"Ungenerous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had for his savage treatment of his brother, the owner of the Bellevite thought his conduct was unjustifiable. The young man was under age; and whether or not his father was less a patriot than his older son, the latter was certainly unkind, ungenerous, and even brutal. Without being a "milk-and-water man," Captain Passford was full of kindness, courtesy, and justice. He did not like the behavior of the major ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... illiterate country folk. It was published towards the end of 1740, and its vogue, in an age particularly coarse and robust, was extraordinary. Of the many who ridiculed his performance the most noteworthy was Fielding, who produced what Richardson and his friends regarded as the "lewd and ungenerous engraftment of 'Joseph Andrews.'" The story has many faults, but the portrayal of Pamela herself is accomplished with the success of a master hand. Richardson ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... conspiring against the king's life. They were condemned and put to death. Not satisfied with procuring this, Alexander had Parmenio himself, who had been left in command in Media, put to death by secret orders. It is perhaps the worst crime, because the most cold-blooded and ungenerous, which can be laid to his charge. By the winter of 329-328 Alexander had reached the Kabul valley at the foot of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to the tribunal of state, produced the written contract, and described the obligations she had heaped on this ungrateful and ungenerous man; sentence was given against him, and he was adjudged to Camiola, not only as her rightful husband, but as a property which, according to the laws of war in that age, she had purchased with her gold. The day of marriage was fixed; ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... that redeemed the dull monotony of existence. She became suddenly humble and tenderly penitent in her mood toward him; he loved her much better than she deserved, and she suspected that her own attitude had been habitually ungenerous and selfish. She had accepted all and yielded nothing. She wondered gravely why it was she did not love him; she was fond of him—she was very, very fond of him; she wondered if after all, as he said, this were not the beginning of love, the beginning ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... moderate savings, always supporting a very expensive public position." Nor have I ever been such a fool as to charge the absence of international copyright upon individuals. Nor have I ever been so ungenerous as to disguise or suppress the fact that I have received handsome sums for advance sheets. When I was in the States, I said what I had to say on the question, and there an end. I am absolutely certain that I have never since expressed myself, even with soreness, on the subject. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... MR. H. Ungenerous Melesinda! I implore you to give me this one proof of your confidence. The holy vow once past, your H. shall not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... adverted to, would have kept me silent altogether. When a writer is no longer able to defend himself, it is ungenerous to attack him: and at a time when he knows far more wonders than are dreamed of by any one on the Earth's surface, it seems unbecoming to stand reasoning over his grave about an "antecedent probability." But I am addressing not the dead, but the living,—to whom, in ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... Gill. All of these four were obnoxious to the Tories, being outspoken Whigs and teachers of sedition, whether in their schools or their publications. One by one they were imprisoned in the common jail, and held there during various terms. Their treatment was harsh and ungenerous, held in close neighborhood with felons and loose livers, and not informed of what they were accused. Leach and Edes kept diaries when in prison. "From the 2d July to the 17th," writes Leach, "a Complicated scene of Oaths, Curses, Debauchery, and the most ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... trial of their patience and courtesy—in the latter part of which I was entirely in their power, from their having possession of our arms—they had manifested no ungenerous sign of taking advantage of the helplessness and dependance of our situation; no rude curiosity to pry into the packages with which they were entrusted; or no sordid desire to possess the contents of them; although among them were articles exposed to ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... should be dismissed by Antiochus, though Scipio declared that this was ungenerous; but they dreaded his never-ceasing enmity; and when he took refuge with the king of Bothnia, they still required that he should be given up or driven a way. On this, Hannibal, worn-out and disappointed, put an end to his ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... my aunt to remonstrate with her son on his ungenerous conduct: her authority with him was a mere cipher, he had his father upon his side, and for my aunt's ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... said Colonel Morris, when the question was referred to him, "I am not a vindictive man, nor, I hope, an ungenerous foe; I do not like to be victimized, and I have vindicated my principles. The victory was mine in fact, if not in law, when that old Irishwoman's confession was wrung out of her. So, therefore, gentlemen, settle the matter as you ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... possible husband! Would to God," said Madame von Marwitz, with sombre fury, "that the possibility had been fulfilled! Would to God that it were my brave, deep-hearted Franz who were her husband—not you, most ungrateful, most ungenerous of men." ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... loved you truly,—passionately, but it was my very love that wrought this misery. I had no strength to reveal the terrible secret: I became selfish and ungenerous; for when I breathed to your innocent ear the vows of everlasting affection, when you repaid my profession with undisguised, pure, and disinterested love, even at that time, my hand, my faith, were ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... protracted. But such limitations are always embarrassing. Other gentlemen do not wish to have them imposed. Mr. FIELD objects to them; and if gentlemen really think they need more time, I think it ungenerous not to yield to their wishes. And I insist that such a course is least calculated to promote conciliation. The more free and full you make this discussion, the more will your results find favor elsewhere. It has been my belief from the beginning, that by ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... was your age I too hoped, and my hopes are come to this at last; you are blind in your hopeful youth, Eric, and do not see that this king (for the king it certainly was) will crush us, and not the less surely because he is plainly not ungenerous, but rather a good, courteous knight. Alas! poor old Gunnar, broken down now and ready to die, as your country is! How often, in the olden time, thou used'st to say to thyself, as thou didst ride at the head of our glorious house, 'this charge may finish ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... was sure of that, but something was dragging them apart Her great enemy was Philip's success. This was rapid and constant. She wanted to rejoice in it; she struggled to feel glad and happy, and even proud. But that was impossible. It was ungenerous, it was mean, but she could not help it—she resented every fresh mark ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... not willingly ungenerous. He wants faith and love, because he is not yet himself an elevated being. He cries, with sneering scepticism, "Give us a sign." But if the sign appears, his eyes glisten, and he offers not ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... shall work thy soul's eternal health, And love, and gentleness, and joy impart. But these thou must renounce, if lust of wealth E'er win its way to thy corrupted heart: For, ah! it poisons like a scorpion's dart; Prompting the ungenerous wish, the selfish scheme, The stern resolve, unmoved by pity's smart, The troublous day, and long distressful dream. Return, my roving ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... not; for a week, Frank, to effect any great, any laudable purpose. But I must be plain with you. It is ungenerous of you to wish to engross all virtue and sensibility. Beside, you have duties to perform to yourself, which are as pressing as any you owe to society, because they are to fit you for the social duties. [Hearken to the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... offer a penny: and there is a story (very vague indeed) of his once lending L20,000 without security. But these are but the halfpennyworth of bread compared to the vast quantity of sack. The matter seems fairly summed up in the story of the man who said, 'Turner is not ungenerous; he once paid the toll over ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... that it could not be complied with; and that one thousand pounds in the four per cents., which will not be yours till after your mother's decease, is all that you may ever be entitled to. On that head, therefore, I shall be uniformly silent; and you may assure yourself that no ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... It was an ungenerous and stupid blunder, such as men make, when they think or are told that "something must be done," and do not know what. It gave the writer an opportunity, of which he took full advantage, of showing his superiority in temper, in courtesy, and in reason, to those ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... but Keith, bending low over his neck, urged him faster and faster, until the horse, his ears laid close against his neck, did the best there was in him. From the tail of his eye, Keith saw Sir Redmond's horse go down upon his knees, and get up limping—and the sight filled him with ungenerous gladness; Sir Redmond was out of the race. It was Keith and Redcloud—they two; and Keith could ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... Caught in a burst of unexpected storm, And pelted with outrageous epithets, Turning beheld the Powers of the House On either side the hearth, indignant; her, Cooling her false cheek with a featherfan, Him glaring, by his own stale devil spurr'd, And, like a beast hard-ridden, breathing hard. 'Ungenerous, dishonorable, base, Presumptuous! trusted as he was with her, The sole succeeder to their wealth, their lands, The last remaining pillar of their house, The one transmitter of their ancient name, Their child.' 'Our child!' 'Our ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... days' residence under the same roof, and a guarded observation of Salome's conduct, sufficed to acquaint Dr. Grey with the ungenerous motives that induced her chagrin at his return; and, without permitting her to suspect that he had so accurately read her character, he endeavored as unobtrusively as possible to bridge by kindness and courtesy the chasm of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... events, there could be no doubt. It seemed hard that he should be compelled to suffer, supposing even that he was guilty, when a new sphere was open to him; and the better disposed boys, even though they mostly went with the tide, could not help feeling that Barber had acted in a very ungenerous way in bringing tales from one school to another, and in injuring the character of one who had always proved himself so harmless and kind-hearted ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... The Manchester people, who made friendly advances to Lady Carbery, did so, I am persuaded, with no ulterior objects whatsoever of pressing into the circle of an aristocratic person; neither did Lady Carbery herself interpret their attentions in any such ungenerous spirit, but accepted them cordially, as those expressions of disinterested goodness which I am persuaded that in reality they were. Amongst the families that were thus attentive to her, in throwing open for her use various local advantages of baths, libraries, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... a single speech. He had been absent from the State fifteen months, and although not continuously at the front there was something inexcusably ungenerous in the taunts of his opponents that he had served "behind fortifications." His superb conduct at Bull Run entitled him to better treatment. But his party was wholly devoted to him, and "amid a hurricane of approbation"[859] he mingled censure of Seymour with praise of Lincoln, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... this rancour was produced by mere feminine emulations and jealousy do these ladies of the ancient sept Macnamara foul wrong. Mrs. Mack, on the contrary, had a fat and genial soul of her own, and Magnolia was by no means a particularly ungenerous rival in the lists of love. But Aunt Rebecca was hoitytoity upon the Macnamaras, whom she would never consent to more than half-know, seeing them with difficulty, often failing to see them altogether—though Magnolia's ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... disposition of Mrs. Honey, our housekeeper. I do not remember meeting with any other lodging-house keeper who did not grow hateful and fearful on short acquaintance; but I attribute this, not so much to the people themselves, as, primarily, to the unfair and ungenerous conduct of some of their English guests, who feel so sure of being cheated that they always behave as if in an enemy's country, and therefore ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not to protest when she knew where his weekly pay went. "Three kids must be fed," she said. In fact, according to her own codes, she was not ungenerous towards the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... to the government as far as a written agreement could give it; but for two sufficient reasons I declined all treaty upon the subject until the war was over. The first of these reasons was, that it would have been highly ungenerous to take advantage of a man's distress to tie him down to any agreement which, in other circumstances, he might not be willing to adopt; and by acting thus ungenerously, it would be tempting the rajah to deceive me when the treaty came to be ratified. The second reason was equally cogent; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... agony, in what fits of flighty resolution, in what collapses of despair, Gideon consumed the night, it would be ungenerous to inquire ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... realized his blunder. He followed her, but she was with her father, and he could not speak there. He looked imploringly at her, but could not catch her eye, for she was deeply incensed. Had she not heard him she would not have believed that he could be so ungenerous. ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... had fallen. How greatly did Alexander honour Apelles, in that he would suffer none else to paint his portrait. And when the painter, by drawing his Campaspe, fell in love with her, he presented her to him. It is a bad policy, Eusebius, to put slights upon these men—and it is more, it is ungenerous; they may revenge themselves upon you whenever they please, and give you a black eye too, that will never get right again. They can in effigy, put every limb out of joint; and you being no anatomist, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... tragedy of "Don Sebastian." This tragedy, which has been justly regarded as the chef-d'oeuvre of his plays, was not, he has informed us, "huddled up in haste." The author knew the circumstances in which he stood, while, as he expresses it, his ungenerous enemies were taking advantage of the times to ruin his reputation; and was conscious, that the full exertion of his genius was necessary to secure a favourable reception from an audience prepossessed against him and his tenets. Nor ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... the ungenerous malice of the elder midshipmen thought to have injured me by leaving me in ignorance, they did me the greatest possible service, by throwing me on my own resources. I continued on pretty nearly the same terms with my shipmates to the ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... upon primary motives and controlling principles in nowise different or better or worse than those of the Produce Exchange and the dry goods district, of Wall Street and Broadway, so that, taking publications in the lump, it is neither untrue nor ungenerous, nor, when fully considered, is it surprising, to say that the world's doing, fact and fancy are collected, reported, discussed, scandalized, condemned, commended, supported and turned back upon the world as the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... and consequent loss of future usefulness will depend on our own conduct, and if we do our duty by firmly supporting the Government through its foreign and general difficulties, I do not think that even the party will be ungenerous ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... pardon. Ye can scarce hold me guilty that my love made me hot for the quickest marriage I could compass, or that, believing ye in honour pledged to me, I should seek to assure myself of the plight from your own lips, ungenerous though it was at the moment. It has since been my endeavour to show that I regretted my impulsive persecution, and I trust that my long forbearance and self-effacement have proved to ye that your comfort and happiness are the first object of ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... reminds me of the very ungenerous treatment that Mr. Bartholomew, one of our citizens, received at the hands of certain red men with whom he trafficked ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... voice low, but quivering with indignation; 'ungenerous to reproach him with what he so bitterly repented. Could not his penitence, could not his own blood'—but as he spoke, the gleam of wrath faded, the flush deepened on the cheek, and he ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... must needs find things as they are on the whole good, the latter must needs see vividly how they can be improved. To the scientific temperament the artistic temperament is unstable and irrational, as the former is dry and ungenerous to the latter. Such broad and recognized types, with a few others like them, ramify into a multitude of ephemeral parties and classes,—racial, political, social, literary, scholarly,—and most of the arguments in the world can be followed back to these essential ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... this,—no coquetry, no ostentation,—and that the young girl was perfectly sincere! But the masculine reader might like to know that the simple fact was that, since she had regained consciousness, she had been filled with remorse for her capricious and ungenerous rejection of Tenbrook's proffered service. More than that, she felt she had periled her life in that moment of folly, and that this man—this hero—had saved her. For hero he was, even if he did not fulfill her ideal,—it was only SHE that was not a heroine. Perhaps if he had ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... that some attendants should follow him in case of his escape: but the cry of "Shame! shame!" which burst from the multitude, induced him to alter his ungenerous purpose. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Lady Price had alienated his brother clergy, and his fellow-curate allowed himself to be kept aloof by his mother, in a manner that became ungenerous. Half petulant, and wholly ungracious, as Mr. Smith's manner was in receiving assistance, only strong principle could lead any one to befriend him; and his few advisers found it difficult to hinder him from making a public exposure ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you didn't think, Terence, or you would not have recorded your poor aunts, in your secret thoughts, as hard-hearted and ungenerous. If you had told us openly that Mitson, the coast-guard, had lent you a gun (as I strongly suspect, and indeed felt sure from the first moment was the case), we should not have been at all angry, only naturally anxious that you should use an instrument of death with ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... he, in a voice so full of earnest emotion that Joyce involuntarily stares at him; "I know what is the matter with you. You are fighting against your better nature. You are trying to be ungenerous. You are trying to believe what you know is not true. Tell me—honestly mind—are you not forcing yourself to regard me as a monster ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... repeat, if his Excellency wishes it, it will afford me great pleasure to state such particulars of her, and which will be incontestably proved by numbers here, that I am sure will acquit me in his opinion of acting unkind or ungenerous towards her. I'll say nothing of the liability I should incur, under the Consolidated Slave Law, of dealing with a free person as ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... while the respective crews continued fighting; and finally retiring, to continue his command, under cover of a powerful battery on shore. His roundly asserting, that we had two ships for one, and that he was told two English ships had struck; his ungenerous and distorted application of Lord Nelson's noble acknowledgment of the general bravery of the Danes; and the low source of solace that he finds in disingenuously limiting the advantage gained by the victory to the possession of a few wretched wrecks, without at all appreciating the grand ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... to the side of Nature lean, And meaning nothing, something seem to mean: To make the whole in lively colours glow, 470 To bring before us something that we know, And from all honest men applause to win, I'll group the Company,[298] and put them in. F. Be that ungenerous thought by shame suppress'd, Add not distress to those too much distress'd; Have they not, by blind zeal misled, laid bare Those sores which never might endure the air? Have they not brought their mysteries so low, That what the wise suspected not, fools know? From their first rise e'en to ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... imperfect picture of what I am forced to see. Forgive me for it; it is not to the commander-in-chief, it is to my most dearest friend, General Washington, that I am speaking. I want to lament with him the ungenerous sentiments I have been forced to see in ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... the same.— His farther arts, inventions, and intrepidity. She puts home questions to him. 'Ungenerous and ungrateful she calls him. He knows not the value of the heart he had insulted. He had a plain path before him, after he had tricked her out of her father's house! But that now her mind was raised above fortune, and above him.' ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... somewhat a lover of the marvellous, and like to indulge a little embellishing exaggeration in any place where there is no chance of finding me out. Mind, therefore, my dear Mr. Linden, that you take no ungenerous advantage of this confession; but suffer me, now and then, to tell my stories my own way, even when you think truth would require me to tell ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Giustiniani, bringing those two before whom life was opening in a golden vista; but as the slow ripples breaking over the water brought them nearer, his heart girded itself again with all his chivalrous strength, lest he should dim the glad light in his beloved one's eyes—lest he should seem ungenerous to the brave young knight who had dared the displeasure of his house and of the Republic for the love he bore ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Presidency in opposition to Hamilton's greatest opponent, Jefferson; Hamilton knowingly incurred a feud which must at the best have been dangerous to him, by unhesitatingly throwing his weight upon the side of Jefferson, his own ungenerous rival. The details of his policy do not concern us, but the United States could hardly have endured for many years without the passionate sense of the need of government and the genius for actual administration ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... have expressed a truth, but in that case a tone of sarcasm must have winged them. As it was, they involved either hypocrisy or ungenerous irony at the expense of his questioner. Buckland could not but understand them in the latter sense; his face darkened. At that moment, Peak met his eye, and encountered its steady searching gaze with a perfectly calm smile. Half-a-dozen pulsings of his heart—violent, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... suit her to think so, she at once encouraged an imaginary conversation, in which she took the argument that it was quite impossible Evan could have been so mad, and others instanced his youth, his wrongheaded perversity, his ungenerous disregard for his devoted sister, and his known weakness: she replying, that undoubtedly they were right so far: but that he could not have said he himself was that horrible thing, because he was nothing of the sort: which faith in Evan's stedfast adherence ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... seem out of earshot, or to have no common tongue. For a third (in the case of both of these spectators), they were blinded by old ingrained predilection. And for a fourth, the risk the Master was supposed to stand in (supposed, I say—you will soon hear why) made it seem the more ungenerous to criticise; and, keeping them in a perpetual tender solicitude about his life, blinded them the more effectually ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fudge! Mary Ann. This is altogether too bad and ungenerous in you. In the first place, the few cents we give, bestowed as they are on a poor old widow woman, are not wasted, in my opinion, but well spent;—and if I spend an evening, granted to me by my father and mother for recreation, in listening to Old Kate, it is no ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... are the first man I ever saw that understood the language of fowls. You had not the politeness even to allude to me in your speech. But when my little friends the guinea-hens came up, and began to holler 'Crockett, Crockett, Crockett,' you were ungenerous enough to drive ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... things must produce unhappiness; and he will alter his course. But until you do this—until you demonstrate that his proceedings are essentially inconvenient or inelegant, essentially irrational, unjust, or ungenerous, he will persevere. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... unmeaning gloom around. When woes are feign'd, how ill such forms appear, And oh! how needless, when the woe's sincere. Slow to the vault they come, with heavy tread, Bending beneath the Lady and her lead; A case of elm surrounds that ponderous chest, Close on that case the crimson velvet's press'd; Ungenerous this, that to the worm denies, With niggard-caution, his appointed prize; For now, ere yet he works his tedious way, Through cloth and wood and metal to his prey, That prey dissolving shall a mass remain, ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... own ungenerous intention, and resolutely pushed back the crust under the pillow. And then he thought it must certainly have been the devil who had tempted him to eat, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... behaved myself in a manner unbecoming the station I occupied, nor so much as even entertained a thought derogatory to his honour, so as to give him the least grounds for entertaining an opinion of me so ungenerous and undeserved; for I flatter myself he cannot give a character of my conduct, whilst I was under his tuition, that could merit the slightest scrutiny. Oh! my dearest mother, I hope you have not so easily credited such an ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... the conquered,—forbearing insults, forgiving injuries, overpaying benefits. Full of dignity themselves, they respect dignity in all, but they feel it sacred in the unhappy. But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendor, and shine out in the full lustre of their native villany and baseness. It is in that season that no man of sense or honor can be mistaken for one of them. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... resolutely and honourably. If he flatters his countrymen, it is the unconscious and spontaneous effect of his participation in their weaknesses. He never knowingly calls black white, or panders to an ungenerous sentiment. He is combative to a fault, but his combativeness is allied to a genuine love of fair-play. When he hates a man, he calls him knave or fool with unflinching frankness, but he never uses a base weapon. The wounds which he inflicts may hurt, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... magnanimous, noble, highminded, ingenuous; munificent, bountiful, open-handed, liberal, lavish, charitable, unstinted; abundant, plentiful, overflowing. Antonyms: illiberal, ungenerous, stingy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the charter of the Province formed, to secure liberty of conscience and freedom of thought. The blow at a loyal portion of Her Majesty's subjects was aimed at them in the dark, 4,000 miles away, and without an opportunity of defending themselves. An act so ungenerous, and in a manner so impious too, cannot be endured. We must defend ourselves against the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... them, to enjoy the blessing of a civilization which I pronounce to be reared upon quicksand, a civilization more fruitful of poverty, misery and crime than of competence, happiness and virtue. Those who regard the black man in the light of a "ward of the nation," are too narrow-minded, ignorant or ungenerous to deserve my contempt. The people of this country have been made fabulously affluent by legalized robbery of the black man; the coffers of the National Government have overflowed into the channels of subsidy and peculation, enriching sharpers and thieves, with the earnings ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... his brother, Sir Ralph Ellerey, tenth baronet of the name, who was quite ready to believe the very worst that was said of Desmond, remarking that it was little more than he expected. Sir Ralph's cast of mind was perhaps narrow and ungenerous, but, since the sympathy so usually shown to the open-handed spendthrift was not forthcoming in this case, it must be assumed that popular opinion condemned Desmond Ellerey, and sympathized with Sir Ralph. It had been easy, therefore, for Desmond to become a stranger to his native ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... order to avert this danger, they immediately sent a deputation to Rome, to make known the fact of Hannibal's flight, and to express the regret they felt on account of it, in hopes thus to save themselves from the displeasure of their formidable foes. It may at first view seem very ungenerous and ungrateful in the Carthaginians to abandon their general in this manner, in the hour of his misfortune and calamity, and to take part against him with enemies whose displeasure he had incurred only in their service and in executing their will. And ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... really say, I think you would be excusable before God and man for resisting this preposterous match by every means in your power. A proud, dark, ambitious man; a caballer against the state; infamous for his avarice and severity; a bad son, a bad brother, unkind and ungenerous to all his relatives—Isabel, I would die rather ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... so accurately measured me that I was disconcerted. It was quite true that he was compelling my respect, while my first dislike of him still obstinately lurked in the background of my mind. I felt ungenerous, but I would not ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the misconstruction of having slipped by the easy and gradual steps of self-indulging persons from the first to the final state of opium-eating (a misconstruction to which there will be a lurking predisposition in most readers from my previous acknowledgments). Be not so ungenerous as to let me suffer in your good opinion through my own forbearance and regard for your comfort. No; believe all that I ask of you, viz., that I could resist no longer. Whether, indeed, afterward, I might not have succeeded in breaking off ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... along the rank at the saddened faces which showed how great a favourite the young lieutenant had been, and something like a feeling of jealousy flashed through him as he began to think how it would have been if he had been the missing man. But the ungenerous thought died out as quickly as it had arisen, and he marched on with the men slowly, so as to make it easier for the corporal, till half the slope of the kopje had been zigzagged down, when he called ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... the false. Here they will most of them pester their husbands to vote for Welwyn-Baker just because they hate change with the hatred of weak fear. Those of them who know anything at all about the Irish question are dead set against Ireland—simply because they are unimaginative and ungenerous; they can't sympathize with what seems a hopeless cause, and Ireland to them only suggests the dirty Irish of Polterham back streets. As for European war, the idiots are fond of drums and fifes and military swagger; they haven't brains enough ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... will-o'-the-wisp sort of affair, leading its dupes into the veriest bog of bankruptcy. In common with all those bold, self-reliant spirits that have ventured to break away from the antecedents of public opinion and custom, he has been the subject of many ungenerous innuendoes and criticisms. All kinds of ambitions and motives have been ascribed to him. Many a burly, red-faced farmer, who boasts of an unbroken agricultural lineage reaching back into the reign of Good Queen Bess, will tell you over his beer that the Alderman's doings ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... "You're unjust and ungenerous," said Val with repressed passion. "But I warn you that I shall interfere none the less to protect ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... was a man who dearly loved easy ways out of difficulties. But in such matters as these his wife he knew was imperative and powerful, and he lacked the courage to plead for a cause that was prudent, but ungenerous. ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... liked Bigley half so well before as when he spoke up like that in defence of his father; but I was in a sour disappointed mood that day, because the holidays were over and I was going back to school, so I said something that was thoroughly ungenerous, and which I felt sorry ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... Lucrezia Buti; for though it was Lippo Lippi who painted, it was Lucrezia who served him for model, and since with him painting, for the first time perhaps, came to need life to inspire it, Lucrezia has her part in his work which it would be ungenerous to ignore. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... big a sinner as ever you clap eyes on. Me and my son was among the sawdust, spite of our three crutches, and he spreading hands at us, sober as a judge, for lumps of ungenerous iniquity. Mother Tapsy told us of it, the very next day, for it was not in our power to be ackirate when he done it, and we see everybody laffing at us round the corner. But we took the wind out of his sails the next night, captain, you may warrant us. Here's to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... indeed, an honourable characteristic of those who occupy the highest social position in America—those who have received, in every respect, the best education in the country—that, as a class, they are free from the little, selfish, ungenerous feeling ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... stigmatised as worse than ungenerous. It was, at all events, extremely to the point, and it may be suggested that for Raleigh and Cecil the time for showing generosity to Essex was past. They took no overt steps, however, but it is plain that they kept ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... holiday, and from her utter dejection, that Alice's expectations had been frustrated, and cherishing no little resentment against her because of her uppishness on the first news of her good fortune, had been ungenerous enough to take her revenge in a way as stinging in effect as bitter in intention; for she loudly protested that no amount of such luck as she pretended to suppose in Alice's possession, would have induced her to behave herself so ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... was ungenerous," said Grace. "Forgive me." But she said it rather coolly, and not with a very ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... in their next conversation I know not. One would be tempted to think by the issue, that Mr. Lovelace was ungenerous enough to seek the occasion given,* and to improve it. Yet he thought fit to put the question too:—But, she says, it was not till, by some means or other (she knew not how) he had wrought her up to such a pitch ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... my recovery, desired my landlady's good offices to introduce him to me, and was as angry, at least, as I was shocked, at the manner in which she had conducted herself towards obtaining him that happiness; but, that to show me how much he disdained her procedure, and how far he was from taking any ungenerous advantage of my situation, and from exacting any security for my gratitude, he would before my face, that instant, discharge my debt entirely to my landlady, and give me her receipt in full; after which I should be at liberty either to reject or grant ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... has it been needed, in order to exalt him, to disparage others with whom he came into strong collision. His own funeral orations from time to time on some who were in one degree or another his antagonists, prove that this petty and ungenerous method would have been to him of all men most repugnant. Then to pretend that for sixty years, with all 'the varying weather of the mind,' he traversed in every zone the restless ocean of a great nation's shifting and complex politics, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... hand of Madame for the Prince of Spain; and she accordingly determined to pave the way towards a reconciliation by thwarting the ambition of the great nobles who were obnoxious to the Princes. The first opportunity that presented itself of adopting this somewhat ungenerous policy was afforded by the Duc de Vendome, who demanded the royal sanction to preside over the States of Brittany, of which province he was governor; but his intention having been discovered by the Comte de Soissons and M. de Conde, they lost no time in warning ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... and fair dealing after my previous experience; so, in presence of our honest member, I handed over the $3,000. Soon after this, I saw the 'Sheriff' and Jones figuring earnestly together, and then go and consult with several members, who I supposed were in the ring. It would be ungenerous to suppose that Jones would receive money for voting for a bill to improve his own county, and he was undoubtedly doing all he could without compensation, while entirely conscious that others were being ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... incompatible alike with circumspect statesmanship and the proverbial hospitality of his country. For he is incapable of resisting the temptation to launch a bon mot, however stinging. It would be ungenerous, however, to attach more importance to such quickly forgotten utterances than he meant them to carry. An instance of how he behaved toward the representatives of Britain and France is worth recording, both as characterizing ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... do it? Should she throw little Bessie to the devouring musquashes? No, she could not stoop to that ungenerous deed. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... word of how ungenerous it would be on my part to have the appearance of defying them; for, after all," added Anastasia, with a melancholy sigh, "it is our attractions which make them distracted. Hold! I shudder, my Alfred, when I think that, if I had refused you your happiness, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... he heard and saw in his mind's eye, in that brief but unpleasant hustling he had to go through at the hands of the ungenerous and indefatigable officer ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... 'It is very ungenerous of her, but very likely she will be very sorry to have done so when her first anger is over, and she understands that you were quite as much ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a pain to me that I ever saw her. Such an adorer of virtue to be sacrificed to the vilest of her sex; and thou their implement in the devil's hand, for a purpose so base, so ungenerous, so inhumane!—Pride thyself, O cruellest of men! in this reflection; and that thy triumph over a woman, who for thy sake was abandoned of every friend she had in the world, was effected; not by advantages taken of her weakness and credulity; but by the blackest ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... sir, that you address the king?" she cried. "That you are without honor I have heard men say, and I may truly believe it now that I have seen what manner of man you are. The most lowly-bred boor in all Lutha would not be so ungenerous as to take advantage of his king's helplessness to heap indignities ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... changed to her by those few words which her lover had spoken to her. She thought now that it would be consolation enough to her in future to know that such a man as Brooke Burgess had once asked her to be the partner of his life, and that it would be almost ungenerous in her to push her advantage further and attempt to take him at his word. Besides, there would be obstacles. Her aunt would dislike such a marriage for him, and he would be bound to obey her aunt in such a matter. She would not allow herself to think that she could ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... old Mrs. Mingott. Archer entirely approved of family solidarity, and one of the qualities he most admired in the Mingotts was their resolute championship of the few black sheep that their blameless stock had produced. There was nothing mean or ungenerous in the young man's heart, and he was glad that his future wife should not be restrained by false prudery from being kind (in private) to her unhappy cousin; but to receive Countess Olenska in the family circle was ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... had been cruising, these would probably have deterred the French. Upon receiving the news he put to sea, going as far as Antigua; but he did not venture to stay away because his expected instructions had not come yet, and, like Keppel, he feared an ungenerous construction of his actions. He therefore remained in Barbados, patiently watching for an opportunity ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... the moment when the yacht had swung back and he had thrown up his commission forever had been his first strong impulse. He had crushed it down only because he saw that to speak then was to take her at an ungenerous disadvantage. Now Fortune had sent him this new meeting, to be untrammeled by any such restraints. No grim duty governed his movements now; no consciousness of secret chicanery any longer enfolded him like ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... The distribution of the forces under my command, incident to an unexpected change of commanders, and the overwhelming force under your command, compel me, notwithstanding the brilliant success of the Confederate arms yesterday, to accept the ungenerous and unchivalrous terms which ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... who none of the children thought was near "it would be ungenerous I wouldn't deprive Master William of ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Philip's influence and position. This Philip, of course, resented, and then the English said that he was envious of Richard's superiority; and they attempted to lay the whole blame of the quarrel on him, attributing the unfriendly feeling simply to what they considered his weak and ungenerous jealousy of a more successful and ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... opposed it. Far was she from foreseeing that a revolution at—such a distance could excite one in which a misguided populace would drag her from her palace to a death equally unjust and cruel. She only saw something ungenerous in the method which France adopted of checking ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... mean I cannot tell you," I stammered, with well-feigned confusion. "Can you not forgive me, William? Often and often, since you left me that day, I have wished to see you, and to tell you how I repented my hasty and ungenerous words. Will you not pardon me? Shall we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... my comrade with surprise, and I think he felt rather ashamed of his ungenerous speech, as he continued: "however, he is unhurt, which is the main thing. It seems we have lost quite a number of brave fellows besides ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... Consistory on the 6th of June, and entered on the duties of his office on the third Sunday in Trinity. Gerhardt, in these transactions, appears to great advantage, in the reasonableness of his demands, and the manner he dealt with the ungenerous imputations made upon his motives and character. He would have removed to Luebben sooner had there been a suitable house to be got; but there was none. He laid stress, in his correspondence, on the want of a study in the Archdeacon's house, and insisted on the necessity of having a place for meditation ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... face was too good for that; besides, no man with that huge frame, that personality so marked and so easily recognizable, could be a swindler; he could not escape detection a single hour. I dismissed the ungenerous thought. Perhaps he is rich, as he says. We do hear of munificent donations by benevolent millionaires now and then. What if this Australian, attracted by the glories of the old cathedral, should now appear as a deus ex machina ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... for Christopher's temper such trash was too much; And it soon made the malecontent quiver and cower, When he saw preparations for handling the Crutch. "Lay your croaking aside," The old gentleman cried, "Or I'll make you eat up each ungenerous word: Not our deadliest foe, Such injustice should know, And far less shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... could be no disguising the truth—he was a worse man. Yes; whatsoever had once been pure in him, whatsoever had once been generous, whatsoever had once been of noble aspiration, was now impure, and ungenerous, and ignoble. Above all else, he had lost that tenderness which is the top and crown of a strong man. He felt as if the world had lifted its hand against him, and as if he were ready ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... pity men, assuredly, my Sandra, but not kings. Luckless kings are not generous men, and ungenerous men are ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Morning and evening prayers were the rule at his headquarters, but if any of his staff chose to remain absent, the general made no remark. Yet all suspicion of indifference to vice was effectually removed. Nothing ungenerous or unclean was said in his presence without incurring his displeasure, always unmistakably expressed, and although he made no parade of his piety he was far too ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... life—animal life and vegetable life—everything that breathes and grows. Yet I am a Huguenot!—one of the race you hate and despise and are paid to exterminate. Assassin, I have spared you. Be not ungenerous. Spare others." ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... fearful sentence on the palace wall of recoiling tyrants. As an englishman, my expiring sigh should be breathed for its preservation; but as an admirer of social repose and national liberality, I regret to see its noble energies engaged in the degrading service of fretful spleen, and ungenerous animadversion. When the horizon is no longer blackened with the smoke of the battle, it is unworthy of two mighty empires to carry on an ignoble war of words. If peace is their wish, let them manifest the great and enlightened sentiment in all its purity, and disdain to irritate each other ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... "It's ungenerous, ungentlemanly," Roy protested to himself; but somehow the feeling persisted that Fanning was not ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... me herself," said Lady Caroline. "She seems unusually excited about the matter. 'Dear mother,' she writes, 'pray interpose to prevent Miss Polehampton from doing an unjust and ungenerous thing. She disapproves of my friendship with dear Janetta Colwyn, simply because Janetta is poor; and she threatens to punish Janetta—not me—by sending her home in disgrace. Janetta is a governess-pupil here, and it ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to be divided in the set; and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... credit that Sir Adrian Landale would marry the daughter of his paramour—however his own brother may deem to his advantage to seem to think so! The fact of Molly de Savenaye becoming Lady Landale would alone, had such ill rumours indeed been current in the past, dispel the ungenerous legend for ever." ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... crept together, speechless and hopeless all three, to be thenceforth the contempt and not the envy of their fellow parishioners. For if the vulgar feeling towards the home born prophet is superciliousness, what must the sentence upon failure be in ungenerous natures, to which every downfall of another is an uplifting of themselves! But Mr Graham's worth had gained him friends in the presbytery, and he was that same week appointed to the vacant school of ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... the doctor tried in vain to stop her tirade. She was in a fury; such blazing eyes, such crimson cheeks, and voice quivering with scorn. For a moment I was abashed and would have liked to slink out of sight. But when she was so ungenerous as to call me "a pretty boy," the fire returned to my heart, and I too drew ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... It was an excellent match, and in a certain way she did like him; and then, you know, there was that great danger about poor Owen. It was a great danger then. But now she is so determined about this, because she thinks it would be ungenerous to go back from her word; and in this way she will ruin the very man she wishes to serve. Of course he cannot break off the match if she persists in it. What I want you to perceive is this, that he, utterly penniless as he is, will have to begin the world with a clog round his ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... spoke like that. . . . And then, with a flare of illumination he perceived how intensely his father disliked him. Nothing but sheer basic antipathy could have been responsible for that miserable retort, "Am I to bind up your broken heart?" Anger, no doubt, was the immediate cause, but so utterly ungenerous a rejoinder to Michael's announcement could not have been conceived, except in a heart that thoroughly and rootedly disliked him. That he was a continual monument of disappointment to his father he knew well, but never before had it been ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... arrows designed to pierce her breast; but Mollie Ainslie did not feel one of them. After what she had suffered, no ungenerous flings from such a source could cause her any pain. On the contrary, it was an object of interest to her, in that it disclosed how deep down in the heart of the highest and best, as well as the lowest and meanest, was that ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the character of its God with minute exactness. It is a portrait of a man, if one can imagine a man with evil impulses far beyond the human limit. In the Old Testament He is pictured as unjust, ungenerous, pitiless, and revengeful, punishing innocent children for the misdeeds of their parents; punishing unoffending people for the sins of their rulers, even descending to bloody vengeance upon harmless calves ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and to many of them, the Adamses, for instance, and Jay and Pinckney, the West owed more than it did to most of the Republican statesmen; but as a whole, the attitude of the Federalists, especially in the Northeast, toward the West was ungenerous and improper, while the Jeffersonians, with all their unwisdom and demagogy, were nevertheless the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... are not always able to resist the counsels of seeming expediency and ungenerous ambition, although measures adopted under such influences seldom fail to be unfortunate and injurious to those ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... with?" And at that thought, such a fierce, sudden suspicion tore through that old, half ossified heart, that he paused on the flags, and gasped for breath. "My God!" he murmured, "has she robbed me?" And during the remainder of that miserable day, his ledgers were almost neglected. Foul and ungenerous suspicion held possession of his mind; and inflamed with a malicious anger, he plotted and schemed his revenge until he had defined a plan that well suited his present mood. "If she plots," he muttered, rubbing his dry, yellow hands together, with grim ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... a child you extracted from her one word of folly; and now you would take advantage of that foolish word; now, when you know that she is engaged to a man she loves with the full consent of all her friends. I thought I knew you well enough to feel sure that you were not so ungenerous." ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Napoleon will furnish to posterity a proverb like that of Dionysius at Corinth. This banishment to St Helena will be very ungenerous and unjust on the part of the English Government, but I suppose their satellites and adherents will term it an act of clemency, and some Church and Kingmen would no doubt recommend hewing him in pieces, as ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... revenged himself on Achilles by depriving him of his beautiful captive, the fair Briseis, who had become so attached to her kind and noble captor that she wept bitterly on being removed from his charge. Achilles, now fairly disgusted with the ungenerous conduct of his chief, withdrew himself to his tent, and obstinately declined to take further part ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... sceptre was transmitted to his children of the third and fourth generation. Yet the difficulties of the times betrayed some defects in his character; and have exposed his memory to some just or ungenerous reproach. The reader may possibly smile at the lavish praise which his daughter so often bestows on a flying hero: the weakness or prudence of his situation might be mistaken for a want of personal courage; and his political arts are branded ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon |
