Detraction Quotes & Sayings

ILLUSTRIOUS, adj. Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and detraction. — Ambrose Bierce

The world the gods made is too big for us, so we make ourselves a smaller one. — Sarah Micklem

I certainly have many enemies, and this is what will be my destruction if I am destroyed; of that I am certain; not Meletus, nor yet Anytus, but the envy and detraction of the world, which has been the death of many good men, and will probably be the death of many more; there is no danger of my being the last of them. — Plato

So long as woman labors to second man's endeavors and exalt his sex above her own, her virtues pass unquestioned; but when shedares to demand rights and privileges for herself, her motives, manners, dress, personal appearance, and character are subjects for ridicule and detraction. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I grew up with a lot of boys. I probably have a lot of testosterone for a woman. — Cameron Diaz

Time will come; we will plant trees to other planets! I see the orange trees and the cherries in the far lands beyond the earth. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Every day in life there are challenges; whether you're an accountant, a race car driver or whatever you do. — Justin Allgaier

I do not truly consider myself an icon, but the Cube has been quite successful. — Erno Rubik

Keith's [Briffa] series ... differs in large part in exactly the opposite direction that Phil's [Jones] does from ours. This is the problem we all picked up on (everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably consensus viewpoint we'd like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann et al series). — Michael E. Mann

There are sounds to seasons. There are sounds to places, and there are sounds to every time in one's life. ALISON WYRLEY BIRCH — Julia Cameron

Love is where unseen and unsaid things
merge with each other
where silence is thirsty of happenings — Seema Gupta

O this itch of the ear, that breaks out at the tongue! Were not curiosity so over-busy, detraction would soon be starved to death. — Douglas William Jerrold

Surely, if we considered detraction to be bred of envy, nested only in deficient minds, we should find that the applauding of virtue would win us far more honor than the seeking slyly to disparage it. That would show we loved what we commended, while this tells the world we grudge at what we want in ourselves. — Owen Feltham

Most houses were crammed with immovable objects in their proper places, and each object told you what to do - here you ate, here you slept, here you sat. I tried to imagine carpets, wardrobes, pictures, chairs, a sewing machine, in these gaping, smashed-up rooms. I was pleased by how irrelevant, how puny such objects now appeared. — Ian McEwan

By the general love of scandal and detraction in Dublin, one might reasonably imagine they were all to feed themselves through the holes which they had made in the characters of others. — Laetitia Pilkington

Our true nature is free of any and all notions of gender, of any notions of difference whatsoever. — Andrew Cohen

Maybe my greater fear should not be fear itself, but what I will lose should I submit to fear. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing which scares virtue. — Leonardo Da Vinci

A wise man seeks much counsel ... a fool listens to all of it. — Larry Burkett

There's nothing like being young, and happy, and fighting. — Mike Tyson

Black detraction will find faults where they are not. — Philip Massinger

Newton found that a star, examined through a glass tarnished by smoke, was diminished into a speck of light. But no smoke ever breathed so thick a mist as envy or detraction. — Robert Aris Willmott

What is in that word "honor"? What is that "honor"? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 'Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore, I'll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism. — William Shakespeare

He treats the person as if they were fully whole.
We become what others expect us to be. Dad expected me to get better and even assumed I would have something helpful to say. Funny how we rise and fall to the assumptions of others. — Nathan Foster

There is no detraction worse than to overpraise a man, for if his worth proves short of what report doth speak of him, his own actions are ever giving the lie to his honor. — Owen Feltham

Detraction's a bold monster, and fears not
To wound the fame of princes, if it find
But any blemish in their lives to work on. — Philip Massinger

Yes, I'm always - I'm always surprised when you make a film and you live with it a while and you put it out, you never dream that anybody is ever going to want to really see it. — Clint Eastwood

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

Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply; for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle detraction. — Henry David Thoreau

I am tired of the misrepresentation, calumny and detraction, heaped upon me by wicked men; and desire and claim, only those principles guaranteed to all men by the Constitution and laws of the United States and of Illinois. — Joseph Smith Jr.

I think topical songwriting is a real gift, and it's hard not to be pedantic and show up with the sledgehammer message. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

Most expositions of Aristotle's doctrines, when they have not been dictated by a spirit of virulent detraction, or unsympathetic indifference, have carefully suppressed all, or nearly all, the absurdities, and only retained what seemed plausible and consistent. But in this procedure their historical significance disappears. — George Henry Lewes

The people who are unprejudiced, but who ... feel it is so hopeless there is no use trying ... probably do just as much damage to the emotional atmosphere in which we are facing the problem as the fanatical Negrophobes. — Margaret Halsey