The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
Samuel Johnson

There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt.
Charles de Gaulle

There is an insolence which none but those who themselves deserve contempt can bestow, and those only who deserve no contempt can bear.
Henry Fielding

There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.
Niccolo Machiavelli

There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
Lord Chesterfield

There is small risk a general will be regarded with contempt by those he leads, if, whatever he may have to preach, he shows himself best able to perform.
Xenophon

Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.
Nicolaus Copernicus

This only grant me, that my means may lie too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Abraham Cowley

Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.
William Hazlitt

To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.
William Hazlitt

To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget.
Mason Cooley

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton

To me all men are equal: there are jackasses everywhere, and I have the same contempt for them all.
Karl Kraus

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.
Thomas Carlyle

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

What I have known with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration, and my contempt, of others.
Joseph Priestley

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?
Kahlil Gibran

What looks like enjoyment is the sneer of contempt. That's not a smile.
Jack Kevorkian

Whence it is somewhat strange that any men from so mean and silly a practice should expect commendation, or that any should afford regard thereto; the which it is so far from meriting, that indeed contempt and abhorrence are due to it.
Isaac Barrow

You can cite me for contempt, Your Honor. I don't care.
Jack Kevorkian