Quotes & Sayings About Despising

A hero worn out by his struggle, one who had sacrificed his youth - that was how he might present himself, not without effect. And it was true, in a way. He was physically brave, he had ideals, he was born a peasant and knew what it was to be despised. And she too, just now, had been despising him. — Alice Munro

The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Before, they had laughed at me, despising me for my ignorance and dullness; now, they hated me for my knowledge and understanding. Why? What in God's name did they want of me? — Daniel Keyes

How do our philosophers act? Do they not inscribe their signatures to the very essays they write on the propriety of despising glory. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising. — Aldous Huxley

And in the most brutal irony of all ironies, the esteemed high priest was mocking him, the one who wrote the law itself. The one appointed to offer sacrifices for blood atonement was despising the Lamb of God. Did they know that for centuries of the sacrificial system they'd been rehearsing the slaughter of the Messiah? — Matt Chandler

Depression was a very active state really. Even if you appeared to an observer to be immobilized, your mind was in a frenzy of paralysis. You were unable to function, but were actively despising yourself for it. — Lisa Alther

Sonnet 29
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings. — William Shakespeare

Olivia watched him through a blur of tears, despising the futility of it. For there was nothing she could say to comfort a man whose family was long dead; there was no balm to heal wounds that scored a man's soul; and there was no way to make a man believe in the ties that bind. — Laura Lee Guhrke

To have faith in Christ means more than simply despising the delights of this life. It means we should bear all our daily trials that may bring us sorrow, distress, or unhappiness, and bear them patiently for as long as God wishes and until He comes to visit us. For it is said, I waited on the Lord and He came to me. — Symeon The New Theologian

In Buddhism we would say that you are lazy ... Despising yourself, thinking you are no good, saying 'I can't do this.' This is the mind of weakness. You must work to overcome it . — David Michie

I heard you before, but I could not immediately determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say 'Yes,' that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of their premeditated contempt. — Jane Austen

She was only really a female to him.
But perhaps that was better. And after all, he was kind to the female in her, which no man had ever been. Men were very kind to the person she was, but rather cruel to the female, despising her or ignoring her altogether. Men were awfully kind to Constance Reid or to Lady Chatterley; but not to her womb they weren't kind. And he took no notice of Constance or of Lady Chatterley; he just softly stroked her loins or her breasts. — D.H. Lawrence

My litmus test of compatibility is 'Tom Cruise.' I hate people who hate Tom Cruise, cultural automatons who at the mention of his name reflexively bridle and say the diminutive thespian and Theta level Scientoligist is 'crazy' and 'a terrible actor'. They hate him because he's easy to hate. They think that despising Tom Cruise's lack of personality and supposed lack of talent is somehow a blow against the bland American Anschluss of the rest of the planet. Tom Cruise may indeed be the Christopher Columbus of the twentieth century, sent off by the kings of Hollywood to prove the new world of International Box Office isn't flat and to find a direct route into the Asian market, but the decline of everything isn't his fault; he's just a cinematic explorer and a damn fine actor. And hating him doesn't make you seditious- it makes you complicit. — Paul Beatty

A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I must not, like the quietists, reduce all religion to a denial of any specific action, despising all other means, since what makes perfection is God's order, and the means he ordains is best for the soul. — Jean-Pierre De Caussade

Therefore, in reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator. If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful, as we would avoid offering insult to him, not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears. In
despising the gifts, we insult the Giver. — John Calvin

Let me, if I may, be ever welcomed to my room in winter by a glowing hearth, in summer by a vase of flowers. If I may not, let me think how nice they would be and bury myself in my work. I do not think that the road to contentment lies in despising what we have not got. Let us acknowledge all good, all delight that the worlds holds, and be content without it. — George MacDonald

By despising all that has preceded us, we teach others to despise ourselves. — William Hazlitt

Lord Loss sows all the sorrows of the world
Lord Loss seeds the grief-starched trees
In the center of the web, lowly Lord Loss bows his head
Mangled hands, naked eyes
Fanged snakes his soul line
Curled inside like textured sin
Bloody, curdled sheets for skin
In the center of the web, vile Lord Loss torments the dead
Over strands of red, Lord Loss crawls
Dispensing pain, despising all
Shuns friends, nurtures foes
Ravages hope, breeds woe
Drinks moons, devours suns
Twirls his thumbs till the reaper comes
In the center of the web, lush Lord Loss is all that's left — Darren Shan

Careless of waste, wallowing in refuse, exterminating the enemies ... despising age, denying human natural history, fabricating pseudotraditions, swamped in the repeated personal crises of the aging preadolescent; all are familiar images of American society. They are signs of private nightmares of incoherence and disorder in broken climaxes where technologies in pursuit of mastery create ever-worsening problems - private nightmares expanded to a social level. — Paul Shepard

Among the many strange servilities mistaken for pieties, one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world, and vilifying human nature. — George Henry Lewes

Who then is free? The wise who can command his passions, who fears not want, nor death, nor chains, firmly resisting his appetites and despising the honors of the world, who relies wholly on himself, whose angular points of character have all been rounded off and polished. — Horace

She has changed in this way that motherhood changes you, so that you forget you ever had time for small things like despising the color pink. — Barbara Kingsolver

The greatest step forward in human evolution was made when society began to help the weak and the poor, instead of oppressing and despising them. — Maria Montessori

Perhaps you should spend less time despising the game and more time building the patients necessary to win. — Renee Ahdieh

Each of us thinks we have just cause for elevating ourselves and despising all others in comparison to ourselves - our self-love ruins us with such blindness. If, in fact, God has gifted us with something that is good in itself, we immediately make it the basis for praising ourselves to such a degree that we not only swell up but almost burst with pride. — John Calvin

Obsessed with success and wealth and despising failure and poverty, our society is systematically dividing the population into winners and losers, using institutions like the courts to speed the process. — Matt Taibbi

We're creating a dystopia, where the mania of the state isn't secrecy or censorship but unfairness. Obsessed with success and wealth and despising failure and poverty, our society is systematically dividing the population into winners and losers, using institutions like the courts to speed the process. Winners get rich and get off. Losers go broke and go to jail. It isn't just that some clever crook on Wall Street can steal a billion dollars and never see the inside of a courtroom; it's that, plus the fact that some black teenager a few miles away can go to jail just for standing on a street corner, that makes the whole picture complete. — Matt Taibbi

More men are ruined by underestimating the value of money than by overestimating it. Let us, then, abandon the affectation of despising money, and frankly own its value. — Orison Swett Marden

I go on writing in both respectable and despised genres because I respect them all, rejoice in their differences, and reject only the prejudice and ignorance that dismisses any book, unread, as not worth reading."
"On Despising Genres," essay — Ursula K. Le Guin

Don't be indifferent about any random idea that occurs to you, because each and every idea is for a particular purpose. it may not be beneficial to you, but can be what others are craving for — Michael Bassey Johnson

Each nation knowing it has the only true religion and the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each an ass and not suspecting it. — Mark Twain

The noblest people are those despising wealth , learning , pleasure and life ; esteeming above them poverty , ignorance , hardship and death . — Diogenes

A developed and decent man cannot be vain without a boundless exactingness towards himself and without despising himself at moments to the point of hatred. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As president, Nixon imposed wage and price controls, created the Environmental Protection Agency, initiated race-based hiring schemes, signed SALT I with the Soviets and instituted rapprochement with the Red Chinese. All of this resulted in liberals ... despising him even more! — Ann Coulter

Possessing Christ and despising the church is an intolerable contradiction. We cannot have Christ without embracing the church. — R.C. Sproul

He who has lived and thought can't help
despising people in his soul;
him who has felt disturbs
the ghost of irrecoverable days;
for him there are no more enchantments;
him does the snake of memories,
him does repentance bite. — Alexander Pushkin

Sooner or later I will realize that the very things I most desperately need are the very things I am unable to give myself. Therefore, I will either be left despising the fact that I am doomed to live out a life that is perpetually empty, or I will realize that an empty tomb is the single thing that will eternally fill me. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

He had always had a passion for life and the idealism he had come across seemed to him for the most part a cowardly shrinking from it. The idealist withdrew himself because he could not suffer the jostling of the human crowd; he had not the strength to fight and so called the battle vulgar; he was vain and since his fellows would not take him at his own estimate, consoled himself with despising his fellows. For Phillip, this type was Hayward, fair, languid, too fat now and rather bald, still cherishing the remains of his good looks and still delicately proposing to do exquisite things in the uncertain future; and at the back of this were whiskey and vulgar amours of the street. — W. Somerset Maugham

No one can hope that men who have fought in silence for four years and are now fighting all day long in the din of bombs and the crackle of guns will agree to the return of the forces of surrender and injustice under any circumstances. No one can expect that these men will again accept doing what the best and purest did for twenty-five years - that is, loving their country and silently despising her leaders, — Albert Camus

Despising each other as we did, we were constantly together, thereby degrading ourselves. If that is what the world calls friendship, the relations between Horiki and myself were undoubtedly those of friendship. — Osamu Dazai

The theory of a complete change of standards in human history does not merely deprive us of the pleasure of honouring our fathers; it deprives us even of the more modern and aristocratic pleasure of despising them. — G.K. Chesterton

She had the look of someone who'd declared herself, and seeing it, my indignation collapsed and her mutinous bath turned into something else entirely. She'd immersed herself in forbidden privileges, yes, but mostly in the belief she was worthy of those privileges. What she'd done was not a revolt, it was a baptism. I saw then what I hadn't seen before, that I was very good at despising slavery in the abstract, in the removed and anonymous masses, but in the concrete, intimate flesh of the girl beside me, I'd lost the ability to be repulsed by it. I'd grown comfortable with the particulars of evil. There's a frightful muteness that dwells at the center of all unspeakable things, and I had found my way into it. As Handful began to shove the vessel back across the piazza, I tried to speak. ". . . . . . Wait. . . . . . I'll. . . . . . help . . ." She turned and looked at me, and we both knew. My tongue would once again attempt its suicide. — Sue Monk Kidd

An important distinction needs to be made in politics between allowing your values to guide you and keeping religion and government separate. Liberals are rightly concerned about government-established and government-supported religion, especially in our religiously polyglot society. But their unwillingness to engage on policy at the level of transcendent and timeless values, for fear of something too moralistic or religious, yields too much ground to the radical political right, which has come to claim Christianity in particular to advance a deeply non-Christian agenda. Theirs is a faith based on intolerance, a faith without compassion. Hating homosexuals and despising immigrants instead of hating poverty and despising homelessness seems to miss the point of a life of faithfulness. — Deval Patrick

Why is it that if you say you don't enjoy using an e-reader, or that you aren't going to get one till the technology is mature, you get reported as "loathing" it?
The little Time article itself is fairly accurate about what I've said about e-reading, but the title of the series, "Famous Writers Who Loathe E-Books," reflects or caters to a silly idea: that not being interested in using a particular technology is the same as hating and despising it. — Ursula K. Le Guin

She spent the rest of the way home despising New York: anonymity, in virtuous terror; and the squeaking drainpipe, all-night light, ceaseless footfall, subway corridor, numbered door (3C).
('Master Misery') — Truman Capote

Courage ought to be guided by skill, and skill armed by courage. Neither should hardiness darken wit, nor wit cool hardiness. Be valiant as men despising death, but confident as unwonted to be overcome. — Philip Sidney

If we are to live with our feet on the ground, in touch with reality, we must help one another accept the fact that we who are christian are heirs to a body-despising, woman-fearing, sexually repressive religious tradition. If we are to continue as members of the church, we must challenge and transform it at the root. What is required is more than simply a "reformation." I am speaking of revolutionary transformation. Nothing less will do. — Carter Heyward

For so blindly do we all rush in the direction of self-love, that every one thinks he has a good reason for exalting himself and despising all others in comparison. — John Calvin

Contempt for flowers is an offence against God. The lovelier the flower, the greater the offence in despising it. The tulip is the loveliest of all flowers. So whoever despised the tulip offends God immeasurably. — Alexandre Dumas

The white man comes, pale as the dawn, with a load of thought, with a slumbering intelligence as a fire raked up, knowing well what he knows, not guessing but calculating; strong in community, yielding obedience to authority; of experienced race; of wonderful, wonderful common sense; dull but capable, slow but persevering, severe but just, of little humor but genuine; a laboring man, despising game and sport; building a house that endures, a framed house. He buys the Indian's moccasins and baskets, then buys his hunting-grounds, and at length forgets where he is buried and plows up his bones. — Henry David Thoreau

Of course, I hated my fellow clerks one and all, and I despised them all, yet at the same time I was, as it were, afraid of them. In fact, it happened at times that I thought more highly of them than of myself. It somehow happened quite suddenly that I alternated between despising them and thinking them superior to myself. A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments. But whether I despised them or thought them superior I dropped my eyes almost every time I met anyone. I even made experiments whether I could face so and so's looking at me, and I was always the first to drop my eyes. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The sceptics, a kind of nomads, despising all settled culture of the land, broke up from time to time all civil society. Fortunately their number was small, and they could not prevent the old settlers from returning to cultivate the ground afresh, though without any fixed plan or agreement. — Immanuel Kant

But it was a religion which enabled him to despise himself and everyone else without despising the universe, thus allowing him at once in argument or conversation to the advantages of the pessimist and the optimist. — Charles Williams

The tea party venerates the Constitution while despising the political system it has produced. — Gideon Rachman

I saw then what I hadn't seen before, that I was very good at despising slavery in the abstract, in the removed and anonymous masses, but in the concrete, intimate flesh of the girl beside me, I'd lost the ability to be repulsed by it. I'd grown comfortable with the particulars of evil. There's a frightful muteness that dwells at the center of all unspeakable things, and I had found my way into it. — Sue Monk Kidd

Despising anything that was easy to achieve because if no sacrifice was involved, it obviously isn't worth having. — Paulo Coelho

A decent, educated man cannot afford the luxury of vanity without being exceedingly exacting with himself and without occasionally despising himself to the point of hatred. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It is a stupid presumption to go about despising and condemning as false anything that seems to us improbable; this is a common fault in those who think they have more intelligence than the crowd. — Michel De Montaigne

He has as yet no perfect love, whose disposition towards men depends on what they are like, loving one and despising another for this or that, or sometimes loving, sometimes hating one and the same man. Blessed is the man who can love all men equally. — Maximus The Confessor

The path of bhakti, karma and love as expounded in the Gita leaves no room for the despising of man by man. — Mahatma Gandhi

More brave in despising gold as yet undiscovered, and so best situated while hidden in the earth, than in forcing it out for the uses of mankind, with a hand ready to make depredations on everything that is sacred. — Horace

Gluttony should be destroyed by self-control; unchastity by desire for God and longing for the blessings held in store; avarice by compassion for the poor; anger by goodwill and love for all men; worldly dejection by spiritual joy; listlessness by patience, perseverance and offering thanks to God; self-esteem by doing good in secret and by praying constantly with a contrite heart; and pride by not judging or despising anyone in the manner of the boastful Pharisee (cf. Lk. 18:11-12), and by considering oneself the least of all men. — John Of Damascus

Men know they are sexual exiles. They wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content. There is nothing in that anguished motion for women to envy. — Camille Paglia

Why am I despising you when I'm about to change your life? — John Le Carre

All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible. — Noah Webster

A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it. — W. Somerset Maugham

Proverbs 19:15-16 15 Lazy people sleep soundly, but idleness leaves them hungry. 16 Keep the commandments and keep your life; despising them leads to death. — Anonymous

If you're capable of despising your own behavior, you might just love yourself. — Criss Jami

Racial tensions are rife with pride - the pride of white supremacy, the pride of black power, the pride of intellectual analysis, the pride of anti-intellectual scorn, the pride of loud verbal attack, and the pride of despising silence, the pride that feels secure, and the pride that masks fear. Where pride holds sway, there is no hope for the kind of listening and patience and understanding and openness to correction that relationships require. — John Piper

It is a curious thing how poets tend to become ascetics ... Even a debauch for them is a self-flagellation. They go on the loose in cruelty against themselves, admitting that they are pandering to, and despising, the lower self. — D.H. Lawrence

Those who merely possess the goods of fortune may be haughty and insolent; ... they try to imitate the great-souled man without being really like him, and only copy him in what they can, reproducing his contempt for others but not his virtuous conduct. For the great-souled man is justified in despising other people - his estimates are correct; but most proud men have no good ground for their pride. — Aristotle.

True humility is not an abject, groveling, self-despising spirit; it is but a right estimate of ourselves as God sees us. — Tryon Edwards

He who has lived and thought can never
Help in his soul despising men,
He who has felt will be forever
Haunted by days he can't regain.
For him there are no more enchantments,
Him does the serpent of remembrance,
Him does repentance always gnaw.
All this will frequently afford
A great delight to conversations. — Alexander Pushkin

Would to God we were all Christians who profess to be Christians, and that we lived up to what we profess. Then would the Christian shine forth "clear as the sun, fair as the moon," and what besides - why, "amazing as an army with
banners"! A consistent Church is an amazing Church - an honest, upright Church would shake the world! The tramp of
godly men is the tramp of heroes; these are the thundering legions that sweep everything before them. The men that are
what they profess to be, hate the semblance of a lie - whatever shape it wears - and would sooner die than do that which is dishonest, or that which would be degrading to the glory of a Heaven-born race, and to the honor of Him by whose name they have been called! O Christians! You will be the world's contempt; you will be their despising, and hissing unless you live for one objective! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Love him,' said Jacques, with vehemence, 'love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last, since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, helas! in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty - they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty, you can give each other something which will make both of you better - forever - if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe.' He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. 'You play it safe long enough,' he said, in a different tone, 'and you'll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever - like me. — James Baldwin

You can't write any form of fiction unless you enjoy reading it. You must be sincere in your approach. It's no good despising the form. So many people think they could earn some money from writing something for which they have no affection. It won't work. The first thing you have to have is belief. — Charlotte Bingham

Now, having left cities behind me, turned
Away forever from the strange, gregarious
Huddling of men by stones, I find those various
Great towns I knew fused into one, burned
Together in the fire of my despising ... — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

He who denies his own vanity usually possesses it in so brutal a form that he instinctively shuts his eyes to avoid the necessity of despising himself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Blackthorne, beside the gates, was still turmoiled by his boundless joy at her reprieve and he remembered how his own will had been stretched that night of his near-seppuku, when he had had to get up as a man and walk home as a man unsupported, and became samurai. And he watched her, despising the need for this courage, yet understanding it, even honoring it. — James Clavell

It is a great deal to fight while despising war, to accept losing everything while still preferring happiness, to face destruction while cherishing the idea of a higher civilization. — Albert Camus

This was London, in all its filth and glory. Nostalgic for the past, while yearning to cast off the chains of bygone ages and step forward into the bright utopia of the future. Proud of its achievements, yet despising its own flaws. A monster in both size and nature, that would consume the unwary and spit them out again, in forms unrecognizable and undreamt.
London, the monster city. — Marie Brennan

It occurred to Susan that men were always waiting for something cataclysmic
love or war or a giant asteroid. Every man wanted to be a hot-headed Bruce Willis character, fighting against the evil foreign enemy while despising the domestic bureaucracy. Men just wanted to focus on one big thing, leaving the thousands of smaller messes for the women around them to clean up. — Bonnie Jo Campbell

Despising cowardice in others, I wished to prove myself no coward. Believing in the good, the gentle, the beautiful things of life, I addressed myself to the sweet duty of keeping these attributes for my children's sake and my own. And in striving to provide a living for them, I found a success beyond my wildest dreams. — Alice Foote MacDougall

There is no rest for the humble except in despising the great, whose only thought of the people is inspired by self-interest or sadism. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide; he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, life which should be high and full, lived for oneself, but not above all for others those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after. — Benito Mussolini

HEB12.1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, HEB12.2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. — Anonymous

Alas, I had always loved sorrow and grief, but only for myself, for myself; for them I wept in my pity. I stretched out my arms to them in my despair, accusing, cursing, and despising myself. I told them that I had done all this, I alone, that I had brought them corruption, contagion, and lies! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Society is invincible - to a certain degree. But your real life is your own, and nothing can touch it. There is no power on earth that can prevent your criticizing and despising mediocrity - nothing that can stop you retreating into splendour and beauty - into the thoughts and beliefs that make the real life - the real you. — E. M. Forster

Communism is the end of the economy as a separate and privileged field on which everything else depends while despising and fearing it. — Gilles Dauve

The idealist withdrew himself, because he could not suffer the jostling of the human crowd; he had not the strength to fight and so called the battle vulgar; he was vain, and since his fellows would not take him at his own estimate, consoled himself with despising his fellows. — W. Somerset Maugham

Oh!" said she, "I heard you before, but I could not immediately determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say 'Yes,' that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of their premeditated contempt. I have, therefore made up my mind to tell you, that I do not want to dance a reel at all--and now despise me if you dare."
"Indeed I do not dare. — Jane Austen

The contempt of riches in the philosophers was a concealed desire of revenging on fortune the injustice done to their merit, by despising the good she denied them. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Any objection to the carryings on of our present golden-calf Christianity is met with the triumphant reply, "But we are winning them!" And winning them to what? To true discipleship? To cross-carrying? To self-denial? To separation from the world? To crucifixion of the flesh? To holy living? To nobility of character? To a despising of the world's treasures? To hard self-discipline? To love for God? To total committal to Christ? Of course the answer to all these questions is no. — A.W. Tozer

I haven't any objection to your thoroughly despising me, right now, because I'm convinced you'll come to love me. You'll find I have some tremendous abysses, some huge, focused emotions that fools think of as vices, but you'll never find me lazy, and you'll never find me ungrateful. In a word, I'm neither a pawn nor a bishop, my young friend, but a castle. — Honore De Balzac

Look at me, I'm not worthy of your anger, I'm nothing but a dumb animal who can't prevent the noisy symptoms of his decay, so don't waste your time with me, don't dirty your hands by hitting me, just try to put up with the fact that I exist. I'm not asking you to like me, I know that's impossible, because I'm not likeable, but at least do me the kindness of despising me enough to ignore me — Roland Topor

Julius brooded. He could see Julius despising the medical school of Pavia. Tobie said, Nicholas managed the journey from Flanders all right. Deferred to you, joked discreetly with me, got on like a dyeworks on fire with the muleteers. — Dorothy Dunnett