Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.

Form, color, composition, drawing, are auxiliaries, any one of which... can be dispensed with.

— Harold Rosenberg

There is no being so poor and so contemptible, who does not think there is somebody still poorer, and still more contemptible.

— Samuel Johnson

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.

— Bertrand Russell

An ignorant man is insignificant and contemptible; nobody cares for his company, and he can just be said to live, and that is all.

— Lord Chesterfield

It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.

— Arthur Machen

To my eye Rubens' colouring is most contemptible. His shadows are a filthy brown somewhat the colour of excrement.

— William Blake

As men neither fear nor respect what has been made contemptible, all honor to him who makes oppression laughable as well as detestable. Armies…

— Edwin Percy Whipple

The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and…

— Susan Sontag

“For it was intelligence that was the thin line between endearing rapscallion and idiot bastard. - Éibhear the Contemptible”

— G.A. Aiken

Nothing that is not a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency, especially…

— Joseph Addison

Contemptuous people are sure to be contemptible.

— Nicolas Chamfort

None but the contemptible are apprehensive of contempt.

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“It is a difficult choice sometimes whether to feel revolted at the male sex or merely to dismiss them as contemptible.”

— Isaac Asimov

We gave him a hearty welcome, for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man..

— Edgar Allan Poe

A man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

— Samuel Butler