49 uses
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Definition
to dislike strongly and to look down upon with disrespect
- He did not want to look at them; he despised memories as a pointless indulgence.1.2 Part 1 Chapter 2 — The Chain (22% in)
- He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth.1.2 Part 1 Chapter 2 — The Chain (67% in)
- He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth.1.2 Part 1 Chapter 2 — The Chain (67% in)
- He had never met the man, but of all the notorious faces that cluttered the pages of newspapers, this was the one he despised.1.6 Part 1 Chapter 6 — The Non-Commercial (40% in)
- But with every hour of his life, with the strain and the pride of every moment when his muscles or his mind had ached from effort, with every step he had taken to rise out of the mines of Minnesota and to turn his effort into gold, with all of his profound respect for money and for its meaning, he despised the squanderer who did not know how to deserve the great gift of inherited wealth.1.6 Part 1 Chapter 6 — The Non-Commercial (40% in)
- He despised himself for that.1.6 Part 1 Chapter 6 — The Non-Commercial (97% in)
- He despised a need which now held no shred of joy or meaning, which had become the mere need of a woman's body, an anonymous body that belonged to a woman whom he had to forget while he held it.1.6 Part 1 Chapter 6 — The Non-Commercial (97% in)
- I know it's a triumph for you, I know that you can laugh at me and despise me with full justice.1.7 Part 1 Chapter 7 — The Exploiters and the Exploited (69% in)
- I'm not able ever to despise you enough to believe that you mean it" The look on her face astonished him more than all the rest: it was a look of defeat and yet of an odd, sly, cynical cunning, as if, for a moment, she held some worldly wisdom that mocked his innocence.1.7 Part 1 Chapter 7 — The Exploiters and the Exploited (86% in)
- Tell me, don't you really despise me for being Operating Vice-President?1.8 Part 1 Chapter 8 — The John Galt Line (3% in)
- The men of the press, who despised their own profession, did not know why they were enjoying it today.1.8 Part 1 Chapter 8 — The John Galt Line (58% in)
- I've given in to a desire which I despise.1.9 Part 1 Chapter 9 — The Sacred and the Profane (5% in)
- I am an animal who wants nothing but that sensation of pleasure which you despise—but I want it from you.1.9 Part 1 Chapter 9 — The Sacred and the Profane (8% in)
- ...would never have the right to leavethe thought that he owed her at least the feeble recognition of sympathy, of respect for a feeling he could neither understand nor returnthe knowledge that he could summon nothing for her, except contempt, a strange, total, unreasoning contempt, impervious to pity, to reproach, to his own pleas for justice-and, hardest to bear, the proud revulsion against his own verdict, against his demand that he consider himself lower than this woman he despised.1.10 Part 1 Chapter 10 — Wyatt's Torch (38% in)
- She had turned to go, when he said, his voice jerky and high, "You haven't any right to despise me.1.10 Part 1 Chapter 10 — Wyatt's Torch (47% in)
- Lawson, I think I should let you know that of all the statements a man can make, that is the one I consider most despicable.1.10 Part 1 Chapter 10 — Wyatt's Torch (47% in)
- The novelist had come from Europe to write an article about him-and he, who had once despised interviews, had talked eagerly, lengthily, too lengthily, seeing a promise of intelligence in the novelist's face, feeling a causeless, desperate need to be understood.2.1 Part 2 Chapter 1 — The Man Who Belonged on Earth (3% in)
- "You despise me, Mr. Rearden," he had declared once, suddenly and without any resentment.2.1 Part 2 Chapter 1 — The Man Who Belonged on Earth (59% in)
- "I've never despised luxury," he said, "yet I've always despised those who enjoyed it.2.1 Part 2 Chapter 1 — The Man Who Belonged on Earth (81% in)
- "I've never despised luxury," he said, "yet I've always despised those who enjoyed it.2.1 Part 2 Chapter 1 — The Man Who Belonged on Earth (81% in)
- You must not despise the women who do not possess your brilliant talent, but who exercise their own particular endowments.2.2 Part 2 Chapter 2 — The Aristocracy of Pull (51% in)
- She resorted to talents which, I'm sure, you despise.2.2 Part 2 Chapter 2 — The Aristocracy of Pull (52% in)
- It shouldn't shock me that you've come to the stage where you despise achievement.2.2 Part 2 Chapter 2 — The Aristocracy of Pull (68% in)
- I despised that Line so much that I didn't want to see it reach the kind of end it has reached.2.2 Part 2 Chapter 2 — The Aristocracy of Pull (68% in)
- By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn?2.2 Part 2 Chapter 2 — The Aristocracy of Pull (77% in)
- Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers-as industrialists.2.2 Part 2 Chapter 2 — The Aristocracy of Pull (82% in)
- Now it's worse, because I can't despise you as I did, as I'd like to, yet the question is much more terrible: How can you waste a mind such as yours?2.2 Part 2 Chapter 2 — The Aristocracy of Pull (87% in)
- I want you to face, in your own home, the one person who despises you and has the right to do so.2.3 Part 2 Chapter 3 — White Blackmail (21% in)
- "That, I won't answer," "You, who loved your work, who respected nothing but work, who despised every kind of aimlessness, passivity and renunciation-have you renounced the kind of life you loved?"2.3 Part 2 Chapter 3 — White Blackmail (58% in)
- I will not say that the good of others was the purpose of my work-my own good was my purpose, and I despise the man who surrenders his.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (57% in)
- Well, the mail who despises himself tries to gain self-esteem from sexual adventures —which can't be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man's sense of his own value.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (81% in)
- But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises-because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (84% in)
- You would be incapable of desire for a woman you despised.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (87% in)
- One kind of half is the man who despises money, factories, skyscrapers and his own body.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (87% in)
- The other kind of half is the man whom people call practical, the man who despises principles, abstractions, art, philosophy and his own mind.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (88% in)
- He tells himself that all he's after is physical pleasurebut observe that he tires of his women in a week or a night, that he despises professional whores and that he loves to imagine he is seducing virtuous girls who make a great exception for his sake.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (89% in)
- Because I knew that you'd despise a playboy more than any other sort of man-as I would, too.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (93% in)
- Wesley Mouch came from a family that had known neither poverty nor wealth nor distinction for many generations; it had clung, however, to a tradition of its own: that of being college-bred and, therefore, of despising men who were in business.2.6 Part 2 Chapter 6 — Miracle Metal (15% in)
- ...was not a progression of words, but the instantaneous verdict of an emotion, a verdict that told him: This, then, was his nature, this was his depravity-that the shameful desire he had never been able to conquer, came to him in response to the only sight of beauty he had found, that it came with a violence he had not known to be possible, and that the only freedom now left to him was to hide it and to despise himself, but never to be rid of it so long as he and this woman were alive.2.6 Part 2 Chapter 6 — Miracle Metal (92% in)
- We kept mankind alive, yet we allowed men to despise us and to worship our destroyers.2.8 Part 2 Chapter 8 — By Our Love (47% in)
- Commercialism is supposed to be despicable, so all those people should truly approve of my decision, and I-I'm tired of helping those who despise me.2.9 Part 2 Chapter 9 — The Face Without Pain or Fear or Guilt (60% in)
- Commercialism is supposed to be despicable, so all those people should truly approve of my decision, and I-I'm tired of helping those who despise me.2.9 Part 2 Chapter 9 — The Face Without Pain or Fear or Guilt (60% in)
- As the audience filed away into the darkness from the lighted rows of benches, she noticed Ellis Wyatt, Judge Narragansett, Ken Danagger, men who had once been said to despise all forms of art.3.2 Part 3 Chapter 2 — The Utopia of Greed (51% in)
- He would have gladly died to defend it, rather than surrender it to the men he despised.3.3 Part 3 Chapter 3 — Anti-Greed (68% in)
- I had accepted, unwittingly and by default, the tenet that ideas were of no consequence to one's existence, to one's work, to reality, to this earth-as if ideas were not the province of reason, but of that mystic faith which I despised.3.3 Part 3 Chapter 3 — Anti-Greed (90% in)
- I rebelled against demands for an unearned wealth-but I thought it was my duty to grant an unearned love to a wife I despised, an unearned respect to a mother who hated me, an unearned support to a brother who plotted for my destruction.3.3 Part 3 Chapter 3 — Anti-Greed (91% in)
- There's no reason why you should forgive me, but it's my place to tell you that I know I was insulting everything I admire and defending everything I despise.3.4 Part 3 Chapter 4 — Anti-Life (54% in)
- ...to think, but not to share his thoughts-the man who chooses to spend his years in the obscurity of menial employment, keeping to himself the fire of his mind, never giving it form, expression or reality, refusing to bring it into a world he despises-the man who is defeated by revulsion, the man who renounces before he has started, the man who gives up rather than give in, the man who functions at a fraction of his capacity, disarmed by his longing for an ideal he has not found-they are...3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (72% in)
- ...was the responsibility you dreaded, it required the kind of rational discipline you did not value yourself enough to assume-and the anxious staleness of your days is the monument to your evasion of the knowledge that there is no moral substitute for happiness, that there is no more despicable coward than, the man who deserted the battle for his joy, fearing to assert his right to existence, lacking the courage and the loyalty to life of a bird or a flower reaching for the sun.3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (85% in)
There are no more uses of "despise" in Atlas Shrugged.
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