily; we have no sea-coast, and we are surrounded by friendly countries. But it would have been a ticklish and discreditable position. I must really speak to Dick," which he did ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... be pleasing to the old gentleman; but he had not forgotten in his calculations the pride which old Saracinesca must naturally feel in his race, and which would probably induce him to take very great pains in finding a suitable wife for San Giacinto rather than permit the latter to contract a discreditable alliance. ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... "Memoirs," he makes a statement that Miss Tree was never engaged at Covent Garden. The play-bills and the newspapers of the day abundantly contradicted this assertion (at the time he entered it in his diary), and, of course, the discreditable motive assigned for ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... censure," as well as "undue praise." We think that he may relieve his mind of any such apprehension. We cannot think his book at all likely to receive more dispraise than it richly merits. A more discreditable one, not absolutely indictable, we hope, has seldom issued ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... arrest, and examined by the tribunals. Among the names were found those of the Marshal de Luxembourg, the Countess de Soissons, and the Duchess de Bouillon. The marshal seems only to have been guilty of a piece of discreditable folly in visiting a woman of this description, but the popular voice at the time imputed to him something more than folly. The author of the Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe since the Peace of Utrecht, says, "The miserable gang ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... daughters of Whig statesmen, it could always find room for calumnies against Mr. Macaulay which in ingenuity of fabrication, and in cruelty of intention, were conspicuous even among the contents of the most discreditable publication that ever issued from the London press. When Queen Caroline landed from the Continent in June 1820 the young Trinity undergraduate greeted her Majesty with a complimentary ode, which certainly little resembled those effusions that, in the old courtly ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... this has arisen very much 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 ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... however, if practicable, would at once make all things comfortable for Ralph, and would give him, probably, a large unembarrassed revenue,—so large, that the owner of it need certainly have recourse to no discreditable marriage as the means of extricating himself from present calamity. But then Sir Thomas had very strong ideas about a family property. Were Ralph's affairs, indeed, in such disorder as to make it necessary for him to abandon the great prospect of being Newton of Newton? If ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... 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, for an openness of countenance can never ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Macaulay's popularity was at its height in 1858. But Macaulay passes lightly in his Introduction over the sixteenth century, and the reign of Henry VIII., or at least the latter part of it, had never been so copiously illustrated before. The Oxford Movement, which treated the Reformation as a discreditable incident worthy of oblivion, had not much influence with the laity. Nine Englishmen in ten were quite prepared to glorify the reformers, and were by no means sorry to find how much evidence there was for the good old English view of a Parliamentary Church. The Statutes of ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... others on that mortgage was yet unpaid. Was it conceivable that one so strict and scrupulous in all monetary transactions as Parkman would have settled his own personal claim, and then sacrificed in so discreditable a manner the claims of others, for the satisfaction of which he ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... he opposed the law because he thought it discreditable to Pennsylvania—that there should be a law to the effect that, "If I play cards, a man may say to me—there, you have done an act that, if legally visited, would send you to the Penitentiary." Mr. Freeman illustrated his views by a reference to the explosion of steamboats. ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... author of the 'Baronet's Wife.' That romance, in which you have had the baseness to use your knowledge of a mother's guilt as a motif in your twopenny plot, unveiled to me the secret of your hidden existence. You must stop the story, or alter the following numbers; you must give up your discreditable mode of life. Heavens, that a Birkenhead should be a literary character! And you must resume your place in my house ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... always deserving of credit. According to some, he was deserted by both his parents, and left as a foundling at the door of one of the principal churches of the city. It is even said that he would have perished, had he not been nursed by a sow.3 This is a more discreditable fountain of supply than that assigned to the infant Romulus. The early history of men who have made their names famous by deeds in after-life, like the early history of nations, affords a ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... of alarm, which, I am sure, under the circumstances, was not discreditable to his courage, and his soul was ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... bore it in silence; but I was at length forced to acquaint my parents of the matter. My father soon took measures to ascertain what manner of life he had led while pursuing his studies in New York; and the information he gained was very discreditable to Mr. Almont. But my parents advised me, as we were married, to try if, by kindness, I could not reclaim him from his evil ways. I willingly followed their advice, for I still loved him; but, I suppose the restraint ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... causelessly murdered and robbed many whites, and now their sins had recoiled on the heads of the innocent of their own race. The conflict could not in any event have been delayed long; the frontiersmen were too deeply and too justly irritated. These particular massacres, however discreditable to those taking part in them, were the occasions, not the causes, of the war; and though they cast a dark shade on the conduct of the whites, they do not relieve the red men from the charge of having committed earlier, more cruel, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Chatham" and "The Coronation of Napoleon." On the sideboard, between fluted Sheraton knife-cases, stood a decanter of Haut Brion, and another of the old Lanning port (the gift of a client), which the wastrel Tom Lanning had sold off a year or two before his mysterious and discreditable death in San Francisco—an incident less publicly humiliating to the family than the sale ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... much as his own. Nor, apparently, did they urge the course upon him because they conceived him capable of accomplishing anything very great or even very good. They felt that he could produce something that was not discreditable, and that was all that could reasonably be expected of an American. There was no other novelist in the field. Charles Brockden Brown had been dead several years. Irving and Paulding were writing only short sketches. John Neal, indeed, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... showing that two dead bodies would be found under the hearthstone in the hut of Coille Doraca, and the inference to be drawn from their crafty missive was that these bodies had been murdered by the Philosopher for reasons very discreditable ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... I thought that I should not arrive in time, but lest I should be later than I wished in congratulating the republic; and I quickly arrived at Velia, where I saw Brutus; how grieved I was, I cannot express. For it seemed to be a discreditable thing for me myself, that I should venture to return into that city from which Brutus was departing, and that I should be willing to live safely in a place where he could not. But he himself was not agitated in the same manner that ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... his path without finding him engaged in something discreditable. But he's truckled himself into a kind of popularity and power, and, having always been 'a Democrat,' he hopes to get ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... of rhetoric was Sir John Knight, member for Bristol, a coarseminded and spiteful Jacobite, who, if he had been an honest man, would have been a nonjuror. Two years before, when Mayor of Bristol, he had acquired a discreditable notoriety by treating with gross disrespect a commission sealed with the great seal of the Sovereigns to whom he had repeatedly sworn allegiance, and by setting on the rabble of his city to hoot and pelt the Judges. [503] He now concluded ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Work, not discreditable to the best Gentleman. How they geld their Cattle. How they make Glew. Their Manufactures. How they make Iron. How they make Butter. Shops in the City. Prices of Commodities. Or their Measures. Their Weights. Measures bigger than the Statute ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... took place in the full heat of midday; Chrysantheme and her mother arrived together, and I alone. We seemed to have met for the purpose of ratifying some discreditable contract, and the two women trembled in the presence of these ugly little men, who, in their eyes, were the personification of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... stream of life is poisoned at its very source. If this be so, then it is as reprehensible in those whose vocation is to watch over the moral and spiritual development of their fellow-men to be indifferent to the conditions by which life is surrounded as it would be discreditable to the physicians of a city swept year after year by pestilence, if they took no interest in the insanitary conditions to which the epidemic was due, but lazily contented themselves with curing their ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... these unprincipled traders in land, some of whom are found in most of the towns, there are a large number of land-speculators who own both wild and improved farms in all parts of the colony who do not descend to these discreditable arts, but wait quietly until their lands become valuable by the progress of improvement in their neighbourhood, when they readily find purchasers—or, rather, the purchasers find them out, and obtain their lands ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... now for the man of intelligence to refuse to read his Livy in the light of his Mommsen. My object has been to help in making it discreditable to him to refuse to read his Christian documents in the light of a trained scientific criticism. We shall have made some positive advance in rationality when the man who is perfectly capable of dealing ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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
... This legislature held only one session, and apparently Holland's statement, that "no important business of general interest was transacted," is a fair summary. Lincoln did only one memorable thing, and that unfortunately was discreditable. In a close and exciting contest, he, with two other Whigs, jumped out of the window in order to break a quorum. It is gratifying to hear from the chronicler of the event, who was one of the parties ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... He is a mediaeval fellow, much more anxious to have a head to bash than to ascertain whom it belongs to. The Slavs have not always treated their raw neighbours with indulgence; in the Balkan War, when their army marched through Albania to the sea some very discreditable incidents occurred, whatever may have been the provocation they received from the sniping natives and however great be the excuse of their own state of nerves. Yet the first stone should be flung by that army of Western ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... another for the use of discreditable tactics, but it will have no hesitation in using such itself if it can thereby snatch a discreditable victory. So, clear speaking is needed: a fight that is not clean-handed will make victory more disgraceful than any defeat. I ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... often do we hear men reproaching themselves for some thoughtless gift, and saying, "I had rather have thrown it away than have given it to him!" What is thoughtlessly given away is lost in the most discreditable manner, and it is much worse to have bestowed a benefit badly than to have received no return for it; that we receive no return is the fault of another; that we did not choose upon whom we should bestow it, is our own. In choosing a fit person, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... 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 was visible in ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... the question in a war with a country that had no commerce. Nor do I think I would have gone in a privateer under any circumstances. The business of carrying on a warfare merely for gain, has ever struck me as discreditable; though it must be admitted the American system of private-armed cruisers has always been more respectable and better conducted than that of most other nations. This has been owing to the circumstance that men of a higher class than is usual in Europe, have embarked in the enterprises. ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... talk of 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
... most discreditable business, and I don't see how you propose to better it by cutting my throat. Of course if he's going to marry her, it's a different thing; but I don't believe he is, or he'd have asked me. You think me a fool? Well see they marry, ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... simpleton as to have been mistaken on such a question as gender—was heightened by the self-evident fact that, very recently, he had been engaged in some pitched battle; some hand to hand, and, probably, discreditable encounter, from which he had borne away uncomfortable proofs of his opponent's prowess. His antagonist could hardly have been a chivalrous fighter, for his countenance was marked by a dozen different ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... the garden with Bob. I cursed Ukridge as I walked. It was abominable of him to desert me in this way. Even if I had not been his friend, it would have been bad. The fact that we had known each other for years made it doubly discreditable. He might at least have warned me, and given me the option of leaving the ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... of running for office is that if a man has ever done anything discreditable it is sure to be ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... looking his man squarely in the eye, "I am inclined to think that the cavalry staff officer is sometimes given to too much 'whitewashing,' and if an infantryman had been sent instead of a cavalryman the most discreditable affair of the late campaign would not have been, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... with opposition from sane and reasonable men. For my own part I am inclined at times almost to doubt if there are such diseases. If there are, the remedy is so simple and obvious, that I cannot but blame the medical profession for very discreditable silences. I am no believer in the final wisdom of the mass of mankind, but I do believe enough in the sanity of the English-speaking peoples to be certain that any clear statement and instruction they received from ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... 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 upon ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... impulses honourable to mankind, to meet the demands of the faculty which is perhaps the noblest of our nature. In the instance of Taste, the process has been reversed; and from the prevalence of dispositions at once injurious and discreditable, being no other than that selfishness which is the child of apathy,—which, as Nations decline in productive and creative power, makes them value themselves upon a presumed refinement of judging. Poverty of language is the primary cause of the use which we make of the word, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of expediency, it might be objected that a bargain which on one side you allow to be discreditable leaves the legacy of an indestructible desire on that side to wipe out the discredit by tearing it up. Though Cavour became great by his connection with a movement which, before all things, was swayed ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... purpose. I am, however, obliged to confess to myself that I see no possibility of this. The publicity which has been given to the whole business seems to render it utterly impracticable. The assurances which have been given are well known, and the breach or performance of them must be discreditable to one of the two parties, for such, unfortunately, they now ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... given much to needless detail. By many, indeed, his intercourse is condemned, to put it plainly, as "boring," and such have even done me the compliment to wonder why I countenance him. But, on the other hand, there is a large faction who marvel at his countenancing such a dishevelled, discreditable acquaintance as myself. Few appear to regard our friendship with equanimity. But that is because they do not know of the link that binds us, of my amiable connection via Jamaica ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... with contempt, for the brethren and sisters of the congregation would not believe anything discreditable to the beloved rector, and he continued to enjoy their confidence and esteem, long after they had begun to observe something very singular in ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... persons, court ladies, even valets and waiting-women, had been sought and searched to satisfy his insatiable curiosity. It is true that the passions which often lit up the truth sometimes obscured it; any gossip discreditable to those whom he hated was welcome to him; he confesses that he did not pique himself on his impartiality, and it is certain that he did not always verify details. Nevertheless he did not consciously ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Congressman from the district of which Columbus was a part, and twice United States Senator, had never married. In his youth he had had a serious love affair, but there was nothing discreditable to him in the fact that it came to nothing. The lady found it inconvenient to wait for him. He was too long in earning a competence ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... 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 ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... he desired, not only was it necessary to husband the resources he possessed, but to increase them in every possible way. Warner had all the American boy's willingness to undertake any occupation not in itself discreditable. Hence to him fell a full share of those experiences which have diversified the early years of so many men who have achieved success. He set up type in a printing office; he acted as an assistant ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... anachronism that has ever been committed. We mean by an anachronism, in common usage, that sort of blunder when a man ascribes to one age the habits, customs, or generally the characteristics of another. This, however, may be a mere lapse of memory, as to a matter of fact, and implying nothing at all discreditable to the understanding, but only that a man has shifted the boundaries of chronology a little this way or that; as if, for example, a writer should speak of printed books as existing at the day of Agincourt, or of artillery ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... an idea is not a bad means of roughly estimating its value. To have come of respectable ancestry, is prima facie evidence of worth in a belief as in a person; while to be descended from a discreditable stock is, in the one case as in the other, an unfavourable index. The analogy is not a mere fancy. Beliefs, together with those who hold them, are modified little by little in successive generations; and as the modifications which successive generations of the holders undergo ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the mode proposed would lead to the construction of works of a local nature, to the exclusion of such as are general and as would consequently be of a more useful character; and, last, that it would create a discreditable and injurious dependence on the part of the State governments upon the Federal power. Of those who object to the ratio of representation as the basis of distribution, some insist that the importations of the respective States ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... Bert made the acquaintance of a pony of a very different sort. How, indeed, it came to have this name does not seem to be very clear, for what natural connection can be established between a diminutive horse, and a discreditable method of reducing the difficulties of a lesson in Latin or Greek? It would appear to be a very unjust slur upon a very worthy little animal, to say ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... fragments of old plays, where, unluckily, we cannot be quite sure whether it represents a Greek or a Latin idea. The following lines from the Telamo of Ennius shows us the hariolus, as well as the word vates with a discreditable ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... 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 who were guilty of forgery and robbery to a public trial, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... if, in this very scrap, chosen almost at 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 ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the Bridgewater in these distressing circumstances was inhuman and discreditable to such a degree as is happily rare in the history of seamanship. On the day following the wreck (August 18th) it would have been easy and safe for her captain, Palmer, to bring her to anchor in one of the several wide and sufficiently deep openings in the reef, and ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... fortune by a stroke of illegal stock-jobbing proved too strong for him; he became involved in a series of shady financial transactions with a Jew; he quarrelled with the Jew; there was an acrimonious lawsuit, with charges and countercharges of the most discreditable kind; and, though the Jew lost his case on a technical point, the poet certainly did not leave the court without a stain upon his character. Among other misdemeanours, it is almost certain—the evidence is not quite conclusive—that he committed ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... 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 send forth fleets that went and conquered, and never sullied ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... whole long line fighting went on with little interruption. On the 30th of July the Federal engineers exploded a mine under the hostile works, and Burnside's corps rushed to the assault. But the attempt ended in failure—the first defeat of the Army of the Potomac which could fairly be called discreditable. Still, Lee was losing men, few it is true, but most precious, since it was impossible to replace them, while the North poured unlimited numbers into the Federal camps. The policy of "attrition" upon which Grant had embarked, and which he was carrying through ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Kant's dictum, that the intuition of duty implies a God of necessity, is foolish enough to say "that this feeling of obligation rather excludes than compels the belief in a divine legislator;" which is a very discreditable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... hearer's memory. He saw himself marching from the room—that room yonder, on the ground-floor. It was some small consolation to remember that he had been drinking steadily for a week before that happened. Indeed, he could recall no scene quite so discreditable throughout the course of ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... discreditable incident occurred on July 23rd, on which day Mr. Moore denounced Mr. Bailey in the House of Commons for his partisanship towards the Nationalists, and gave a graphic picture of the private letter which Mr. Bailey had written to him to protest against his personal ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... of our soldiers, both at Siboney and at the front, in the early days of the campaign, was discreditable to the army and to the country; and there is no reason why military surgeons should not frankly admit it, because it was not their fault, and they cannot justly be held accountable for it. The blame ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... as she was, had accidentally seen the footman smile rudely when he spoke of "master coming home last night;" and a vague thought struck her, that such late hours were discreditable in the head of a family. Her father should not be ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... have similar views, for they have taken every means to discredit, disgust, and drive away every foreigner who, by his conduct, counsel, or friendly intimation, could avert the evil. Thus things are fast tending towards a discreditable close ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... 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 attracting the notice of popular writers ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... as he suggests in his Epistle to Africanus. Bishop Gray (O.T. p. 612) describes this Epistle as 'suspected'; but it appears now to be generally accepted. Origen thinks that the motive of Susanna's exclusion was its relation of particulars discreditable to the Jewish nation. But the Bishop truly says, "there is no foundation for this improbable fancy." It is, however, maintained by Philippe in Vigouroux' Dict. (cf. ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... other in the reasonings of theologians, legends of miracles grew luxuriantly. It would be utterly unphilosophical to attribute these as a whole to conscious fraud. Whatever part priestcraft may have taken afterward in sundry discreditable developments of them, the mass of miraculous legends, Century after century, grew up mainly in good faith, and as naturally as elms along water-courses or flowers ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... life of Benjamin Franklin than this quarrel with his brother. We charge the difficulty mainly upon James, of course; but this does not blot out the unpleasantness of the affair. A quarrel between brothers is always painful in the extreme, and is discreditable to all parties concerned. Dr. Watts has very beautifully written, for the admonition of little children, what older ones ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... prosecutions as are hinted at in the Times this morning; I ask you not to allow sects once more to be hurling anathemas against each other, and flying to the magistrates to settle questions which should be settled by intellectual and moral suasion; I ask you not to open a discreditable chapter of English history that ought to have been closed for ever; I ask you to give us a verdict of Not Guilty, to send us back to our homes and to stamp your brand of disapprobation on this prosecution, which ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... speak properly, and say Kone?" says the Dane. "Weib is the right word," says the German. "Who ever says woman?" cry both. The language has not been reduced to writing; indeed, the little that has been done with it is highly discreditable to the Sleswick-Holstein Church Establishment. It is spoken by upwards of thirty thousand individuals; and when we remember that the whole population of Denmark is less than that of London and the suburbs, we see at once that a large proportion of it has been less ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... impelling motive was to detach his beloved cousin, if possible, from the dangerous and discreditable machinations in which he suspected her to have engaged, or, on the other hand, to discover that she really had no concern with these stratagems. He should know how to judge of that in some measure, he thought, by finding her present or absent at the hut, towards which he was ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... returned to the 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 ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden |
