Top 159 Contemptible Quotes & Sayings

There are some vile and contemptible men who, allowing themselves to be conquered by misfortune, seek a refuge in death.

Wit is the most rascally, contemptible, beggarly thing on the face of the earth.

Only the contemptible fear contempt.

Personally, I feel that it is the most contemptible thing for a politician to seek personal gains from politics.

There is no creature so contemptible but by resolution may gain his point.

What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets ? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.

An ignorant man is insignificant and contemptible; nobody cares for his company, and he can just be said to live, and that is all.

Nothing is so contemptible as the sentiments of the mob.

Of all the vulgar arts of government, that of solving every difficulty that might arise by thrusting the hand into the public purse is the most illusory and contemptible.

With every exertion, the best of men can do but a moderate amount of good; but it seems in the power of the most contemptible individual to do incalculable mischief.

Frenchmen are like gunpowder, each by itself smutty and contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed!

Contemptuous people are sure to be contemptible.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

If a great man struggling with misfortunes is a noble object, a little man that despises them is no contemptible one.

Not being ambitious of martyrdom, even in the cause of gastronomical enterprise, especially if the instrument is to be a contemptible, rank-smelling fungus, I never eat or cook mushrooms.

Jealousy is not contemptible, real love has a beak and claws.

None of God's Creatures absolutely consider'd are in their own Nature Contemptible; the meanest Fly, the poorest Insect has its Use and Vertue.

A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.

Sexual morality - as society in its extreme form, the American, defines it - is contemptible. I advocate an incomparably freer sexual life.

Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.

We gave him a hearty welcome, for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man.

Poverty is only contemptible when it is felt to be so. Doubtless the best way to make our poverty respectable is to seem never to feel it as an evil.

The French, for example, are a contemptible nation.

In politics, nothing is contemptible.

None but the contemptible are apprehensive of contempt.

There is no being so poor and so contemptible, who does not think there is somebody still poorer, and still more contemptible.

Nothing that isn't a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.

The unarmed man is not just defenseless - he is also contemptible.

An old man at school is a contemptible and ridiculous object.

There is nothing contemptible about an intoxicated man - if it is nothing more than a bookful of words or a roomful of notes that he has got drunk on.

I've always been that contemptible thing, a luxury communist.

There is nothing more contemptible than a bald man who pretends to have hair.

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.

The American girl makes a servant of her husband and then finds him contemptible for being a servant

To my eye Rubens' colouring is most contemptible. His shadows are a filthy brown somewhat the colour of excrement.

The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a But.

Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation.

The trite objects of human efforts-possessions, superficial success, luxury-have always seemed contemptible to me.

Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge.

People like Mr. Hitchens are ready to fight to the last drop of other people's blood, and it's utterly and completely contemptible.

[F]or contemporary judgment does not recognize that much depth of soul is needed to light up the picture drawn from contemptible life and elevate it into a pearl of creation.

It seems to me that the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is difficult. He is contemptible in that his judgments reflect a vision of himself which in his ignorance and pride he would impose upon the world. I implore you, do not become a moralist; you will destroy your art and your mind.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

Age is rarely despised but when it is, contemptible.

Nothing is so contemptible as that affectation of wisdom, which some display, by universal incredulity.

the whole purport of literature...is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.

There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.

What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?

There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.

Yesterday misspent can't be recall'd Vanity makes beauty contemptible Wisdom is more valuable than riches.

It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.

Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose Public Records to be true.

Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.

Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.

Complaint is. more contemptible than pitiful.

How can a Man respect his Wife when he has a contemptible Opinion of her and her Sex?

War, like children's fights, are meaningless, pitiless, and contemptible.

People only see in us the contemptible skirt-fever which rules our actions but completely miss the beauty-hunger underlying it.