It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.
Arthur Machen
Wit is the most rascally, contemptible, beggarly thing on the face of the earth.
Arthur Murphy
In politics nothing is contemptible.
Benjamin Disraeli
There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.
Bertrand Russell
I've always been that contemptible thing, a luxury communist.
Bruce Robinson
The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.
Charles Caleb Colton
When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man.
Diogenes
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Edmund Burke
Whatsoever is done out of pure love, be it ever so little or contemptible in the sight of men, is wholly fruitful; for God measures more with how much love one worketh, than the amount he doeth.
Ellen G. White
Only the contemptible fear contempt.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.
George Eliot
Taught to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject and contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the dignity of Man which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for great and useful purposes.
George Mason
There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.
Henry Fielding
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.
Mary Astell
How can a Man respect his Wife when he has a contemptible Opinion of her and her Sex?
For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible; which is one of those disgraceful things which a prince must guard against.
Niccolo Machiavelli
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
Samuel Butler