Admiration for ourselves and our institutions is too often measured by our contempt and dislike for foreigners.

Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes the edge off admiration

And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes enough to make us love a woman that she should look on us with contempt, as I supposed Mlle Swann to have done, and that we should think that she can never be ours, sometimes, too, it is enough that she should look on us kindly, as Mme de Guermantes was doing, and that we should think of her as almost ours already.

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

Between flattery and admiration there often flows a river of contempt.

A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings.