scorn quotes

  • What helps it now, that Byron bore, With haughty scorn which mocked the smart, Through Europe to the Aetolian shore The pageant of his bleeding heart? That thousands counted every groan, And Europe made his woe her own?

    - Matthew Arnold
      Poems: Second Series,'Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse', l.133^8.

  • Since Man with that inconstancy was born, To love the absent, and the present scorn. Why do we deck, why do we dress For such a short-liv'd happiness?

    - Brendan Francis Behan
      Lycidus,'To Alexis in  Answer to his Poem against Fruition,' stanza 3.

  • But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,HetrustedontheL that hewoulddeliverhim: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDPsalms 22:6^8.

  • Laugh no man to scorn in the bitterness of his soul: for there is one which humbleth and exalteth.

    -Bible (Apocrypha)
    Ecclesiasticus 7:11.

  • Inspiring, bold John Barleycorn! What dangers thou canst make us scorn! Wi' tippenny, we fear nae evil; Wi'usquabae, we'll face the devil!

    - Robert Burns
      'Tam o' Shanter.  A  Tale'.'Usquabae' = whisky.

  • Il n'est pas de destin que ne se surmonte par le me  pris. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

    - Albert Camus
      Le Mythe de Sisyphe ( The Myth of Sisyphus,1955).

  • A little disdain is not amiss; a little scorn is alluring.

    -William Congreve
      Lady Wishfort to Foible. The Way of the World, act 3, sc.5.

  • Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my languish and restore the light; With dark forgetting of my care return. And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill adventured youth: Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn Without the torment of the night's untruth.

    - Samuel Daniel
      Delia, sonnet 54.

  • Learn then to dance, you that are princes born, And lawful lords of earthly creatures all; Imitate them, and thereof take no scorn, (For this new art to them is natural) And imitate the stars celestial. For when pale death your vital twist shall sever, Your better parts must dance with them forever.

    - SirJohn Davies
      Orchestra, or a Poem of Dancing, stanza 60.

  • What I have left is from my native spring; I've still a heart that swells, in scorn of fate, And lifts me to my banks.

    -John Dryden
      All for Love, or The World Well Lost, act 3.

  • I know that Ihavethe bodyof a weak and feeble woman, but I havetheheart and stomach of a kingand a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.

    -Elizabeth I
       Address at Tilbury on the approach of the Spanish Armada.

  • Still on Israel's head forlorn Every nation heaps its scorn. 496

    - Emma Lazarus
     'The World's  Justice'.

  • Human nature is the same everywhere; it deifies success, it has nothing but scorn for defeat.

    - Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain
      Joan of Arc, bk.1, ch.8.

  • For generations the British bourgeoisie have spoken of themselves as gentlemen, and by that they have meant, among other things, a self-respecting scorn of irregular perquisites. It is the quality that distinguishes the gentleman from both the artist and the aristocrat.

    - Evelyn Arthur StJohn Waugh
      Decline and Fall, pt.1, ch.6.

  •    In this House, which is termed a place of free speech, there is nothing so necessary for the preservation of the Prince and State as free speech; and without it, it is a scorn and a mockery to call it a Parliament House, for in truth it is none but a very school of flatteryand dissimulation, and so fit a place to serve the devil and his angels in, and not to glorify God and benefit the Commonwealth.

    - Peter Wentworth
      House of Commons, 8 Feb.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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