quotations about contempt
Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever. It implies a discovery of weakness, which we are much more careful to conceal than crimes.
LORD CHESTERFIELD
letter to his son, July 1, 1748
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by Scripture. Enjoy, Sir, your insensibility of feeling and reflecting. It is the prerogative of animals. And no man will envy you those honors, in which a savage only can be your rival, and a bear your master.
THOMAS PAINE
letter to Sir William Howe, March 1, 1778
A little quiet contempt contributes greatly to the elegance of life.
MARY ANN EVANS
The Lifted Veil
Our contempt for others proves nothing but the illiberality and narrowness of our own views.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
There was nothing offensive in the quiet politeness of her voice; but following his high note of enthusiasm, her voice struck a tone that seemed flat and deadly in its indifference--as if the two sounds mingled into an audible counterpoint around the melodic thread of her contempt.
AYN RAND
The Fountainhead
Perhaps feeling contempt is a psychological mechanism to make one's fears manageable.
J. THOMAS LINDBLAD
Roots of Violence in Indonesia
He regarded the obvious with the same contempt most of us reserve for wine spritzers.
ERIC WEINER
The Geography of Genius
Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.
BIBLE
Daniel 12:2
Christ saw much in this world to weep over, and much to pray over: but he saw nothing in it to look upon with contempt.
EDWIN HUBBELL CHAPIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
There is no room in the universe for the least contempt or pride; but only for a gentle and a reverent heart.
JAMES MARTINEAU
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
When wickedness comes, so does contempt,
and with shame comes reproach.
KING SOLOMON
Proverbs 18:3
How could man have such utter contempt for man? Because he had reached the point of contempt for God.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
speech delivered at the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, March 23, 2000
Men despise what they do not understand.
HUGH JAMES ROSE
The Commission and Consequent Duties of the Clergy
Every exercise of power incorporates a faint, almost imperceptible, element of contempt for those over whom the power is exercised. One can only dominate another human soul if one knows, understands, and with the utmost tact despises the person one is subjugating.
SANDOR MARAI
Embers
CONTEMPT, n. The feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
The mind that is too ready at contempt and reprobation is, I may say, as a clenched fist that can give blows, but is shut up from receiving and holding ought that is precious.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain's Notebook
If the pleasure of normal contempt is often tinged with complacency, self-satisfaction, and smugness, or even with a simple and less culpable delight in one's own superiority or in the sentimentality of pity, the pleasure in upward contempt is seldom separable from the knowledge that the superior you hold in contempt is humiliating himself, is, in short, looking foolish.
WILLIAM IAN MILLER
The Anatomy of Disgust
Contempt is a kind of gangrene which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
"Blackmore", The works of Samuel Johnson
The spirit of contempt is the true spirit of Antichrist; for no other is more directly opposed to Christ.
HENRY GILES
sermon preached at the Union Street Brick Church in Bangor, Maine, October 24, 1847