Who can refute a sneer? [ Paley ]
Familiarity breeds contempt. [ Proverb ]
To be too busy gets contempt. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Some evils are cured by contempt. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Too much familiarity breeds contempt. [ Proverb ]
Happy that I can
Be crossed and thwarted as a man,
Not left in God's contempt apart,
With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart,
Tame in earth's paddock, as her prize. [ Browning ]
Valor is the contempt of death and pain. [ Tacitus ]
Contempt leaves a deeper scar than anger.
Many can bear adversity, but few contempt. [ Proverb ]
Contempt is frequently regulated by fashion. [ Zimmermann ]
Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt. [ B. Franklin ]
An Englishman fears contempt more than death. [ Goldsmith ]
Nothing so contemptible as habitual contempt. [ E. L. Magoon ]
Contemptuous people are sure to be contemptible. [ Chamfort ]
Contempt is the only way to triumph over calumny. [ Madame de Maintenon ]
Those only are despicable who fear to be despised. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
I find my familiarity with thee has bred contempt. [ Cervantes ]
Contempt is usually worse borne than real injuries. [ Proverb ]
Contempt will cause Spite to drink of her own poison. [ Proverb ]
No man can fall into contempt but those who deserve it. [ Johnson ]
None but the contemptible are apprehensive of contempt. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Hate injures no one; it is contempt that casts men down. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Contempt should be the best concealed of our sentiments.
Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them. [ Seneca ]
Life in harmony with virtue is the only life safe from contempt. [ Edwin P. Whipple ]
A man gains nothing by being vain-glorious, but contempt and hatred. [ Proverb ]
Nothing, says Longinus, can be great, the contempt of which is great. [ Addison ]
Contempt for private wrongs was one of the features of ancient morals. [ Joubert ]
Pride is the consciousness of what one is, without contempt for others. [ Senac de Meilhan ]
Alas! poor human nature, pity, if hard pressed, degenerates into contempt. [ J. G. Saxe ]
O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful in the contempt and anger of his lip! [ William Shakespeare ]
Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration. [ Hazlitt ]
Love of glory can only create a great hero; contempt of it creates a great man. [ Talleyrand ]
Teach not thy lip such scorn; for it was made for kissing, lady, not for such contempt. [ William Shakespeare ]
Excellence and greatness of soul are most conspicuously displayed in contempt of riches.
The possession of great powers no doubt carries with it a contempt for mere external show. [ James A. Garfield ]
Contempt is like the hot iron that brands criminals: its imprint is. almost always indelible. [ Alibert ]
Be not too familiar with thy servants; at first it may beget love, but in the end it will breed contempt. [ Fuller ]
The spirit of contempt is the true spirit of Antichrist; for no other is more directly opposed to Christ. [ Henry Giles ]
Contempt is a kind of gangrene which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees. [ Johnson ]
There is no room in the universe for the least contempt or pride; but only for a gentle and a reverent heart. [ James Martineau ]
The best philosophy to employ toward the world is to alloy the sarcasm of gayety with the indulgence of contempt. [ Chamfort ]
Of all human actions, pride seldomest obtains its end; for, aiming at honor and reputation, it reaps contempt and derision. [ Walker ]
I have unlearned contempt; it is a sin that is engendered earliest in the soul, and doth beset it like a poison worm feeding on all its beauty. [ Willis ]
The disesteem and contempt of others is inseparable from pride. It is hardly possible to overvalue ourselves but by undervaluing our neighbors. [ Clarendon ]
Famine is in thy cheeks. Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes. Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back; The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law. [ William Shakespeare ]
Seek not proud riches, but such as thou may'st get justly use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly; yet have no abstract nor friarly contempt of them. [ Bacon ]
Speak with contempt of no man. Every one hath a tender sense of reputation. And every man hath a sting, which he may, if provoked too far, dart out at one time or other. [ Burton ]
There is no real elevation of mind in a contempt of little things; it is, on the contrary, from too narrow views that we consider those things of little importance which have in fact such extensive consequences. [ Fenelon ]
Every fiction since Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of death. These are the highest virtues; and the fictions which taught them were therefore of the highest, though not of unmixed, utility. [ Sir J. Mackintosh ]
Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several - from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy. [ La Bruyere ]
Boasting and bravado may exist in the breast even of the coward, if he is successful through a mere lucky hit: but a just contempt of an enemy can alone arise in those who feel that they are superior to their opponent by the prudence of their measures. [ Thucydides ]
It would not be more unreasonable to transplant a favorite flower out of black earth into gold dust than it is for a person to let money-getting harden his heart into contempt, or into impatience, of the little attentions, the merriments and the caresses of domestic life. [ Mountford ]
There are persons of that general philanthropy and easy tempers, which the world in contempt generally calls good-natured, who seem to be sent into the world with the same design with which men put little fish into a pike pond, in order only to be devoured by that voracious water-hero. [ Fielding ]
A literary career is a more thorny path than that which leads to fortune. If you have the misfortune not to rise above mediocrity, you feel mortified for life; and if you are successful, a host of enemies spring up against you. Thus you find yourself on the brink of an abyss between contempt and hatred. [ Voltaire ]
True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt; its essence is love: it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper. It is a sort of inverse sublimity, exalting, as it were, into our affections what is below us, while sublimity draws down into our affections what is above us. [ Carlyle ]
I have so great a contempt and detestation for meanness, that I could sooner make a friend of one who had committed murder, than of a person who could be capable, in any instance, of the former vice. Under meanness, I comprehend dishonesty; under dishonesty, ingratitude; under ingratitude, irreligion; and under this latter, every species of vice and immorality in human nature. [ Sterne ]