"Narrow-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very neat inside; I often feel as if it was a cupboard, and I like to know exactly which shelf to go to for anything I want. Mums says, 'That's all very well so far as it goes, Jack, but don't stop short at that, or you will be in danger of growing narrow-minded and self-satisfied.' ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... truly religious. The quiet evenings spent together before communion, and the directness and reverence with which both served God were combined with an utter abhorrence of all intolerance. Such qualities are generally misunderstood by the narrow-minded, who have only their own "shibboleths" to test all faith, and the one Church—whatever it may be—that they regard as "true." The queen and the prince rose above such distinctions; they shared the Catholicism of St. Paul, "Grace be with all who love the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... measurin' other folks' corns right away by your own chilblains, marm," interrupted Mr Lathrope. "It's allers what you'd do; and you never kinder give a thought to what t'other people would have to say in the matter! I guess you're a bit narrow-minded, excuse me, marm." ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... She couldn't be straitlaced anyhow, nor narrow-minded. Doris would do anything under the sun that ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... Teresina and Giordano lived very happily for some months, much to the scandal of the narrow-minded, bigoted village folk, until I was compelled to absent myself from the country owing to some little disturbances in the neighbourhood in ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... feeling of jealousy or to some dissension amongst the disciples. The peculiar hatred John manifests toward Judas[7] confirms this hypothesis. Less pure in heart than the others, Judas had, from the very nature of his office, become unconsciously narrow-minded. By a caprice very common to men engaged in active duties, he had come to regard the interests of the treasury as superior even to those of the work for which it was intended. The treasurer had overcome the apostle. The murmurings which escaped him at ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... men. The head ones were stiff and overbearing, and meddled and interfered with people who didn't think as they did, and made a lot of strict little laws about all sorts of things, so that the name of 'Puritan' and 'puritanical' came to be used for anything that was bigoted and narrow-minded; and these names have stuck to all New England, and papa says that at this day people mix up things, and think that the Mayflower people and Boston people were ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... sister-in-law urge on him that the law was absurd, and that, as there was no blood-relationship between them, there could be nothing criminal in their living together; he had not the moral courage to face the cold criticism of a narrow-minded and bigoted community, and, though mad with passionate love, he hesitated ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... any headway in Rixton. He had won his first step in the parish as a wrestler, but to contend against firmly rooted opinions was a far more difficult undertaking. It would be all the harder if he should find Strong a stubborn, narrow-minded person, unreasonable, and firmly-settled in ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... of justice which made Burke take the side of America against England, or rather made him see that it would be the real advantage of England to conciliate America, made him also take the side of liberty on the Catholic question. The short-sighted and narrow-minded politicians who resisted the reasonable demands of a colony until it was too late to yield, were enabled, unfortunately, to resist more effectually the just demands of several millions ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... have made me leave them alone if I had had the chance. Lois has been kind to me. I happen to know that, little as she likes me, she is about the only one in the Station who keeps her tongue from slander and—the truth. As for John Stafford, if he is a narrow-minded bigot, he is at least a man, and that is something ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... request. There were many in South Africa who did not recognize the tremendous seriousness and great possibilities of this war, and some thought that the storm did not threaten South Africa. This was a most narrow-minded conception. The Empire was at war; consequently South Africa was at war with the common enemy. (Cheers.) Only two paths were open — the path of faithfulness to duty and honour — (cheers) — and the path of disloyalty and dishonour. A characteristic of the South African people ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... France, but visited Quebec in 1617 and 1618. During the years spent at Quebec, which followed his explorations of 1616, he was greatly impeded in his work of consolidating Canada as a French colony by the religious strife between the Catholics and Huguenots, and the narrow-minded greed of the Chartered company of fur-trading merchants for whom he worked. But in 1620 he came back to Canada as Lieutenant-Governor (bringing his wife with him), and after attending to the settlement of a violent commercial ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... irksome, but even delightful. And if I am wrong in this, that I believe the souls of men to be immortal, I willingly delude myself; nor do I desire that this mistake, in which I take pleasure, should be wrested from me as long as I live; but if I, when dead, shall have no consciousness, as some narrow-minded philosophers imagine, I do not fear lest dead philosophers should ridicule this my delusion. But if we are not destined to be immortal, yet it is a desirable thing for a man to expire at his fit time. For, as ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... a. "His Lordship commanded the Iurie to obserue the particular circumstances."] The judge in this case was Altham, who seems even to have been more superstitious, bigotted, and narrow-minded than his brother in commission, Bromley. Fenner, who tried the witches of Warbois, and Archer, before whom the trial of Julian Cox took place, are the only judges I can meet with, quite on a level with this learned baron in grovelling absurdity, upon whom "Jennet ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... whole population was interested, while the India navigation, although vital to the well-being of the nation, was not yet universally recognised as so supremely important, and was declared by a narrow-minded minority to concern the provinces ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of the words, which have consequently to be repeated over and over again with very little regard for poetical or even common sense. Schumann and Beethoven, especially the former, were culturally very far from narrow-minded men; but there was not in their days any general cultural pressure sufficiently strong to influence them as composers. Now, the pressure is so strong that few can resist. Most composers have now fully learned ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... report of his actual life: "My countrymen are to me foreigners. I have but little more sympathy with them than with the mobs of India or China"? Or this about his Concord neighbors, as he looks down upon them from a near-by hill: "On whatever side I look off, I am reminded of the mean and narrow-minded men whom I have lately met there. What can be uglier than a country occupied by grovelling, coarse, and low-minded men?—no scenery can redeem it. Hornets, hyenas, and baboons are not so great a curse to a country as men of a similar character." Tried by ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... daughters of a deceased and only son of Mrs Charlton; they were single, and lived with their grand-mother, whose fortune, which was considerable, they expected to share between them, and they waited with eagerness for the moment of appropriation; narrow-minded and rapacious, they wished to monopolize whatever she possessed, and thought themselves aggrieved by her smallest donations. Their chief employment was to keep from her all objects of distress, and in this though they could not succeed, they at least ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the type of the narrow-minded man of the world, who is indignant at innovation, and equally detests the popular teacher and the true philosopher. He seems, like Aristophanes, to regard the new opinions, whether of Socrates or the Sophists, as fatal to Athenian greatness. ...
— Meno • Plato
... preventing a free circulation of labour, and made it hard for a poor man to seek the best price for his only saleable commodity, was, so far, opposed to the fundamental principles common to Smith and Eden. The law, too, might be used oppressively by the niggardly and narrow-minded. The overseer, as Burn complained,[80] was often a petty tyrant: his aim was to depopulate his parish; to prevent the poor from obtaining a settlement; to make the workhouse a terror by placing it under the management of a bully; and by all kinds of chicanery to ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... respects painful. Indeed, one sees at a glance how absolutely hopeless would be any finite effort to convince him of the absurdity of his positions or the weakness of his understanding. There he stands, a solemn, shallow, conceited, narrow-minded, imperturbable, impracticable, incorrigible blockhead, on whom everything in the shape of argument is utterly wasted, and from whom all the arrows of wit and sarcasm fall harmless to the ground. In fact, he is perfectly proof against any intellectual weapons forged by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... elephantine everywhere but here (tapping her forehead), And Man, whose brain is to the elephant's As Woman's brain to Man's - (that's rule of three),— Conquers the foolish giant of the woods, As Woman, in her turn, shall conquer Man. In Mathematics, Woman leads the way; The narrow-minded pedant still believes That two and two make four! Why, we can prove, We women — household drudges as we are— That two and two make five — or three — or seven; Or five and twenty, if the case demands! Diplomacy? The wiliest diplomat Is absolutely helpless in our hands. He wheedles monarchs ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... treated with as much justice and courtesy and consideration as if he had been a Christian. He had been vexed that his father should suffer on behalf of such a man, had been half inclined to put down the scorn and contempt and anger of the narrow-minded to the atheist's account. The feeling had perhaps been natural, but all was changed now; he only revered his father all the more for having suffered in an unpopular cause. With some eagerness, he went back into the shop to see if he could gather any more particulars from ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... narrow-minded churchman, Laud, Bishop of London, one of Laud's first endeavours was to restore St. Paul's. Charles I. was a man of taste, and patronised painting and architecture. Inigo Jones was already building the Banqueting House at Whitehall. The king was so pleased with Inigo's ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... result from breaking up the foundations of public order, and from causing or suffering the principles of property to be subverted, they will, in the ruin of their country, leave a melancholy and lasting monument of the effect of preposterous politics, and presumptuous, short-sighted, narrow-minded wisdom. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... interference of the Romans in the affairs of the eastern powers there was no immediate need. The Achaean league, the prosperity of which was arrested by the narrow-minded coterie- policy of Aratus, the Aetolian republic of military adventurers, and the decayed Macedonian empire kept each other in check; and the Romans of that time avoided rather than sought transmarine acquisitions. When the Acarnanians, appealing to the ground that they alone of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Rockford, Ill., on Tuesday, October 5, 1880. We publish it in order to show the utter fallacy of the infidel's claim that Christianity is necessarily in conflict with education; that Christians are necessarily bigots, narrow-minded men, dangerous to the liberty of man, woman and child. Read it, ye fault-finding skeptics and infidels, and save your claims against the Christian religion if you can. Correllate it with the hollow utterances of Colonel Ingersoll, which are so often ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... but were not pleasant people to speak to. They had been part owners with her father in the Dolphin, the ship in which he had been wrecked. Having neglected to insure her they had lost a good deal of money by the circumstance, and being especially narrow-minded entertained an ill feeling even for poor Jessie herself, which they exhibited whenever she went to their office. She had been to a good school in Exeter, but the lady who kept it, and who would have been of great assistance, was dead, and the ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston
... delusion of a diseased brain, his notion that he is an instrument of Heaven, and that he is born to rule over Prussian souls by right divine, the old man is by no means a bad specimen of a good-natured, well-meaning, narrow-minded soldier of the S.U.S.C. type; and between Bismarck and Moltke he has of late had by no means an easy time. These two worthies, instead of being, as we imagined in Paris, the best of friends, abominate each other. During the siege Moltke would not allow ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... horribly intelligent and capable. I can see that, the way you are tending now. You will have gray hair, thin, too. You will draw it back like a conviction, and wind it in a knot at the back of your head as tight as a narrow-minded conclusion. You will have lost the damask flush of youth. I think your cheek bones will stick up, too prominent, you know, as if your character had knobbed up under your eyes. There will be a staircase ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... the divers, and breathless interest was aroused as they went calmly over the side and remained down for more than an hour, sending up immense quantities of oysters. Of course liberal-minded men were made converts on the spot, and, equally of course, the narrow-minded remained "of the same opinion still." Nevertheless, that day's trial of Western ingenuity has borne much fruit, for we are now told, by the best authorities, that at the present time the diving-dress is very extensively used in ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... one side of any thing—was softened and modified in him into firmness and fidelity. His heart was large enough to hold a deep reservoir of love, but not so wide at its exit as to allow the stream to flow forth in all directions at once. If this be narrow-mindedness, then he was narrow-minded. But he was loyal to the heart's core, faithful unto death, true in every fibre of his being. "He loved one only, and he clave to her," and there was room in ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... developed and came to a climax. At the beginning of the war I was sympathetic with Germany, but my sympathy changed to disgust as I watched developments in Berlin change the German people from world citizens to narrow-minded, deceitful tools of a ruthless government. I saw Germany outlaw herself. I saw the effects of President Wilson's notes. I saw the anti-American propaganda begin. I saw the Germany of 1915 disappear. I saw the birth of ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... recently, theme for theme, resemblance for resemblance, in this Liszt-Wagner Verhaeltniss. Wagner owed everything to Liszt—from money to his wife, success, and art. A wonderful white soul was Franz Liszt. And he is only coming into his kingdom as a composer. Poor, petty, narrow-minded humanity could not realize that because a man was a pianist among pianists, he might be a composer among composers. I made the error myself. I, too, thought that the velvet touch of Thalberg was more admirable than ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... death what had been reserve had become melancholy. She had always been afraid of her only son since they had sent him to Charterhouse, and he had become so much "finer" than his parents. She knew that he must consider her a very ignorant and narrow-minded person; when he was with her she was humiliated in her own eyes, though as soon as he was gone she resumed what was in truth a leading place ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... majority as "too gay." That circumstance alone was sufficient to render that funeral famous, but it was remembered, too, as having shocked the proprieties in another and more serious manner. No one would be so narrow-minded as to object to the custom of the return procession falling into a series of horse-races of the wildest description, and ending up at Latour's in a general riot. But to race with the corpse was considered bad form. The "corpse-driver," as he was called, could hardly ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... a way I was making the enthusiasms possible—I knew that. She never could have gone on as she did if she'd been nagged at all the time for money. Big ideas are always more important to her than small facts, but without some narrow-minded, literal person to look after the facts her ideas wouldn't have had much chance. I grubbed away until I got things straightened out, so that her income was enough to live on—enough for her to live on. I'd pulled her ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... trifle; and after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant in love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave mean and narrow-minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed ...
— Symposium • Plato
... think of Cornell, always esteemed by me as an ingenious and shrewd man, when employed by me to set the posts and put up the wire for the first line of Telegraphs between Washington and Baltimore, yet thought to be rather close and narrow-minded by those around him. But see, when his wealth had increased by his acquisition of Telegraph stock to millions (it is said), what enlarged and noble plans of public benefit were conceived and brought forth by him. I have viewed his course with great gratification ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... almost flown into a passion. "How can you say such things? Do you think I am narrow-minded? Whether it is my own child or a child I have adopted is quite immaterial, as it becomes mine through its training. I will train it in my own way. That it is of your own flesh and blood has nothing to do with it. Am I only to love a child because I have ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... of God is always mixed with great hardships, and is often executed by those worthy neither of confidence nor respect. I am sure that we shall all have to go through many humiliations before this matter is settled. I know, darling, that you will say I am making a rather narrow-minded fuss. But I do hate publicity, and if it doesn't kill Robert outright, it will have some shattering effect upon his character and his health. Really, I am not thinking so much of myself. Your own reckless bravery, however, would quail a little, I fancy, at the idea of ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... necessarily obliged, in my own interests, to keep my experiments secret, and to impose similar discretion on the workmen whom I employ. This unavoidable appearance of mystery, and the strictly retired life which my studies compel me to lead, offend the narrow-minded people in my part of the county, close to Barkingham; and the unpopularity of my pursuits has followed me here. The general opinion, I believe, is, that I am seeking by unholy arts for the philosopher's stone. Plain man, as you see me, I find myself getting quite the reputation of ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... innocent as some hundreds of other narrow-minded, short-sighted old men whom chance, or the duplicity of the real rascals, puts at the ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... field of human knowledge of nature by these results is patent to everyone. They are destined every year increasingly to manifest their transforming influence in all departments of knowledge, the more the conviction of their irrefragable truth forces its way. And it is only the ignorant or narrow-minded who can now doubt their truth. If, indeed, here and there, one of the older naturalists still disputes, the foundation on which they rest, or demands proofs which are wanting (as happened a few weeks ago on the part of a famous German pathologist ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... help matters—so long as I owed the debt. After all, we belong to that old-fashioned, rather narrow-minded class of New England people to whom debt of any kind is the source of something like anguish. At least," she corrected herself, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... sense of that which is pure and true, and a genuine love of mankind. They dwelt upon their idea—they lived upon it for a few years—and then they "showed their keeping." If I should wish to find a narrow-minded, uncharitable, bigoted soul, in the smallest possible space of time, I would look among those who have made temperance the specialty of their lives—not because temperance is bad, but because one idea is bad; and the men afflicted by this particular ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... they be brushed away by the quick, firm touch of the great world. Kleinstaedtisches Leben, despite its many advantages, fails to develop the burgher in every direction. It leaves him one-sided, if not exactly narrow-minded. Professor C.K. Adams, in his admirable essay upon "State Universities,"[1] has touched upon this point with reference to studies. His words should be carefully weighed: "If the best education consisted simply of making perfect recitations ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... that I could make no possible objection to it. Much as I sympathised with Lady Glyde in other respects, I could not sympathise with her in her unjust prejudices against Count Fosco. I never before met with any lady of her rank and station who was so lamentably narrow-minded on the subject of foreigners. Neither her uncle's note nor Sir Percival's increasing impatience seemed to have the least effect on her. She still objected to staying a night in London, she still implored her husband not ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... such a protest was utterly unintelligible. James sent for them to the royal closet. He rated them like schoolboys till they fell on their knees and with a single exception pledged themselves to obey his will. The one exception was the Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke, a narrow-minded and bitter-tempered man, but of the highest eminence as a lawyer, and with a reverence for the law that overrode every other instinct. He had for some time been forced to evade the king's questions and "closetings" on judicial cases by timely withdrawal from the royal presence. But now that ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... to be the last appearance of the artistic spirit of the people" he says, "and placed him in opposition to the narrow-minded citizens from whom the Mastersingers were chosen. To their ridiculous pedantry, I gave personal expression in the Marker whose duty it was to pay attention to the mistakes of the singers, especially of those who were ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... am carried away, I admit, but I am right. Everything justifies me—the past and the present, I am sure; and so will the future, I fear. Did I say the past? Be assured, Monsieur de Camors, I am not a narrow-minded admirer of the past. Though a Legitimist from personal affections, I am a downright Liberal in principles. You know that, Durocher? Well, then, in short, formerly between the Alps, the Rhine, and the Pyrenees, was a great country ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... came to inaugurate your system of insurance against railway accidents?" I asked Mr. Newnes, after a brief discussion on the ridiculous and narrow-minded behaviour of these worthy clerics. "It was in this way," he replied, as he brought himself to an anchor against the billiard-table, where he rested for a brief moment. "It was in this way: A woman wrote to me saying that her husband had been killed on the railway, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... one sense, Lister was the man for Barbara; he was honest, sober, and resolute, and she needed firm control. The girl was as wild as a hawk, and although she was marked by a fine fastidiousness, would revolt from a narrow-minded prig. Lister was not a prig; his blood ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... into possession of a large French element by the Louisiana purchase, there was no fear of a servile insurrection in this country. The free colored men of New Orleans, under the proclamation of the narrow-minded Jackson, rallied to the defence of that city and bore themselves with commendable valor in that useless battle. The war closed, however, and the glory of the Negro soldier who fought in it soon expired in the dismal gloom of a race-slavery becoming daily ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... A close-fisted, hard-hearted, narrow-minded, poor-spirited man was John Webster, Esquire, merchant and shipowner, of Ingot Lane, Liverpool. And yet he was not altogether without good points. Indeed, it might be said of him that if he had been reared under ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... little friction was caused by what the mate bitterly termed the narrow-minded, old-fashioned ways of the skipper. He had arranged that the skipper should steer while he and Miss Harris breakfasted, but the coffee was no sooner on the table than the skipper called him, and relinquishing the helm in his favour, ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... to the thought and the action of the time. So insistent was Page on this programme that his pages were not "closed" until a week before the day of issue. Though the Forum dealt constantly in controversial subjects it never did so in a narrow-minded spirit; it was always ready to hear both sides of a question and the magazine "debate," in which opposing writers handled vigorously the same ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... was unhappily so prevalent Forgetfulness is the best cure for the losses we suffer Fundamentally nothing is great, you see, and nothing small God wills not that a sinner die, but that he live and pay Influence he had gained over the narrow-minded Interpolated according to the needs of the prosecution Italy and Greece seemed to be mere suburbs of Venice Jesus, Son of David and Mary Knew how short was the space between a prison and a tomb Let her keep the pearl for the same price she had paid for it Madly in love-that is to say silly ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... sinking her voice and glancing to the other end of the room, where Mrs Crow's black bonnet was nodding confidentially at Mrs Hunt, "dear old Mrs Crow is rather narrow-minded. I should think the presence of the Vicar at the readings might satisfy her that all ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... for two centuries and better men had refused even to argue,—that life amid free Negroes was simply unthinkable, the maddest of experiments. The agents which the Bureau could command varied all the way from unselfish philanthropists to narrow-minded busybodies and thieves; and even though it be true that the average was far better than the worst, it was the one fly that helped to spoil the ointment. Then, amid all this crouched the freed slave, bewildered between friend and foe. He had emerged from slavery: not the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... in the world so much in need of unpractical people as this country of ours. With us, Thought is degraded by its constant association with practice. Who that moves in the stress and turmoil of actual existence, noisy politician, or brawling social reformer, or poor narrow-minded priest blinded by the sufferings of that unimportant section of the community among whom he has cast his lot, can seriously claim to be able to form a disinterested intellectual judgment about any one thing? Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... righteousness shall shine as the light, and their just dealing as the noonday." Protected in such an impregnable tower of defence from the strife of tongues, Mr. Schoolcraft has been enabled freely to forgive, and even befriend, those narrow-minded calumniators who have aimed so many poisoned arrows at his fame, his character, and his success in life. These are they who hate all excellence that they themselves can never ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... There are a great many of them, and as regards beauty, if not wit—of a limited kind indeed, but still wit—it is hard to say that the animal kingdom has the advantage. The views of plants are sadly narrow; all dissenters are narrow-minded; but within their own bounds they know the details of their business sufficiently well—as well as though they kept the most nicely- balanced system of accounts to show them their position. They are eaten, it is true; to eat them is our intolerant and bigoted way of trying to ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... One would imagine that the kind of paternal affection which is ascribed to God would have induced him to intervene at an earlier stage. The kind of father who co-operates with the more gifted and ambitious of his children, and does nothing for the less gifted and sluggish, is a narrow-minded and narrow-hearted man. Affection turns rather to those who cannot help themselves, or who need judicious and constant inspiration. This view we are considering is even less flattering to God, because the aspiring children of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries seem able to dispense with ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... acts by narrow-minded good men were supplemented by the knavery of unscrupulous bad men. The Indian trader, in accordance with the teachings of the times, not only looked upon the savages as the offspring of Satan, but also as fair objects of spoil; consequently, ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... he bade his black comrades "Good-bye! Good luck! God bless you! Take keer o' yo' self!" felt in his heart that all America ought to forget her prejudices. He felt that if she did not do so, she was indeed only fit to be characterized as narrow-minded, mean-spirited, illiberal and warped—entirely unfit for the position of leadership in democratization of ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... head that he wished to learn the English language, he set about it, and was able to understand, read, and speak a little, in a very short time—in fact, in a few days. Not only is he talented, but also endowed with a wonderful courage and independence, which superiority over the narrow-minded officials and intriguers who, for the most part, surround the King, has often led him into scrapes with His Majesty of Cho-sen. As he jocosely said to me, it was a marvel to him that his head was still on his shoulders. It was too good, and some one else might wish to have ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Edwin was sneaped into silence. Once more he could not keep from his face a look that seemed to apologise for his opinions. And all the heroic and passionate grandeur of Parnell's furious career shrivelled up to mere sordidness before the inability of one narrow-minded and ignorant but vigorous woman to appreciate its quality. Not only did Edwin feel apologetic for himself, but also for Parnell. He wished he had not tried to be funny about Parnell; he wished he had not mentioned him. The brightness of the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of such a creed have much to answer for. The murderer who destroys human life for wicked passion and wantonness is less criminal than the proudly learned, yet egotistical, and therefore densely ignorant scientist, who, seeking to crush the soul by his feeble, narrow-minded arguments, and deny its imperishable nature, dares to spread his poisonous and corroding doctrines of despair through the world, draining existence of all its brightness, and striving to erect barriers of distrust ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... Exmoor people, or that you should take a mastership, get rooms somewhere, and let him live with you? He's not very happy with your mother, you say. Wouldn't he be happier with you? What think you? Charity begins at home, you know: a good proverb—a good, sound, sensible, narrow-minded, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... earnest upon the subject of religion, and that this is the cause of his tolerant spirit; but is it possible you can intend to give us such dreadful and unamiable notions of religion. Are we to understand that the moment a man is sincere he is narrow-minded; that persecution is the child of belief; and that a desire to leave all men in the quiet and unpunished exercise of their own creed can only exist in the mind of an infidel? Thank God! I know many men whose principles are as firm as they are expanded, ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... heard of his engagement that, to excuse it in her own eyes, she had convinced herself that a French girl could only be flippant, extravagantly fond of amusement, and neglectful of homely duties; a Roman Catholic must of necessity be narrow-minded and bigoted, and the want of fortune betrayed low birth and lack of education. These views had been expressed at length to my betrothed, together with severe reproaches and admonitions, and it was in vain that he had attempted to justify his choice; his aunt persisted in attributing it ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... bought. He said something about his cousin Mrs. Fordyce calling on me. Well, if she does, I shall perhaps have a glimpse at the beau monde. I wonder if all the men in society look as high-bred as he does? He is probably narrow-minded naturally, but he is one result of our scheme of civilization, which has its good as well as its bad points. Dear me! I certainly did not mean to make an analysis of Mr. Lawrence's character. Good-night, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... question of "mixed" marriages (i.e. between Catholic and Protestant) would have been happily solved; but the archbishop died in 1835, the arrangement was never ratified, and the Prussian king was foolish enough to appoint as Spiegel's successor the narrow-minded partisan Baron Droste. The pope gladly accepted the appointment, and in two years the forward policy of the Jesuits had brought about the strife which Bunsen and Spiegel had tried to prevent. Bunsen rashly recommended that Droste should ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... a young stork—and narrow-minded. Before he married he had consorted mainly with striplings of his own kind, and had given no thought to the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... generous and noble as most people are narrow-minded," said Severne, enthusiastically; "and I have determined to ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... raised, as there ever has been and always will be, against ministerial interference at the elections. This is the sour consolation of the beaten, who feel the necessity of accounting for their defeat. Elections, taken comprehensively, are almost always more genuine than interested and narrow-minded suspicion is disposed to allow. The desires and ability of the powers in office, exercise over them only a secondary authority. The true essence of elections lies in the way in which the wind blows, and in the impulse of passing events. The decree of the 5th of September, 1816, had given ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... them and won't get them through. This place rather gets on my nerves now. The Dons don't confide in me, and I don't see things from their angle, as my father says. I think you somehow managed to keep them reasonable; they are narrow-minded men, I think." ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... God, sir, we can't sit quietly under the assault of these narrow-minded bigots. You must give the lie to this ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... him, perhaps the most ridiculous character in literary history, that Demosthenes spoke to a people of brutes;—to a barbarous people;—that there could have been no civilisation before the invention of printing. Johnson was a keen but a very narrow-minded observer of mankind. He perpetually confounded their general nature with their particular circumstances. He knew London intimately. The sagacity of his remarks on its society is perfectly astonishing. But Fleet ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bent on finding the truth, and doing their duty."[263] Such infidels as these are claimed to have blessed the world. All liberal minds ought to catch their spirit and administer every possible blessing to struggling humanity. But there is a species of narrow-minded infidelity which must be shunned; and it is the only kind of which we need to forebode any evil. "The only infidelity to be feared," says Mr. Frothingham, "the only real infidelity which is a sin in the sight of God, is a disbelief in the primary faculties of the human soul; disbelief in ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... ("La Greve des Forgerons"), which is written in rhymed Alexandrines, does not differ markedly in narrative method from "The Substitute" ("Le Remplacant"), which is written in prose. To be sure, the former is a poem and the latter is not; but only a very narrow-minded critic would call the latter a short-story without applying the same term also to the former. Therefore, the question whether a certain fictitious tale should be told in verse or in prose has no place in a general discussion of the materials and methods of fiction. It is a matter ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... before deciding on any measure, consulted a Mr. H.—, one of the most uninfluential, and even narrow-minded members of the House of Commons. Some astonishment being expressed at this, he replied that he regarded Mr. H.—-as a perfect type of the faculties and prejudices of a country gentleman, and he ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... went on, had still upon him the touch of family tradition, which may become either offensive pride or defensive self-respect. With the Cure, Ferrol was not quite so successful. The ascetic, prudent priest, with that instinctive, long-sighted accuracy which belongs to the narrow-minded, scented difficulty. He disliked the English exceedingly; and all Irishmen were English men to him. He resisted Ferrol's blarney. His thin lips tightened, his narrow forehead seemed to grow narrower, and his very cassock appeared to contract austerely on his figure as he talked ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ask you about these new friends of Cedric's," she began. "He seems so full of them, and neither Elizabeth nor I know anything about them. My sister, who is certainly not at all a narrow-minded person, has taken a most ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... petty middle-class, narrow-minded and penuriously pretentious, which was the main factor of Cullerne life, he possessed considerable influence and authority. Among his immediate surroundings a word from Churchwarden Joliffe carried more weight than an outsider would have imagined, and long usage ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... would give me to win and wear you, in spite of 'em all; and if without a farthing in your pocket, so much the more I should rejoice in the opportunity of proving to your dear self, and all else whom it may consarn, that Brian O'Neill is no fortune-hunter, and scorns them that are so narrow-minded as to think that no other kind of cattle but them there fortune-hunters can come out of all Ireland. So, my dear Phoebe, now we understand one another, I hope you will not be paining my eyes any longer with the sight of these odious brown bags, which are not fit to be worn by any Christian ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... may thereby be ignorant of much which others know, and may appear to disadvantage when they are talking together; though you appear behind the rest of the world; though you be called a coward, or a child, or narrow-minded, or superstitious; whatever insulting words be applied to you, fear not, falter not, fail not; stand firm, quit you like men; be strong. They think that in the devil's service there are secrets worthy ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... as they were not considered dangerous to the empire or imperial rule, or so long as they threatened no appreciable harm to the social order. If a Jew came to Rome and practised Judaism well and good. It was, in the eyes of the Romans, a narrow-minded and uncharitable religion, marked by many strange and absurd practices and superstitions, but if a misguided oriental people liked to indulge in it, well and good. Even if a Roman became a proselyte to Judaism, well ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... "A narrow-minded, bigoted fool!" she cried in the seclusion of her bedroom. "I'll show you where you get off, Mr. ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... of elderly widows who have given up the annual visit to London in the season, was a trifle behind the times. More charming an old lady could not be, but, in common with all who vegetate in the depths of rural England, she was just a trifle narrow-minded. In religion, she found fault constantly with the village parson, who, she declared, was guilty of ritualistic practices, and on the subject of her daughters she bemoaned the latter-day emancipation of women, which allowed them to go hither and thither at their own free will. Like ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... man alive has points of interest, but a rich man dead is only interesting to his heirs. Also, this Brant was one of these narrow-minded, fanatical, New Religion fellows who were so wearisome to men of intellect and refinement. True, he, Adrian, was himself of that community, for circumstances had driven him into the herd, but oh! he found them a dreary set. Their bald doctrines of individual effort, of personal striving ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... sad—very sad. There were good and noble qualities in the hearts of both. They were not narrow-minded and selfish, like so many of your placid, accommodating, calculating people, but generous in their feelings and broad in their sympathies. They had ideals of life that went reaching out far beyond themselves. Yes, it was sad to see two such hearts beating against and bruising each other, instead ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... of earlier times—invariably maintains whatever axioms it has laid down; it is arrogant, as is everything that is narrow-minded; while true physical philosophy, founded on science, doubts because it seeks to investigate thoroughly—distinguishes between that which is certain and that which is simply probable—and labours incessantly to bring its theories nearer ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... from generous and enlarged principles, or to be a narrow, selfish seeker of his own glory? Do we want the generous philanthropist there—the man who loves justice for its own sake—the man of strong natural powers, rendered stronger and clearer by honest principles?—or the narrow-minded timeserver—the man who would sacrifice any thing, even the liberties of his country, for a selfish end—the legal oppressor of the widow and the fatherless? Need these questions be answered from honest, high-souled voters? ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... ways. That was what the new party said. Away with the old-fashioned thoughts and the old-fashioned trusts and beliefs and worship. We are wiser than our simple-minded fathers. We know a few things more than these narrow-minded and crazy prophets. We will ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... inculcated into me his own aversion, that I cannot yet unexpectedly behold a priestly robe without a sensation of shuddering as at the sight of a snake. Secondly, the bourgeois, whom he called philistines, - the humbly living, contented, narrow-minded, timid, - whom he did not hate as much as he despised them with fervid scorn. And finally women, whom he neither hated nor despised, but whom he feared with ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... that he would like to have you take lunch with him. I told him that you didn't go out with any one, and with coldbloodedness he replied, 'Ah, she hasn't been here long.' I hated him from that moment. Don't you see what a narrow-minded fellow ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... to hear such things; and to me they appeared to be insolent, as well as narrow-minded. For if you came to that, why might not men, as well as women, be divided into the same three classes, and be pronounced upon by women, as beings even more devoid than their gentle judges of reason? Moreover, I knew, both from my own sense, and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... being influenced by Mr. Southard, I think. You see the Southards knew all about me and my affairs. Long ago Mr. Southard began educating David to his point of view in regard to the stage. David is neither narrow-minded nor obstinate, so it has all come right for me," she ended happily. Then she added, as her hand found Grace's. "I wish you loved ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... intervention in behalf of the outcasts of their sex readily exposed the English women to misrepresentation and degrading remarks from the quarter of narrow-minded men, the women did not allow themselves to be held back from energetically opposing the introduction of the law that was an insult to their sex. In newspaper articles and pamphlets the "pros" and "cons" were discussed by men and women; in Parliament, the extension ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... seemed to me the most vital and profound. I discovered that the art that he preferred was a kind of brilliant impressionism. He did not care much about the truth of it to life; the desirable quality seemed to him to be a sort of arresting daring of statement. He was not a narrow-minded man at all; he had read a great many books, both old and new, but he valued specious qualities above everything, and books which seemed to me to be like the crackling of thorns under a pot seemed to him to be ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that had been proved long ago? Could any one say that he was displaying a spirit of greediness in his love for the classical? And were joy and sorrow, however intense, less perceptible when expressed through a concise, well ordered medium? "What a distorted view a man takes when he becomes so narrow-minded," thought Daniel. "His ambition makes it impossible for him to feel; his very wit ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... is the narrow-minded and intolerant view of those who can see no virtue in an opposing party; who define, for instance, the distinction between parties as the party for things as they are, and the party for things as they ought to be; the latter being, of ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... had never been made as well as at present. Political economy, that science which leads on to all things, had appealed to him when he went out into the world as a vocation and a career, consequently he had decided to be an economist. He had brought to this dry study a narrow-minded intelligence, but he had been patient and persevering, and now, once a fortnight, he published in important reviews a long article well padded with figures which the women skipped and the men said ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... scandalise some of the old dowagers who were admitted into the society of his mamma: not that there were many of them; for I did not encourage the visits of what you call respectable people to Lady Lyndon. They are sad spoilers of sport,—tale-bearers, envious narrow-minded people; making mischief between man and wife. Whenever any of these grave personages in hoops and high heels used to make their appearance at Hackton, or in Berkeley Square, it was my chief pleasure to frighten them off; and I would make my little Bryan ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... character, her capacious mind, her unmethodical manners, were still badly suited to the nice precision of a country housewife; and as the prudent mistress of a family sneered at her pretensions, she, in her turn, scorned the narrow-minded mistress of ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... them; we know, indeed, that there is a good deal of very mean and unworthy Patriotism—the flag-waving variety, for instance, which we saw in the Boer war—exultant over a small nation of farmers defending their homes, and whipped up deliberately by a commercial gang for their own purposes; or the narrow-minded, lying, canting variety which blinds a people to its own faults, and credits itself with all the moral virtues, while at the same time it gloats over every defamation of the enemy. There is a good deal of that variety in the present war. And it is ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... will not succeed in removing a hair's-breadth of the mountains, much less the whole vast mass of rock and soil." With a sigh the Simpleton of the North Mountain answered:—"Surely it is you who are narrow-minded and unreasonable. You are not to be compared with the widow's son, despite his puny strength. Though I myself must die, I shall leave my son behind me, and he his son. My grandson will beget sons in his turn, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... with good reason, men having a larger share of that greatest of gifts, charity! their knowledge of human nature making them rarely censorious, their education giving them larger, broader views; how many women, alas, are essentially censorious, uncharitable and narrow-minded. Yes, nature has been lavish in gifts to ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... himself in indulging the feeling. The removal of this prejudice is not a matter of opinion—it is a matter of duty. We have no right to palliate a feeling, sinful in itself, and highly injurious to a large number of our fellow-beings. Let us no longer act upon the narrow-minded idea, that we must always continue to do wrong, because we have so long been in the habit of doing it. That there is no necessity for the prejudice is shown by facts. In England, it exists to a much less degree than it does here. If a respectable colored person enters a church there, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... that one important difference between the teacher and other operatives arises from the difference in the objects on which they operate. The one operates upon matter, the other upon mind. The one attains perfection in his art by a process which in the other would produce an ignoramus, a bungler, a narrow-minded, conceited charlatan. Hence the necessity on the part of those who would excel in the profession of teachers, of endeavoring continually to enlarge the bounds of their knowledge. Hence the error of those who think that to teach anything well it is necessary ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... anything, I protest, if I had one as near me as she is to you, I had rather match her with him, than with men of far greater titles." The suit, happily for Bacon, was unsuccessful. The lady indeed was kind to him in more ways than one. She rejected him; and she accepted his enemy. She married that narrow-minded, bad-hearted pedant, Sir Edward Coke, and did her best to make him as miserable as he deserved ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... heathenism, though they may by some be considered harmless in themselves, are generally adverse to the spiritual life of a Christian, and therefore they have been discouraged. The missionaries have in consequence been accused of being morose and narrow-minded. Far, far different is their real character. As a class, they are zealous, earnest, devoted men, full of life, activity, and energy,—courageous and persevering,—gifted with high and varied attainments, ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... Mr. Merton, "at the broad and liberal views you expressed of men and their actions generally. I supposed I had greatly the advantage over you in means and education; yet how cramped and narrow-minded have been my views beside yours! That wife of yours is an estimable woman, and that boy of yours will be an honor to any man. I tell you, Bishop," said the lawyer, becoming animated, "you are rich—rich beyond what money could make; you have treasures that gold will not buy. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... and now his wife seemed half as old again as himself. She was a tall woman, with dark eyebrows, erect, grave, stolid, and she thought herself an intellectual woman. She read a great deal, called her husband not Dimitri, but Demitri, and in his private mind he thought her short-witted, narrow-minded, and ungracious. He was afraid of her and disliked being at home. He had begun to betray her with other women long ago, betrayed her frequently, and, probably for that reason nearly always spoke ill of women, and when they were discussed in ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... relax the mind, divert the mind, veg out. Adj. vacant, unintellectual, unideal^, unoccupied, unthinking, inconsiderate, thoughtless, mindless, no-brain, vacuous; absent &c (inattentive) 458; diverted; irrational &c 499; narrow-minded &c 481. unthought of, undreamt 'of, unconsidered; off one's mind; incogitable^, not to be thought of. Phr. absence d'esprit; pabulum ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of the convicts. Judging from appearance as they sat in the assembly, a few were evidently hard cases, narrow-minded, sordid, ugly. To a number, dame Nature had dealt bountifully on the score of mind, they having noble foreheads, and bright, sparkling eyes, indicative of no small natural ability. One would think that some ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... partial representations of narrow-minded bigots, who paint the Deity from their own gloomy conceptions, the young are too often frighted from the paths of virtue; despairing of ideal perfections, they give up all virtue as unattainable, and start aside from the road which they falsely suppose strewed ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... my sisters and brothers, as are nice to me; and won't even draw any distinction between those born of primary wives and those of secondary ones. Properly speaking, I shouldn't say these things about her, but she's narrow-minded to a degree, and unlike what she should be. There's besides another ridiculous thing. This took place the last time I gave you the money to get me those trifles. Well, two days after that, she saw me, and she began again to represent ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... of his grandfather's gravestone, and fires away, with great self-applause. People in general seem to like to show that they are well-born, and come of good stock; but the young New-Englanders, many of them, appear to take pleasure in insisting that they came of a race of narrow-minded, persecuting bigots. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... a narrow-minded, or a stupid woman, cannot feel nor understand the rationality, the propriety, or the beauty of this relation; and she it is, that will be most likely to carry her measures by tormenting, when she cannot please, or by ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... it was a model of neatness and order, and Mrs. Esterbrook, who was herself a pattern in that way, found her harsh judgment insensibly relaxing, as she stepped to the counter where Pease stood, and asked quite amiably to see some of the best calicoes, just in from New-York. Pease, the narrow-minded idiot, thought this a good time to play off a smart trick on one of Smith's regular customers. So he paraded a large variety of goods before her, and took occasion to recommend a very pretty article, for which he charged a monstrous price, because he said it was a very ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... him again." This incident shows that, if Sunderland had lived, he would have plotted against Walpole to the end, and would have stood in Walpole's way to the best of his power, and with all the unforgiving hostility of the narrow-minded and selfish man who has had services rendered him for which he ought to feel grateful ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... disturbing and even disastrous to St. Rest suggested itself troublously to his mind. Arguing inwardly with himself, he presently began to think that notwithstanding all his attempts to live a Christian life, after the manner Christianly, he was surely becoming a very selfish and extremely narrow-minded man! He was unreasonably, illogically vexed at the return of the heiress of Abbot's Manor; and why? Why, chiefly because he would no longer be able to walk at liberty in Abbot's Manor gardens and woods,—because ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Mrs. Salsify Mumbles in this case, "Better overshoot than fall short." Louise was graceful and self-possessed as usual; and it must be confessed did not appear very much disconcerted when Col. M. showed her husband in some ridiculous light, or mercilessly uncurtained his crude, narrow-minded opinions and ideas. ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... from indigence to opulence by business capabilities must have brains worthy of admiration, but the man who makes a fortune as M'Swat of Barney's Gap was making his must he dirt mean, grasping, narrow-minded, and soulless—to me the most uncongenial of ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... heroes, and profound diplomatists. But I was terribly undeceived. Those selfish shop-keepers amused me with fair but false promises; they care neither for my welfare nor for that of Europe, but only for their commerce. The egotism of Great Britain is equalled only by her narrow-minded avarice. I asked the British cabinet to guarantee a Russian loan, and they were impudent enough to refuse me, although they knew very well that I wished to negotiate it for the sole purpose of equipping an army, with which I ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... from the broadly social point of view. We should recognize it only to the extent that is necessary to give us control over it—not allow it to hold us helplessly in its grip because we cannot separate it from the idea of sexual indiscretion. There is a form of narrow-minded self-righteousness about these things that sets the stamp of vice on innocent and guilty alike simply on the strength of the sexual transmission of syphilis. In the effort to avoid so mistaken and heartless a view, we cannot remind ourselves too often that syphilis ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... Rappoport, "have fallen below the level of progressive capitalistic governments. No 'Socialistic' minister has done near so much for democracy as honorable but narrow-minded democrats like Combes. 'Socialistic' ministers have before anything else sought the means of keeping themselves in office. In order to make people forget their past, they are compelled to give continuously new proofs of their zeal for ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... aspiring, less sensuous art which belongs to Western civilisation may bear many a change and not die utterly; nay, may feed on its intellect alone for a season, and enduring the martyrdom of a grim time of ugliness, may live on, rebuking at once the narrow-minded pedant of science, and the luxurious tyrant of plutocracy, till change bring back the spring again, and it blossoms once more into ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... arm, thrusting his hand deep into the long grass. "That sort—narrow-minded people—aren't all found in the country, though—not by a long shot. I've sometimes thought I'd take an office in town, but, when it comes to making the move, I can't bring myself to it. You see, I happen to like it out here, and I like the village work. This way I get ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... boldly and say, "Sir, I am an amateur," or, "I am a young professional," as the case may be. "Your work interests and delights me. May I look around?" Doubtless, the person addressed will be flattered by your appreciation, and, unless narrow-minded, will exchange views ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... with his cold smile. "It would appear that you do not quite realize the situation. Women rarely realize situations in time. Our friend—your husband—has many of the English idiosyncrasies. He has all the narrow-minded notions of honor which obtain in that country. Added to this, I suspect him of possessing a truly Slavonic fire which he keeps under. 'A smouldering fire—' You know, madame, our French proverb. He is not the man ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... wonderfully narrow-minded in business, and, being new to the country, had no notion that Indian banking is totally distinct from Home work. Like most clever self-made men, he had much simplicity in his nature; and, somehow or other, had ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... noble, Fellow, thought they were quite justified. Well, your Emerson has done him far more Justice than his own Countryman Carlyle, who won't allow him to be a Hero in any way, but sets up such a cantankerous narrow-minded Bigot as John Knox in his stead. I did go to worship at Abbotsford, as to Stratford on Avon: and saw that it was good to have so done. If you, if Mr. Lowell, have not lately read it, pray read Lockhart's account of his Journey to Douglas Dale on (I think) ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... this celebrated statesman, this eminent orator, this mediocre writer, this narrow-minded man, an indefinable sentiment of ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... since he cast his destiny into the lap of the woman he loved. In all these years no olive-bearing dove had spanned the gulf that yawned between the prodigal and his father. The seigneur of Beaubocage had been marble. A narrow-minded old man, living his narrow life, and nursing one idea with fanatical devotion, was of all men the least likely to forgive. Vain had been the tears and entreaties of mother and sister. The doors of that joyless dwelling on the fertile flats beyond Vevinord were sealed against the offender with ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... England has always been liberal, progressive and patriotic; whereas that of the landed interest has been retrograde and selfish. There cannot be a greater delusion. English manufacturers have been just as self-seeking and narrow-minded as other people—no more and no less; they have been quite as ready to sacrifice the interests of others when they believed them to be opposed to their own, as the much-abused landowners. At this time every nation in ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... Harry, "it is unphilosophical and narrow-minded to fasten on a class the faults of a few individuals, that form a very ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... what, after all, do we know about the difficult task of governing men, i.e. to keep law, order, quietness, and peace among millions of boundlessly egoistical, unjust, unreasonable, dishonourable, envious, malignant, and hence very narrow-minded and perverse human beings; and thus to protect the few things that the State has conquered for itself against covetous neighbours and jealous robbers? Such a hard-pressed State holds out its arms to any associate, grasps at any straw; and ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... curtailing the right to householders only. I rose and moved an amendment, substituting universal for householder suffrage, and, with all the reasoning and energy in my power, I combated the arguments of my friends Cobbett and Major Cartwright, deprecating the narrow-minded policy that would deprive 3-4ths of the population of the inherent birthright of every freeman. My proposition, and the whole of the arguments I used in its support, were received by a very large majority of the delegates with enthusiastic approbation; ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... Britain, from the times of Milton and Locke down to the times of Mackintosh and of Chalmers, has been giving it impetus in but one direction; and it is scarce likely that it will reverse its course now, at the bidding of a few intolerant and narrow-minded aristocrats. British opinion has but to be fairly appealed to, in order to declare strongly in favour of the oppressed Highlanders of Sutherland. What we would first remark, then, is, that the policy of his Grace the Duke cannot ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... bluff or settle a dispute with some other outfit riding the high country. And because Gary imagined that Bailey of the Concho had deliberately sent such youngsters as Andy White and Young Pete to the Blue Mesa to settle the matter of a boundary line, Gary felt insulted. He was too narrow-minded to reason that Bailey could hardly know whom Houck of the T-Bar-T would send. Gary's ill-humor was not improved by the presence of Young Pete nor by Pete's pugnacious attitude. Strangely enough, Gary was nervous because he knew that Young Pete ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... just passed near where we stood, as they entered the church. One of us remarked in reference to the Tower close by, that it was the dower of the Lady Blanche, the daughter of John O'Gaunt, who, although occupying so eminently marked a place in history, was a man so narrow-minded that he would not allow any of his vassals to receive the least education as he held that it unfitted them for the duties of their station, and gave them ideas far above their lot in life. A curious speculation was hazarded by one ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... reputation, looking into the history of Luther, and Calvin, and John Knox, and the rest, find them falling far short of the philosophic ideal—wanting sadly in many qualities which the liberal mind cannot dispense with. They are discovered to be intolerant, dogmatic, narrow-minded, inclined to persecute Catholics as Catholics had persecuted them; to be, in fact, little if at all better than the popes and cardinals ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... There were a few who envied him his physical powers. There were some who envied him his moral influence. None envied him his intellectual superiority, for they did not understand it. There was one who not only envied but hated him. This was Eemerk, a mean-spirited, narrow-minded fellow, who could not bear to play ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... he was in search of the truth, while he was on the journey, he excited no little suspicion and distrust. The very thing that lends him charm to those who love to see intellectual movement and development allowed apostles of prejudice and good, but narrow-minded, men to think of him as insidious, leading his disciples on to conclusions to which he designed to bring them, while his purpose was veiled. But, says Froude, who tells us this, and was himself at Oxford ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... did not mean to injure him; but he is vexed to think that your behaviour to him upon that occasion may be interpreted as a proof that he is despised by you, which I know is not the case. I have told him, that the charge of being narrow-minded was only as to the particular point in question; and that he had the merit of being a martyr to his ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... I said about Eliza Lynn. She may be the best of human beings, and I am but a narrow-minded fool to express prejudice against a person I have ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... me almost pityingly. "Don't be so narrow-minded," he said. "We're rational beings. We have the power of speech and we can outreason you any day. There's nothing in the dictionary that says men have ...
— Robots of the World! Arise! • Mari Wolf
... absurdities from which average common sense would shrink, and only supply logical machinery for warring against reason. The reference to enlightened aristocracies is common enough; but I cannot discover that, "taken in a lump," any particular aristocracy cannot be as narrow-minded, short-sighted, and selfish, as the most rampant democracy. In point of fact, we all know that political action is determined by instinct rather than by reason. I do not mean that instinct is opposed to reason: it is simply a crude, undeveloped, inarticulate form of reason; it is blended with prejudices ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... more people, however, are capable of knowledge and insight. Indeed, one may well say that everyone is thus capable who can deny himself and subordinate himself to external objects, everyone who does not strive with rigid and narrow-minded obstinacy to impose upon the highest works of Nature and Art his own personality and ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... best I was able to produce in the way of a crusher for Miss Higglesby-Browne and her fellow-passengers was a cool little white gown, which would shine at least by contrast with Miss Browne's severely utilitarian costume. White is becoming to my hair, which narrow-minded persons term red, but which has been known to cause the more discriminating to draw heavily on the dictionary for adjectives. My face is small and heart-shaped, with features strictly for use and not for ornament, but fortunately inconspicuous. As for my eyes, I think tawny quite the nicest word, ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... dogmatism from which they had broken loose; to those schools and churches where the foolish and the unnatural had been taught and worshipped; to those priests and monks who themselves most shamefully violated their teachings. To profess morality was to be a hypocrite; to reprobate others was to be narrow-minded. There was so much error mixed up with truth that truth had to share the discredit of error; so many innocent things had been denounced as sins that sinful ones at length ceased to be reprobated; people had so often found themselves ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... music and fancy work she might get "a place as governess in some family where the want of a knowledge of French would be no objection." But, unhappily, good dame Herschel, like many other uneducated and narrow-minded persons, had a strange dread of too much knowledge. She thought that "nothing further was needed," says Carolina, "than to send me two or three months to a sempstress to be taught to make household linen; so all that my father could do was to indulge me sometimes ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... celebrating with the customary gorgeous ritual the accession of a new Doge, seemed to Odo like the richly-inlaid frame of some Renaissance "triumph." But the splendid houses with their marble peristyles, and the painted villas in their orange-groves along the shore, housed a dull and narrow-minded society, content to amass wealth and play biribi under the eyes of their ancestral Vandykes, without any concern as to the questions agitating the world. A kind of fat commercial dulness, a lack of that personal distinction which justifies magnificence, seemed to Odo the prevailing note of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... conventional accessories, according to this school of morals; nothing of the sort remaining as it came from above, in the simple abstract qualities of right and wrong. On such feelings and principles as these, do men get to be dogmatical, narrow-minded, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... his arbitrary decision in all that he deemed best for them; still it serves greatly to allay this feeling, to observe that the resistance which he experienced did not proceed from the people, but almost exclusively from the obstinate pride of a spoiled nobility, and the narrow-minded policy of an ignorant and jealous priesthood. The Russian nation itself is indeed, more than any other people, susceptible of deep impressions. Hence they are in general not averse to innovations; and were in Peter's time, ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... peace, and between the Protestants and Henry IV. some little mutual confidence and friendliness. Mornay had made up his mind to serve forever a king who had saved his country. He remained steadfast and active in his creed, but without falling beneath the yoke of any narrow-minded idea, preserving his patriotic good sense in the midst of his fervent piety, and bearing with sorrowful constancy his friends' bursts of anger and his king's exhibitions of ingratitude. Between 1597 and 1605 three incidents supervened which put to the proof Henry IV.'s feelings towards his ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... treating of Wordsworth, he points out with great skill the fallacy of some of his theories and the inconsistency of his practice. But whilst keenly observant of some of the failings of his friends, he reproduces others in even an exaggerated type. He shows to the full their narrow-minded hatred of the preceding century, of all forms of excellence which did not correspond to their favourite types, and of all speculation which did not lead to, or start from their characteristic doctrines. The error is fully ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... at the stern, quiet features of his effigy and wonders what was the truth about the man. Was he what Macaulay has called him—"a narrow-minded, mean, and tyrannical priest, who gained power by servility and adulation, and employed it in persecuting those who agreed with Calvin about Church Government, and those who differed from Calvin touching the doctrine ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker |
