"Sneer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... His presence.' Eleven poor men on one side, and all the world on the other, made fearful odds. The more unevenly matched are the respective forces, the more plainly does the victory of the weaker demand for its explanation the intervention of God. The old sneer, that 'Providence is always on the side of the strongest battalions,' is an audacious misreading of history, and is the very opposite of the truth. It is the weak battalions which win in the long run, for the history of every good cause is the same. First, it kindles ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... we do?" It was not a sneer; if so, too delicately veiled for detection; the words were uttered in a ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... said, with a suave sneer, "except when 'any person' happens to be a rich Englishman with a handsome face and easy manners! . . . then you are not slow to make friends, Froeken,—on the contrary, you are ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power over me it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi- sarcastic attentions of the other—Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana ruffle me. The ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... of inaction and fearful of dangers, desiring to return to Cuba. Here Cortes's diplomacy came to the rescue. "On board, all of you!" he exclaimed. "Back to Cuba and its Governor, and see what happens!" The threat and sneer had the effect he expected. Scarcely a man would return, but on the contrary they clamoured for the establishment of a colony and for a march on Montezuma and his capital, whilst the few who remained disaffected were clapped in irons, among them the hidalgo Velasquez, a relative ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... passionate, deep love. And the second, the greater, the fulfillment through the accomplishment of religious purpose, the soul's earnest purpose. We work the love way falsely, from the upper self, and work it to death. The second way, of active unison in strong purpose, and in faith, this we only sneer at. ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... usual. It gets harder as the weather grows colder and the streets get more sloppy. When Lavinia laughed at my muddy skirt as I passed her in the hall, I thought of something to say all in a flash—and I only just stopped myself in time. You can't sneer back at people like that—if you are a princess. But you have to bite your tongue to hold yourself in. I bit mine. It was a cold afternoon, Melchisedec. And it's ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... nothing. Marking something in my manner, nevertheless, he asked my name and country; and then observed with a sneer, "Ah, you are the lad, I see, that wrote the Round Robin; I'll take good care of you, my ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... doubt, brought the water with you in a bottle," said Shasha, the war-doctor, with a sneer in his voice. He ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... sophist, come not anear; All the place [1] is holy ground; Hollow smile and frozen sneer Come not here. Holy water will I pour Into every spicy flower Of the laurel-shrubs that hedge it around. The flowers would faint at your cruel cheer. In your eye there is death, There is frost in your breath Which would blight the ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... in office. We had nothing to boast of in arts or letters, and were given to bragging overmuch of our merely material prosperity, due quite as much to the virtue of our continent as to our own. There was some truth in Carlyle's sneer after all. Till we had succeeded in some higher way than this, we had only the success of physical growth. Our greatness, like that of enormous Russia, was greatness on the map—barbarian mass only; but had we gone down, like ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... blood of his race flowed in the veins of the "new Antinous" who could sing Greek songs so well and with so pure an accent; every insult to his people was stamped deep in his heart, every sneer at his faith revived his memory of the day when the Melchites had slain his two brothers. And these bloody deeds, these innumerable acts of oppression by which the Greek; had provoked and offended the schismatic Egyptian and hunted them to death, were now avenged by his father. It lifted ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... into their neighbors are very apt to be contemptuous; but men who see through them find something lying behind every human soul which it is not for them to sit in judgment on, or to attempt to sneer out of the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... your present purposes," said Wellmere, with a sneer; "but I apprehend it is opposed to all the opinions and practices ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... of a sneer that Mr. Smith did not like, and as he held the upper hand in the detective business he did not need to tolerate such conduct in ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... relentless cruelties suffered by the Covenanters and Nonconformists from the Church of England. As the gospel spreads, it humanizes and softens the hearts even of the rebellious. The dread fire no longer consumes the cedars of Lebanon. Still there remains the contemptuous sneer, the scorn, the malice of the soul, against Christ and his spiritual seed. Not many years since the two daughters of an evangelical clergyman, a D.D., came out, from strong and irresistible conviction, and united with one of the straitest sects of Dissenters—the Plymouth Brethren. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... heroics of yours, Miss Radie, should contribute to bring about—to bring about the worst,' said Stanley, with a sneer, through which ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... word, Doctor Poundtext, you are——' 'What am I, sir?' said the parson, bursting with rage. 'Ay, what is he, sir?' rejoined the schoolmaster. 'He is a black coat,' said the stranger, with a contemptuous sneer, 'and you are a pedagogue.' This sentence was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... them; but I cannot say that I was comfortable, as we had already discovered that the brig, to say the best of her, was excessively crank. The two lieutenants and the master had served chiefly on board line-of-battle ships and frigates before they got their promotion, and were inclined to sneer at the commander's caution, and I know that during their watch they carried on much longer than ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... It was Pierre, and yet not her Pierre. Rather an exaggerated growth—of the man she had once known. The same soft brown hair, only thicker and rougher, one drooping wave looking tangled and unkempt—the dreamy eyes with the latent sneer in them dreamier than ever and yet the sneer more visible, the thin sensitive nose thinner, the satisfied mouth more satisfied and conscious, the weak chin fatally weaker. And he was married, too! Mdme. Dubois—that must be his ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... of the fanatic sprang into Valentin's eyes; he strode towards the priest with clenched hands. "And, perhaps," he cried, with a blasting sneer, "perhaps he was also thinking of leaving all his money to ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... same tone that Lindley answered: "Let's wonder, rather, if the fair Sylvia'll be given her conge in a fortnight's time!" But the sneer in Lindley's voice was for Ashley, who had asked the impertinent question, not for Farquhart, whose honor he, apparently, doubted. "Lord Farquhart's not to blame, as you know well enough. The mess is of Lord Gordon's making, for Lord ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... that, the next day on the fishing wharf, where we were inspecting nets, he saw fit to laugh and sneer at us, and this before all the fishermen. Charley's face went black with anger; but beyond promising Big Alec that in the end he would surely land him behind the bars, he controlled himself and said nothing. The King of the Greeks made his boast that no fish patrol ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... Mongolfier, nor the dubious contrivance of Marriott. A gentleman of proper aspirations would scorn to employ either, as the Man-Frog would reject a diving-bell, or the subterranean chieftain would sneer at the Mont Cenis tunnel. These "weak inventions" only emphasize our impotence to strive with the subtle element about and above. They prove nothing so conclusively as that we can't fly-a fact still more strikingly ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... what must have appeared to be the ravings of lunacy, had it been deliberately set down by some inspired prophet. Neither the man nor his cause commanded much respect. We, who know that the French Emperor is the first man of the age, as well in intellect as in position, have no right to sneer at the men of 1840 because they looked upon him as a feeble pretender. He had made two attempts to place himself at the head of the French nation, and in each instance his failure had been so signal, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... men have to meet and face; and if we can trust Matthew's statement, an utterance of his in later years called out by the sneer of a Pharisee, shows how he had made the old poet's ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... it was all "bosh;" for fifty years ago a boy at school had not learned to declare that everything which did not suit his taste was "rot." So Slegge stood leaning up against the playground wall with a supercilious sneer upon his lip, and said it was all "bosh," and only fit ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... the other one cried, "That Mary would venture there now." "Then wager and lose!" with a sneer, he replied, "I'll warrant she'd fancy a ghost by her side, And faint if she saw a ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... sun's going is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit to the ends of it, has given edge to many a sneer at its supposed assertion that the sun went round the earth. It teaches a higher truth—that the sun itself obeys the law it enforces on the planets, and flies in an orbit of its own, from one end of heaven in Argo to the ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... of the verse, there is a thrilling power in these lines. People in gilded houses, on silken couches, at ease among books, and friends, and literary pastimes, may sneer at the Covenanters; it is much easier to sneer than to die for truth and right, as they died. Whether they were right in all respects is nothing to the purpose; but it is to the purpose that in a crisis of their country's history they upheld a great principle ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... Fellowes, "I ought rather to have said that Christians inculcate, theoretically, a contempt of the present life, while, practically, they enter as keenly into its pleasures as the 'worldling,'"—uttering the last word with an approach to a sneer. ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... my readers at home with this statement before them proceed too hastily to laugh or sneer at China for unprogressiveness. For my part, as I have thought of this matter of money transfer over here, the whole question has seemed to me to be on all-fours with our question of land title transfers at home, and the more I have thought of it the firmer has ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... this; but after Silence spake A Vessel of a more ungainly Make: "They sneer at me for leaning all awry; What! did the Hand then of the ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... failed of their wonted effect. In the natural course of things they had recourse to remonstrances, but their appeals were equally fruitless. The delicate creatures tried reproaches, but the boyish cynics received them with a scowl and answered them with a sneer. ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... she not heard with her own ears Marion's sneering sentence in the face of the unanswerable arguments that had been presented?" I wonder how often we turn away from harvest fields that are ready for the reader because we mistake for a sneer that which is the admission of a ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... do!" retorted the official with a sneer, "and 'tis a mighty clever one, I'll allow. Celine Dumont, ma foi! Not badly imagined, ma petite mere: and all would have passed off splendidly; unfortunately, Celine Dumont, servitor to Citizeness Desiree Candeille, passed through these ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... sneer at friendship's ties, Have for my weakness oft reproved me; Yet still the simple gift I prize, For I am sure the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... sneer, sent a cold chill through Felicite's bones. But she was a strong-minded woman, and the sight of Monsieur Peirotte's beautiful curtains, which she religiously viewed every morning, sustained her courage. Whenever she felt herself giving way, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... of this singular place in detail, but with respect, in so far, at least, as detail and respect are compatible. We do not understand all, but we insult nothing. We are equally far removed from the hosanna of Joseph de Maistre, who wound up by anointing the executioner, and from the sneer of Voltaire, who even goes so far as to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a murderer," continued the lieutenant very severely. "This is the second time you have visited this mansion for plunder; but you don't come out of it so well as you expected," said Deck with a sneer, evident in his tones as well as ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... get the best possible alloy sufficiently malleable for general use has always been a local desideratum. Alloys of copper with tin, spelter or zinc were used here in 1795, and the term "German" was applied to the best of these mixtures as a Jacobinical sneer at the pretentious appellation of silver given it by its maker. After the introduction of nickel from the mines in Saxony, the words "German silver" became truthfully appropriate as applied to that metal, but so habituated have the trade and the public become to brassy ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... vanity alone which leads a married woman to receive the first disgraceful flattery of dissolute men. Probably nine out of ten of those American women who have trifled with honor and reputation, whose names are spoken with the sneer of contempt, have been led on, step by step, in the path of sin by vanity as the chief motive. Where one woman falls from low and coarse passions, a hundred fall from sheer levity and ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... But fairness requires us to add that, though the mass of the people are more or less influenced by Buddhist doctrines, yet the people, as a whole, have no respect for the Buddhist church, and habitually sneer at Buddhist priests." For the "most" in the former of these two sentences I would substitute "nearly all;" and between my friend's "but" and "emotionally" I would introduce "many are," and would not care to ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... have found from those who profess to be authoritative judges the encouragement of praise. How much better, then, I should have done if I had found it! How a little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, and the sneer of a contempt which he feels to be unjust chills the ardour to excel! However, I forced my way, so far as was then most essential to me, the sufficing breadmaker for those I loved; and in my holidays of song and ramble ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Reynolds cast one glance toward Glen, and saw her looking at him with a peculiar expression in her eyes. He seemed to read there a challenge, which could have but one meaning. He turned to Curly, and beholding that sneer of contempt still upon his face, he sprang forward ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... me into trouble!" thought the stranger, trying in vain to smooth down the corners of the offending organ, which in spite of him would curve with what Hagar called a sneer, and from which there finally broke a merry laugh, sadly at variance with the ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... in him that he would not use the opportunity she had made to sneer at his adversary, none the less because she knew that Ridgway might not have been so scrupulous in his place. That Lyndon Hobart's fastidious instincts for fair play had stood in the way of his success in the fight to down Ridgway she had repeatedly heard. Of late, rumors had ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... younger man who answered this time, with an ugly lift of the lip over his teeth, between a sneer and a snarl. ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... when he should have to mount his horse and meet the princess. He was not with the living bride, but with the dead one; and as he thought of her grace, her smiles, her surpassing beauty, his lip curled with a sneer, and his brow grew ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... tall, lean man with a mantle over his shoulders—and as our fellows came forward he ran out midway between the two parties and stood as a fencer would, with his sword up and his head back. I can see him now, with his lowered eyelids and the kind of sneer that he had upon his face. On this the subaltern of the Rifles, who was a fine well-grown lad, ran forward and drove full tilt at him with one of the queer crooked swords that the rifle-men carry. They came together like two rams—for each ran for the ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... d—d careful how you say it," was the reply, with a sneer that would have stung an abject slave into a longing for revenge, and that grated on Mr. Billings's nerves in a way that made him clinch his fists and involuntarily grit his teeth. Could it be that O'Grady detected it? One quick, wistful, half-appealing ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... justice. She ought to see and judge for herself. If she decides—as her mother did—that I am an ogre, she can go back to her aristocratic friends in the North. I shall not try to keep her." There was the suspicion of a grim sneer on ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Celeste La Rue, an aggressive blonde with thin lips and a metallic voice, whose name was synonymous with midnight escapades and flowing wine. His contemptuous smile at the sight of them deepened into a disgusted sneer when he saw that one of the men was John Cavendish, ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... held a meaning less light than his words. Perhaps he was thinking of it as a toast to his own departure into exile, but to Eben it had the ring of a sneer, as though the words "too ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... law helps us to understand how such institutions as the Grange and farmers' institutes are doing a work that the church cannot do. They are doing a work that needs doing. They are serving human need. No pastor can afford to ignore them, much less in sneer at them as unclean; he may well apply the lesson of Peter's vision, and accept them as ministers of the kingdom. (2) He may encourage and stimulate them. The rural pastor may throw himself into the van of those who strive for better farming, for a quicker social life, ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... to Dorothy of her interview with Richard; she appeared to believe that Richard had saved her that labor. There was a kind of sneer in this. Feeling the sneer, Dorothy put no questions; she was willing, in her resentment, to have it understood that Richard had told her. Why should he not?—she who was to be his wife! Dorothy would have been proud to proclaim her troth ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... following of the French, and of no less a French poem than the Battle of Aliscans, which has been so fully dealt with above. It is interesting to compare advocates of the two, and see how German critics usually extol the improvements made by the German poet, while the French sneer at his preachments and waterings-down. But we need say nothing more than that if Wolfram's fame rested on Willehalm, the notice of him here would probably not go beyond a ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... it got into circulation, to the horror and disgust of all right-minded persons. The press joined in the cry for remedial legislation. Ashley's speech in support of his Mines and Collieries Bill made an unusual impression in the House of Commons. Even Cobden, who had been ready to sneer at the "philanthropists" who opposed the repeal of the tax on bread, came over to the orator's side at the conclusion of his two hours' plea, and wringing his hand heartily, declared, "I don't think I have ever been put into such a frame of mind in all my life." From this time he no longer ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... think more of yourself, and a little less of other people, then,' said Vera, with a sneer at the 'other people'. She rose. 'Let me do this. You sit down; you are tired, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... that mark of propriety, I took out of my pocket the twelve pairs of gloves which I had bought in the morning, and after I had begged her acceptance of half a dozen pairs I gave the other six to my young friend. P—— C—— rose from the table with a sneer, dragging along with him his mistress, who had likewise drunk rather freely, and he threw himself on a sofa with her. The scene taking a lewd turn, I placed myself in such a manner as to hide them from the view of my young friend, whom I led into the recess ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Besides those who sneer at dream study, because they have never looked into the subject, there are those who do not dare to face the facts revealed by dream study. Dreams tell us many an unpleasant biological truth about ourselves and only very free minds can thrive on such a diet. Self-deception ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... Emily with a sneer. "I don't believe in fairies. My plan is to tell your mother, that while Rover was playing with us, he bounced against the mirror, and ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... committee, I'd make them walk straight.' He sent every one away delighted, closed the door behind each visitor with an air of extreme amiability, through which, however, there pierced the secret sneer of an ex-lounger on ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Her lips and cheeks seemed very pale and wan, But on her forehead, and within her eye 1920 Lay beauty, which makes hearts that feed thereon Sick with excess of sweetness; on the throne She leaned;—the King, with gathered brow, and lips Wreathed by long scorn, did inly sneer and frown With hue like that when some great painter dips 1925 His pencil in the gloom of earthquake ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... he, with a faint smile bordering on a sneer: 'to abuse your friend and knock him on the head without any assignable cause, and then tell him the deed was not quite correct, but it's no matter whether ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... He carried his wet garments at arm's length. Jimmy Kinsella went to meet him. They talked together as they walked down to the boats. Then the two ladies kissed each other warmly. Priscilla watched the performance with a sneer. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... equality of rank and a community of goods, defended their cause with fire and sword, and indulged in barbarous atrocities. On the other hand, the enemies of the Reformation asked the reformer, with a malicious sneer, if he did not know that it was easier to kindle a fire than to extinguish it. Shocked at these excesses, alarmed at the thought that they might check the progress of the Gospel, Luther hesitated no longer, no longer temporized; he inveighed against ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... estate without a touch of a sneer, when we were alone; but with strangers, he rang the ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the book, the keys, The flag that spreads before the breeze, The triple-belted crown! It wends its way; and straw is sold— Yea! deadly drugs for heavy gold, To feeble hearts whose pulse is fear; And though some smile, and many sneer, There's none ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... all the modern improvements. You want eggs, I said. I supply them. I will let you have so many hundred eggs a week, I said; what will you give for them? Well, their terms did not come up to my scheduled prices, I admit, but we mustn't sneer at small prices ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... Dodd had taken the trouble to look at the seneschal's face, he would have seen a well-defined sneer there. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... poor?" differs very little from that now in circulation. It was revised some years later by Bernard Shaw, who cut down the rhetoric and sharpened the phraseology, but the substance has not been changed. It is remarkable as containing a sneer at Christianity, the only one to be found in the publications of the Society. Perhaps this was a rebound from excess of "subordination of material things to spiritual things" insisted on by the Fellowship of the ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... red and white now. The insult was open and patent; but worse was to follow, for she made a mistake, and went on, with a sneer: ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... to your old spying tricks, I see!" exclaimed Joe, with a sneer he could not forego. "Have ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... "That's it—sneer! He does a great many things. He is interested in literary work, so he says. He writes for a living, I suppose ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... long as their career in vice is unchecked by calamity, will no doubt sneer when we assure them, that Fardorougha, after leaving his wife that morning once more to visit his son, felt a sense of relief, or, perhaps we should say, a breaking of faint light upon his mind, which, slight as it was, afforded him more comfort and ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... debts, and distributing embassies in Washington, May 1, 1861. And as to La' Davis, there seems to be documentary evidence that she meant to be "At Home" in the capital, bringing the first strawberries with her from Montgomery for her May-day soiree. Bah! one does not like to sneer at people who have their necks in the halter; but one happy result of this disturbance is that the disturbers have sent themselves to Coventry. The Lincoln party may be wanting in finish. Finish comes with use. A little roughness of manner, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... deliberately recommended wickedness so horrible that wicked men recoiled from it with indignation. But they could not succeed even in making their scruples intelligible to him. To every remonstrance he listened with a cynical sneer, wondering within himself whether those who lectured him were such fools as they professed to be, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... neck were of a lusty red, but lean and stringy; he always wore his expensive gold-rim eye-glasses slightly askew upon his aquiline nose; and he always showed two gleaming foreteeth under his moustache, in a smile so perpetual as to earn the reputation of a sneer. But for the crooked glasses his dress was always exquisite; and but for the smile he ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... most uncomfortable nose. It had a way of hanging protectingly over his heavy dark-brown mustache, which, in its turn, hangs protectingly over his thin, wide lips, so as to make it disagreeably certain that they can open and shut, laugh, snap, and sneer without ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... sensible man, but has not worn off his authorism yet, and thinks there is nothing so charming as writers, and to be one: he will know better one of these days" GRAY and BURKE! What mighty men must be submitted to the petrifying sneer—that indifference of selfism for great sympathies—of this volatile and heartless man of literature ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... The minister had introduced a measure for the division of the province of Canada and for the establishment of a local legislature in each division. Fox in the course of debate went out of his way to laud the Revolution, and to sneer at some of the most effective passages in the Reflections. Burke was not present, but he announced his determination to reply. On the day when the Quebec Bill was to come on again, Fox called upon Burke, and the pair walked together from Burke's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... mention the word "damn" or some other analogous one when you read that. "Fun!" you'll sneer. But my dear fellow, it expresses my point of view. I am having fun. I'm having the time of my life. Afterward—"let come what come may, I shall have had my day." And I'm going to fight it out on these lines if it takes all summer—unless Caspian undermines ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... for all his being there voluntarily, one might have seen by the pallor of his face that he was half afraid. There, in the shadow, just beyond the rim of his own lantern light, was the desk where Jim Ellison used to sit—and sneer at him. Did Colonel Witham recall that? Perhaps. He lifted the lantern and let the light fall on the spot. The ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... not help feeling hurt and sorry at the half-sneer she saw in the look and manner of the others, as well as in William's words. She wished for no better than to go away; but as she did so, her bosom swelled, and the tears started, and her breath came ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... he is the coward who proves false to his vows, To his manhood, his honor, for a laugh or a sneer." ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... glories of the empire scarcely parallels its knavish gluttonies of illegal seizure. And Wall Street has been the boiling point of all this infectious train of outrages against a patient people—one that presumes to rate itself really democratic, and to sneer at countries over seas in which to-day a Credit Mobilier, a Pacific Railroad atrocity, a Manhattan Railroad brigandage, would make Trafalgar Square or the Place de la Concorde howl with ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... the old man stood in the courtyard, while the Dark Master was seeing to horses being made ready for them. Drawing his cloak farther about his hunched shoulders, the latter turned to Brian with a mocking sneer. ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... "he hath a villainous sneer, my lord, which seems to say as much; but, my Lord Duke, we have pardoned him, and so has ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... me guard against the possibility that this might be interpreted as a sneer at The Dynasts—a great work by ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... had the same unflattering opinion of those who lacked it. But it ruffled her to hear him call the home folks jays—just as it would have ruffled him had she been the one to make the slighting remark. "If you invite people's opinion," said she, "you've no right to sneer at them because they ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... completed, who never wasteth his time, and who hath his soul under control, is regarded wise. They that are wise, O bull of the Bharata race, always delight in honest deeds, do what tendeth to their happiness and prosperity, and never sneer at what is good. He who exulteth not at honours, and grieveth not at slights, and remaineth cool and unagitated like a lake in the course of Ganga, is reckoned as wise. That man who knoweth the nature of all creatures (viz., ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... brain and money. A man who could see clearly and who had words to choose from might have stood firmly in the place to which he was born and have spoken in a voice which might have been listened to. He might have fought against folly and blindness and lassitude. I deliberately chose privately to sneer at the thought of lifting a hand to serve any thing but the cold fool who was myself. Life passes quickly. It does not turn back." He ended with a short harsh laugh. "This is Fear," he said. "Fear clears a man's mind of rubbish and non-essentials. It is because I am ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... superficial absurdities. There was in this thirst to be "progressive" a subtle sort of double-mindedness and falsity. A man was so eager to be in advance of his age that he pretended to be in advance of himself. Institutions that his wholesome nature and habit fully accepted he had to sneer at as old-fashioned, out of a servile and snobbish fear of the future. Out of the primal forests, through all the real progress of history, man had picked his way obeying his human instinct, or (in the excellent phrase) following his nose. But now he was trying, by violent athletic ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Effie, I suppose—and the outraged shades of Givre!" He paused, as if to lay more stress on the boyish sneer: "Do you likewise include the late Monsieur ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... "Humph!" with a sneer; "perhaps your authority comes from some one else. Her daughter, maybe? You and she are—or shall we say were—quite touchingly confidential at one ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Bordeaux, said the Knight?" answered Sir Fulk with a sneer; "to Bordeaux forsooth! It is well for you, my fair young cousin, that I have other claims to you, since, were you once out of England, I can well guess who would return to claim the ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a million dollars I s'pose," the porter said with a sort of sneer. Evidently his breakfast had not ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... sneer accompanying this question, which Dora felt keenly. Her little swelling heart was already full, and, with quivering lips and gushing tears, ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... censorship. And many more who do not go all these lengths with the reactionists, and cannot make up their mind to look to the Stuart reigns either for model churchmen or model courtiers, are still inclined to sneer at the Puritan 'preciseness,' and to say lazily, that though, of course, something may have been wrong, yet there was no need to make such a fuss about the matter; and that at all events the Puritans were men of very ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... sneer at me like that? At the Baron, too, in spite of all his goodness! As for your father, I'm out of patience. He wasted his wealth and his rank, and left his own flesh and blood to the mercy ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... shrine; I told him what the world would sa If Stella were unsung to-day; How I should hide my head for shame, When both the Jacks and Robin came; How Ford would frown, how Jim would leer, How Sh—-r the rogue would sneer, And swear it does not always follow, That Semel'n anno ridet Apollo. I have assured them twenty times, That Phoebus helped me in my rhymes, Phoebus inspired me from above, And he and I were hand and glove. ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... felt as a Stone Age man might feel in the presence of a brilliant scientist of the thirty-fourth century. If any sign of interest had shown on the peak of the metallic lord, Phobar failed to see it. But he sensed an intolerant sneer of ridicule in Garboreggg, as though the ruler considered these statements to be only the most ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... your eye, Fix'd laws, and order you descry; And hence, a fair conclusion grows, That from the hand of Art, the building rose." At this the fly, in his conceptions proud, Laugh'd out aloud, And with a sneer of scorn, replied— "Most learned sir, I oft have tried, At this same Art to get a sight, But never on him yet could light; And now, the more I think, the more I find, Your Art is but a fiction of the mind. Now learn from me how this same temple ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... meetin'?" inquired Waxy Collins, with a sneer. "Biff him on the boko, an' we'll finish 'im in ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... well-conditioned mind would more easily, methinks, tolerate the fox brush of learned vanity, than the sans culotterie of a contemptuous ignorance, that assumes a merit from mutilation in the self-consoling sneer at ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... question "Who built the dolmens?" Close familiarity with and contiguity to uncommon objects not infrequently dulls the sense of wonder they should otherwise naturally excite. But lest we feel tempted to sneer at these poor folk for their incurious attitude toward the visible antiquities of their land, let us ask ourselves how many of us take that interest in the antiquities of our own country or our own especial ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... modern life," explained the vicar. "She turns to stone those who gaze on her. Most certainly she petrifies all good feeling and Christian tolerance. Why, I actually heard a woman whose conduct is not usually governed by what I hold to be good taste sneer at Miss Wynton this evening. 'The murder is out now,' she said. 'Bower's presence explains everything.' Yet I am able to state that Miss Wynton was quite unprepared for his arrival. By chance I was standing on the steps when he drove up to the hotel, and it was perfectly ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... on the floor; the latter will most likely thump the same with the imperative tip of his boot. How horridly stupid one seems after being aroused! The woman eyes you with the most piquant, self-justifying sneer possible; while all her little IMMACULATES, if she have any, look at you like so many hissing young turkey cocks; and as for the man—bless his holiness!—he'd frown you down to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... his own way, but it is hard to fight the impalpable, hence their sick fancies grew in spite of themselves. Their minds needed food to prey upon, but found none. Each began to criticize the other silently, to sneer at his weaknesses, to meditate derisively upon his peculiarities. After a time they no longer resisted the advance of these ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... and moves away. She is saved! It was a sand-hauler who fished her out. Policemen are carrying her, surrounded by boatmen and lightermen, and in the darkness a hoarse voice is heard saying with a sneer: "That water-hen gave me a lot of trouble. You ought to see how she slipped through my fingers! I believe she wanted to make me lose my reward." Gradually the tumult subsides, the bystanders disperse, and the black group moves away ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... gloomiest of them all. Not since the death of Tommy had his eyes twinkled with the old mischief; he had no bets to offer, no news to volunteer; a dull, sombre abstraction lay upon him like a pall. Only when Bill Lightfoot spoke did he look up, and then with a set sneer, growing daily more saturnine. The world was dark to Creede and Bill's fresh remarks jarred on him—but Bill himself was happy. He was of the kind that runs by opposites, taking their troubles with hilarity ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... in their attentions to Maggie, with perhaps the addition of an open eulogy of her handsome brother, more or less invidious in comparison to the officers. "I suppose it's an active out-of-door life gives him that perfect grace and freedom," said Emily, with a slight sneer at the smartly belted Calvert. "Yes; and he don't drink or keep late hours," responded Cicely significantly. "His sister says they always retire before ten o'clock, and that although his father left him some valuable whiskey he seldom takes a drop of it." "Therein," gravely ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... you wish." Her sad smile was almost a sneer. "And men talk of going to the stars. Where is the clock they will use? Where is their yardstick? Where is the concept? Why, out there, for all you know, Huckleberry Finn is still floating down the river, and Macbeth walks through the halls ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... these men were parties concerned. No entreaties could prevail on them to quit the chamber, where they both remained, questioning, in a manner the most unfeeling and insulting, the unfortunate victim of their audacity and persecution. One of them, the client, with a barbarous and unmanly sneer, turning to his confederate, asked, "Who, to see the lady they were now speaking to, could believe that she had once been called the beautiful Mrs. Robinson?" To this he added other observations not less savage and brutal; and, after throwing on the bed ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson |
