C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Meanness
The mean man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom meanness withholds some important benefit.
A nation cannot afford to do a mean thing.
An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.
There has never been a man mean and at the same time virtuous.
There are some things I am afraid of: I am afraid to do a mean thing.
We can easily forgive want of means; but littleness, with means, is disgusting.
Who gives a trifle meanly, is meaner than the trifle.
There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred.
I have great hope of a wicked man, slender hope of a mean one. A wicked man may be converted and become a prominent saint. A mean man ought to be converted six or seven times, one right after the other, to give him a fair start and put him on an equality with a bold, wicked man.
I have so great a contempt and detestation for meanness, that I could sooner make a friend of one who had committed murder, than of a person who could be capable, in any instance, of the former vice. Under meanness, I comprehend dishonesty; under dishonesty, ingratitude; under ingratitude, irreligion; and under this latter, every species of vice and immorality in human nature.