None of God's Creatures absolutely consider'd are in their own Nature Contemptible; the meanest Fly, the poorest Insect has its Use and Vertue.
Several people, not just reviewers, took me to task for writing about what they called the working classes - something I've been doing for 40 years. I thought that was contemptible - what do they want to do, ghettoize the working class as a subject? Can you only write about your own class? I've written about royalty, am I not allowed to do that?
When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.
Whatsoever is done out of pure love, be it ever so little or contemptible in the sight of men, is wholly fruitful; for God measures more with how much love one worketh, than the amount he doeth.
It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.
There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.
Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.