Contempt

“ I’ve tried to find, in knowing them and reading them, a great, real contempt, something as fierce and clean as fire, a nightmare of contempt, so that from the pillars of burning smoke we can build beings of better shape than ourselves. ”

“ Heaven or hell, I care not which, have cast a ray so bright around my brow that not all the perfidy of a heart as lost as mine, of a heart loaded, as you know too well, with crimes man shudders even to imagine—not all the envy and malice of those whom my contempt has stung can lower me to their level. ”

“ But unfortunately, when you are dealing with crimes of violence, moral suasion and gentle treatment produce nothing more poignant in the bosom of your adversary than a sensation of amused and derisive contempt. ”

“ Shall we see our authority brought into contempt, and the craft by which we get our living ruined, and not bestir ourselves? What have we been doing all this while? And what are we now thinking of? Shall we be always talking, and bring nothing to pass? ”

“ A word of contempt against the King or the government, a joke, a detached phrase, was enough. It is incredible how many people, justly or unjustly, were more or less ruined, always without resource, without trial, and without knowing why. ”

“ He feels no conscience, and he fears no law.
Nor think, acquainted with small knaves alone,
Who have not shame outlived, and grace outgrown,
The great world hidden from thy reptile view,
That on such men, to whom contempt is due, 80
Contempt shall fall, and their vile author's name
Recorded stand through all the land of shame. ”

“ But contempt itself has no longer any meaning, if esteem is a word void of signification. We must say simply that all is as it is, and abandon those terms of speech which conscience has stamped with its own superscription. ”

“ Cry out into the world your “wild and guilty fantasy” of property in man, and every echo responds with a cry of horror or contempt; every breeze, from whatever point of the compass it may come, brings you a verdict of condemnation. ”

“ For if they do not find it ridiculous to feel contempt, they are perfectly right to feel contempt, it being natural to them; and you have no business to be sorry for them, for that is, after all, only your euphemism for contempt. ”

“ For myself, as you know, uncanny things hold no fear. I suppose it is that I have been up against so many different kinds of fears, or, rather, of things which for most people have terrors of their own, that I have come to have a contempt--not an active contempt, you know, but a tolerative contempt--for the whole family of them. ”

“ Do you ever realise in what contempt you are living? They would rob you of your share in this daylight, if they could. They are indignant because you breathe and utter speech and wear the form of men. ”

“ for contempt is that, which putteth an edge upon anger, as much or more than the hurt itself. ”

“ Contempt is a tool I am used to grasp by the handle only. Be it enough to say that, without releasing me, he rang the bell for Cora, whose greedy eyes glistened when she saw my gordit loose from my bosom, and tangled in the net. ”

“ Above all, I cannot but acknowledge the obligation we have to you, Sir, for the light which you have thrown upon the follies and outrages of the different sects; the weapons you employ against those madmen, or those impostors, are the only suitable ones; to make use of any others would be imitating them: they must be attacked by ridicule, and, punished with contempt. ”

“ But since you have not attained to it, I advise you to cultivate that form of contempt which is called pity. It is perhaps the least difficult—always remembering that you, too, if you are anything, are as pitiful as the rest, yet never expecting any pity for yourself. ”

“ Contempt for one's own comrades, for the troops of the enemy, and, above all, fierce contempt for one's own person, are what war demands of every one. Far better is it for an army to be too savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to possess too much sentimentality and human reasonableness. ”

“ And however their success may dazzle men’s eyes and warp their judgment for a season, contempt is their portion at last. They are often held in contempt even while living, and the reproaches of those who have been made to suffer by them are heaped upon their heads. Many of those who fawned upon them and flattered them while they were prospering will be most ready to scorn and upbraid them, if the day of their retribution arrives before they quit this world. ”

“ On the contrary, when we gaze upon the progress of the vicious and the criminal, however successful and prosperous in their brief space of action, to contempt and indignation, to disgust and horror, are added the same consciousness of a hereafter, and the certainty of an awful retribution. ”

“ People in general, knowing themselves to be innocently made to suffer, would take comfort in righteous indignation and justified contempt: but to you the indignation and contempt would be the worst part of suffering ”

“ To be treated by your philosophy with rudeness and contempt, because you yield to [Pg 149] emotions which are as natural, and, therefore, in my judgment, as innocent as any, is, as if one were struck with violence by a friend or a parent, to whom you fled for protection or comfort. ”

“ But I have always found it possible, without using vulgar and exaggerated abuse, to express the contempt which, in common with every right-minded man, I feel for the grovelling herd of incompetent boobies, whose minds are as muddy as the Rowley Mile after a thunderstorm. ”

“ My manners had not been framed in the world’s school, and I felt all that mauvaise honte that people of a sensitive mind generally feel in such a situation, which, along with a proud feeling that caught fire at the slightest look, or word indicative of contempt, rendered my progress in the world almost a thing impossible. ”

“ If he makes no secret of his indignation, and even contempt, it must be remembered that indignation and contempt may well have been real with him, while they were real with the soundest part of his countrymen ”

“ He put himself under obligation--in moments of supreme need--to dangerous persons, and suffered from the familiarity and perhaps the contempt of some who were his inferiors in breeding, in heart, and in soul. ”

“ Your enemies talk of treachery in the vain and fallacious hope of creating it; but you, who scorn equally to be their dupe or slaves, will meet their forgeries with dignified contempt, incapable of being either goaded into untimely violence, or sunk into pusillanimous despondency. ”

“ They dislike, therefore, to hear of 'contempt' of themselves. So I will appeal to their pride. ”

“ To make laws that man can not and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. ”

“ Any other cause, besides contempt, through which a man suffers an injury, takes away from the notion of injury: contempt or slight alone adds to the motive of anger, and consequently is of itself the cause of anger. ”

“ Moral contempt is a far greater indignity and insult than any kind of crime. ”

“ Contempt is a kind of gangrene, which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees. ”

“ But if he have no choice in the case, if there be no alternative presented to him but a dereliction of duty or the opprobrium of those who are denominated the world, he merits the contempt as well as the indignation of his country who can hesitate which to embrace. ”

“ He knows that the indifference of contempt, which is professed a hundred times in human society for once that it is really felt, may be better and more bitingly conveyed in a subordinate clause than in the main sentence. ”

“ To reprove those, that although they confesse the power in words, yet in their deeds resist it, nor do they respect it farther then it makes for their lusts.
Doctrine 7. The effect of contempt is, to reproach a man, and speak evill of him.
Reason. Because reproaches and contumelies come properly from pride, whereby a man thinks himself better then another. For otherwise he could not reproach another man, but the same reproach would fall upon himselfe also. Contempt is the daughter of pride, and the mother of such nephewes. ”

“ Their habit of contempt is tranquil, it is without vaunt and without vanity, but it is almost constant, and they dwell with difficulty in that middle or neutral state which neither reverences nor despises. ”

“ We know that human laws do bind in the case of scandal or contempt. But that nonconformity is neither scandal nor contempt, Parker hath made it most evident.123 For, as touching contempt, he showeth out of fathers, councils, canon law, schoolmen, and modern divines, that non obedire is not contempt, but nolle obedire, or superbiendo repugnare. Yea, out of Formalists themselves, he showeth the difference betwixt subjection and obedience. Thereafter he pleadeth thus, and we with him: “What signs see men in us of pride and contempt? ”

“ But it happened, on the contrary, that I had a perfect craze for being despised. I doted on it, and considered contempt a sort of luxury that I was in continual fear of losing. Why not? Wherefore should any rational person shrink from contempt, if it happen to form the tenure by which he holds his repose in life? The cases which are cited from comedy of such a yearning after contempt, stand upon a footing altogether different: there the contempt is wooed as a serviceable ally and tool of religious hypocrisy. But to me, at that era of life, it formed the main guaranty of an unmolested repose ”

“ They have thus earned a large allowance of general contempt, and they have nowhere, perhaps, excited a stronger feeling of disgust than in the minds of those who thought themselves compelled, by a rigid conscience, to give a seeming concurrence to their proceedings. ”

“ Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it. ”

“ There are innumerable modes of insult and tokens of contempt, for which it is not easy to find a name, which vanish to nothing in an attempt to describe them, and yet may, by continual repetition, make day pass after day in sorrow and in terrour. ”

“ Yet, if, after this, people persist in blaming you, abandon any further defence of yourself, and conquer by silence, modesty, and patience.
5. Prudence has its own part to play in the conflict; for there is no better way of dealing with insults than by treating them with contempt. He who gives way to anger looks as if he acknowledged the truth of the accusation. ”

“ You must foresee what it is, and you probably rejoice at the prospect which it holds out to you of escape from an attachment which, though it has often stood between you and danger and disgrace, you treat with contempt when not forced to have recourse to it. ”

“ If there is any man in the community that excites my contempt, and that ought to excite the contempt of every man and woman, it is the soft-handed, soft-headed fop, who, perfumed until the air is actually sick, spends his summer in taking killing attitudes, and waving sentimental adieus, and talking infinitesimal nothings, and finding his heaven in the set of a lavender kid-glove. ”

“ Reflect on the things which goad man into destroying man: you will find that they are hope, envy, hatred, fear, and contempt. 2. Now, of all these, contempt is the least harmful, so much so that many have skulked behind it as a sort of cure. When a man despises you, he works you injury, to be sure, but he passes on; and no one persistently or of set purpose does hurt to a person whom he despises. Even in battle, prostrate soldiers are neglected: men fight with those who stand their ground. ”

“ In vain may the suffrage of the public be in our favour; contempt is so much the more stinging as it is unusual and rare. In vain may we retaliate with censures yet mo^e biting and keen; resentment and revenge always suppose a sense of guilt; and, be sides, the chagrin of having encountered scorn is so much more lively than any pleasure that can accrue from retorting it. Lastly, from the moment that you live solely for the world, and that your pleasures or your vexations depend wholly on it, the judgments of the world can never be indifferent to you. ”

“ And because all signs of hatred, or contempt, provoke to fight; insomuch as most men choose rather to hazard their life, than not to be revenged; we may in the eighth place, for a law of nature, set down this precept, that no man by deed, word, countenance, or gesture, declare hatred, or contempt of another. ”

“ His malice was aimed at himself; with shame and contempt he recollected his “cowardice.” ”