Ungenerous Quotes & Sayings

You can't marry an ungenerous man; there's no joy in his soul. — Maeve Binchy

A Christian people who have for two hundred years kept a race in bondage, deprived of the advantages of civilization and religion, owe them a debt of gratitude which it would seem ungenerous to withhold. — Nelson A. Miles

The terms that Sforza Cesarini offered Rossini, 400 Roman Scudi, were not ungenerous, though it must have been galling for Rossini to see the Figaro, Luigi Zamboni, getting almost twice as much, and the Almaviva, Manuel Garcia, being offered three times the amount. Of the first-night cast, only the 'altro buffo', Bartolomeo Botticelli, who played Bartolo, and the 'seconda donna', Elisabetta Lowselet, who played Berta, were paid less than the composer. — Richard Osborne

I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding?joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid leaves with disgust. — Jane Austen

Real generosity is anonymous to the extent that a man should be prepared even to be considered ungenerous rather than explain it to others. — Idries Shah

She haunted him, as an ungenerous action haunts one. — Jean Rhys

Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom, so common with novel-writers, of degrading, by their contemptuous censure, the very performances to the number of which they are themselves adding; joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronised by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another- we are an injured body. — Jane Austen

Privacy, after all, was the most relative of privileges. It was granted us by society under ungenerous conditions, the most fundamental of them that whether for pain or profit, by design or accident, we not call public attention to ourselves. — Diana Trilling

You don't want to be ungenerous toward people who give you prizes, but it is never the social or political message that interests me in a novel. I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character. — John Irving

I never say to him, 'Let this or that enemy alone, because it would be ungenerous or cruel to harm them'; I say, 'Let them alone, because I should hate them to be wronged': and he'd crush you like a sparrow's egg, Isabella , if he found you a troublesome charge. — Emily Bronte

The talent of turning men into ridicule, and exposing to laughter those one converses with, is the qualification of little ungenerous tempers. — Joseph Addison

We get no good by being ungenerous, even to a book, and calculating profits ... so much help by so much reading. it is rather when we gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth
'tis then we get the right good from the book. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Most assuredly that spirit of envious rivalry and depreciating criticism in which many English travellers have written, is greatly to be deprecated, no less than the tone of servile adulation which some writers have adopted; but our American neighbours must recollect that they provoked both the virulent spirit and the hostile caricature by the way in which some of their most popular writers of travels have led an ungenerous onslaught against our institutions and people, and the bitter tone in which their newspaper press, headed by the Tribune, indulges towards — Isabella L. Bird

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury. — Abraham Lincoln

Th-there," she sobbed. "it dragged him to the Italian gardens. He managed to elude its maw at first, but it harried him through the paths. No matter how much I screamed, it would not put him d-down!" She burst into a fresh wave of tears.
"You screamed," will said. "Is that all you did?"
"I screamed a great deal,." Tatiana sounded injured. She drew fully away from Will and fixed him with a green gaze. "I see you are as ungenerous as you ever were. — Cassandra Clare

In 1848, the 39-year-old Lincoln offered some sage advice to his law partner, William H. Herndon, who had complained that he and other young Whigs were being discriminated against by older Whigs. In denying the allegation, Lincoln urged him to avoid thinking of himself as a victim: "The way for a young man to rise, is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that any body wishes to hinder him. Allow me to assure you, that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation. There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury. Cast about, and see if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to fall into it."1 — Michael Burlingame

It may be very generous in one person to offer what it would be ungenerous in another to accept. — Samuel Richardson

Yes. I - I can't help liking her - just a little bit! She's not an ungenerous nature; and I am so glad her difficulties have all suddenly ended." She explained how Arabella had been summoned back, and would be enabled to retrieve her position. "I was referring to our old question. What Arabella has been saying to me has made me feel more than ever how hopelessly vulgar an institution legal marriage is - a sort of trap to catch a man - I can't bear to think of it. I wish I hadn't promised to let you put up the banns this morning! — Thomas Hardy

It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families where education is attended to ... Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help sometimes suspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of rivals near the throne. — Abigail Adams

He who confers a favor should at once forget it, if he is not to show a sordid ungenerous spirit. To remind a man of a kindness conferred and to talk of it, is little different from reproach. — Demosthenes

A loving parent would be sorely grieved if his child could not trust him; and how ungenerous, how unkind is our conduct when we put so little confidence in our heavenly Father who has never failed us, and who never will. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental act of the will. — Thomas Nagel

Such terrifying powers we possess, but what a sorry lot of gods some men are. And the worst of it is not the cruelty but the arrogance, the sheer hubris of those who bring only violence and fear into the animal world, as if it needed any more of either. Their lives entail enough frights and tribulations without the modern fire-makers, now armed with perfected, inescapable weapons, traipsing along for more fun and thrills at their expense even as so many of them die away. It is our fellow creatures' lot in the universe, the place assigned them in creation, to be completely at our mercy, the fiercest wolf or tiger defenseless against the most cowardly man. And to me it has always seemed not only ungenerous and shabby but a kind of supreme snobbery to deal cavalierly with them, as if their little share of the earth's happiness and grief were inconsequential, meaningless, beneath a man's attention, trumped by any and all designs he might have on them, however base, irrational, or wicked. — Matthew Scully

There is nothing that more betrays a base ungenerous spirit than the giving of secret stabs to a man's reputation. Lampoons and satires that are written with wit and spirit are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable. — Joseph Addison

She reminded him that the weak will never enter the kingdom of love, which is a harsh and ungenerous kingdom,and that women give themselves only to men of resolute spirit, who provide them with the security they need in order to face life. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

If a child is inclined to be grasping, or to cling to any of his or her little possessions, legends are related about the contempt and disgrace falling upon the ungenerous and mean person ... — Charles Alexander Eastman

Lord, my culture and my heart tell me that it is wholly due to my hard work that I am not poor. If I believe that lie, I will be ungenerous. I praise you that you are a God with a heart for the poor. Give me the same kind of heart. Amen. — Timothy Keller

Nothing can be more wounding to a spirit not ungenerous, than a generous forgiveness. — Samuel Richardson

It wasn't that he was specially ungenerous but that he put things off to give his generosity a longer and more significant route. — Saul Bellow

Ridicule may be the evidence of with or bitterness and may gratify a little mind, or an ungenerous temper, but it is no test of reason or truth. — Tryon Edwards

Well said our Lord, "Judge not,
that you be not judged." Especially judge not the sons and
daughters of sorrow. Allow no ungenerous suspicions of the afflicted, the poor and the despondent
. Do not hastily say
they ought to be more brave and exhibit a greater faith.
Ask not why are they so nervous
and so absurdly
fearful? No, in this you speak as one of the foolish women speaks. I beseech you, remember that you understand not your fellow man.

sermon "Man unknown to man — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

We are all contingent. Resentment is foolish and ungenerous, and even anger is inadequate. I am a fleck of light on the surface of the sea, a glint of light from the evening star. I live in awe. If I never lived at all, yet I am a silent wing on the wind, a bodiless voice in the forest of Albunea. I speak, but all I can say is: Go, go on. — Ursula K. Le Guin