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There are more things to admire in men than to despise.

Albert Camus - The Plague /

The contempt of our nature is an error of our reason.

Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues - Reflexions and Maxims /

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

Simone de Beauvoir /

No man is despised by another unless he is first despised by himself.

Seneca - De Consolatione ad Helviam Matrem /

The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches.

François de La Rochefoucauld - Reflections, or Sentences and Moral Maxims /

The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.

François de La Rochefoucauld - Reflections, or Sentences and Moral Maxims /

Contempt

Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.

François de La Rochefoucauld - Reflections, or Sentences and Moral Maxims /