129 Quotes About Contempt

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. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Disregard for those who are smaller and weaker is this the best defense against a breakthrough of one's own feelings of helplessness: it is an expression of this split-off weakness. The strong person who- because he has experienced it- knows the he, too, carries this weakness within himself does not need to demonstrate his strength through contempt.

It is considered a rather cheerful axiom that all Americans distrust politicians. (No one takes the further and less cheerful step of considering just what effect this mutual contempt has on either the public or the politicians, who have, indeed, very little to do with one another.)

Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life...

I'm not at all contemptuous of comforts, but they have their place and it is not first.

Soon he essentially stopped talking. "I am retreating into silence as a defensive mode," he mentioned. Eventually, he was down to uttering just five words, and only to guards: yes; no; please; thank you. "I am surprised," he wrote, "by the amount of respect this garners me. That silence intimidates puzzles me. Silence is to me normal, comfortable." Later he added, "I will admit to feeling a little contempt for those who can't keep quiet.

Ever wondered why as we grow up, we stop asking for a hand? As contempt becomes certain, and the payoff gets scant.

The muscle above his lip began to tremble uncontrollably as he tried to hold back all the furor piping up inside him like a furnace full of hot coals but it was searing at his innards.

He himself was one of your noisy roisterers, for whom life holds no greater pleasures than wine and bought women. Outside these two poles of existence, he understood nothing. Braggart, brawler, contemptuous of every living person, he despised the whole world from the heights of his ignorance.