Contempt Quotes - Page 9

• Go let thy less than woman's hand Assume the distaff not the brand.

  Lord Byron

  Hands, Assuming, Brands

  Lord Byron (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron (Illustrated)”, p.789, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing has so exposed men of learning to contempt and ridicule as their ignorance of things which are known to all but themselves. Those who have been taught to consider the institutions of the schools as giving the last perfection to human abilities are surprised to see men wrinkled with study, yet wanting to be instructed in the minute circumstances of propriety, or the necessary form of daily transaction; and quickly shake off their reverence for modes of education which they find to produce no ability above the rest of mankind.

  Samuel Johnson

  School, Ignorance, Men

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “Works”, p.420

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Republican Party and the conservative movement cannot unify around a single proposition, and the Democrats easily do. They have total contempt for us.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Party, Movement, Conservative

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think that what's actually happening is the collapse of the Center - the centrist semi-coalitions, mildly social-democrat, mildly conservative, that have been running the countries for years. They are severely declining. You can see it in voting; you can see it also in popular attitudes: contempt for what are called "the élites," the experts, the people in charge.

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, Country, Attitude

  Source: www.brooklynrail.org

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A schmuck is a general term of disrespect. It's a term of contempt and derision. It applies to a lot of people.

  Jackie Mason

  People, Disrespect, Schmucks

  Source: spectator.org

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Where strictness of grammar does not weaken expression, it should be attended to. . . . But where, by small grammatical negligences, the energy of an idea is condensed, or a word stands for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Writing, Expression, Ideas

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: 1799-1803”, p.321, Cosimo, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Expectations are usually predicated on the idea that the everyday things that happen to ordinary people shouldn't happen to you. People hold the idea of being ordinary in absolute contempt, so when they face an illness, poverty, or any kind of catastrophe, they say, "I can't believe this happened to me." And who did you think it was going to happen to - the woman across the street? It makes them think, "I must be on the wrong path." But what if something you thought was bad was the best thing that ever happened to you? What if that was part of your path?

  Caroline Myss

  Believe, Thinking, Ideas

  Source: www.oprah.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Eye, Self, Soul

  "Strivings of the Negro People" (1897)

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• The people whose necks hurt when I write about the Middle East tend to live in Brooklyn or Boca Raton: the kind of Zionist who pays another man to live in Israel for him. I have nothing but contempt for such people.

  Tony Judt

  Hurt, Writing, Men

  8 Copy quote

• There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity -- like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar.

  Molly Ivins

  Powerful, Two, People

  "The Mouth of Texas", People Weekly, December 9, 1991.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's the only condition I know. Bitter Love, Loneliness, contempt for corruption, blind hope. It's where I live. A permanent state of bereavement. This is nothing new.

  Gregory Maguire

  Loneliness, Bereavement, Bitter

  4 Copy quote

• I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBois’s learning and Baldwin’s love and Langston’s humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art’s redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels.

  Barack Obama

  Art, Men, Self

  Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams From My Father”, p.86, Canongate Books

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don’t know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who’ve never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt, and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you’ve felt what it means to love as you and I know it – the total passion for the total height – you’re incapable of anything less.

  Ayn Rand

  Love, Life, Sympathy

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.572, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• She, too, had worn a mask in assuming a contempt for him, whilst, as a matter of fact, she completely misunderstood him

  Baroness Orczy

  Misunderstood, Matter, Facts

  Baroness Orczy (2015). “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, p.143, Xist Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Start dating someone who is funny, someone who has what in high school you called a "really great sense of humor" and what now your creative writing class calls "self-contempt giving rise to comic form." Write down all of his jokes, but don't tell him you are doing this. Make up anagrams of his old girlfriend's name and name all of your socially handicapped characters with them. Tell him his old girlfriend is in all of your stories and then watch how funny he can be, see what a really great sense of humor he can have.

  Lorrie Moore

  Girlfriend, Writing, School

  7 Copy quote

• Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand, or are you mongoloids really talking about me?

  John Kennedy Toole

  Attitude, Hands, Talking

  John Kennedy Toole (1980). “A Confederacy of Dunces”, p.89, Dubois Publishing

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development.

  Agnes Repplier

  Strong, Writing, Careers

  Agnes Repplier (1895). “Essays in Miniature”

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• Since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don’t have to have contempt for its manipulability in the way we might with actual people. It’s all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Technology, Mirrors, People

  Jonathan Franzen (2012). “Farther Away”, p.11, HarperCollins UK

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... don't ever underestimate people, don't ever underestimate the pleasure they receive from viewing pain that is not their own... Pain by itself is just Pain. But Pain + Distance can = entertainment, voyeurism, human interest, cinéma vérité, a good belly chuckle, a sympathetic smile, a raised eyebrow, disguised contempt.

  Zadie Smith

  Pain, Distance, Eyebrows

  Zadie Smith (2003). “White Teeth”, p.177, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Familiarity breeds contempt, but without a little familiarity it's impossible to breed anything.

  Noel Coward

  Sex, Littles, Impossible

  22 Copy quote

• In all my life I have treated the press with marked contempt and remarkable success.

  Robert Menzies

  Party, Remarkable, Treated

  5 Copy quote

• You have very little morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, People, Disrespect

  13 Copy quote

• I believe we're going to find that respect and affection are essential to all relationships working and contempt destroys them.

  John M. Gottman

  Love, Trust, Respect

  85 Copy quote

• The customs of God's people and the institutions of our ancestors are to be considered as laws. And those who throw contempt on the customs of the Church ought to be punished as those who disobey the law of God.

  Saint Augustine

  Law, People, Church

  4 Copy quote

• The divide of race has been America's constant curse. Each new wave of immigrants gives new targets to old prejudices. Prejudice and contempt, cloaked in the pretense of religious or political conviction, are no different. They have nearly destroyed us in the past. They plague us still. They fuel the fanaticism of terror. They torment the lives of millions in fractured nations around the world. These obsessions cripple both those who are hated and, of course, those who hate, robbing both of what they might become.

  William J. Clinton

  Religious, Hate, Past

  10 Copy quote