A nation cannot afford to do a mean thing. [ Charles Sumner ]

An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. [ Dr. Samuel Johnson ]

Who gives a trifle meanly, is meaner than the trifle. [ Lavater ]

Good-humor is allied to generosity, ill-humor to meanness. [ Greville ]

There has never been a man mean and at the same time virtuous. [ Confucius ]

There are some things I am afraid of: I am afraid to do a mean thing. [ James A. Garfield ]

We can easily forgive want of means; but littleness, with means, is disgusting. [ Mme. de Lambert ]

The mean man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom meanness withholds some important benefit. [ Emerson ]

Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived. [ Colton ]

The tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, it is a meanness to calculate the difference. [ Thackeray ]

Good-humor will sometimes conquer ill-humor, but ill-humor will conquer it oftener; and for this plain reason, good-humor must operate on generosity, ill-humor on meanness. [ Greville ]

There is something in meanness? which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred. [ Thomas Paine ]

Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength; there is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage. [ Hazlitt ]

Money never can be well managed if sought solely through the greed of money for its own sake. In all meanness there is a defect of intellect as well as of heart. And even the cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

I have great hope of a wicked man, slender hope of a mean one. A wicked man may be converted and become a prominent saint. A mean man ought to be converted six or seven times, one right after the other, to give him a fair start and put him on an equality with a bold, wicked man. [ Beecher ]

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 ]