"Look down on" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very extensive that we could scarcely perceive the ascent, but proceeded insensibly until we arrived on the centre of the arch. The view from thence was glorious beyond conception; 'twas divine to look down on the kingdoms and seas and islands under us. Africa seemed in general of a tawny brownish colour, burned up by the sun: Spain seemed more inclining to a yellow, on account of some fields of corn scattered over the kingdom; France ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... wrote his plays to be acted, as a passage in one of his letters very clearly shows. 'You are, I think,' he writes to Kelsall, 'disinclined to the stage: now I confess that I think this is the highest aim of the dramatist, and should be very desirous to get on it. To look down on it is a piece of impertinence, as long as one chooses to write in the form of a play, and is generally the result of one's own inability to produce anything striking and affecting in that way.' And it is precisely ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... Herbert Blackwell for lieutenant-colonel, and Charles Harris was appointed adjutant. They were temporarily encamped on the common between the railroad depot and Mr. Huntingdon's residence, and from the observatory or colonnade Irene could look down on the gleaming tents and the flag-staff that stood before the officers' quarters. Reveille startled her at dawn, and tattoo regularly warned her of the shortness of summer nights. As the fiery carriage-horses would ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... "They look down on the islanders as theatrical; but it's partly jealousy. Marken has a history, you know; it was once connected with the mainland, but that was as long ago as the thirteenth century, and ever since the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... opera-glass is indispensable. Let any one who has not tried it look with such a glass at sunset-decked water in motion. I am sure they will be startled by its beauty, and this especially if the surface be seen from a boat, because merely to look down on water is to make no acquaintance with its loveliness. A scroll of paper to limit the view and cut out side-lights also intensifies color. The materials my pupil is to use are words, and words only. Constant dissatisfaction ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... mind when it had rendered him service. Although my mother was so kind and good she spoke of abandoned women with disgust and scorn as of some unclean animal. As it flatters vanity and pride to be able with good countenance and universal consent to look down on something, I soon grasped the situation and adopted an attitude which is, in the main, that of most middle-class Christian Englishmen towards prostitutes. But as puberty develops this attitude has to be accommodated with the wish ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... lie within touching distance of your hand. It is curiously unfamiliar to see houses from such an angle, a perspective of the roofs, with the windows and doors become unimportant; it is an aeroplane view of the world, or perhaps, more properly, a bird's view, for you may pause and poise to look down on Lynton and Lynmouth as no aeroplane ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... island, is famous for its great volcanoes, Kea, Loa, and Kilauea. From the village or city of Hilo comfortable coaches take visitors over a fine road clear to the crater of Kilauea. At times one may stand on the edge of Kilauea's rampart and look down on a lake of white-hot, molten lava three miles long and half as wide. Every now and then bubbles of gas or steam come to the surface and exploding send long threads of viscous lava into the air. Some of the glassy threads are fine as the ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... boughs above my head, when he was close under the tree. As I did so my cap fell off. I knew that the animal could reach to a great height with his trunk, and did not feel secure till I had clambered up to one still higher. I was then able to look down on my assailant, when I saw that he had seized my cap as it fell; and that probably saved my leg being seized by his trunk, for he could without difficulty have reached it. I could only hope that my cousin would in the meantime be able to ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... designed by Hardwicke in 1814. The chapel stands well at the junction of four important roads; its Ionic portico is dignified and suitable to the position. The body of the chapel is covered with ivy, and the windows look down on a large burial-ground, now open as a public garden, which is peculiarly bright and well kept. In it are many fine trees, chiefly willows, which overhang the seats placed for public comfort. The gravestones, ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... floating out from the ledge are as mere specks from above, as they were from below. The reef running out from the beach, though now covered by the tide, is visible as you look down on it through the water; the seaweed, which lay matted and half dry on the rocks, is now under the wave. Boats have come round, and are beached; how helplessly little they seem beneath the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... the bears' open places, rise rocks on which various sorts of chamois and goats live happily. They can climb far above our heads and look down on us, or leap from rock to rock as if they were in their native haunts. I often wonder what they think of the bears running about below them! Sometimes they must watch in surprise as they see the bears chasing each other. There are one or two together in most of the big spaces, and they ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... shoulders bare? Has she not borne enough? Soon will the mirroring woodland pools begin to con her, And her sad immemorial passion come upon her; Lo, would you add despair unto despair? Shall not the Spring be answer to her prayer? Must her uncomforted heavens overhead, Weeping, look down on tears and still behold Only wings broken or a fledgling dead, Or underfoot the meadows that wore gold Die, and the leaves go mourning to the mould Beneath poor dead and desperate feet Of folk who in next summer's meadows shall not meet? Who has not seen in the high gulf of light What, ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... and knickerbockers. The Mullingar folks despise the dictum of the American economist who said that every town without a river should buy one, as they are handy things to have. They boast of three magnificent lakes, and they look down on the Athlone people, thirty miles away, with their trumpery Shannon, of which they are so proud, but which the Mullingar folks will tell you is not worth the paper it is written on. Lough Owel, five miles long by two or three wide; Lough Derravarra, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... of the proletariat think a good deal of themselves; they look down on farm-workers, and will have nothing to do with them. They are ever on the move, going from one waterway to another, drawing their wages in cash, and spending a fair part of the same in drink. Then, too, they are more popular among the girls. It is the same with men working on the roads or ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... which just fits them, he proceeds to explain himself. Through the base of the opposite extremity of the island there is a natural channel, into which the sea rushes furiously at high tide: and finding no other vent but the little crevice we now look down on, is expelled through it in long, thin jets of spray, with a roaring noise resembling the sound of a gigantic bellows at work. But the sea is not yet high enough to exhibit this phenomenon, so the guide takes my toes out of the hole again for me, just as politely as he put them ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... anything about Mordaunt Prince. She must never know. Neither must mother. They don't often talk much about the family; but they're awfully proud of it. Mother's people date from before Noah, and they look down on the Oldrieves because they sprang up like mushrooms just after the Flood. Prince's real name is Huzzle, and his father kept a boot shop. I don't care a hang, because he's a gentleman, ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... chawin' some, an' ther' wa'n't no spit boxes. That's wher' the trouble come. Ther' wus a raw-boned cuss wi' his missis settin' on the bench front o' me, an' I guess her silk fixin's got mussed up wi' t'bacca juice someways. I see her look down on the floor, then she kind o' gathered her skirts aroun' her an' got wipin' wi' her han'k'chief. Then she looks aroun' at me, an', me feelin' friendly, I kind o' smiled at her, not knowin' she wus riled. Then she got whisperin' ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Laureates dead, look down On smaller fry unworthy of the crown, Mere mushroom men, puff-balls that advertise And bravely think to brush the skies. Great is advertisement with little men! Moi, qui vous parle, L- G-ll—nn-, Have told them so; I ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... they sat on the side of Hindfell and talked of all that is and can be, and then together they climbed the mountain, till beneath them they saw the kingdoms of the earth stretching far away, and Brynhild bade him look down on her home, saying: ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... "Why shouldn't he look down on that sort of pottering around?" she demanded. "He isn't the sort of man who has time ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... create great Saints who may be compared to the lily and the rose, but He has also created lesser ones, who must be content to be daisies or simple violets flowering at His Feet, and whose mission it is to gladden His Divine Eyes when He deigns to look down on them. And the more gladly they do His Will the ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... look down on that kind of love seven years ago," he thought, cynically. But he didn't say so; no matter what his thoughts were, he was always kind to Eleanor. Lily, over in Medfield; Lily, in the small, secret house; Lily, with the good-looking little boy—blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... her face with her hands) What have I not seen in that chamber? What must my eyes look down on? ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... into the darkness, past dogs and chattering coolies and oil lamps and gaming-house doors. Into one of these gaming houses he turned, passing through the blackwood sliding door and climbing the narrow stairway to the floor above. There, from a small quadrangular gallery, he could look down on the "well" of the ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... Look down on that valley of sorrows, whence the land-marks of joy are removed, Oh! where is the darling Francesca, so loving, so dearly beloved?— And where are her children, whose voices rose music-winged once form this spot? And why are the sweet bells now silent? and where is the vine-cover'd ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... look down on their American employers, and frequently have to leave the room to keep from laughing ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... you have to say that," he exclaimed, "but of course there's no honour about it to you. If your father was a clergyman, you probably look down on me. My father was in the grocery business. He got me into the bank because ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... but now when I look down on it I sees it now. I bleeve us been here goin' on fo' year' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... and headlands of what once was a vast inland sea now stand far away from the shores of Winnipeg. Hundreds of miles from its present limits these great landmarks still look down on an ocean, but it is an ocean of grass. The waters of Winnipeg have retired from their feet, and they are now mountain ridges rising over seas of verdure. At the bottom of this bygone lake lay the whole valley of the Red River, the present Lakes Winnipegoos and Manitoba, and the prairie ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... higher up a man regards his wurruk, th' less it amounts to. We cud manage to scrape along without electhrical injineers but we'd have a divvle iv a time without scavengers. Ye look down on th' fellow that dhrives th' dump cart, but if it wasn't f'r him ye'd niver be able to pursoo ye'er honorable mechanical profissyon iv pushin' th' barrow. Whin Andhrew Carnagie quit, ye wint on wurrukin'; if ye quit wurruk, he'll ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... that sent a torrent of sparks up into the night. And Eudena sat red in the light of the fire, gloating on him, her face flushed and her eyes shining, and the necklace Uya had made about her neck. It was a splendid time, and the stars that look down on us looked down on her, our ancestor—who has been dead now these ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... enveloped us, and in the dark half-hour transit that followed I regained my self-control. It was not worth while, I decided, to quarrel with the fellow, to break his head or to give him the chance of breaking mine. After all, I thought low-spiritedly, what right had I to look down on him? We were pot and kettle, indistinguishably black. It was true that he had perjured himself upon the liner; but so, in spirit if not in words, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... of one, and the deathlike calm that had forever settled on the lineaments of the other. The scout was hard by, leaning in a pensive posture on his own fatal and avenging weapon; while Tamenund, supported by the elders of his nation, occupied a high place at hand, whence he might look down on the mute and sorrowful assemblage ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... other organisation in that hospital that deserves mention. It was the most exclusive little clique and rather inclined towards snobbishness. I was a member of it. We used to look down on the ordinary wounded cases that had two eyes. We enjoyed, either rightly or wrongly, a feeling of superiority. Death comes mighty close when it nicks an eye out of your head. All of the one-eyed cases and some of the no-eyed cases received attention in one certain ward, and it was to ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... year ahead look with scorn on fellow farmers who thru inertia or bad luck must be furnished food and the wherewithall to farm. In turn, families that have forged ahead sufficiently to be able to pay cash rent on farms they cultivate look down On both of the ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... somewhat of the awe which a person of her condition in life naturally felt toward that brilliant aristocracy which in those days assumed the state of princes, and the members of which were supposed to look down on common mortals from as great a height as the stars regard the humblest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... and the mist gathered in my eyes as I thought of its tremendous significance, and the armies and the treasury, and the judges and the President, and the Congress and the courts, and all that was gathered there. And I felt that the sun in all its course could not look down on a better sight than that majestic home of a republic that had taught the world its best lessons of liberty. And I felt that if honor and wisdom and justice abided therein, the world would at last owe to that great house in ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... look at her. Yes; Clarence would come, too. Perhaps he would love her just a little then. Perhaps he would think of her tenderly when he saw her with the white roses in her hands. Oh, was there a God in heaven who could look down on her sorrow to-night, and not in pity call her home? She listened for the call that would bear her far beyond this earthly strife, where all was such tangle and confusion. She listened, but she heard it not, and the darkness deepened, the moon grew pale and ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... many people to grow," said Sun, "and so I have scattered them; but you have been putting them in darkness and thus have you been killing many with hunger. Ho! ye people!" called the Sun. "Many of you shall mature. I will look down on you from above. I will direct ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... bare-headed young women in "shirt-waists," one with a lover, and an old gentleman with a red ribbon reading his morning newspaper. The traveller can place himself on one of the benches in this pleasant little greenery, look down on the infantile engineers below, and make ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... irresistibly added, "think of books merely as tools, others as tooling. I'm between the two; there are days when I use them as scenery, other days when I want them as society; so that, as you see, my library represents a makeshift compromise between looks and brains, and the collectors look down on me almost ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... Christ was crucified. How simple are the works of God, and yet how very grand; The shells in ocean caverns, the flowers on the land; He gilds the clouds of evenin' with the gold right from his throne, Not for the rich man only—not for the poor alone. Then why should man look down on man because of lack of gold? Why seat him in the poorest pew because his clothes are old? A heart with noble motives—a heart that God has blest— May be beatin' Heaven's music 'neath that faded coat and vest. I'm old—I may be childish—but ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... inferior as compared to themselves. As this sublime truth was severely rubbed into me several times daily during the greater portion of my youthful life, and as in its earlier stage I rarely met with a man grown who did not look down on me as an unfortunate non-arithmetical, unbusinesslike creature, and let me know it too, I very naturally grew up with a low estimate of my own capacities; and as I was proud and sensitive, this was to me a source of much suffering, which often became terrible ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... little chance of getting a cheaper lady. For there is, in the Congo Francais and the country adjacent to the north of it (Batanga), a regular style of aristocracy which may be summarised firstly thus: All the other tribes look down on the Fans, and the Fans look down on all the other tribes. This aristocracy has sub-divisions, the M'pongwe of Gaboon are the upper circle tribe; next come the Benga of Corisco; then the Bapuka; then the Banaka. This system of aristocracy is kept ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... would witness against them. The same stars which would look down on their freedom and prosperity in Canaan, had looked down on all their slavery and misery in Egypt, hundreds of years before. Those same stars had looked down on their simple forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... only fields, where no cattle now browsed; and the little brown birds, which stirred occasionally in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had forgotten to drop. . . . From my seat I could look down on Thornfield: the gray and battlemented hall was the principal object in the vale below me; its woods and dark rookery rose against the west. I lingered till the sun went down amongst the trees, and sank crimson and ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... two reasons—first, because, having no chick or kin of my own, I happen to have taken a fancy to you and wish to push you on. The world has treated you badly, and I want to see you one of its masters, with all these smart people who look down on you licking your boots, as they will sure enough if you grow rich and powerful. That's my private reason. My public one is that you are the only man in Dunchester who can win us the seat, and I'd think 10,000 pounds well spent if it put those Tories at the bottom of the poll. I want ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... "You did look down on your luck when I saw you in the quad. I can't think why anybody should take these wretched games so seriously; it seems to me a perfectly rotten ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... before the other, and our progress is painfully slow. We are in a broad, stone-strewed valley, partly covered with withered puma-grass, on which a flock of graceful vicunas are quietly grazing, as seemingly unconscious of our presence as the great condors which soar above the snowy peaks that look down on ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... your success in your profession will not have a tendency to make you vain, or embolden you to look down on any in your profession whom Providence may have been less favorable to in point of talents for this particular business; and that you will observe a modesty in the reception of premiums and praises on account of your talents, that shall show to those who bestow them that ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... aside at a little farm-house, and took us into a swelling field to look down on the tumbling stream which bounded it, and which we saw precipitated at a distance, in a broad white sheet, from the mountain." (This refers to Easdale Force.) "Then, as he mused for an instant, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... as these Mays do. I should like to know them more. I do so much want a friend of my own age. It is the only want I have. I have tried to make a friend of Leonora, but I cannot; she never cares for what I do. If she saw these Mays she would look down on them. Dear Mrs. Larpent is better than any one, but then she is so much older. Flora May shall be my friend. I'll make her call me Meta as soon as she comes. When will it be? The day ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... constituting a more essential difference between us than they really do. The qualities of the mind do, in reality, establish the truest superiority over one another: yet should not these so far elevate our pride as to inflate us with contempt, and make us look down on our fellow-creatures as on animals of an inferior order; but that the fortuitous accident of birth, the acquisition of wealth, with some outward ornaments of dress, should inspire men with an insolence capable of treating the rest of mankind with ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Odysseus declared himself. Lifting up his hand to heaven he said, 'I am your master, Odysseus. After twenty years I have come back to my own country, and I find that of all my servants, by you two alone is my homecoming desired. If you need see a token that I am indeed Odysseus, look down on my foot. See there the mark that the wild boar left on me in the days of ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... our weapons on the tank as we passed it, and faced each other abreast of the main hatch. The skipper looked on from the poop; the carpenter and cook came out of their shops to witness; and of course the watch, working aloft, stopped work to look down on us. The sea was smooth, the wind mild and fair, and the ship slid along with very little pitching or rolling; so ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... himself master of ceremonies and pointed out all the monuments, but Mme Fauconnier would not put her foot outside the little door; she would not look down on that pavement for all the world, she said, and the party soon tired of this amusement and descended the stairs. At the foot Madinier wished to pay, but Coupeau interfered and put into the hand of the ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... stands still—a short, square tower, battlemented at top, and surmounted with a pointed roof, which seems to grow out of a cluster of farm-buildings, so surrounded is its base by roofs of thatch and slates. Incongruous, vulgar, and ugly in every way, the old keep appears to look down on them—time-worn and battered as it is—as might a reduced gentleman regard the unworthy associates with which an altered fortune had linked him. This is all that ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Bess, my own daughter, actually looks down on us. She's ashamed of her own father and mother- -and she shows it. And it's that Gaylord girl that's done it, too, I believe. I thought I—I was training my daughter to be a lady—a real lady; but I never meant to train her to look down on—on her ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... the vine leaves rustle low, If the moon shine on the sea, If the night wind softly blow,— Dreaming of what may not be,— Well I know that I shall see Your sweet eyes look down on me. ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... true—what Isobel said—that you look down on us because we're countrified, that you're still hankering after that precious artistic crew of yours ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... with a pitiful smile. "When one is very ill, they take care of you or they let you die. If they let me die it will be all over, I shan't be hungry any more, and there'll be no more beatings. And they do say that when we die we go up and live with God. Then, if I'm up there, I can look down on Mamma and Christina, and I can ask God not to let my little sister be unhappy. Also, if they send me to the ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... wide, then the reddish hills of an irregular island. Every idler on the citadel can tell us all the story. On that headland on a certain fateful morning sat Xerxes, lord of the Persians, with his sword-hands and mighty men about him and his ships before him, to look down on the naval spectacle and see how his slaves would fight. The island beyond is "holy Salamis," and in this narrow strip of water has been the battle which saved the life of Hellas. Every position in the contest seems clearly in sight, even ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Persians in their continued use of the custom, to some extent followed a fashion, elevating their royal residences, not so much for security or comfort, as because it had come to be considered that a palace ought to have a lofty site, and to look down on the habitations of meaner men; but, however this may have been, the custom certainly prevailed, and at Persepolis we have, in an almost perfect condition, this first element of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... it perhaps not heed him, not even perceive him? He had always fancied that these trees and flowers had a species of sight, that they watched him, the trees shyly out of their green foliage, the flowers with their bright unshrinking gaze. The tallest trees seemed to look down on him from a height, regarding him with a dignified and quiet interest; his personal affection for them had led him indeed to be careful not to ill-use them; he had always disliked the gathering of flowers, the tearing off of boughs or leaves from shrubs. They seemed to suffer injury patiently, but ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his tense muscles. "Now they'll go back for their horses," he said to himself. "They'll ride up to the next ridge, where they can look down on this pocket, but I ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... very sight of her equipment would drive mad a whole conclave of milliners! Then her postures are so strange—she does so stoop and lollop, as the women call it, so cross her legs and square her arms—were the goddess of grace to look down on her, it would put her ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... dissidents under the old name. It is the sort of vengeance which, under favourable circumstances, the mouse may enjoy at the expense of the elephant. If he can mount high enough by artificial means, the smallest of created things may contrive to look down on the greatest, and to affect to compassionate his want of range. For purposes of controversy, the Anglican could talk of himself as a terrestrial ancient-of-days, and regret the rage for innovation, which led, not, of course, to his ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... Shepherd's "jugs" numerous as they are (and by the way the Shepherd propounds two absolutely contradictory theories of toddy-making, one of which, according to the instructions of my preceptors in that art, who lived within sight of the hills that look down on Glenlivet, is a damnable heresy) are not in the least like the seze muiz, deux bussars, et six tupins of tripe that Gargamelle so rashly devoured. There are men now living, and honoured members of society in Scotland, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Weston, and had half a mind to take it up; but she struggled, and let it pass. She would keep the peace if possible; and there was something honourable and valuable in the strong domestic habits, the all-sufficiency of home to himself, whence resulted her brother's disposition to look down on the common rate of social intercourse, and those to whom it was important.—It had a high claim ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... I should like to be quite English. I should feel more comfortable in my scorn of these regimental ladies if I thought they could find no reason to look down on me." ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... comprehension. Courtship should be made easy. My Jane was clever, and vexed me a great deal in consequence, daughters of that kind are so unmanageable: give me the most stupid in preference. It is pleasant to a husband to feel his superiority, to look down on his wife. The mediocre is the girl I take most delight in. There are so many mediocre men that they are sure to get suited without ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... set his foot on Ballycloran; he had forbad him the house, as if he had been the master; and at the present moment he felt as though he did not dare address him, for it seemed to him as if every one now would look down on him, as he looked down on himself,—as if every one could see what was in his breast, as plainly as ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... bourgeoisie—a lesser nobility as good as they, and a match for them! There shall be no more trampling down half a score of wheat fields for a single hare; no bringing shame on families by seducing unprotected girls; they shall not look down on others as good as they are, and mock at them for ten whole years, without finding out at last that these things swell into avalanches, and those avalanches will fall and crush and bury my lords the nobles. You want to go back to the old order of things. You want to tear up the social compact, ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... of the feeble-minded. By a special dispensation of Providence, they can never see but one side of a subject, so are always convinced that they are right, and from the height of their contentment, look down on those who chance to ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... "Look down on the top of the candle around the wick. See, it is a little cup full of melted wax. The heat of the flame has melted the wax just round the wick. The cold air keeps the outside of it hard, so as to make the rim of it. The ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... "You see, you do know where I stand, after all. If I let it slide, the way you want me to, that's exactly what you'd be thinking after awhile—that I never had squared up with your dad. You'd look down on me, and so would your father and your mother. They'd always be afraid I'd do some fool thing and sting your dad again for a ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... too many who look down on hand-craft. They think only of the tasks of a drudge or a char-boy. They do not know the pleasure there is in working, and especially in making. They have never learned to guide the fingers by the brain. They like to hear, or see, or own, or eat, what others ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... Road—a tea-house with golden dragons climbing over its walls and long wooden signs bearing cabalistic figures swinging in the wind like so many banners. Percival secured a table on the upper balcony, where they could look down on the passing throng, and here in the intimate solitude of a foreign crowd they ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... my house. I lead the life you see—a spiritless, womanish life, most men would account it—holding converse with Philosophy, with Plato, with Truth. From my high seat in this vast theatre, I look down on the scene beneath me; a scene calculated to afford much entertainment; calculated also to try a man's resolution to the utmost. For, to give evil its due, believe me, there is no better school for virtue, no truer ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... bright regions of eternal day, Where now thou shin'st among thy fellow-saints, Array'd in purer light, look down on me: In pleasing visions and assuasive dreams, O! sooth my soul, and teach ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... is light, and waves above my brow, My mustache can just be seen through opera-glasses; I originate but flee from every row, And no one knows as well as I what "sass" is! The officers look down on me with scorn, The sailors jeer at me—behind my jacket, But still my heart is not "with anguish torn," And life with ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... grandmothers, and the whole race by whose life she lives, have had, as a matter of fact, a roughly recognizable mode of living; sitting in a green field was a part of it; travelling as quick as a cannon ball was not. And we should not look down on the seamstress because she mechanically emits a short sharp scream whenever the motor begins to move. On the contrary, we ought to look up to the seamstress, and regard her cry as a kind of mystic omen or revelation of nature, as the old Goths used to consider ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... millinery establishment in London, where she wore a silk dress every day. This was sufficient to excuse airs of superiority in anyone. It was natural, therefore, to repay Lilac's devotion by condescending patronage, and to look down on her from a great height; nevertheless it was extremely agreeable to Agnetta to be worshipped, and this made her seek her cousin's companionship, and invite her often to Orchards Farm. There she could display her smart frocks, ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... on the hill, And I in the valley dwell, My neighbor must look down on me, Must I look up?—ah, well, My neighbor lives on the hill, And I ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... dropped there by the birds who build their nests within its chinks and crannies; to see its Pit of Fight filled up with earth, and the peaceful Cross planted in the centre; to climb into its upper halls, and look down on ruin, ruin, ruin, all about it; the triumphal arches of Constantine, Septimus Severus, and Titus; the Roman Forum; the Palace of the Caesars; the temples of the old religion, fallen down and gone; is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked, wonderful old city, haunting the very ground on which its people ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... perishing glory; we will gaze without desire on all their possessions, and all their pleasures. Our destiny is different from theirs. Not for such as we, the lowly flights of their crippled wings. We acknowledge no fellow-ship with them in ambition. We composedly look down on the paths where they walk, and pursue our own, without uttering a wish to descend, and be as they. What is it to us that the mass pay us not that deference which wealth commands? We desire no applause, save the applause of the good and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... crown The upland, where the mingled splendors glow, Where the gay company of trees look down On the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... the real old-time quality folks and you ought to be brung up with your own kind. Now, we is a bottom rail that's done come to the top. My chillen's got to be schooled and give book-learnin'. Some day they'll forget they was ever anything but top rails, and look down on their old daddy ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... idea of the strength of the castle may be obtained when I state that the walls of this tower are twenty-two feet thick, and that a staircase has been made through them to the top, where one can sit under the lindens growing upon it or look down on the city below with the pleasant consciousness that the great mass upon which he stands is only prevented from crashing down with him by the solidity of its masonry. On one side, joining the garden, the statue of the Archduke Louis in his breastplate and flowing beard looks ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... its presence there before him wove most subtly with his mood. He smoked in silent enjoyment because on a morning such as this everything he saw was a delicate flattery to his pride. At the beginning of a new day, to look down on the petty burgh in which he was the greatest man filled all his being with a consciousness of importance. His sense of prosperity was soothing and pervasive; he felt it all round him like the pleasant air, as real as that and as subtle; bathing him, caressing. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... intellect severely by itself to a great poem, boasts of the devastation of the highest power a human being can attain. The commonest man that lives, whatever his powers may be, if they are powers that act together, can look down on a man whose powers cannot, as a mutilated being. While it cannot be denied that a being who has been thus especially mutilated is often possessed of a certain literary ability, he belongs to the acrobats ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... it strange that Mr. Margrave should move from his handsome rooms in the hotel to a somewhat uncomfortable lodging, from the window of which he could look down on Mrs. Ashleigh's garden? I have seen him at night in the balcony of that window, and when I noticed him going so frequently into Mrs. Ashleigh's house during your unjust detention, I own, sir, I felt ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and the priest led them up a stair into a gallery from which they could look down on to the ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... wheels are slight, and the body painted uniformly of a chocolate colour. The foot-board is not larger than a tea-tray, about six inches square, and in order to reach it, the legs are so extended as to bring the tip of the toes and the apex of the knees on the same plane. Nor does the driver look down on his horse, as he would in England; but the eye has a level view along the back of the animal, and his neck, or wooden collar obstructs ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... to mountain-tops, shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; He who surpasses or subdues mankind, Must look down on the hate of those below. Though high ABOVE the sun of glory glow, And far BENEATH the earth and ocean spread, ROUND him are icy rocks, and loudly blow Contending tempests on his naked head, And thus reward the toils ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... walk slowly and look down on the ground, searching around us and seeking in the corners; it is there that Providence has ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... applause. Pittiwitz, startled, sat up and blinked. People bent to each other, asking: "Who is this Roger Poole?" Under his breath Barry was saying, boyishly, "Gee!" He might still wonder about Mary's lodger, he would never again look down on him. And Delilah Jeliffe sitting next to Barry murmured, "I've heard ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... ashamed that he hardly ventured to show his face. He had always made Bliss a laughing-stock, had nicknamed him Ass's Head, and had taught others to jeer at his backwardness. He had presumed on his lazy good humour, and affected to patronise and look down on him. An eruption in a long-extinct volcano could not have surprised him more than the sudden outburst of Bliss's wrath, and if the two blows which he had received as he fled before him in sight of the whole house had been branded on his back with a hot iron, they could hardly have caused ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... shake the midnight air With those dear tones that custom loves, You wake no sounds of laughter here, Nor mirth in all our silent groves; On one broad waste, by hill or flood, Of ravaged lands your music falls, And where the happy homestead stood The stars look down on roofless halls. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... an unusually lovely April shining on her face. She had only to open her window to be convinced that all which she beheld was full of blessings. Just beneath her window on the grass was a double cherry tree in flower, an exquisite thing to look down on with the sunshine and the bees busy among its blossoms. The unreasoning joyfulness that invariably took possession of her heart whenever the weather was fine, filled it now with a rapture of hope and confidence. This world, this wonderful morning world that she saw and smelt from ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... said, "that it would be just as difficult to get any idea of what human beings are about by looking down on them from a height, as it is for us to discover what insects are doing when we look down on them." ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... disdain did she look down on me, As if her eye should blast me like the lightning! Poor feeble wretch! I bear far other arms, Their touch is mortal, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... breakfast-time came with the top of the tide, we could look down on the plan of a deck beneath, with its appurtenances and junk, casks, houses, pumps, and winches, rope and spare spars, binnacle and wheel, perhaps a boat, the regular deck seams curving and persisting under all. An old collier ketch ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... look down on the road From the ancient abode! Betwixt acre and field Shineth helm, shineth shield. And high over the heath Fares the bane in his sheath; For the wise men and bold Go their ways o'er the wold. Now the ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... recall many evening rambles with him over the high lands that look down on London; but the memory I cherish most is linked with a crowded street, where the clumsy and the coarse jostled the old man eloquent, as if he had been earthly, of the earth. It was in the Strand: he pointed out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... plush, of torn up battlefronts where there is no life, no color—nothing but desolation. But this seems like another world. Here are spring flowers, the orchards are in bloom, and children are playing in the narrow streets of the towns. Flying over it, you look down on all that. You see it—and you don't see it. But in driving we would feel that we were a part of it. There's a difference. It gives you a feeling that you are better acquainted with the people, and you get ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... inferior sex perhaps, or one of an inferior race. American women, especially American girls, are not accustomed to think of themselves as men's inferiors. American citizens find it impossible to believe that any one in the world can look down on them. The Queen was not annoyed. She ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... he meant; but royal, purple dreams, that De Quincey could not purchase with his opium; dreams that I would not forego for all the inducements that could be offered. I go to sleep, and pay a visit to heaven or fairyland. I have white wings, and with another, float in rosy clouds, and look down on the moving world; or I have the power to raise myself in the air without wings, and silently float wherever I will, loving all things and feeling that God loves me. I have heard Paul preach to the people, while I stood ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... of service at least. We're paid on the higher scale, it's true, but what of that? We are Officials, and yet they humiliate us. At H.Q. they set us to cleaning, and carrying the dung away. The civilians see the treatment they inflict on us, and they look down on us. And if you look like grousing, they'll actually talk about sending you off to the trenches, like foot-soldiers! What's going to become of our prestige? When we go back to the parishes as rangers after the war—if we do come back from it—the people of the villages and forests ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... detail constituted grandeur, any one could do this: the greatest dauber would at that rate be the greatest artist. A house or sign painter might instantly enter the lists with Michael Angelo, and might look down on the little, dry, hard manner of Raphael. But grandeur depends on a distinct principle of its own, not on a negation of the parts; and as it does not arise from their omission, so neither is it incompatible with their insertion ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... she cried, from beneath a projecting elbow of rock; 'you look down on it. It's a delicious fall. I declare one can get into it;' and, by the aid of a tree, she lowered herself down on a flat stone, whence she could see the cascade better than above. 'This is stunning. I vow one can get right into the bed of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... manes, gallant Ney; and if thy spirit be permitted to look down on this earth, it will be soothed by the knowledge that the wife of thy bosom has remained faithful to thy memory; and that thy sons, worthy of their sire—brave, noble, and generous-hearted—are devoted to their country, for which thou hadst so ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... pardon, whether I dare or not to ask one thing more. I never was sure that her heart was mine; my conduct did not deserve it, whatever my feelings did. If she accepted me from romance, I did enough to open her eyes! I am told she accepts Lord St. Erme—fit retribution on me, who used to look down on him in my arrogant folly, and have to own that he has ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remaining windings of the steep path, turning whenever we had a chance, to look down on the horsemen and their prisoner below, till at last we emerged in the valley a quarter of a mile or so beyond where they were stationed. Here on the level of the plain we stopped a moment, and Ram Lal renewed his ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... o' slavin' fer us, who ain't got no claim on her, aftuh fifteen yeahs dat she has libbed 'mongs' us an' made herse'f one of us, an' endyoed havin' her own people look down on her, aftuh she has growed ole an' gray wukkin' fer us an' our child'n, we talk erbout turnin' 'er out like a' ole hoss ter die! It 'pears ter me some folks has po' mem'ries! Whar would we 'a' be'n ef her folks at de No'th hadn' 'membered us no bettuh? An' we hadn' done nothin', neither, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... of her father, in Herbert Street, the next one eastward from Union. The land belonging to this ran through to Union Street, adjoining the house they had left; and from his top-floor study here, in later years, Hawthorne could look down on the less lofty roof under which he was born. The Herbert Street house, however, was spoken of as being on Union Street, and it is that one which is meant in a passage of the "American Note-Books" (October 25, 1838), which says, "In this dismal chamber ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... dovetailed by the art of years gone by, and riveted by age. The same plants grow from both alike—spurge, cistus, rue, and henbane, constant to the desolation of abandoned dwellings. From the castle you look down on roofs, brown tiles and chimney-pots, set one above the other like a big card-castle. Each house has its foot on a neighbour's neck, and its shoulder set against the native stone. The streets meander in and out, and up and down, overarched and balconied, but ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... is no doubt, difficult as it may be to realise the idea, that at the times with which we are dealing, Ireland enjoyed a kind of civilisation, which enabled its princes and its priests to look down on Pictland, and even on Saxon England, as barbarian. The Roman dominion had not penetrated among them, but the very remoteness which kept the island beyond the boundaries of the Empire, also kept it beyond the range of the destroyers ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... a bit flighty, Master Gilbert, and rather given to look down on the other servants. That kind of girl is open ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... have our breakfasts at the Cafe Greco at dawn. The birds are very early birds here; and you'll see the great sculptors—the old Dons, you know, who look down on us young fellows—at their coffee here when it is yet twilight. As I am a swell, and have a servant, J. J. and I breakfast at our lodgings. I wish you could see Terribile our attendant, and Ottavia our old woman! You will ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... orders; and he was the buffer between the servants and his Mamma's wrath. The working of that household turned on Tods, who was adored by every one from the dhoby to the dog-boy. Even Futteh Khan, the villainous loafer khit from Mussoorie, shirked risking Tods' displeasure for fear his co-mates should look down on him. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... meeting me two years ago. Here is a note from Miss Clara Deane, mother. She trusts that Greg and I can make it convenient to call at her home next Saturday afternoon, and meet some of her friends. When I attended Gridley Miss Deane used to look down on me because I was a poor man's son. I believe her set referred to me as a 'mucker.' At least, the fellows of her set did. So I shall send Miss Deane a ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... Till I look down on the garden green, Down on the roof so brown— Up in the air I go flying again, Up in the air ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... high hall we look down on the assembled society of the cantonment. The scene is commonplace enough; twaddle and tea, after tennis; "frivolling"—it is their word; women too empty-headed and men too tired to do anything else. This mill-round of work and exercise is maintained like a religion. ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... isn't game. Ay, you may laugh, but it is so; and your friends will throw their eyes askance at me, and never think on my pedigree, which would beat theirs all to shivers, I'll be bound. No: I'll have no one here at the Hall who will look down on a Hamley of Hamley, even if he only knows how to make a cross instead of ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... distant hill. Old stone farm houses, clusters of ruined villages, and as many as seven forts may be seen from this commanding position. A few miles distant rises the almost impregnable fortress of Verdun whose round Roman towers look down on the devastated region and seem to say, "They shall not pass." Nature has given just as picturesque a setting to many of her ancient fortified hills of the Western World, whose crowning battlements speak of ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand |
