"Depreciating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He commonly spoke of his life as a professor with whimsical disparagement, as Henry Adams wrote of his own teaching with a somewhat cynical disparagement. But the fact is that both of these self-depreciating New Englanders were stimulating and valuable teachers. From his happily idle boyhood to the close of his fruitful career, Lowell's loyalty to Cambridge and Harvard was unalterable. Other tastes changed after ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... abruptly as he had entered, and he paused long enough outside to know that a silence marked his going. Then he heard Ed Koran's voice depreciating him. Frankly he ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... examples and its warnings. But he was sure that the Future must be different, and might be better. In the same disdainful spirit he rejected Religion as the accumulated legacy of childhood, and believed that it arrested progress by depreciating terrestrial objects. Nevertheless he had the confidence of Lubersac, Bishop of Treguier, and afterwards of Chartres, who recommended him to the clergy ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... attempt to erect the philosophy of morals into an independent science, we shall soon find that its highest inductions only lead us to a point beyond which we are condemned to wander in doubt and in darkness. But, on the other hand, by depreciating philosophy, or the light which is derived from the moral impressions of the mind, we deprive ourselves of a most important source of evidence in support of revelation. For it is from these impressions, viewed in connexion with the actual state of man, ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... Henry to be ridiculous to believe that the English government was deliberately depreciating the work of the Irish soldiers, and he said so. "They hardly mention the names of any regiments," he ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... judge agreed. "You go in and clean up. Run these gunmen down the valley. Cut out this amatoor wild West business—it's hurting us. Property is depreciating right along. We certainly can't stand any more of this brimstone business. Go to it! We'll see that ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... you have asked as to the direction of your talents, but my opinion of them, and yet the opinion may be worth little, and the advice much. You evidently possess, and in no inconsiderable degree, what Wordsworth calls the 'faculty of verse.' I am not depreciating it when I say that in these times it is not rare. Many volumes of poems are now published every year without attracting public attention, any one of which if it had appeared half a century ago, would have obtained a high reputation for its author. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that I was not far wrong in fearing that I could have no sound notion about wisdom; I was quite right in depreciating myself; for that which is admitted to be the best of all things would never have seemed to us useless, if I had been good for anything at an enquiry. But now I have been utterly defeated, and have failed to discover what that is to which the imposer of names gave this name of temperance or wisdom. ...
— Charmides • Plato
... year of the war, with the price of living at the South running up to eight hundred and nine hundred dollars per day, and currency depreciating so rapidly that one's salary had to be advanced every morning in order to keep pace with ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... power and judgment. Some of them have furnished Varchi with the subject of Discourses. It must be remembered, however, that he practised poetry for his amusement, and not as a profession, always depreciating his own talent, and appealing to his ignorance in these matters. Just in the same way he has perused the Holy Scriptures with great care and industry, studying not merely the Old Testament, but also the New, together with their commentators, as, for example, the writings of Savonarola, for whom he ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... noticed that those sharp observers, the French,—who have a double turn for sharp observation, for they have both the quick perception of the Celt and the Latin's gift for coming plump upon the fact,—it is to be noticed, I say, that the French put a curious distinction in their popular, depreciating, we will hope inadequate, way of hitting off us and the Germans. While they talk of the 'betise allemande,' they talk of the 'gaucherie anglaise;' while they talk of the 'Allemand balourd,' they talk of the 'Anglais empetre;' while they call the German ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... to so many gold dollars. When that result shall be accomplished, we can proceed to pay our Five-twenties either in coin or paper, for the one would be equivalent to the other. But to proceed deliberately on a scheme of depreciating our legal tenders and then forcing the holders of Government bonds to accept them in payment, would resemble in point of honor, the policy of a merchant who, with abundant resources and prosperous business, should devise a plan for throwing discredit on his own notes with the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... is said to you, or analyze every simple remark until you magnify it into something of the greatest importance. Do not have such a low and unjust estimate of people as to think they are bent on nothing but hurting the feelings of others, and depreciating and making light of them on every possible occasion. A man who appreciates himself at his true value, and who gives his neighbors credit for being at least as good as he is, cannot ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... is intended for purposes of stockjobbing. The financial world is percolated with it. It is the common method of raising or depreciating securities, attracting investors, preying upon the ignorant and credulous, and enabling dishonest men to rise rapidly to fortune. When the prospect of speedy wealth is in sight, there are always numbers who are perfectly prepared to pursue courses involving the utter ruin of multitudes, endangering ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... the banker, who alone appeared dissatisfied at this interruption, and now approached the stranger; "I warn you, Senorias! I recognise in this caballero"—he spoke the word in an ironical and depreciating tone—"the same gentilhombre whom the alguazils were so lately seeking. Beware! his presence may get us ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... what it would. Now, s'posen an old feller that don't know nothin' says somethin'?" said Kent, good-humoredly; for he, as is generally the case with those of his class, had a habit of depreciating his own sagacity and foresight, when he really knew how much superior it ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... Port Royal, it being the skipper's intention to take a wherry for the trip to Kingston. The moment that our wants were made known, the black boatmen crowded round us in a perfect mob, each extolling the merits of his own boat and depreciating those of the others. From words they soon came to blows, the combatants lowering their heads and butting at each other like goats, until one Hercules of a fellow, having won by force of arms—or rather, by the superior thickness and strength of his woolly skull—the right to convey ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... scene of one of those quick comedies of national self-transformation which start trains of consequences rather than produce immediately great results. One may call it a comedy, not in a depreciating sense, but because the piece was played out to a successful issue with little bloodshed and small hindrance. It had been laid down as a principle by the playwrights that the Vatican was the natural enemy of Italian ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... remained deplorable. Nothing was done for the provinces whose paper currency was depreciating from month to month in an alarming manner; whilst the rivalries between the various leaders instead of diminishing seemed to be increasing. The Tutuhs, or Military Governors, acting precisely as they saw fit, derided the authority ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... restlessness which fills the mind with sudden distaste for the present scene, and a fierce longing to be somewhere far away. Others are preserved from it by the love of home; but we, in our poverty of attachment, listen more readily to the depreciating voice. ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... said the doctor, "depreciating what you know nothing about; now, listen to me, Master Henry, and I will tell you. That picture evidently had some sort of lining at the back, over the original canvas; and do you think I would have taken such pains to bring it away with me if that lining had not made me suspect that between ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... for granted that they have so far counterpoised the depreciating language of my fellow-countryman and fellow-teacher as to gain me a reader here and there among the youthful class of students I am now addressing. It is only for their sake that I think it necessary to analyze, or explain, or illustrate, or corroborate any portion of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... throw off yourself—what you feel to be yourself—into another atmosphere and into other relations where your life may spread its wings out new, and gather on every separate plume a brightness from the sun of the sun! Is it possible that imaginative writers should be so fond of depreciating and lamenting over their own destiny? Possible, certainly—but reasonable, not at all—and ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... to criticise the ethical inferences drawn in reference to man's responsibility for his belief. Those who think that our characters, moral and intellectual, are formed for us by circumstances, are consistent in denying or depreciating responsibility.(86) There is a danger however among Christian writers of falling into the opposite error, of dwelling so entirely on the moral causes, in forgetfulness of the intellectual, as to teach not only that ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... weather. They are very seldom captured, and charge an enormous price for passengers and freight. It is doubtful whether the traffic of the private blockade-runners doesn't do more harm than good to the country by depreciating its currency, and they are generally looked upon as regular gambling speculations. I have met many persons who are of opinion that the trade ought to be stopped, except for Government stores and articles ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... more inactive mind, formed into perfect thought his master's crude ideas while they yet hung on his lips, and liberally allowed him the glory of the invention. Granvella understood the difficult and useful art of depreciating his own talents; of making his own genius the seeming slave of another; thus he ruled while he concealed his sway. In this manner only could Philip II. be governed. Content with a silent but real power, Granvella did not ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... be improper to consider as a variety of the genus a mode of representation that could be expressed as clearness in simplicity? It is the dry and rational imagination. Without depreciating it we may say that it is rather a condition of imaginative poverty. We hold with Fouillee that the average Frenchman furnishes a good example of it. "The Frenchman," says he, "does not usually have a very strong imagination. His internal vision has neither the hallucinative ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... subject of silk and silk-culture at the late Woman's Congress, Mrs Julia Ward Howe said that "although silk is said to be depreciating in value, and is not quite as popular as formerly, yet we must confess it lies very near the feminine heart," at which statement an audible smile passed over the audience, as each one acknowledged to herself ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... saved; and that while Christians are made really holy and good, their sanctification is to be traced to the grace of God in Christ Jesus. In neither passage is there any statement on which to rest an argument for the arbitrary and unconditional decree of the Calvinist, nor for depreciating the intrinsic value of those really good works which the Christian performs in faith. Calvinism has no foundation in the word of God. It is in direct collision with that sacred authority. St. Paul rests the divine election on the foreknowledge ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... agents—when they object to the circulation of such papers and tracts as Abolitionists prepare, because they believe them most pernicious in their influence and tendencies, is it not as much persecution to use invidious insinuations, depreciating accusation and impeachment of motive, in order to intimidate, as it is for the opposers of Abolitionism to use physical force? Is not the only method by which the South can be brought to relinquish slavery, a conviction that not only her duty, but her highest ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... spared. I had the best teachers—and, of course, the most expensive; with none others would I have been satisfied, for I had come naturally to regard myself as on a social equality with the fashionable young friends who were my companions, and who indulged the fashionable vice of depreciating everything that did not come up to a certain acknowledged standard. Yearly I went to Saratoga or Newport with my sisters, and at a cost which I now think of with amazement. Sometimes my mother went with us, but my father never. He was not ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... depreciating the value of Associations already existing, it is yet deemed that an organization at once more comprehensive and more widely representative than any of these is urgently called for. In this view, the Executive Committee of the New England Woman Suffrage Association ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... frequent miracles recorded of Jesus Christ is called the "casting out devils." The Pharisees in the Evangelist, for the purpose of depreciating this evidence of his divine mission, are recorded to have said, "this fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince of devils." Jesus, among other remarks in refutation of this opprobrium, rejoins upon them, "If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... letter was received afterwards from Mrs. Bright, in which she made this playful reference to Miss Anthony's always depreciating herself in favor of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... a depreciating eye towards the portrait, but, after a glance at it, suddenly regained his ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... him a rapid glance. She did not understand him and did not want to understand him. It seemed to her impertinent that he should compare himself to Nejdanov. "Let him brag!" she thought, though he was not bragging at all, but rather depreciating himself, according to ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... where several other women were examining and depreciating Mrs. Lincoln's costly carpets, pronouncing them "half cotton," &c., Mary made her way up the stairs, where in a chamber as yet untouched, she found Jenny and with her William Bender. Mrs. Lincoln's cold, scrutinizing eyes were away, and Mr. Lincoln ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... as decrying or depreciating dress. It is a duty as well as a delight. Mrs. Madison is reported to have said that she would never forgive a young lady who did not dress to please, or one who seemed pleased with her dress. And not only ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... exclaimed Gretry, with a long breath, "the risk is about as big as holding up the Bank of England. You are depreciating the value of about forty million dollars' worth of your property with every ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... the world minify our intelligence by depreciating our favorite article of diet, and express the ultimate extreme of mental pauperism by saying of him on whose intellect they would heap contempt, "He doesn't know beans"? [Laughter.] And it is within my recollection that there was a time when it ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Here are the true weapons of the enemies of our constitution! Here may we search for the source of the present outpourings of seditious writings, meant either to weaken our attachment to the constitution by depreciating its value, or that loudly tell us we have no constitution at all. We may blame, we may reprobate such doctrines; but while we furnish those who circulate them with argumenta such as these, while the example of this day shows us to what degree the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... beaten. She tried Francis, but he really did know next to nothing, and whenever he came to a word above five letters long stopped short, and when told to spell it, said, "Mamma never made him spell;" also muttering something depreciating about civilians. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Without depreciating in the least his illustrious brother, it may truly be said that while the one was a saint in the cloister, the other was a saint in the very thick of life's battle. [Footnote: "Henry Newman... stood for a spiritual Tory; while Francis Newman was a spiritual Radical" (Morning Leader, October, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... notice of the large and lofty Sir Geoffrey Peveril, who, being at least three inches taller than his son, was in so far possessed of that superior excellence, which the poor dwarf, in his secret soul, valued before all other distinctions, although in his conversation, he was constantly depreciating it. "Good comrade and namesake," he proceeded, stretching out his hand, so as to again to reach the elder Peveril's cloak, "I forgive your want of reminiscence, seeing it is long since I saw you at Naseby, fighting as if you had as many arms ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Using a prefabricated bin can prevent a person from readily turning the heap and can almost force a person to also buy some sort of shredder/chipper to first reduce the size of the material. Also, viewed as a depreciating economic asset with a limited life span, many composting aids cost as much or more money as the value of all the material they can ever turn out. Financial cost relates to ecological cost, so spending ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... action, and have been found unequal to the duties of life. Looking back on them now that they are removed from the scene, we feel that mankind has been the better for them. The world was against them while they lived; but this is rather a reason for admiring than for depreciating them. Nor can any one doubt that the influence of their philosophy on politics—especially on foreign politics, on law, on social life, has been upon the whole beneficial. Nevertheless, they will never have justice done to them, for they do not agree ...
— Philebus • Plato
... quality is will power, the only knowledge needed a knowledge of the value of money. I must not be understood here as in any degree disparaging Oscar. I can surely state that a flower is weaker than a weed without exalting the weed or depreciating ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... far from venerating the peculiar tenets asserted by those who call themselves the followers of those men, and whose intolerance and narrow-minded bigotry are at least as conspicuous as their devotional zeal, yet it is without depreciating the memory of those sufferers, many of whom united the independent sentiments of a Hampden with the suffering zeal of a Hooper or Latimer. On the other hand, it would be unjust to forget, that many even of those who had been most active in crushing what they conceived the rebellious and ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was recommending, others would be supplied for its action, in the proportion of the excess of colored population it would be necessary to throw off, by the process of voluntary manumission or sale. This effect must result inevitably from the depreciating value of the slaves, ensuing their disproportionate multiplication. The depreciation would be relieved and retarded at the same time by the process. The two operations would aid reciprocally, and sustain each other, and both be in the highest degree ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... interpreted. It is not for the sake of the nation that he asks to retain some of the taken islands; for what are islands to a nation that has already too many for her own good, or what are they in comparison to the expense of another campaign in the present depreciating state of the English funds? (And even then those islands must ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... in depreciating the merit of this work. Herman Ravespenger, Professor at Groningen, attacked it with so much rudeness, that Balthasar Lydius, who, however, was not of the Arminian party, told him his criticism was wretched, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... the London Stock Exchange in depreciating everything Persian, for the sake of reprisal, is also injurious to the Bank, and more so to the prestige of this country, though we do not seem to see that our attitude has done much more harm to ourselves than to the Persians. It is ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... me up, old fellow, to-night—please don't. There, I give in. Don't hit a fellow when he's down. I'm so low." Tom spoke in such a depreciating tone that Hardy's ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... reported by Mr. Emmons, and without questioning the accuracy of any of his observations, or depreciating in any degree the great value of the admirable study he has made of this difficult and interesting field, his conclusion in regard to the source of the ore cannot yet be insisted on as a logical necessity. In the judgment of the writer, the phenomena presented ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... and heavy hat of English manufacture, as witness the name of a Bond Street hatter in its crown; by the slight discolouration of its leather, had seen service without, however, depreciating in utility, needing only brushing and ironing to restore its pristine brilliance; carried neither name nor initials on its lining; and lacked every least hint as to its ownership—or so it seemed until the prying fingers of P. Sybarite turned down the leather and permitted ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... his admiration of Rowley, appeared to derive pleasure from depreciating Chatterton, who had avowed himself the writer of that inimitable poem, "The Death of Syr Charles Bawdin," but well knowing the consequences which would follow on this admission, he laboured hard to impeach the veracity of our bard, and represented him as one who, from vanity, assumed ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... lively and most interesting conversation, which certainly would have given Elise pleasure, and in which she might have taken part, had not a feeling of depression stolen over her, as she fancied she perceived a something cold and depreciating in the manners of her husband towards her. She grew stiller and paler; all gathered themselves round the brilliant Emelie; even the children seemed enchanted by her. Henrik presented her with a beautiful flower, which he had obtained from Louise by flattery. Petrea seemed to have ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... that woman was intended to be a predominant influence in the world through her moral and spiritual being, principally, I must not be understood as depreciating the value to her of mere subjective knowledge. So far from this, I believe that her means of acquiring knowledge of all kinds should be limited only by her capacity. The more her intellect is enlightened and disciplined, the better ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... think that I am, for one moment, depreciating sentiment. I worship it; I am a sentimentalist myself. But everything has its place, and sentiment of this kind belongs to young unmarried life—to the period when you are engaged, or when you ought to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... important garrisons occupied the places. In accordance with a mental habit which grew upon him through default of contradiction, the Emperor Napoleon did not admit the enfeeblement of his forces, whilst depreciating beforehand those of his enemy. "My cousin," wrote he on the 10th of September, 1810, to Marshal Berthier, "let a French officer set out immediately as bearer of a letter for the Prince of Essling, in which you will make him understand that my intention is that ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... pay for it," said Stacy deliberately, as he folded his arms and gazed at Demorest. "You and I, well known as old friends and former partners, for no apparent reason—for we cannot prove the forgery now—have thrown upon the market all our stock, with the usual effect of depreciating it. Another old friend and former partner has bought it in and sent up the price. A common trick, a vulgar trick, but not a trick worthy of James Stacy ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... that in the long run it will prove to have been so, for the inevitable effect of it was to wake up our British golf, which stood sadly in need of arousing. I think that amateur golf in this country has been steadily depreciating for some time, and at the present moment I think that the standard of merit of our best players is lower than in the days when Mr. Harold Hilton, Mr. John Ball, jun., and the late Mr. Freddy Tait were at their best. And despite the American shock, I cannot profess that the outlook at the present ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... with indignation in the course of this speech, which, in more passages than one, was at variance with those imperial maxims of the Grecian court, which held its dignity so high, and plainly intimated a tone of opinion which was depreciating to the Emperor's power. But the Empress Irene had received instructions from her imperial spouse to beware how she gave, or even took, any ground of quarrel with the crusaders, who, though coming in the appearance of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... language, partly, Cicero's feelings were altered, and partly, also, because Pompey made no great use of him. Although, indeed, he was himself the cause of it, by his not denying that he was sorry he had come, by his depreciating Pompey's resources, finding fault underhand with his counsels, and continually indulging in jests and sarcastic remarks on his fellow-soldiers. Though he went about in the camp with a gloomy and melancholy face himself, he was always trying to raise a laugh in others, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Borghese was now my home. Eccellenza received me with the greatest kindness, but all the family continued to use the old teaching tone and depreciating mode of treatment. Thus six years went by; but somehow my protectors did not realise that I was no longer a boy, and my dependence gave them the right to make them let me feel the bitterness of my position. Even my talent as poet and improvisatore was by no means taken ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... and persecute the offending one. From tests, the accuracy of which left no doubt, I learned that this acrimonious bitterness against their suffering sisters was nearly always instigated by a desire to conceal their own defects, to raise themselves, as they thought, by depreciating others, and to lay hypocritical claim to a superior austerity and goodness which was not theirs. The really pure—and for the honour of the past age of Montalluyah, I must say there were some few who were truly good—were those only from whom the sinner received sympathy ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... courtly and soothing note; but she was so much offended by his description of the Sigismunda, that she took no notice of his present. The widow of the artist was poor—and an opinion so ill-natured—so depreciating—and so untrue, injured the property which she wished to sell: she loved too the memory of her husband, and resented in the dignity of silence the malicious and injurious attack. She considered the present as an insult offered when she had no ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... The spectacle of a philosopher on the throne who proclaimed toleration, and contempt for Christianity, was too tempting and too useful controversially to allow of much circumspection in handling it. The odious comparisons it offered were so exactly what was wanted for depreciating the Most Christian king and his courtly Church, that all further inquiry into the apostate's merits seemed useless. Voltaire finds that Julian had all the qualities of Trajan without his defects; all the virtues of Cato without his ill-humour; all that one admires in Julius Caesar without his vices; ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... but has written of daily work and worry amid daily work and worry: and herein lies the charm of his discourses. He has one of those sensible, elastic, cheerful natures whose ideal qualities are not perverted by fretfulness and discontent. That most wicked of Byronisms, which consists in depreciating the duties of common life in order to exalt the claims of a kind of spiritualized sensuality and poetic self-importance, he instinctively avoids. The thirteen shrewd, suggestive, and practical essays which compose the present volume are transcripts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... millions per month, to accomplish as much as has already been effected? And how as has already been effected? and how long can such a currency be floated within a contracting circle, and in the face of our new levies and our unbounded national credit? If the war should last another year, and this depreciating currency can be floated at all, it is safe to infer from the history of the past that the debt of the South must increase at least one thousand millions. Under the pressure of such growing weight its end ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... bosom. His history was now to show that his previous thrift of human life was not derived from any love of his kind. Personally he was stern and overbearing. As difficult of access as Philip himself, he was even more haughty to those who were admitted to his presence. He addressed every one with the depreciating second person plural. Possessing the right of being covered in the presence of the Spanish monarch, he had been with difficulty brought to renounce it before the German Emperor. He was of an illustrious family; but his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... think he is the greatest force in English painting. I would reserve for him the largest print in my manual of English art. But have we declined since the death of Rossetti? On the contrary, I think we have advanced and are advancing. You must not think I am depreciating the past. The past is one of my witnesses. The past was very like our present; it nearly always ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... rising fortunes of Julian, his discontented mind was prepared to receive the subtle poison of those artful sycophants, who colored their mischievous designs with the fairest appearances of truth and candor. [3] Instead of depreciating the merits of Julian, they acknowledged, and even exaggerated, his popular fame, superior talents, and important services. But they darkly insinuated, that the virtues of the Caesar might instantly be converted into the most dangerous crimes, if the inconstant multitude should ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... (despise) 930; neglect &c 460; slur over. make light of, make little of, make nothing of, make no account of; belittle; minimize, think nothing of; set no store by, set at naught; shake off as dewdrops from the lion's mane. Adj. depreciating, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... protected by him from every care, and not one to share Scott's deeper anxieties, or to participate in his dreams. Yet Mrs. Scott was not devoid of spirit and self-control. For instance, when Mr. Jeffrey, having reviewed Marmion in the Edinburgh in that depreciating and omniscient tone which was then considered the evidence of critical acumen, dined with Scott on the very day on which the review had appeared, Mrs. Scott behaved to him through the whole evening with the greatest politeness, but fired this parting shot in her broken ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... Mary brimful of annoyance with Louis's folly, a mild word of assent was sufficient to make him turn round and do battle with the imaginary enemy who was always depreciating Fitzjocelyn. To make up for Clara's avoidance of Mary, he rendered her his prime counsellor, and many an hour was spent in pacing up and down the garden in the summer twilight; while she did her best to pacify him by suggesting ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... themselves for having admired too much, by afterwards despising and depreciating without mercy—in all great assemblies the perception of ridicule is quickly caught, and quickly too revealed. Lady Clonbrony, even in her own house, on her gala night, became an object of ridicule,—decently masked, indeed, under the appearance of condolence with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... universe; not to cater for the pride of man by refined inquiries into the remoter mysteries of nature; not to trace the path of our system through space, or its history through past and future eternities. These, indeed, are noble ends and which I am far from any thought of depreciating; the mind swells in their contemplation, and attains in their pursuit an expansion and a hardihood which fit it for the boldest enterprise. But the direct practical utility of such labours is fully worthy of their speculative grandeur. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... of ammonium nitrate in lowering the temperature of explosion of the various substances to which it is added, it was found by a French Commission that, when dry and finely powdered, ammonium nitrate succeeds in depreciating the heat of decomposition without reducing the power of the explosive below a useful limit. The following table (B) shows the composition of the explosives examined, and the temperatures which ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... in the soul and sentiment which resists the chills of analysis, as a healthful human heart resists cold; yet still, all humbly, she thought this perhaps was a defect in herself, and therefore, having confessed, in a depreciating tone, her habits of unanalyzed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... and, that the Scriptures are not of "absolute and universal inspiration." The following sentence, which will be found in this "Letter" of Dr. Conyers Middleton, does honor to his name:—"If religion consists in depreciating moral duties and depressing natural reason; if the duty of it be to hate and persecute for a different way of thinking where the best and wisest have never agreed—then. I declare myself an Infidel, and to have no share in that religion." Matthew Tindal ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... in the same way as it was amusing to Boz, as a capital illustration of character, genuinely exhibited, and yet it is with the greatest sympathy and affection I recall these things: but they were too enjoyable. There is nothing depreciating, no more than there was in Bozzy's record, who so amiably puts forward the pleasant weaknesses of his hero. Though twenty years and more have elapsed since he passed from this London of ours, there is nothing I think of with more pleasure and affection than those far-off scenes ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... reputation. What! you don't think so?" he impetuously asked, moved, perhaps, by my suggestive silence. "You are suspicious of these two poor old women? What reason have you for that, Miss Saunders? What motive could they have for depreciating the value of what was ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... yet he seems even then to have been able to decide on many writers in logic and rhetoric, philosophy and poetry. Of course he was familiar with the works of his friend Wordsworth, of whom he cleverly observed, in reply to the depreciating opinion of Mackintosh, "He strides on so far before you, that he dwindles in ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... intimations of kindling circumstances concerning her, and magnified them in the interests of the national humour: which is the English way of exalting to criticize, criticizing to depreciate, and depreciating to restore, ultimately to cherish, in reward for the amusement furnished by an eccentric person, not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his friends, when relating what had passed) "began to consider that I was depreciating this man in the estimation of his Sovereign, and thought it was time for me to say something that might be more favorable." He added, therefore, that Dr. Hill was notwithstanding a very curious observer; and if he would have been contented ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... be hungry! Depreciating it after the fashion of chartered hypocrites. Fine Shades were still too dominant at Brookfield He thinks that the country must be saved by its women as well I know that your father has been hearing tales told of me My voice! I have my voice! ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... that prevent it.—The Mode of promoting it is through a friendly and commercial Intercourse with the Natives.—Exhortation to Great Britain to attend to the Intercourse with Africa.—Danger of the French colonizing Senegal, and supplanting us, and thereby depreciating the Value ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... facts; for experience proves philosophers to be either useless or rogues. Contrary to all expectation Socrates has no hesitation in admitting the truth of this, and explains the anomaly in an allegory, first characteristically depreciating his own inventive powers. In this allegory the people are distinguished from the professional politicians, and, as elsewhere, are spoken of in a tone of pity rather than of censure under the image of 'the noble captain who is not very quick in ...
— The Republic • Plato
... think it is one of Pythagoras's golden sayings, that a man should take care above all things to have a due respect for himself; and it is certain, that this licentious sort of authors, who are for depreciating mankind, endeavour to disappoint and undo what the most refined spirits have been labouring to advance since the beginning of the world. The very design of dress, good-breeding, outward ornaments and ceremonies, were to lift up human nature, and set it of too advantage. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... offer, but my mind turns in other directions. I'm not depreciating your occupation, Mr. Watson, but I'm interested in ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... man. At this time he was seventy years old; he had been a soldier till thirty, since then a diplomatist and politician. I do not think in all things as Hammerfeldt thought; time moves, and each man's mind has its own cast; but I will make no claim to originality at the cost of depreciating what I learned from him. He was a solitary man; once he had taken a wife; she left him after two years; he used to talk about her as though she had died at the date when she ran away, without bitterness, with an indulgent kindness, with a full recognition ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... favourable opportunity for pausing to consider what manner of man it was who had so suddenly passed into the intimate favour of the Queen. Naunton has described Raleigh with the precision of one who is superior to the weakness of depreciating the exterior qualities of his enemy: 'having a good presence, in a handsome and well-compacted person; a strong natural wit, and a better judgment; with a bold and plausible tongue, whereby he could set out his parts to the best advantage.' His face had neither the ethereal beauty of Sidney's ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... circumstances of her life leave her leisure and adequate repose, that soul will be to her a solemn trust, a sacred charge, for which she will give her own soul's life in pledge. But, dear me! how many such women do you suppose there are in your village? Heaven forbid that I should even appear to be depreciating woman! Do I not know too well their strength, and their virtue which is their strength? But stepping out of idyls and novels, and stepping into American kitchens, is it not true that the larger part of the mothers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... as officers in a cheerful state of mind. It is true that the difficulties of obtaining provisions were in some ways greater than they had been before; for the Continental money, with which all supplies were paid for, was depreciating so rapidly that now thirty or forty dollars of it were barely equal to one silver dollar, and the country people very much disliked to take it. But the army had just achieved some important victories, and there was a feeling in many circles that it would not be long before the war would ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... "we will say no more. I might answer that, without depreciating the Thuilliers, the Orleans family seems to me more distinguished; but I do not like to introduce acerbity into the conversation, and therefore, begging you to receive the assurance of my humble respects, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... crossed himself devoutly, looking in the meantime, as appeared to Quentin, very like a cunning vassal, who was depreciating the merit of something which he was desirous to keep to himself, in order that he might stand excused for not offering it to ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... are fond of depreciating New York; of assailing it with all sorts of cheap and sensational vituperation; of picturing it as the one great canker spot of the Western hemisphere, as irretrievably sunk in wickedness and shame. The fact remains, however, that the ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... parts affected by his father. He was one of the ringleaders in the intrigues against John Highmore, who had bought a share in the patent of Drury Lane from Colley Cibber. Theophilus Cibber, with a number of other actors, seceded from Drury Lane, and in thus depreciating the value of the patent, for which his father had received a considerable sum, acted with doubtful honesty. He contemplated the publication of an autobiography, but was effectually dissuaded by the appearance (1740) of a scathing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... had first declared his passion to her, and the thousand proofs he had since given of its reality. From the constancy of his disposition, she depended that sentiments like these were not totally eradicated; and from the extreme desire which Mr. Sandford now, more than ever, discovered of depreciating her in his patron's esteem—from the now, more than common zeal, which urged him to take Lord Elmwood from her company, whenever he had it in his power, she was led to believe, that while his friend entertained such strong fears of his relapsing into love, ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... have allowed the easy impulse of exaggeration to force a sentence which the mere truth, sensitively and powerfully pausing, would well have become. Exaggeration has played a part of its own in human history. By depreciating our language it has stimulated change, and has kept the circulating word in exercise. Our rejection must be alert and expert to overtake exaggeration and arrest it. It makes us shrewder than we wish to be. And, indeed, the whole endless action of refusal shortens the life we could desire ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... very good teeth as yellow, his cheeks as hard, or his forehead as knotty as they appeared to Hugh, or that his tone of superiority, so overbearing last night, so ingratiating to-day, was any worse for the change. Hugh was biassed—felt bias and anger as an encumbering and untimely weight. In self-depreciating contrast he recalled a certain young lady's airy, winning way—airy way of winning—and coveted it for himself here and now: a wrestler's nimble art of overcoming weight by lightness; of lifting a heavy antagonist off his feet ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... radio increased in both length and intensity as the grass spread. Pastors of other churches and conductors of similar programs denounced him as misled; realestate operators, fearful of all this talk about the grass bringing doom and so depreciating the value of their properties, complained to the Federal Communications Commission; Sundayschools voted him the Man of the Year and hundreds of motherly ladies stored the studio with cakes baked by their own hands. Brother Paul's answer to indorser ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore |
