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More "Sneer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inches taller than his opponent and at least fifteen pounds heavier. His nose was a bit swollen, and there was a sneer ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... mouth lifted in a sneer. That precious heart of his! the heart of a thief upon which even now the fruits ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... know you must execute sentence of death upon him as soon as he marries again, and breaks faith with you."—"To this hour he is a widower," said Undine, "and loves and mourns me truly."—"Ah, but he will be bridegroom soon," said Kuehleborn with a sneer; "wait a couple of days only; and the marriage blessing will have been given, and you must go up and put the criminal to death."—"I cannot!" answered the smiling Undine. "I have had the fountain sealed up, against ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... The sneer conveyed in the tones stung him to the quick. But he made an effort to conceal his chagrin, and said, with apparent calmness: "You must admit it was an unaccountable freak to start for the plantation in the evening, and go wandering round the grounds in that mysterious way. What could have induced ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... could not leave the stranger in peace: and knowing that his privileged calling protected him from that formidable fist, he never passed him by without a sneer or a jest, as he wandered round the table, offering his harp, in the Cornish fashion, to any one who wished to ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... him. An anecdote is told which shows his impudence and incurable perversity. One day he was caught taking some money, and was soundly whipped by his cousins. When this was over, the child, instead of showing any sorrow or asking forgiveness, ran away with a sneer, and seeing they ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... dreaming," he mused. "Wake to know That my place is not here—I must go—I must go. Who dares laugh at Love shall hear Love laughing last, As forth from his bowstring barbed arrows are cast. I scoffed at the god with a sneer on my lip, And he forces me now from his chalice to sip A bitter sweet potion. Ah, lightly the part Of a lover I've played many times, but my heart Has been proud in its record of friendship. And ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... brilliance, as he rose and walked away. For some time he stood before the window, with his arms folded; and, laying her head on the stool of the melodeon, Beulah knelt just as he left her It has been said, "Who can refute a sneer?" Rather ask, Who can compute its ruinous effects. To that kneeling figure came the thought, "If he, surrounded by wealth and friends, and blessings, cannot believe in God, what cause have I, poor, wretched, and lonely, to have faith in him?" The bare suggestion of the doubt stamped it on her ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... of this volume will be found a sketch of the French revolution of 1789, as connected with persecution. It has long been the practice of infidels to sneer at christianity, because some of its nominal followers have exhibited a persecuting spirit. And although they knew that christianity condemns persecution in the most pointed manner, yet they have never ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... with a sneer, "if Olivia were alive, I dare scarcely have trusted you, could I? But you have nothing to gain by my death, you know; and I have so much faith in you, in your skill, and your honor, and your conscientiousness—if ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... moment the elder woman's sneer dulled the edge of Claire's anticipations, but presently the man began to speak, and at once she felt a sense of power back of his halting words, a sudden bursting fort of bloom amid the frozen assembly that sat ice-bound, ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the use of the Alexandrine is that, in attempting to give dignity to his line, the poet may only produce heaviness, incurring the sneer of Pope— ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... class in the places where they gathered—the public houses—the churchly scandal-mongers called him "a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners"—precisely as in the old days they used to sneer at the Socialists for having their meetings in the backrooms of saloons, and precisely as they still denounce us ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... me, but I daresay you will have a good sneer at me, and tell me to stick to my barnacles. By the way, you agree with me that sometimes one gets despondent—for instance, when theory and facts will not harmonise; but what appears to me even worse, and makes me despair, is, when I see from the same great ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Jimmy, with a sneer; "you all time talking 'bout you know all 'bout job; you 'bout the womanishest little girl they is. Now I know job 'cause Miss Cecilia 'splained all 'bout him to me. He's in the Bible and he sold his birthmark for a ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... I am," he answered, with a sneer upon his coarse, handsome face. "Did I not swear that it should be so, beauteous Rosamund, after your saintly cousin worsted me ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... been a correct one. A few of them had known that we were going; some had bade us good-bye. They rested on their picks now and stared at us, lifting their eyebrows, with a knowing smile for one another and a half-sneer for us. My companion had already plumbed the depths of fear and so was now lost to all shame. Myself, I found it very hard. Soldiers have, outwardly at least, but little tenderness, except perhaps in bad times, and they showed none now. Nor mercy. The situation ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... sneer upon Ferd's lip, for that young man had never earned one cent in all his life, and foolishly looked down upon the unfortunate boy whom fortune compelled to face the world and wrest ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... added Havill, brightening into a civil sneer. 'That is, he would be, if he were not a maker of negatives well ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... surrendered first, and afterwards Philip of Megalopolis. King Philip, happening to meet the latter as he was coming out from the town, ordered his attendants, in derision, to salute him with the title of king; and he himself, coming up to him, with a sneer, highly unbecoming his own exalted station, addressed him as Brother. Having been brought before the consul he was ordered to be kept in confinement, and soon after was sent to Rome in chains. All the rest of the Athamanians, together with the ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... told him of my disappointment, for I never kept a thing from him—traitor that he was—he laughed at me for losing my heart to my housekeeper's daughter! I, who, he said, might marry the greatest lady in the land. I could have knocked him down for his sneer at Amy, and I wish now I had, the wretch! He will not marry your daughter, madam; and if he does not I ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... calmly than he had done hitherto, in spite of the sneer in the last sentence. He had broken down, and he felt that Paolo and Gianbattista were too much for him. He desired no repetition of the scene which had passed, and he thought the best thing to be done was to ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... 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
... addition to the mass of facts collected, Darwin was busy with some of the experiments which he described in a letter to Sir Joseph Hooker (in 1855) as affording the latter a "good right to sneer, for they are so absurd, even in my opinion, that I dare not tell you." While a sentence in another letter (dated 1849) throws a sidelight on all this preparatory work: "In your letter you wonder what 'ornamental poultry' has to do with barnacles; but do not ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... by this appeal; and indeed Riccabocca had never before thus reverently spoken of the cloister. In his hours of philosophy, he was wont to sneer at monks and nuns, priesthood and superstition. But now, in that hour of emotion, the Old Religion reclaimed her empire; and the skeptical world-wise man, thinking only of his child, spoke and felt ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... transurban excitement, which made that of Suzanne almost a forgotten affair, Mademoiselle was not less agitated; she was filled with a variety of novel emotions. Looking about her salon, dining-room, and boudoir, cruel apprehensions took possession of her. A species of demon showed her with a sneer her old-fashioned luxury. The handsome things she had admired from her youth up she suddenly suspected of age and absurdity. In short, she felt that fear which takes possession of nearly all authors when they read over a work they have hitherto thought proof against every exacting ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... said Diana gently. She knew the sneer was meant to cover uneasy feeling; and if it had not, still she would not have resented it. She never resented anything now that was done to herself. In came Josh with the foaming pails. Diana's hands were in the butter, and her mother came ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... sufficiently apprised of the power of the Gods by domestic examples? Will not the temerity of P. Claudius, in the first Punic war, affect us? who, when the poultry were let out of the coop and would not feed, ordered them to be thrown into the water, and, joking even upon the Gods, said, with a sneer, "Let them drink, since they will not eat;" which piece of ridicule, being followed by a victory over his fleet, cost him many tears, and brought great calamity on the Roman people. Did not his colleague Junius, in the same war, lose his fleet ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Don lifts high his injured head, Or 'stands between the living and the dead.' Still from St. Mary's pulpit echoes wide Primo, beware of truth, whate'er betide; Deinde, from deep Charybdis while you steer Lest damned Socinus charm you with his sneer, Watch above all, so not Saint Thomas spake, Lest upon Calvin, Scylla's rook, you break," ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... dint of time and good pies combined. If Titian were to send us a portrait from the other world, as certain dead poets send their poetry by means of a medium, it would be some time before the art critic of the Times would discover its value. We may sneer at the want of judgment thus displayed, but such slowness of judgment is human and has always existed. I say all this here because my thoughts on the matter have forced upon me the conviction that very much consideration is due to the bitter ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... isn't so bad, after all?" There was no time for explanation. She passed on into the jeweller's with another smile on her mobile face. He had to do his stammering to himself, annoyed at the quip of triumph, at the blithe sneer, over his young vaporings. This trivial annoyance was accentuated by the effusive cordiality of the great Lindsay, whom he met in the elevator. Sommers did not like this camaraderie of manner. He had seen Lindsay snub many a poor interne. In his mail, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... morning of thy death, the seven old men to whom obedience was commanded by the chieftain, curse thee because thou borest away with thee the soul of their hero. In their addresses to the people, with scorn and scoff upon their lips, they sneer and call thee 'WOMAN;' but the people weep, and pray: Lord Christ, Son of the Virgin, give to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... him. He always spoke to me politely, and to a casual observer his demeanour towards me was very friendly. Kaffar, on the other hand, treated me very rudely. He often sought to turn a laugh against me; he even greeted me with a sneer. I took no notice of him, however—never replied to his insulting words; and this evidently maddened him. The truth was, I was afraid lest there should be some design in Voltaire's apparent friendliness and Kaffar's evident desire ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... younger officers 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 ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... jaw. His voice as he spoke was low and soft; but at the end, with the concluding words, "I am innocent!" it flashed into strong masculinity. His eyes, shaded with long girlish black lashes, by chance met mine. "I am innocent." His curving sensuous lips drew down into a grim sneer.... ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... March 18th. The sneer at the godly man for his imperfections is ill-judged. A blade is a small thing. At first it grows very near the earth. It is often soiled and crushed and downtrodden. But it is a living thing,. . . and "it doth not yet appear what it shall be." ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... you ashamed to 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 of ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... then parted. Hooper was to suffer at Gloucester, and returned to his cell; Rogers was committed to the sheriff, and led out to Smithfield. The Catholics had affected to sneer at the faith of their rivals. There was a general conviction among them, which was shared probably by Pole and Gardiner, that the Protestants would all flinch at the last; that they had no "doctrine that would abide the fire." When Rogers appeared, ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... into putting into your sink-hole down there. You may remember that you told me, when I went in, that you would guarantee me all I put in." His voice rose into a sneer. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... ear? and shall I never again possess a friend, whose face will wear a smile of joy whenever I approach? Alas! how thoughtless, how dreadfully imprudent have I been! I know not which is most painful to endure, the sneer of contempt, or the glance of compassion, which is depicted in the various countenances of my own sex: they are both equally humiliating. Ah! my dear parents, could you now see the child of your affections, the daughter whom you so dearly loved, ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... a sneer; "we'll see,—we'll see! Here, Sambo, Quimbo, give this dog such a breakin' in as he ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... echoed Molly with a sneer. "Do you mean to try to choke it down my throat that my whiteness would save me should your people rise up against Niggers in Wilmington? Honestly, Ben Hartright, do you mean that?" Molly arose from the sofa and stood up before her lover that she might the better ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... a curious remnant of that pride of race at which it is the undisputed privilege of low birth and a plebeian temperament to sneer. "I won't have my own name dragged in. I dropped it years ago. I've confessed as Stephens, and I'll die and be buried as Stephens. I'm not going to disgrace ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... way of passing the time,' he said with a sneer. 'Book-learning, forsooth, when the ship may go to pieces ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... appears in the warmth betrayed by writers over their favorite. The cool-headed Delambre, in his "Histoire de l'Astronomie," speaks of Kepler with the heat of a pamphleteer, and cannot repress a frequent sneer at his contemporary, Galileo. We know the splendor of the Newtonian synthesis; yet we do not find ourselves affected by Newton's character or discoveries. He touches us with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... their midst, feeling humble and contrite, and had been conscience-smitten at sight of her mamma's pale face; but the sneer on Betty's face, the cold, averted looks of Edward and Zoe, and then Rosie's taunt roused her quick temper to almost a ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... learned, sympathetic? To us he is merely the sore old bear, who was too stupid to perceive the genius of Pope. The grace and discrimination lavished by Francis Jeffrey over a thousand pages, weigh like a feather beside one sentence about Wordsworth's Excursion, and one tasteless sneer at Charles Lamb. Even the mighty figure of Sainte-Beuve totters at the whisper of the name Balzac. Even Matthew Arnold would have been wiser to have taken counsel with himself before he laughed at Shelley. And the very ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... knotted. He has an immense moustache. He has (God knows why) a serene contempt for ordinary mortals. He is always growing black with fury, and bullying weak men. On such occasions, his lips may be observed to be twisted into an evil sneer. He is a seducer and liar: he has ruined various women, and had special facilities for becoming acquainted with the rottenness of society: and occasionally he expresses, in language of the most profane, not to say blasphemous character, a momentary regret for having ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... "We do not sneer, my boy," returned Uncle Geoffrey, more mildly—for he remembered Fred's father had only been dead a week—"we are only doubtful of the wisdom of your choice; but there, work hard at your daubs, and keep out of debt and bad company, and you may yet triumph over your cranky old uncle." And ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... how it is"—with a sneer; "but all horses aint virtuous, no more than all men kind; and come close to, and much dealt with, some things are catching. When you find me a virtuous jockey, I will find you a benevolent ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... intercourse, which extinguishes all delicacy even in the spectators. The young English woman sees the foreign woman leading a life which, though in England it would stamp her with universal shame, in France or Germany, and above all, in Italy, never brings more than a sneer, and seldom even the sneer. She sees this wedded or widowed profligate received in the highest ranks; flourishing without a reproach, if she has the means of keeping an opera-box, or giving suppers; every soul round her acquainted with every point of her history, yet none shrinking from her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Dombey dropped his eyes, and adjusted his neckcloth again, the smiling face of Mr Carker the Manager became in a moment, and without any stage of transition, transformed into a most intent and frowning face, scanning his closely, and with an ugly sneer. As Mr Dombey raised his eyes, it changed back, no less quickly, to its old expression, and showed him every gum of which ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... winds it up?" said his companion. "Who but Allah," he replied. This admiration of our superior attainments is however not universal; for, upon an occasion similar to the above, a Sumatran observed, with a sneer, "How clever these people are in ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... manners have become more free, and intimacies that once took months to develop, now need only minutes, so much contemporary verse-tribute to women is so detailed, so bold, so cock-sure, that the elaborate compliments only half-conceal a sneer. In all such work love is born of desire—its sole foundation—and hence is equally short-lived and fleeting. In the poems of Mr. Yeats, desire seems to follow rather than to precede love. Love thus takes on, as it ought to, something of the ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... market-dinner times. We were very jolly afterwards, and amazingly triumphant over the frost-bitten, snow-buried soldier-banditti that had so long lorded it over continental Europe. Dutton did not partake of the general hilarity. There was a sneer upon his lip during the whole time, which, however, found no expression ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... ached like a living wound. She had told so little, and he could guess so much. This unknown man who had triumphed seemed to sneer scornfully at him ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... retorted Rosenheim, with an oily sneer, "I owe the money all right, but I don't own a thing in the world. Everything in this room belongs to my wife. The amount of money I owe is really something shocking. Even what is in the safe"—he nodded to a large affair on the other ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... clothed him. I wonder Aristophanes never thought of that jest. Notwithstanding his willingness to please the populace with the coarse wit current in the Agoras, I think it gratifies his equestrian pride to sneer at those who are too frugal to buy coloured robes, and fill the air with delicious perfumes as they pass. I know you seldom like the comic writers. What did you ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... plain cooks at twenty pounds a year will see to these things for us. Your work is to teach us gentleness and kindness. Lay your foolish curls just here, child. It is from such as you we learn wisdom. Foolish wise folk sneer at you. Foolish wise folk would pull up the laughing lilies, the needless roses from the garden, would plant in their places only useful, wholesome cabbage. But the gardener, knowing better, plants the silly, short-lived flowers, foolish wise ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... now stood leaning against the mantle-piece, beating the devil's tatoo upon the wall, and, from time to time, whistling snatches of a popular air. His strongly marked features, though handsome, were bold and repulsive, the upper lip curling with half a sneer—but it was merely the soul imaged in the countenance, for, lad as he was, the spirit had quaffed many a deep draught of sinfulness, while mildew and iciness had crept down and sullied the purity of his heart, whose stern monitor-angel, conscience, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... for light, he tried to iron all suggestion of a sneer out of his voice, but evidently he ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Renovales thought of the frescos of Giordano that decorated its ceilings. Afterwards, he fixed his attention on a building with red walls and a stone portal, which pretentiously obstructed the space in the foreground, at the edge of the green slope. Bah! The Academy! And the artist's sneer included in the same loathing the Academy of Language and the other Academies—painting, literature, every manifestation of human thought, dried, smoked, and swathed, with the immortality of a mummy, in the bandages of tradition, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... saw in the papers an account of the opera and of the dresses of the company, and hence the town, and thence, of course, the whole nation, were informed that Mr. Fitzpatrick had very little powder in his hair.' Walpole sheltered himself behind the corner of a pension to sneer at the tragi-comedy of life; but if his feelings were not profound, they were quick and genuine, and, affectation for affectation, his cynical coxcombry seems preferable to the solemn coxcombry of the men who shamelessly wrangled for plunder, while they talked solemn ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... not from any scientific spirit or scientific acumen that this materialistic coterie avoid psychometric and spiritual facts. The newspapers which ignore or sneer at such knowledge are easily gulled in matters of science. A writer in the Open Court upon the possibilities of the future, which he presents as being confined "strictly to legitimate deductions ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... their opinions of TO-MORROW in words just as hard, although their opinions of to-morrow may contradict their opinions of to-day.' They are fearless of personal consequences. As free men, they will think, as free men they will speak, and as such they will act, regardless of the jibe and sneer of those who accuse them of change, of inconsistency, of being mutable and unstable of purpose. The point to the march of improvement, the advance in the actualities of life, and ask, 'When every thing else is on the move, shall we stand still? Shall the opinions of a quarter of a century, a decade, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... if I were to anger him by jumping over it, he would be vexed and give me trouble.' 'Yes,' said he, 'that is exactly what I said, and I repeat it. Beware, young man, beware of idle boasting and of breaking the law.' 'What do I care for a spirit that lives on my father's land?' I answered with a sneer. 'I don't believe there is a spirit in this well. If there is, it is only another ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... nobody who IS any nobody—comes out to show himself or herself, to see and to be seen, to promenade about and display their winding-sheets and grave-clothes to each other, to criticise one another's style, and sneer at one another's complexion. ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... be," he said. "Well, well, there it is, and must be swallowed with the rest. Pity, though," he added, with a sneer on his dark face, "since many a year has gone by since these walls have seen a bastard, and, as things are, that may pull them ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... one like you, Charles," said Herbert, with a sneer; "one would think you never had seen a hen or a cow before. If you were at our school they would call you 'lady;' for you clap your hands just as a girl does over these things. I like horses and dogs, but who cares for a ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples
... towns, and London especially, grew richer, their voices were listened to in the settlement of the affairs of the nation. It might be very well for Chaucer to close the description of his "Merchant" with what looks very much like a fashionable writer's half sneer:— ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... his class on oratory and mentioned the fact that Webster and Choate both came from Dartmouth; that Wendell Phillips graduated at Harvard, but the university had not seen much of him since. At the mention of Wendell Phillips some of the boys from pro-slavery families began to sneer. Professor Child raised himself up and said determinedly, "Wendell Phillips is as good an orator as either of them!" He was chagrined, however, at Phillips's later public course,—his support of Socialism and General Butler. Neither ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... inconvenient, and untidy. Recently, in several places, practical reformers, as bold as Joan d'Arc, have discarded the trailing skirts, and adopted the far more convenient, equally chaste, and more elegant dresses of Oriental women. Some ridicule them; others sneer contemptuously or laugh incredulously, and others commend them for their taste and courage. We are disposed to be placed in the latter category; and to show our good-will, we present, above, a sketch of ORIENTAL COSTUME, as a model for ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... moral meanings," and no happier choice of phrase could characterize his many works. Lamb, with true discrimination, says: "All laughter is not of a dangerous or soul-hardening tendency. There is the petrifying sneer of a demon, which excludes and kills love, and there is the cordial laughter of a man, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... broke, And smiling, with malignant sneer, Upon her sister dear, Who stood in expectation by, Ever implacable and cruel, spoke "I would be blinded of ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... complexion, foxy haired, his beard cut to a point, small moustaches curled upward showing thin pale lips, and giving his mouth a disagreeable curve also upwards, a sort of set smile that was really a sardonic sneer, conveying distrust and disbelief in all around. His eyes were so deep set as to be almost lost in their recesses behind his sandy eyelashes, and he kept them screwed up close, with the intent watchful ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... learned to sneer at "book learning" is foredoomed to failure and will spare himself many humiliations by ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... to the will of God," which Mohammed praised as the highest of all virtues. For seven years he preached to the people of Medina. Then he believed himself strong enough to begin a campaign against his former neighbours who had dared to sneer at him and his Holy Mission in his old camel-driving days. At the head of an army of Medinese he marched across the desert. His followers took Mecca without great difficulty, and having slaughtered a number of the inhabitants, they found it quite easy to ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... doctor's opinion was borne out by the way in which Sam senior took hold of his son on his return. Reproaches were perhaps to be expected, but, alas, the poor, sore-hearted father tried sneers as well. A sneer is like a flame; it may occasionally be curative because it cauterizes, but it leaves a bitter scar. Of his dreadful anxiety in these seven or eight weeks of absence, of his sleepless nights, of his self-accusings, of his anguished affection, the senior warden could find nothing to say; but ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... with a laugh; "and what poor gull am I to adore an attested wanton?" Then, with a sneer, he spoke of Melicent, and in such terms as are not bettered ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... of this passage is of very undefined sense; we can guess at what is meant by the sneer upon the "vaunted Italian schools." There are not only immense gaps, but great gulfs, over which there is no legitimate passage. If these schools have "done so much honour to the art of painting," as M. de Burtin asserts that they have, it has rather ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... sound of his mistress' name one of the bearers turned and shot a sharp glance at the speaker. Instantly the old man fell back, saying, as a sneer of contempt ran through the rabble at the intelligence his words conveyed: "Anger them not. They ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... to reconcile unflinching honesty with a just and becoming regard for the feelings of those who have claims upon our forbearance, than would have been the case a hundred years ago. 'It is not now with a polite sneer,' as a high ecclesiastical authority lately admitted, 'still less with a rude buffet or coarse words, that Christianity is assailed.' Before churchmen congratulate themselves too warmly on this improvement in the nature of ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... John quarrelled; and she left him and came to live at Deepley Walls, leaving him at Dene Folly; and here she stayed till Sir John was taken with his last illness and sent for her. He sent for her, not to make up the quarrel, but to jibe and sneer at her, and to make her wait on him day and night, as if she were a paid nurse from a hospital. While this was going on, and after Sir John had been quite given up by the doctors, news came from India of Master Charles's death. Well, her ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... the Little Russian said with a good-natured sneer, "you have eaten well, but you have chewed your food up badly, and a piece has remained sticking in your throat. You ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... and included my intelligence in the sneer at Scotland Yard. He argued the point with me until he forced me to admit that there was a large element of luck ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... fearful. It seemed she was being racked to pieces. Master and mate were side by side when this happened, and the expressions on their faces typified them. In neither face was apprehension. Mr. Pike's face bore a sour sneer for the worthless sailors who had botched the job. Captain West's face was ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... think he wants to thank me, give me a new suit of clothes and invite me to dine with him at Del's?" and Fred gave the least tinge of a sneer to ...
— Halsey & Co. - or, The Young Bankers and Speculators • H. K. Shackleford
... Don't sneer at Knowles. Your own clear, tolerant brain, that reflects all men and creeds alike, like colorless water, drawing the truth from all, is very different, doubtless, from this narrow, solitary soul, who thought the world waited for him to fight down his one evil before it went ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... her son regarded her with an expression of mingled surprise and incredulity, then the sneer returned, and, turning to leave the room, he ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... in modern poetry is due to Johann Heinrich Voss, a man of genius, an admirable metrist, and, Schlegel's sneer to the contrary notwithstanding, hitherto the best translator of Homer. His "Odyssey," (1783,) his "Iliad," (1791,) and his "Luise," (1795,) were confessedly Goethe's teachers in this kind of verse. The "Hermann and Dorothea" of the latter (1798) ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... austere in age; Calm, but not cold, and cheerful though a sage; Too true to flatter and too kind to sneer, And only just when seemingly severe; So gently blending courtesy and art That wisdom's lips ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the resolution, and her manner, without being sullen, aggravated her brother into wrath, the effusion of which was a withering sneer. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... 'forefathers' will appeal differently to different minds. By some they will be dismissed with a sneer; to others they will appeal as proofs of genius on the part of those who enunciated them. There are men, and by no means the minority, who, however wealthy in regard to facts, can never rise into the region of principles; and they are sometimes intolerant of those who can. They ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... to impose upon me," replied the monk with a sneer. "Bring the queen this way, and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the sacrifice was mine," said the squire, with a half sneer. "If I remember rightly, I advanced the money which ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Miss Varnham; but her smile was so like a sneer, and her glance about the room so cold and contemptuous, that Peggy felt ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... pricks. He knew so well the cold, curt, inflexible official answer; the empty, vapouring regrets, false, simpering, pharisaical; the parrot-phrases of public interests, public considerations, public welfare; the smile, the sneer, the self-complacent shrug of those who know that only the people whom they profess to serve will suffer. To him, as to them, it seemed a monstrous thing to take away the water from its natural channel and force the men who lived on it and by ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... miscalled her shadow a "shabby"; who had asked to be "merinded to merember," like her absent-minded Aunt Anne; and who had unconsciously parodied Split's passionate rendering of a line of the old song, "I feel his presence near" into "I feel his pleasant sneer"! ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Abbey. But there is one general objection which he is sure to make at almost every house, particularly at those which are most distinguished. He allows that all the apartments are extremely fine, but adds, with a sneer, that they are too ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... sentimental, bold as a lion, destructively experienced in hardship and endurance, very quick indeed to single out and wither humbug that was within her range of knowledge, but innocent as a child before any other sort of humbug whatsoever. That was why she could now sneer at the stage-heroine, and could play with the mysterious beauties of her own reflection; but it was why she could also be led into quick indignation by something ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... in my body, and my strength is nearly wasted. A hind cast me his crust to-day, and five hours I have battled with myself not to creep back to the place where it still lies and eat of that vile bread. I do not fear to die, but I fear to die of my hunger lest they sneer at the last of my race brought low to so mean a death. Neither will I die by my own act, lest they think my courage broken by these breaking days. On my knees," said she, "I beseech you to send me in some wise ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... Italy with his army. One morning a large packet was brought to him by an Imperial courier. To his astonishment, and the amusement of his staff, it was but models of tails and curls. Suvaroff gave vent to a sneer, a much more fatal thing than a sarcasm, in some Russian ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... and good-will among them till Philip Ross, fixing his eyes on Eddie, said with a sneer, "So, Master Ed, though you told me one day you'd never talk to your mamma as I did to mine, you've done a good deal worse. I don't set up for a pattern good boy, but I'd die before I'd shoot ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... been less beautiful,—if Envy's self could have found aught else to sneer at,—he might have felt his affection heightened by the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of emotion that throbbed within her heart; ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... forgotten demonstration when he recalled his thoughts in the morning. But, while he was thus becoming assimilated to the enthusiasts, his contempt, in nowise decreasing toward them, grew very fierce against himself; he imagined, also, that every face of his acquaintance wore a sneer, and that every word addressed to him was a gibe. Such was his state of mind at the period of Ilbrahim's misfortune, and the emotions consequent upon that event completed the change of which the child had been the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... one, not even infants of tender age. He lives in the Rue Mandar with a wife who might be the Mamamouchi of the Bourgeois gentilhomme and a couple of little Vernous as ugly as sin. He tries to sneer at the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where he will never set foot, and makes his duchesses talk like his wife. That is the sort of man to raise a howl at the Jesuits, insult the Court, and credit the Court party with the design of restoring feudal rights and the right of primogeniture—just ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... with a bitter sneer, "is not what I expected from an uncle and warrior. But other chiefs may be found less afraid of the luck of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the cobbles of the Holy City, praying as they went. Some of them had been saving up all their lives, I imagine, against the coming of this great day; but our guide—and we tried three different ones—never beheld this sight that he did not sneer at it; and not once did he fail to point out that most of the pilgrims were middle-aged or old, taking this as proof of his claim that the Church no longer kept its hold on the younger people, even among the peasant classes. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... from jumping into the lake, if I had wished to get it? Do you think that suicides are not mine already?—mine by their own act, without the formality of a bargain?—Your soul!" repeated the Prince of Darkness, with a sneer; "I don't want it, I assure you: at least not to-day—I feel sure of it whenever I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... to a crooked elm over-hanging the water,—all in vain for many lingering minutes; but presently the obdurate knot gave way, and, turning to gather up her shawl, there, close behind her, so close that his hot breath seemed to sear her cheek, stood her husband, clear in the moonlight, with a sneer on his face, and the lurid glow of drunkenness, that made a savage brute of a bad man, gleaming in his deep-set eyes. Hitty neither shrieked nor ran; despair nerved her,—despair turned her rigid before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... your pet is very forward, and so tiresome," said Mrs. Farnham, gazing down upon the waters with a weak sneer; "one would think she had never seen ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... seeing a well-dressed woman covered with diamonds, and whom nobody knew, alight from a very handsome carriage, were curious to know who it was, and sent to enquire of the lackey. He replied, with a sneer, "It is a lady who has recently tumbled from a garret into this carriage." This lady was probably of the same sort as Madame Bejon's cook. That lady, being at the opera, some days back, saw a person in a costly dress, and decorated with a great quantity of jewels, but very ugly, enter the theatre. ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... antiquity. The old tradition is that here, as at St. Paul's and Westminster, was a Roman temple, but of that there is no proof whatever. The first Bow Church seems, however, to have been one of the earliest churches built by the conquerors of Harold; and here, no doubt, the sullen Saxons came to sneer at the masse chanted with a French accent. The first church was racked by storm and fire, was for a time turned into a fortress, was afterwards the scene of a murder, and last of all became one of our earliest ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... can't see why you are so set on having your father see you married," she said with a bitter sneer. "HE has never remembered that he is your father. He cares nothing ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... as she sat at her spinning-wheel. As to her two sisters, they were perfectly helpless, and a burden to themselves. They would rise at ten, and spend the live-long day fretting for the loss of their fine clothes and gay parties, and sneer at their sister for her low-born tastes, because she put up with their ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... said Leslie, anticipating and interrupting the half-sneer that was coming—"is the red woman whom I saw to-night in the house on Prince Street, just before I fell out of the tree; and it was her voice that I heard on the piazza yonder just before the door opened. What do you think ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... held out his hand with frank forgiveness. "Your apology is ample, Sieur Deschenaux. I am satisfied you meant no affront to my sister! It is my weak point, messieurs," continued he, looking firmly at the company, ready to break out had he detected the shadow of a sneer upon any one's countenance. "I honor her as I do the queen of heaven. Neither of their names ought to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... hand; then, with an astounding oath, he hurried up the court to the Plaza. I went up to the woman and said, 'What is the cause of this? I hope the ruffian has not seriously injured you.' She turned her countenance upon me with the glance of a demon, and at last with a sneer of contempt exclaimed, 'Carals, que es eso? Cannot a Catalan gentleman be conversing with his lady upon their own private affairs without being interrupted by you?' She then bound up her hand with a handkerchief, and going into the room brought a small table to the door, on ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... speak the truth, was easily seen. He was framed like a sky-scraping building, with the girders all plainly suggested. Not without a certain insolence of deliberation, he stared about the room before assuming his seat, and provoked himself to a sneer ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... no money—and is welcomed with tearful affection by his favourite sister Mary, shakes hands silently with his father, and has a long whispered conversation with his mother, which leaves him very subdued. His brothers forbear to sneer at him, partly because it is Christmas, partly on mother's account, and thirdly, because Jim can use his hands. Aunt Emma, who is fond of him, cheers ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... you has been! I knew that you would not refuse me in spite of the fact that the world may misunderstand, may sneer at your taking me. I knew that you were big enough even for that, when you understood it, coming from me. I wanted to be with you, now, that we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... black than we were painted"? — Faith, no word of black was said; The lightest touch was human blood, and that, you know, runs red. It's sticking to your fist to-day for all your sneer and scoff, And by the Judge's well-weighed word ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... rather hard. Was there a hidden and inexplicable sneer in this retort? No. It was not that. It might have been resentment. Yes. But what had he to resent? He looked as though he had not slept very well of late. I could almost feel on me the weight of his ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... Atwater paid no attention to the sneer, flung his shoe at him. The soldier was reading by the light of the flames, when the missile came, striking the ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... to you for thinking so much about my comfort," he said in a voice into which he hoped he had insinuated a sneer. "But I'm bound to say you're awful suspicious folk about here. You needn't be feared for your old policies. There's plenty of nice walks about the roads, and I want ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... leaning against the rail, buried deep in thought, Billy Byrne passed close behind her. At sight of her a sneer curled his lip. How he hated her! Not that she ever had done aught to harm him, but rather because she represented to him in concrete form all that he had learned to hate ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... all that was mighty—and represented it so perfectly that through all their lives her pupils never dissociated herself from the righteousness which she taught and upheld and practised. And this attitude was wholly good for girls born in a century when it was the fashion to sneer at hero-worship and to scoff at authority when the word obedience in the Marriage Service was accused of redundancy, and the custom of speaking evil of dignities was mistaken ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... his anxiety was solely of a public nature, why did it date from March 7, when, prior to that time, there was much greater cause for alarm than afterwards. In everything he said or wrote he continually recurs to the slavery question and always in a defensive tone, usually with a sneer or a fling at the abolitionists and anti-slavery party. The spirit of unrest had seized him. He was disturbed and ill at ease. He never admitted it, even to himself, but his mind was not at peace, and he could not conceal the fact. Posterity can see the evidences of it plainly ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... too, how greatly he had exaggerated the effect to be produced by his act. For a few nights there was a sneer or a laugh when he knelt down, but this passed off soon, and one by one all the other boys but three or four ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... as are now most improperly, whether as boast or as sneer, called Evangelical, what an insufferable tyranny would this introduce! Who would not rather live in Algiers? This alone would make this minute history of the ecclesiastic factions invaluable, that it must convince all sober lovers of independence and moral self-government, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... said Favonius, with half a sneer, "you think your forces inadequate. The two legions at Luceria are just detached from Caesar. Perhaps you question ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... It cost labor and the pains of innumerable toilers to clothe it, nourish it, maintain it, guard, comfort, and embellish it. And an effort of ten minutes was enough to drain it of all save the fleshly, the mere bestial. The habit of his mind impelled him to sneer as he stood above it, to moralise in the tune of cynicism. "Ecce homo!" were the words he chanced upon; but the flavor of them troubled him when he remembered the goal of the journey upon which that ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... with the nearest approach to a sneer that ever she made. "I have heard all you have to say, Mrs. Stillwater, and now I have to reply—First, that I give you no credit for any respect or affection that you may profess for Mr. Rockharrt, or for disinterested motives in marrying the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... because of their dread of ironic criticism. Long after his death, Thackeray, who had an intense sense of human character, but was typically stupid in valuing and interpreting it, instinctively sneered at him and exulted in his defeat. That sneer represents the common English attitude towards the Burgoyne type. Every instance in which the critical genius is defeated, and the stupid genius (for both temperaments have their genius) "muddles through all right," is popular in England. ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... of a virtuous friend; But everlasting dictates crowd his tongue, Perversely grave, or positively wrong. The still returning tale, and ling'ring jest, Perplex the fawning niece and pamper'd guest, While growing hopes scarce awe the gath'ring sneer, And scarce a legacy can bribe to hear; The watchful guests still hint the last offence; The daughter's petulance, the son's expense, Improve his heady rage with treach'rous skill, And mould his passions till they make his will. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... call the laws of the country oppressive?" asked the baronet, with as much of a sneer as cowardice would ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... "I don't propose to be bothered by the other kind. They wouldn't do anything for me if they could except sneer ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... being on the spot," I said, with something like a sneer. "All the same, I am very sure that there is another means of communicating with the octagonal room and the tower besides the main door through the passage." And I mentioned the mysterious disappearance of the servant, which had on Christmas Day led ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... He cannot control a sneer. The men who are lumber-hewers, dirt-diggers, cod-fishers and factory operatives will never face the Southern chivalry. He despises the sneaking Yankees. Traders in a small way arouse all the arrogance of the planter. He cannot bring any philosophy of the past to tell him that the straining, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... an insufferable insolence in the smile, an insufferable sneer in the compliment. Ethel had half extended a timid hand—Victor had wholly extended a pleading one. She took not the slightest notice of either. She lifted the white veil, and looked down ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... are, one thing is certain—it will be long before America will have a literature. Nor am I disposed to sneer, when I think of it, at the alarm of the New York Gazette, which is afraid lest the Tories of Maga should gain a preponderating influence in the minds of educated American youth. Why is it absurd to suppose that, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... smoking room, is criticism, playful and otherwise, of others. There are people in whom the adversely critical spirit is so highly developed that they find it hard to praise any one or to hear any one praised—their criticism leaps to the surface in one way or another, in the sneer, in the "butt," in the joke, in the gibe, in the openly expressed attack. This way of being superior may be direct and open, more often it is disguised. Many a woman (and man) who denounces the sinner receives from her contemplation ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... be a precious revelation of Stacy's inner nature. Facing the wind and rain, he recalled how Stacy, though never so enthusiastic about his marriage as Demorest, had taken up Van Loo sharply for some foolish sneer about his own youthfulness. He was affectionately tolerant of even Stacy's dislike to his wife's relations, for Stacy did not know them as he did. Indeed, Barker, whose own father and mother had died in his infancy, had accepted his wife's relations ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... not sneer so at every thing if you could help it," she said. "I am not wise enough to do so; but I don't ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... if you think that! You are not that sort. You are not, and you never were and never could be. Don't you suppose I know?"—almost with a sneer: "I won't have it—nor would you! It is you, not I, who have controlled this situation; and if you don't realise it I do. I never doubted you even when you prattled to me of moderation. I know that you were not named with your name in ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... Guy seemed to have no trouble in reining in his temper in arguing with Charles, except once, when the lion was fairly roused by something that sounded like a sneer about King Charles I. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of that?' says the Lizard with a sneer. 'Now I reckons a thousand-dollar bet would scare this puerile game you deals a-screechin' up a tree or ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the British are fond of puns. It is usual to sneer at the pun as the lowest form of wit. Such, alas! it too often is, and frequently, as well, it is a form of no wit at all. But the pun may contain a very high form of wit, and may please either for its cleverness, or for its amusing quality, or for the ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... notice the matter in his account of Narbon Gaul, accompanies it with the intimation that although asserted by both Greek and Roman authorities, the story was either a delusion or a fraud.[2] JUVENAL has a sneer for the rustic— ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... very good of you to tell me," said Mary. "Thank you. It's so like me! When I'm agitated I become too appallingly absent-minded for words. That's the sort of thing I do. How you must sneer—I mean, laugh at me, ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... you seek the general for some ulterior purpose," he said with a sneer, and, before Chester realized what he was about to do, the officer raised his hand and slapped him soundly across the face. "Take them ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... with this whipper-snapper. I'll go to-night beneath Eva's window and sing a serenade which will surely win her heart. I'll not lose her even if this great knight should prove to be a great singer." Every time he thought of Walther, it was with a sneer. On the whole, Beckmesser was a nasty little man, even though he was quite a singer. He was old and ugly and it was quite ridiculous of him to think ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... capable man to jilt her. Then seize your chance. All the affections which have gone out to him, unmet, ready to droop, quivering with the painful, hungry instinct to grasp some object, may possibly lay hold of you. Let the world sneer; but God pity such natures, which lack the faith and fortitude to live and die true ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... at Oxford, and one day I found that he had a Greek Euripides in his pocket, and that he needed little help from a dictionary. He sometimes brought with him a college friend, and well do I remember a sneer from this gentleman about the poor creatures whose acquaintance with AEschylus was derived from Potter. I did not look at a translation ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... fixed, but still knew that Elzevir was beside me. He would not let me risk myself in any hazard alone without he stood by me himself to help in case of need; and yet his faithfulness but galled me now, and I asked myself with a sneer, Am I never to stir hand or foot without this man to dog me? The merchant sat still for a minute as though thinking, and then he took one of the diamonds that lay on the table, and then another, and set them close beside the great stone, pitting them, as it were, with it. Yet how could ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... though the Graces never clothed him. I wonder Aristophanes never thought of that jest. Notwithstanding his willingness to please the populace with the coarse wit current in the Agoras, I think it gratifies his equestrian pride to sneer at those who are too frugal to buy coloured robes, and fill the air with delicious perfumes as they pass. I know you seldom like the comic writers. What ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... distinction, Innŭee, or mankind. One day, for instance, in securing some of the gear of a sledge, Okotook broke a part of it composed of a piece of our white line, and I shall never forget the contemptuous sneer with which he muttered in soliloquy the word “Kabloona!” in token of the inferiority of our materials to his own. It is happy, perhaps, when people possessing so few of the good things of this life can be thus contented ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... me of wandering out of the subject? Who will say that I exaggerate the tendencies of our measures? Will any one answer by a sneer, that all this is idle preaching? Would any one deny that we are bound, and I would hope to good purpose, by the most solemn sanctions of duty for the vote we give? Are despots alone to be reproached for unfeeling ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... and have found out how much we owe unto our Lord, it is not likely that we shall take our brother by the throat and say, 'Pay me that thou owest.' If any treat me badly, try to rob me, harm me, sneer at me, or turn the cold shoulder to me, who am I that I should resent that? Oh, brethren, we need, for our right relation to our fellows, a deeper conviction of our sinfulness before Him. Many of us are blessed with natural tendencies to meekness, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... kick that sent him on his back to the curbstone. Almost insensible, but with the impression that something was interfering between him and his work, he returned to the door. As he laid his hand on it, it opened a little, and his master's face, with a hateful sneer upon it, shot into the crack, and spit in his. Then the door shut so sharply that his fingers caught an agonizing pinch. At last he understood: he was turned off, and ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... are not aware," with a strong sneer, "of the differences that exist between Mr. Ready and me (and which will continue to exist, as long as mind claims a superiority over matter); that we are only husband and wife in name. ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Faber!" said the youth with a sneer, struggling hard to keep the advantage he had in temper. "Every body knows you don't believe there ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... notwithstanding Angelika's restlessness, which could hardly be controlled. She even began to sneer; but there was something holy in his anticipation: her words ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... fashion with a number of later Socialist writers and speakers, mind-struck with that blessed word "evolution," confusing "scientific," a popular epithet to which they aspired, with "unimaginative," to sneer at the Utopian method, to make a sort of ideal of a leaden practicality, but it does not follow because the Utopias produced and the experiments attempted were in many aspects unreasonable and absurd that the method itself is an unsound one. At a certain phase of every creative ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... referred to my estate without a touch of a sneer, when we were alone; but with strangers, he rang the words ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a reckless rider," said Forsythe, with a sneer in his voice that Margaret did not like, as they watched the speck in the distance clear a steep descent from the mesa at a bound and disappear from ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... in the papers an account of the opera and of the dresses of the company, and hence the town, and thence, of course, the whole nation, were informed that Mr. Fitzpatrick had very little powder in his hair.' Walpole sheltered himself behind the corner of a pension to sneer at the tragi-comedy of life; but if his feelings were not profound, they were quick and genuine, and, affectation for affectation, his cynical coxcombry seems preferable to the solemn coxcombry of the men who shamelessly wrangled for plunder, while they talked ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... other that they never would have fallen out if it hadn't been for Clump-clump. She was enough to set mountains to fighting. Ah! the Boches knew her well now, they could understand how much the Lorilleuxs must suffer. And whenever she passed beneath the doorway they all affected to sneer ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... went, the tall thin man Explained the manners of Old Japan; If you pitied a thing, you pretended to sneer; Yet if you were glad you ran to buy A captive pigeon and let it fly; And, if you were sad, you took a spear To wound yourself, for fear your pain ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... busybody of Beorminster, I should say,' rejoined the man with a sneer. 'See here, my friend,' and he rapped Cargrim on the breast with a shapely hand, 'if you interfere in what does not concern you, there will be trouble. I saw Dr Pendle on private business, and as such it has nothing to do with you. Hold your tongue, you black crow, and keep away ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... whether it is common amongst servants or uncommon," spoke Lord Hartledon rather hotly, as though he would resent the covert sneer. "It is Anne Ashton's; and I love the name for her sake. But I think it a pretty name; and should, if she did not bear it; prettier than ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... He ought to help his friends. He's a kind man and lots of fun. It's not his fault if you don't get on. It's your own fault. You don't have to work in a fish market if you don't want to, or sit there and sneer at a man who doesn't care what you think of him. ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... This sneer of Saxon hypocrisy, of "Perfide Albion," is seldom explained to other people by men of our race, and we Americans and Englishmen have taken little pains to make it clear. We should not be surprised, therefore, if we are misunderstood. We have been ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Northerners of the democratic class were pressing one of their frequent schemes for free land, Southerners and their sympathetic Northern henchmen were furthering a scheme that aimed at the purchase of Cuba. From the impatient sneer of a Southerner that the Northerners sought to give "land to the landless" and the retort that the Southerners seemed equally anxious to supply "niggers to the niggerless," it can be seen that American history is sometimes better summed up by angry politicians ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... the other night after the ball you said you were prepared to carry out the suggestion, in order to save yourself," he remarked with a covert sneer. ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... trap in the center of a broad elephant trail near the drinking hole, the warriors turned back toward their village. On the morrow they would come again. Tarzan looked after them, upon his lips an unconscious sneer—the heritage of unguessed caste. He saw them file along the broad trail, beneath the overhanging verdure of leafy branch and looped and festooned creepers, brushing ebon shoulders against gorgeous blooms which inscrutable Nature has seen fit to lavish most profusely ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... more calmly than he had done hitherto, in spite of the sneer in the last sentence. He had broken down, and he felt that Paolo and Gianbattista were too much for him. He desired no repetition of the scene which had passed, and he thought the best thing to be done was ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Paul's, were brought up before them. Both were condemned as Protestants, and both were burnt at the stake, the bishop at Gloucester, the canon at Smithfield. They suffered heroically. The Catholics had affected to sneer at the faith of their rivals. There was a general conviction among them that Protestants would all flinch at the last; that they had no "doctrine that would abide the fire." Many more victims were offered. The enemies of the church were to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... this it is excessively easy to be unjust, to misjudge and to go wrong. The man who is ready with a priori opinions about all forms and means and ends of Socialism will smile if he be kindly and sneer if he be not. But most of these people are in earnest. If they represent nothing else, and however they disagree and quarrel, they do represent an enormous amount of real discontent. "I protest" is often in their mouths; as the president yells "Monsieur, vous n'avez pas la parole" they stand in the ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... chopped in with his cold logic, and declined to believe that any golden mine existed in Guiana "anywhere in nature," as he craftily said. When Raleigh returned after his last miserable failure in May 1617, the monarch spared no sneer and no reproof to the pirate of the seas. Of course, the King was right; there was no mine of diamonds, no golden city. But the immense treasures that haunted Raleigh's dreams were more real than reality; they existed in the future; ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... match in spite of the roaring wind, and by this wild light the brakie read the denomination of the bill with a gasp. He rolled up his face and was in time to catch the sneer on the face of Lefty before a gust snatched away the light of ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... Tim! Would you throw another stone at him, boys? Would you hunt the weary old man through the streets like some wild beast? Would you taunt, and sneer, and shout in his ears, "Old crazy Tim"—"Old crazy Tim?" Oh, no—no! Pick a flower and give him, as Kitty used; take his hand—poor, harmless old man—and walk along with him; maybe he'll fancy that ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... melon-seeds, such as were then in fashion, and to have such quantities of things come out of it was in no wise short of magic. It was not for many, many years that I observed that Francis sat on this bag in his tub, as they sailed to the shore. In those later years, however, I also noticed a sneer of Ernest's which I had overlooked before. He says, "I do not see anything very wonderful in taking out of a bag the same thing you have put into it." But his wise father says that it is the presence of mind which in the midst of shipwreck put the right things into the bag which ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... suited perhaps to the serious consideration of ladies and dancing masters, but utterly unworthy of one thought from a strong-minded or intellectual man. But you tell him that without it the world will sneer at him. He then pities the world, and replies—"What do I care about the world's thoughtless sneer; have I not a priestly heart and ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... they told their colleagues that the relations of intimacy among the Roman senators surpassed all conception; that a single set of silver plate sufficed for the whole senate, and had reappeared in every house to which the envoys had been invited. The sneer is a significant token of the difference in the economic ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... very successful tour de force, and represents an expenditure of brain power by no means justifiable on the part of a man who could have made so much better use of it, they are never to be spoken of disrespectfully. Those who sneer at their "Wardour Street" Old French are not usually the best qualified to do so; and it is not to be forgotten that Balzac was a real countryman of Rabelais and a legitimate inheritor of Gauloiserie. ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... this time in a tone which through its plain implication put a sudden flash into Virginia's eyes. As he looked toward her there was a half sneer upon the lips which his scanty growth of beard and mustache failed to hide. Had he gone on to say, "A lady doctor, eh?" and laughed, the case would not ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... nothing of the sort," I said hotly. "I do hate you, Vere, when you sneer like that, and make out that everyone is worldly and horrible, like yourself! Will Dudley is a good man, and he wants a good woman for his wife—not a doll. He'd rather have Rachel's little finger than a dozen empty-headed fashion-plates like the girls you admire. But you ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... my marriage, I too was for leaving them alone. I developed a dread and dislike for romance, for emotional music, for the human figure in art—turning my heart to landscape. I wanted to sneer at lovers and their ecstasies, and was uncomfortable until I found the effective sneer. In matters of private morals these were my most uncharitable years. I didn't want to think of these things any more for ever. I hated the people whose talk or practice ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... by me bound, Came one who wore my lost career With star on star pinned round, And stood him by my bones to stare. With pity's ancient sneer He mocked my bleachen nudity; Then did she turn, then did she care, And pausing where I might not see She let the winds blow back her hair And ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... out a living that way,' said Wylder, with a sort of sneer or laugh. I thought he seemed put out, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... entered, and a sort of subdued hum passed through the court. He was a tall, spare man, with long thin legs, with extremely long, thin, pale fingers, clean-shaven face, demurely brushed, rather short hair, and thin lips that were at times curved into something between a sneer and a smile. He looked about forty. His face would have been pleasant, if it had not been for his eyes, which, in themselves small and inexpressive, were set remarkably close together, with only the thin, long nose as a dividing line between ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... know who that is," said Burrows, with a sneer. "Well, I can tell you what the rest of the men in that place think, and it's this: that the man in that village who doesn't drink is a mean skunk, who's betraying his own flesh and blood to ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... every mood, every feeling; all pathos, joy, sorrow—the good and the evil too—all there is in life, all that one has lived." (This recalls a recently published remark of J. S. Van Cleve: "The piano can sing, march, dance, sparkle, thunder, weep, sneer, question, assert, complain, whisper, hint; in one word it is the most versatile ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... that it was no other than his grandfather who was furnishing food for merriment to half the school, and that Jim was aware of it and held this rod over him. The knowledge that this was so was not calculated to soften Theodore's animosity toward Jim. Disposed as he was to raise a laugh or a sneer at the expense of another, he could not endure them himself; and to feel that he was thus in the power of the boy whom he hated, was intolerable to him. From this time, however, it gave him a wholesome awe of Jim, and proved a check upon him; and "Jim Grant Garfield Rutherford ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... wisdom, inscribed on decorated scrolls or embroidered on rich crapes and brocades. They carve them on door-posts and pillars, and emblazon them on the walls and ceilings in gilt letters. The following are a few specimens of this sort of literature: As a sneer at the use of unnecessary force to crush a contemptible enemy, they say: "He rides a fierce dog to catch a lame rabbit." Similar to this is another, "To use a battle-ax to cut off a hen's head." They say of wicked associates: "To cherish ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... dignified sense of true greatness rendered him superior. Some instances of rashness have been noted by Walpole with unsparing vituperation;[1] and some self-complacent or boasting sallies, have been pointed at by Croker with a sarcastic sneer. But, admitting that these were far from being venial faults, yet it would be very uncharitable now to recall them from the forgetfulness and forgiveness in which they have long been passed over; especially as they were fully redeemed ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... any scientific spirit or scientific acumen that this materialistic coterie avoid psychometric and spiritual facts. The newspapers which ignore or sneer at such knowledge are easily gulled in matters of science. A writer in the Open Court upon the possibilities of the future, which he presents as being confined "strictly to legitimate deductions from present knowledge," exhibits an amount and variety of ignorant credulity which ought not ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... those who sneer at the communities of the West, and who classify all things rural as crude and unworthy, entitled only to tolerance, if they be spared contempt. They are but provincials themselves who are guilty of such attitude, and they proclaim only an ignorance which itself is not entitled to the dignity ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... was in ill favour at headquarters; and though most of the girls were sorry for her, with a certain number her changed fortunes undoubtedly lessened her popularity. Maude Helm never lost an opportunity of a sneer or a slight, and could sometimes raise a laugh at Gipsy's expense among the more thoughtless section of the Form. Gipsy generally responded with spirit, but the ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... were set in an ugly sneer—but he met the steady fire of Arnold's eyes, and the words he would have spoken ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Spare her the cruel pain Of finding her whole life a prey for daws; Of hearing with quickened sense and burning brain The world's sneer-tinged applause. ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... remark with a sneer, for of all pitiable objects, he regarded an unmanly man as the most despicable. He consented, however, to sit down on a grassy bank and watch the proceedings of this Indian dandy, who had just seated himself ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... in vain to page 312 of "Household Words" for the sneer to which you call my attention. Nor have I, I assure you, the least idea where else it is ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... against the rail, buried deep in thought, Billy Byrne passed close behind her. At sight of her a sneer curled his lip. How he hated her! Not that she ever had done aught to harm him, but rather because she represented to him in concrete form all that he had learned to hate and ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the snow drove outside and there was the leap of flame on the hearth! Sydney was a scholar and a gentleman. He had led a gentle and sequestered life. Here in his native village there were none to gibe and sneer. The contrast of the traveling show would be as great for him as it had been for Margaret, but he was the male of the species, and she the female. Chivalry, racial, harking back to the beginning of nobility in the human, to its earliest ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... they are," said Cranfield, with a sneer. "But there is already an obvious difference observable here in the people, which becomes more marked as you proceed toward Castile. The Spaniard is taller and yet leaner than the Portuguese. He has a ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... "always speak of it with a sneer—as though it were something disgraceful. But you can't blame us, can you? After all, who WOULD stay on a sinking ship, if he could get ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... authorities. And the offenders, while they refrain from open acts, do nevertheless conduct their petty persecutions in such a manner that one can shape no charge against them, and consequently finds himself helpless. One must endure these little tortures—the sneer, the shrug of the shoulder, the epithet, the effort to avoid, to disdain, to ignore— and thus suffer; for any of them are—to me at least— far more hard to bear than a blow. A blow I may resist or ignore. In either case I soon forget it. But a sneer, a shrug of the shoulder, mean more. ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... very marked differences between the two commonwealths of Kentucky and Tennessee, yet they resemble one another more closely, in blood and manners, than either does any other American State; and both have too just cause for pride to make it necessary for either to sneer at the other, or indeed at any State of our mighty Federal Union. In their origin they were precisely alike; but whereas the original pioneers, the hunters and Indian fighters, kept possession of Tennessee as long as they lived,—Jackson, at Sevier's death, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... truth the opening picture was effective. Sixteen black-robed, long-bearded Netherland envoys stalking away, discomfited and indignant upon one side; Catharine de' Medici on the other, regarding them with a sneer, painfully contorted into a pathetic smile; Henry the King, robed in a sack of penitence, trembling and hesitating, leaning on the arm of Epergnon, but quailing even under the protection of that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... latter stood but little chance in the competition, but were almost entirely deserted. To this result the comfortable cabins of the coasters, designed for passengers (spacious and satisfactory for those times, however the refined effeminacy of the present generation might sneer at them), and the good fare they furnished, not a little contributed. The Calypso was one of the finest of the line of packets to which she belonged, and provided with every convenience that could be desired. She was a sloop of some ninety ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... very generous of you." And she did not know whether that were praise or a sneer. That had been a week before. And all that week he had passed in an increasing agony at the thought that those mountains, that sea, and those sunlit plains would be between him and Maisie Maidan. That thought shook him in the burning nights: the sweat poured from him and ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... in the school that the young Christian must stand alone. He returns from the Lord's Table to his week-day duties, full of noble impulses, but finds himself the only Christian in the place where his duty leads him. His companions are ready to sneer, and they point the finger of scorn at him, with irritating epithets. Or they even persecute him in petty ways. At least they are not Christ's friends, and he, as follower of the Master, finds no sympathy among them in his new life. He must ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... plain sentence, smiled, and said with a sneer, 'The dervish is well paid for his maxim.' But the king was so well satisfied with the answer, that he ordered it to be written in golden letters in several places of his palace, and engraved on all ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... bonnie blossoms a', Ye royal lasses dainty, Heav'n mak you guid as weel as braw, An' gie you lads a-plenty: But sneer na British Boys awa', For kings are unco scant ay; An' German gentles are but sma', They're better just than want ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... you save the other granaries," he urged, adding, with a sneer, "and forget not to bless ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Rosenheim, with an oily sneer, "I owe the money all right, but I don't own a thing in the world. Everything in this room belongs to my wife. The amount of money I owe is really something shocking. Even what is in the safe"—he nodded to a large affair on the other side of the ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... Mike," returned Joel, with a sneer—"It's a month, or more, sin' you seen it, and the priest will think you have forgotten him, and ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... sinners." Spoke and went, while her faint lips fashioned unuttered entreaties,— Went, and came again in a year at the time of the meeting, Haggard and wan of face, and wasted with passion and sorrow. Dead in his eyes was the careless smile of old, and its phantom Haunted his lips in a sneer of restless, incredulous mocking. Day by day he came to the outer skirts of the circle, Dwelling on her, where she knelt by the white-haired exhorter, her father, With his hollow looks, and never moved from ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... scarlet standard high, Beneath its shade we'll live and die; Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer We'll keep ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... destiny awaits them all. The gods created with the nations must perish with their creators. They were created by men, and, like men, they must pass away. The deities of one age are the by-words of the next. The religion of our day, and country, is no more exempt from the sneer of the future than others have been. When India was supreme, Brahma sat upon the world's throne. When the sceptre passed to Egypt, Isis and Osiris received the homage of mankind. Greece, with her fierce ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... much in earnest to be conscious of them, or, indeed, to care for anything but what she was saying. There was a moment's pause when she came to the end of her speech, and then the thread of talk was quietly taken up again where Sybil's incipient sneer had ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the board displayed beef and pudding, the statutory dainties of Old England. A small cupboard of plate, very choicely and beautifully wrought, did not escape the compliments of some of the company, and an oblique sneer from Sir Mungo, as intimating the owner's excellence in his ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... overhead. The 200 men eating were quite noiseless—and as they rose, one by one washed their hands and went, the crowd melted away like a vision. But before all were gone, came the Bulook, or sub-magistrate—a Turkish Jack in office with the manners of a Zouave turned parish beadle. He began to sneer at the melocheea of the fellaheen and swore he could not eat it if he sat before it 1,000 years. Hereupon, Omar began to 'chaff' him. 'Eat, oh Bulook Pasha and if it swells thy belly the Lady will give thee of the physick of the English to clean thy stomach upwards and downwards of all thou hast ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... betraying you suffer at all. Lord Ormont has eyes of an eagle for a speck above the surface. All the more because the aunt is a gabbling idiot does he—I say it seeing it—fire up to defend her from the sneer of the lip or half a sign of it! No, you would be an your guard; I can trust you. Of course you'd behave like the gentleman you are where any kind of woman's concerned; but you mustn't let a shadow be seen, think what you may. The woman—lady—calling herself Lady Ormont,—poor woman, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hear any more dying requests," she said to the old negro, with a sneer. "Your prisoner will survive. Only give him a little coffee, if there is any. Here is some: I will ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... shoulders and sneered. It was Joseph's habit to sneer when he spoke, and his words were wont to ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... man of sixty. His face was emaciated and seamed, and his dark eyes shone brightly. His companion was a woman of twenty-four, obviously of the Jewish type, as was the old man; what good looks she possessed were marred by the sneer on ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... From me the circulation of warm, musical blood emanates. I stand at the back of the orchestra as high as the conductor. Ah! he knows it; he looks at me first. How about the Fifth Symphony? You now sneer no longer. It is I who outline with mystic taps the framework of the story. Wagner, great, glorious, glowing Wagner!—I kiss his memory—he appreciated the tympani and their noble ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... it, the club-room is before us, and the table on which stand the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke, and the tall thin form of Langton, the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have been brought up—the gigantic body, the huge massy face, seamed ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her guest in uncomprehending wonder. Could this be the sneering, insolent Miss Wicks who was speaking? There was no sign of a sneer on her face now. She spoke with a simple directness that could not fail to impress the most sceptical. "I have been hearing about you from a source entirely outside Overton," she continued, "from a Smith College senior who lives in Oakdale. She visited a friend of mine during the holidays. I ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... laugh that had a little sneer in it, "put them to the test! I will not object to that, if you will only keep your notions to yourself. Now, Christian, give me your word for silence, and we will ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the name of stockade. To go out of life into a dungeon like that, and at noon of a day in June. That Jim made no sign was accredited to his hardness of heart. That, having registered and heard an official sneer at the name, Jim Royal, and having passed through the hands of the barber, and being duly entered at last among the State's hired help, and dropped down on his ill-smelling bunk, a rat came and gnawed his ear, and the vermin crawled unmolested over him, and still he gave ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... listened to in the settlement of the affairs of the nation. It might be very well for Chaucer to close the description of his "Merchant" with what looks very much like a fashionable writer's half sneer:— ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... comrades. My prognostication had been a correct one. A few of them had known that we were going; some had bade us good-bye. They rested on their picks now and stared at us, lifting their eyebrows, with a knowing smile for one another and a half-sneer for us. My companion had already plumbed the depths of fear and so was now lost to all shame. Myself, I found it very hard. Soldiers have, outwardly at least, but little tenderness, except perhaps in bad times, and they showed none now. Nor mercy. The situation ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... disdain which the painted old duchesse of the Restoration cast upon the youthful belles of the Chausse d'Antin, or the handsome widows of Napoleon's army of heroes, defies description. Although often responded to by a sarcastic sneer at the antediluvian charms of the emigree, yet the look of contempt and disgust often sank deep into the victim's heart, leaving there germs which showed themselves fifteen years later in the revolution of 1830. In those days, this privileged class was ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... went to Pellinaeum. Here the Athamanians surrendered first, and afterwards Philip of Megalopolis. King Philip, happening to meet the latter as he was coming out from the town, ordered his attendants, in derision, to salute him with the title of king; and he himself, coming up to him, with a sneer, highly unbecoming his own exalted station, addressed him as Brother. Having been brought before the consul he was ordered to be kept in confinement, and soon after was sent to Rome in chains. All the rest ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... never stilled, The skeptic's sneer, the bigot's hate, the din Of clashing texts, the webs of creed men spin Round simple truth, the children grown who build With gilded cards their new Jerusalem, Busy, with sacerdotal tailorings And tinsel gauds, bedizening holy things, I turn, with glad and grateful heart, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... it was there, but indistinguishable among the masses like a celebrity in a crowd; on the other hand, big A and little e were so dirt cheap, that these two scholars passed them with something very like a sneer. ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... awful! The two ladies were not on speaking terms, and I had to put on a fur overcoat to keep from freezing to death in the atmosphere that had arisen between them. It was six inches below zero—and the way those two would sniff and sneer at each ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... at themselves. It is self-love that makes people easily offended and easily wounded; and the more self-love they have, the easier they are hurt and the quicker their resentment is aroused. Self-love begets vanity; it quivers in keenest anguish at a sneer or a scornful smile; it is distressed by even a fancied slight. Self-love throws the nerves of sensation all out to the surface and makes them hyper-sensitive, and so the person feels everything keenly. He is constantly smarting under a ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... take first. They stood about the tops of basement stairs, and walked two and two along the dirty pavement, with their little hands tucked into their sleeves across their breasts, aloof in immaculate cleanliness from the filth around them, and scrutinizing the scene with that cynical sneer of faint surprise to which all aspects of our civilization seem to move their superiority. Their numbers gave character to the street, and rendered not them, but what was foreign to them, strange there; so that March had a sense of missionary ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... has gone to Rockwood, I doubt if you see him before mid-afternoon." The sneer is plainly evident here, and Grandon feels ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... 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 ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... was thankful to say, and his thankfulness on the point was proof to him of how years and circumstances had estranged him from Evelyn; for, though he would not obstruct or forbid, it would be impossible for him to keep a sneer out of his face when she told him she had been to the sacraments or refrained from meat on Friday. "What a strange notion it is to think that a priest can help one," he said, thinking then that his presence would be a sneer, however he might control his ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... was to celebrate the astounding fact of Pio Nono having exceeded the days of Saint Peter. We, who had come from Rome, where thirty upstart papers were denouncing time-honored usages and formulas, where many of the people had begun to sneer at the Papacy and to take gloomy views of the Church, were not prepared for the religious fervor and devotion to the Papal See which greeted us in the Tyrol, especially at Bruneck, where from time immemorial a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... began to flag, Paul was reminded of his errand by Dawkins saying, in a tone which was half a sneer, "Have you any business with Mr. Danforth this morning, or did you merely come in ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... worse. Forsaken by th'inspiring Nine, I waited at Apollo's shrine: I told him what the world would say, 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 Sheridan the rogue would sneer, And swear it does not always follow, That semel'n anno ridet Apollo. I have assur'd them twenty times, That Phoebus help'd me in my rhymes; Phoebus inspired me from above, And he and I were hand and glove. But, finding me so dull and ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... often His Majesty's officers shave so close," the pilot answered, with a sort of sneer I did not like. "They commonly send in hands with a ship, when they find it necessary to take ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... judgment. At that period the noble lord was a distinguished patron of the turf: all England knew him as a sporting gentleman, a first-rate judge of horses, and an extensive winner on the course. In allusion to his habits in these respects, it became a popular sneer that the Conservatives required "a stable mind," after the versatile performances of Sir Robert Peel, and they had at last found such in Lord George. But although his whole mind had apparently been given up to the turf, it was not actually so. He had been a member of parliament for eighteen ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... inspiration, Captain Pharo glanced triumphantly at his wife, who, at this more than Pentateuchal illustration, refused to sneer. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... doubt." "Indeed, Mr. Partridge," says Mrs. Miller, "you are not of the same opinion with the town; for they are all agreed, that Hamlet is acted by the best player who ever was on the stage." "He the best player!" cries Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer, "why, I could act as well as he myself. I am sure, if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as ne did. And then, to be sure, in that scene, as you called it, between him and his mother, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... the flighty conquest and ephemeral possession of France? The obvious reason is, that however the governments might be disliked, neither the Austrian soldier, nor the Prussian, nor even the Russian, made himself abhorred, employed his study in vexing the feelings of the people, had a perpetual sneer on his visage, or exhibited in his habits a perpetual affectation of that coxcomb superiority to all other human beings, that pert supremacy, that grotesque and yet irritating caricature, which makes the Moi, je suis Francais, a demand for universal adoration, the concentrated essence of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... left for a government that had spent millions in war preparation but to declare war. The affair had that surface appearance, which was noisily proclaimed by Germany to the world. Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg's sneer concerning the "voice of the piazza having prevailed" revealed not merely pique, but also a complete misunderstanding, a Teutonic misapprehension of the underlying motives that led to an inevitable step. No one who witnessed, as I did at close ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... a prayer meetin'?" inquired Waxy Collins, with a sneer. "Biff him on the boko, an' we'll finish ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... undeserved praise. Transcribing his own words, as well as I could recollect them, at the top of my letter, I added, underneath, "Is this the way you speak of your friends?" Not long after, too, when visiting him at Venice, I remember making the same harmless little sneer a subject of raillery with him; but he declared boldly that he had no recollection of having ever written such words, and that, if they existed, "he must have been half asleep ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... a dark stairway they came to a door, which opened under the garret stairs, and Mary was startled by a voice which seemed to be almost over her head, and which, between a sneer and a hiss, called out, "See where the immaculate Miss ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... to have me tell you," he said, with a sneer. "I don't think Mr. Reynolds is very prudent to employ a ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... his desire to make every return in his power, if the "fortune of war" should give him an opportunity: but when he claimed the performance of his promise, his reply was, "Monsieur de Connolly, I very sorry for your misfortune; but I wish you good morning!" and left him with a sarcastic sneer. ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... England particularly so. But the war at large had not gone severely enough against the French to force them to abandon a stronghold on which they had set their hearts, and for which they were ready to give up any fair equivalent. The contemporary colonial sneer, often repeated since, and quite commonly believed, was that 'the important island of Cape Breton was exchanged for a petty factory in India.' This was not the case. Every power was weary of the ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... sir, about the great unknown beyond thirty," he said. "You are in a good way to have your curiosity satisfied." And then I could not mistake the slight sneer that curved his upper lip. There must have been a trace of disrespect in his tone or manner which escaped me, for Alvarez turned upon him ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 is a plant which withers ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... liberty we are positively unable to comprehend anything, because we are not in possession of it. Whenever we hear it spoken of, we draw the words down to our own meaning, or briefly dismiss it with a sneer, as nonsense. With the knowledge of liberty, the sense of another world is also lost to us. Everything of this sort floats by like words which are not addressed to us; like an ash-gray shadow without color or meaning, which we cannot by any end ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... home, to find his sister dead—slain by the ill-treatment of her stepfather, who, it was even said, had hastened her death with poison. Otto, overcome with grief, confronted her murderer, heaped abuse on his head, and demanded his share of the property. The only answer was a sneer, and the youth, maddened with grief and indignation, drew his sword and plunged it in his tormentor's heart. A moment later he saw the probable consequences of his hasty action, concealed himself in the woods, and thenceforth became a fugitive, renounced even by his own uncle, and obliged to remain ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Queen and Buckingham. By the end of that time I knew it fairly well, so I left it for a while and stealthily entered the old oak chamber—Act III, Scene I—by the secret door behind the arras. After bringing down the curtain with two ugly looks, four steps, and a sneer, I sat down on the fallen beech-tree, lighted a cigarette, and wondered why I had rejected the post of call-boy. Then I started ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... Chisholm was almost too hot to sneer. "But can't you realize how your action reflects ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt, Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt; Then, while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip, Defiance glanced in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... I had the thought, two windows were lit in that black, blind face. It was as if two eyes had opened in the huge face of a sleeping giant; the eyes were too close together, and gave it the suggestion of a bestial sneer. And either by accident of this light or of some other, I could now read the big letters which spaced themselves across the front; it was the Babylon Hotel. It was the perfect symbol of everything that I should like to pull down with my hands if I could. Reared ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... this volume will be found a sketch of the French revolution of 1789, as connected with persecution. It has long been the practice of infidels to sneer at christianity, because some of its nominal followers have exhibited a persecuting spirit. And although they knew that christianity condemns persecution in the most pointed manner, yet they have never had the generosity to discriminate between the system, and the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... enduring the torments of hell in Venetian dungeons ever suffered more from the torture of the boot than Birotteau did, standing there in his ordinary clothes. He felt a sneer in every word. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... betraying my informant, even how contemptible. He was inexorable. This time I should not escape, nor my accomplice either. Out with it, and at once. With a show of regretful resignation I gave in. For once I would break my rule and "tell on" my informant. I thought I detected a slight sneer on the Doctor's lip as he said that was well; for he was a gentleman, every inch of him, and I know he hated me for telling. The other ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... as he was dragged away with the rest of the gang. Through his glittering, bloodshot eyes he saw the cool, derisive sneer on her red lips. He had failed, however, to note the keen, appraising look with which she searched the faces of his baffled, glowering companions. In that long, tense look she had seen dawning comprehension change to conviction; she had read his doom, so she ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... friends, attempt to turn aside this appeal which I now make to you with a laugh or a sneer. This is the Lord's word, and the word of the Lord is not to be put aside with a sneer. Do not scoff at this as a water of salvation. You certainly will not scoff at the word of ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... assent with evil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer. Pope, Prologue ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... millions of Americans who to-day are toiling on the farms and in the workshops of the country and who demand from the laws they obey nothing but equity and justice. It was easier, and more pleasant to those who heard him, to wrong these men with a sneer than to answer them with an argument. He might possibly have done well to relinquish this task to one who sat near him, his ex-Secretary of the Treasury, who had himself, in 1878, discovered something that he thought a crime and had thus denounced it: ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... desire philosophy, prepare yourself from the beginning to be ridiculed, to expect that many will sneer at you, and say, He has all at once returned to us as a philosopher; and whence does he get this supercilious look for us? Do you not show a supercilious look; but hold on to the things which seem to you best as one appointed by God to this station. And remember that if you abide in the ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... remembering that the sceptic is sometimes vouchsafed revelations to which the most devout believer may not aspire. It is, for instance, always the young man who scoffs at ghosts that the family spectre chooses as his audience. But it required more than a mere sneer or an empty gibe to pump information out of Bradshaw. He ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... is not bowing and smiling, a sneer is on his face. And when he speaks to the horse his voice is harsh and mean. He holds an unlighted cigar in his mouth as a terrier might hold a loathed rat; working the muscles of his lips at times viciously but saying nothing. The soft, black hat of his youthful days is replaced by ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... be avenged with hideous hate By Iroquois, swift to annihilate His vile detested captors, that now flaunt Their war clubs in his face with sneer and taunt, Not thinking, soon that reeking, red, and raw, Their scalps will deck ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... for a moment. Bland's thin lips twisted into a sneer. "We'll see," he said. "We'll settle all that in the morning." His tone took on a more friendly aspect "I'm going to pick out a downy couch in one of these rooms," he said, "and lay me down to sleep. Say, I could greet a blanket like a ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... have potentates learned to beg, and forgotten to command and to exact?" he answered with half a sneer. "See, she still extends her hand to every ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... within the mill. And 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 place was ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... M. Clemenceau moved every lever to deliver his country for all time from the danger of further invasions. And, being a realist, he counted only on military safeguards. At the League of Nations he was wont to sneer until it dawned upon him that it might be forged into an effective weapon of national defense. And then he included it in the litany of abstract phrases about right, justice, and the self-determination ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... with the satirical method, shot a suspicious glance upon the stranger, but not a line was there, upon that smooth fair face, to which a sneer could for a moment have clung. Clearly he was as simple ...
— Passing of the Third Floor Back • Jerome K. Jerome
... dress, but flushed and overheated to an unbecoming degree. She rowed up smartly, shipped her oars in true nautical fashion, sprang from the boat, and held out her hand to her companion with a hardly repressed sneer: "Pray allow me to assist you, ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... too, Stealth's slow; The sun has got as far As the third sycamore. Screams chanticleer, "Who's there?" And echoes, trains away, Sneer — "Where?" While the old couple, just astir, Fancy the sunrise ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... stooped down, turning over the various objects about the tap in my search, Sebastian's voice came to me. He had paused outside the door, and was speaking in his calm, clear tone, very low, to Hilda. "So NOW we understand one another, Nurse Wade," he said, with a significant sneer. "I know whom ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... in books, I have seen written on battlefields, with steel and blood. They sneer at my mean origin. Where,—and may the gods bear witness,—where, but in the spirit of man, is nobility lodged? Tell these despicable railers that their haughty lineage cannot make them noble, nor will my humble birth make me base. I profess no indifference ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... though?" he answered with a sneer, pushing his weather-beaten face forward until it was within a ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have judged you well," answered Soa with a sneer; "also you are wise: little work for little wage. Listen now, this is ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... his red colour, his football . . . and then he ruined that fellow Thompson. That was a poor game, but no one seemed to think anything of it . . . and indeed he and I seemed to be very good friends. He used to sneer at me behind my back, I know, but I didn't mind that. Any one's at liberty to sneer if they like. But he was really afraid of me . ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... man has ever been. The unknown is up against us on every side. Outside the narrow lines of the rivers what does anyone know? Who will say what is possible in such a country? Why should old man Challenger not be right?" At which direct defiance the stubborn sneer would reappear upon Professor Summerlee's face, and he would sit, shaking his sardonic head in unsympathetic silence, behind the ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sermons, set forth the majesty and beauty of Christianity with such justness of thought, and such energy of language, that the indolent Charles roused himself to listen and the fastidious Buckingham forgot to sneer; men whose address, politeness, and knowledge of the world qualified them to manage the consciences of the wealthy and noble; men with whom Halifax loved to discuss the interests of empires, and from whom Dryden was not ashamed to own that he had learned to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Prince, that on joining us he forgot to be sarcastic. Not a question, not a sneer as to our progress, not an apology for being late. He flung himself into a chair at the table, ordered the waiters about with truculence, and, having thus relieved his mind, began complaining ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... answered the King, "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
... "This, " said a naval officer of high reputation, "is the blessed effect of your game laws; your sailors never fire at a mark; whilst our free tars, from their practice in pursuit of game, can any of them split a hair." But the favourite, the constant, the universal sneer that met me every where, was on our old-fashioned attachments to things obsolete. Had they a little wit among them, I am certain they would have given us the cognomen of "My Grandmother, the British," for that is the tone they take, and it is thus they reconcile themselves ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... yet without once realizing the counterfeit. The Western country boy, whatever his Cavalier stock, had a Puritanical backbone in common with the whole American race. And without being aware of it, his personal, private bearing toward the light and airy French girl was a sneer, a tolerant, good-natured and ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... prevailing Revue, one of them 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
... less cause for annoyance if she had had a little more severity," said Mrs. Rainham with an unspoken sneer at poor Aunt Margaret. "You had better advise her to do her best in return for the very comfortable home we give her." With which Bob had to endeavour to be content, for the present. He went off to find Cecilia, with a lowering ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... beauty, grandeur, and utility is something that defies a sneer. It is more than imagination. It is next to divine beauty and the gran- deur of Spirit. It lives with our earth-life, and is [25] the subjective state of high thoughts. The atmos- phere of mortal mind constitutes our mortal envi- ronment. What mortals hear, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... undying youth they speak to ours. "Wretched is the man," says Goethe, "who has learned to despise the dreams of his youth!" It is from this misery that the imagination and the poets, who are its spokesmen, rescue us. The world goes to church, kneels to the eternal Purity, and then contrives to sneer at innocence and ignorance of evil by calling it green. Let every man thank God for what little there may be left in him of his vernal sweetness. Let him thank God if he have still the capacity for feeling an unmarketable enthusiasm, for that will make him worthy of ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say, that though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two great creative minds. One of those minds produced ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... hurt an old man." There was a sneer in her voice which he had not heard before. "But if you promise not to shout, ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... a fool if he drowns then," retorted the girl with a sneer. "He can get across easy enough if he finds th' ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... when Sim Squires came in to supper, he made casual announcement that he understood Bas had gone away somewhere. His vapid grin turned to a sneer as he mentioned Rowlett's name after the never-failing habit of his dissembling, but Dorothy set down his plate as though it had become suddenly too ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Mr. Hazlehurst will not be easily satisfied," added Mr. Clapp, with an approach to a sneer. "Shall we go on, Mr. Reed, or ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... you sneer at Strelitski?" he said, pained. "He has a noble soul. It is to the privilege of his conversation that I owe ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... said the Grand Duke amusedly, "I am going to do that which may bring the blush of shame to your brow or the sneer of pity to your lips. I am going to fulfill the destiny provided for every man with a pair of strong hands, and a willing ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... professor, with a bitter sneer; 'who are my friends? Where have I found any whose friendship was other than a name? My books, my cabinet, my studies, the great work on which I am now laboring—these are my friends; it is only through these that I shall ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... repudiate" or to "sneer at the idea of any manifestation of design in the material universe,"[III-9] is one thing; while to consider, and perhaps to exaggerate, the difficulties which attend the practical application of the doctrine of final causes to certain instances, is quite another thing: ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... of Dintonknow. He happened incidentally to observe, that education was requisite to promote the interests of religion. But Miss Mally, on that occasion, jocularly maintained, that education had only a tendency to promote the sale of books. This, Mr. Dalgliesh thought, was a sneer at himself, he having some time before unfortunately published a short tract, entitled, "The moral union of our temporal and eternal interests considered, with respect to the establishment of parochial seminaries," and which ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... come to good, when I heard him attempting to sneer at an unoffending city so respectable as Boston. After a man begins to attack the State-House, when he gets bitter about the Frog-Pond, you may be sure there is not much left of him. Poor Edgar Poe died in the hospital soon after he got into this way of talking; and so sure as you find an unfortunate ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... son's account with a contemptuous sneer on his lips. Another subject was at that moment occupying his thoughts. He had just received notice from Sir Ralph's steward to quit the mill ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... 'I think I'll choose another regiment. I'm not hungry for the cat-o'-nine tails, and I should earn it if I were under this brute's command five minutes. You'd be a handsome chap in your own way, Major, if it were not for that silly sneer you're pleased to carry about with you. But I warn you that, under any circumstances whatsoever, if you should presume upon any difference in our rank to insult me by a word, a gesture, or a look I'll spoil ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... attention of the house to public affairs was more imperatively demanded, and he boldly maintained that it was the duty of their lordships to lay the true state and condition of the country before his majesty. After indulging in a quiet sneer at the care the council had bestowed upon horned cattle, he remarked, that he was glad to hear that the king had reason to believe the peace of the country would be preserved, since peace could never be more desirable to a kingdom, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... don't know any man in the world with whom I have more intellectual sympathy than Aylmer Ross. Do you remember how I pointed him out to you at once at the Mitchells'? And sometimes when I think how you used to sneer at the Mitchells—oh, you did, you know, dear, before you knew them—and I remember all the trouble I had to get you to go there, I wonder—I simply wonder! Don't you see, through going there, as I advised, we've made one of the nicest friends we ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... the sensation in high finance just now," Stuart said, with an unconscious sneer. "They say he's destined ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... you are a notorious gambler, and you sneer at love! Gad! what a change is here! My dear fellow, what ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... I suppose, the best beloved in recent literature, certainly they are the sweetest to me, but there was a time when my mother could not abide them. She said 'That Stevenson man' with a sneer, and, it was never easy to her to sneer. At thought of him her face would become almost hard, which seems incredible, and she would knit her lips and fold her arms, and reply with a stiff 'oh' if you mentioned his aggravating name. In the novels we have a way of writing ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... coming swiftly across the room with that strange, padding step. He had no eye for her. He was smiling, and she had rather have seen him in a cursing fury than to see this smile. It curled the upper lip with something like a sneer; and she caught the white glint of his teeth; the wolf-dog snarled back over his shoulder to hurry his master. It was the crisis which she had known all day was coming, sooner or later. She had only prayed that it might be delayed for a little time. And confronting the danger ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... a certain experience of his moods, his intimacy becomes insupportable! A man who uses his balmorals to tread on your toes with much frequency and an unmistakeable emphasis may prove a fast friend in adversity, but meanwhile your adversity has not arrived and your toes are tender. The daily sneer or growl at your remarks is not to be made amends for by a possible eulogy or defence of your understanding against depredators who may not present themselves, and on an occasion which may never arise. I cannot ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... how to acquire honest wives, aye, and keep them so. There had never been in the de Wissant family any of those ugly scandals which stain other clans, and which are remembered over generations in French provincial towns. Those scandals which, if they provoke a laugh and cruel sneer when discussed by the indifferent, are recalled with long faces and anxious whisperings when a young girl's future is being discussed, and which make the honourable marriage ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... mention that minx to me," said Mrs. Prague, with a sneer; "but it must be confessed, Sheldon has very limited knowledge of business, or he might have saved a part of his fortune at least. My son-in-law, Esq. Hardin, by his alacrity and far-seeing judgment, secured himself from material loss in the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... and at once put on her company-manners again, behaving to him with great politeness, and a sneer that would not be hid away under it. From this Hugh suspected that she had made a better bargain than she had hoped; but the discovery was now too late, even if he could have brought himself to take advantage of it. He hated bargain-making as heartily ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... said Jimmy, with a sneer; "you all time talking 'bout you know all 'bout job; you 'bout the womanishest little girl they is. Now I know job 'cause Miss Cecilia 'splained all 'bout him to me. He's in the Bible and he sold his birthmark for a mess ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... unduly about the oysters and the underdone mutton, little woman. Good plain cooks at twenty pounds a year will see to these things for us. Your work is to teach us gentleness and kindness. Lay your foolish curls just here, child. It is from such as you we learn wisdom. Foolish wise folk sneer at you. Foolish wise folk would pull up the laughing lilies, the needless roses from the garden, would plant in their places only useful, wholesome cabbage. But the gardener, knowing better, plants the silly, short-lived flowers, foolish wise folk ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... that which Mrs. Devar deemed ridiculous. As events shaped themselves, it was of the utmost importance to Cynthia, and to Medenham, and to several other persons who had not yet risen above their common horizon, that Mrs. Devar's sneer should pass unchallenged. Though that lady herself was not fashioned of the softer human clay which expresses its strenuous emotions by fainting fits or hysteria, some such feminine expedient would certainly ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... said he, with surprise and a half-sneer, "extra train? why you can't have an extra train to Rugby for less ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... idea how wretched and despised all the Irish rebels are here. O'Connor alone is an exception; and this he owes to Talleyrand, to General Valence, and to Madame de Genlis; but even he is looked on with a sneer, and, if he ever was respected in England, must endure with poignancy the contempt to which he is frequently exposed in France. When I was in your country I often heard it said that the Irish were generally considered as a debased and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the lobby, for although their party was seated in an alcove they were visible to all in the big room of which it formed a part. Yes, Mr. Isidore Le Drieux was standing near them, as she had feared, and the slight sneer upon his lips proved that he had observed ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... shallow of heart, but she was not of pate," answered Mr. Aylett, with a cold sneer. "She was a fair plotter, and not fickle of purpose when she had her desires upon a much-coveted object. Her marriage proved that. She meant to captivate Chilton before she had known him a month—yes, and to marry him, as she finally did. Her intermediate conquests ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... 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, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... appeared in their midst, feeling humble and contrite, and had been conscience-smitten at sight of her mamma's pale face; but the sneer on Betty's face, the cold, averted looks of Edward and Zoe, and then Rosie's taunt roused her quick temper to almost a ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... and charm. In the light of the lanterns swinging to and fro on the shore, a black group forms 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and I bowed, and oh! how I gripped Harold's arm as I heard the reply; not openly derisive to a lady, but with a sneer in the voice, "Oh! ah! yes! But you'll come when you've seen her home. We'll send on the ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... positively quavered with apprehension. During this time the personage never took his eyes off the two friends, and Frobisher was on the point of losing his temper when the unknown, with a distinctly perceptible sneer, turned his back rudely and, with a curt command to his waiting ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... late; he seems to be getting rather shiftless; he is wasting his time over some silly invention, a machine by which he expects to send messages from one place to another. He is a very good painter, and might do well if he would only stick to his business; but, Lord!' he added with a sneer of contempt, 'the idea of telling by a little streak of lightning what a body is saying at the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Would be swathed, feet thick, like an ash-tree root. The fox raced on, on the headlands firm, Where his swift feet scared the coupling worm; The rooks rose raving to curse him raw, He snarled a sneer at their swoop and caw. Then on, then on, down a half-ploughed field Where a ship-like plough drove glitter-keeled, With a bay horse near and a white horse leading, And a man saying "Zook," and ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... by for a week or a year, With an air apathetic, or maybe a sneer: Some ev'ryday thing, like a crime or a creed, A mode or a movement, and pay it small heed, Till Somebody started to laud it aloud; Then all but the ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... uneasy, said nothing in answer to this. Their faces, which had become impassive, seemed made of wax behind their long whiskers. Then, the Prussian officer began to laugh. And still, lolling back, he began to sneer. He sneered at the downfall of France, insulted the prostrate enemy; he sneered at Austria which had been recently conquered; he sneered at the furious but fruitless defense of the departments; he sneered at the Garde Mobile and at the useless artillery. He announced ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... heart. Amusement, recreation, enjoyment! There are no more beautiful things. But this proceeding falls under another head. We watched the various toilettes of these bounding belles. They were rich and tasteful. But a man at our elbow, of experience and shrewd observation, said, with a sneer, for which we called him to account, "I observe that American ladies are so rich in charms that they are not at all chary of them. It is certainly generous to us miserable black coats. But, do you know, it strikes me as a generosity of display that must necessarily leave the donor ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... 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 ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... never changed his attitude, although Keith noted that his right hand was hidden beneath the skirts of his long coat. The plainsman drew back, facing his enemy, until he reached the outer door. There was a sneer on Hawley's dark sinister face like an invitation, but a memory of the girl he had just left, and her dependence upon him, caused Keith to avoid an encounter. He would fight this affair out in a different way. As the door opened and he slipped forth into the gloom, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... be famous than pleasant, I'd rather be rude than polite; It's easy to sneer When you're witty and queer, And I'd rather be Clever ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... that," answered he, with a half sneer—and then, "Farewell, friend Leigh—farewell, gallant Dick Grenville. God send I see thee Lord High Admiral when I come home. And yet, why should I come home? Will you pray for poor ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... but not austere in age; Calm, but not cold, and cheerful though a sage; Too true to flatter and too kind to sneer, And only just when seemingly severe; So gently blending courtesy and art That wisdom's lips ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of them," SARK grudgingly admits; "but"—he must have the compensation of a sneer—"imagine our House of Lords forming themselves into groups to play the band in Palace Yard, with HALSBURY wielding the mace by way of baton! They'd never do it, TOBY, even in top-hats. Germany's miles ahead of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... Kieff's sneer deepened. It was Kelly's privilege always to speak his mind, and no one took offence however extravagantly he expressed himself. "Can't we have a drink?" he suggested, in the indulgent tone of one humouring ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... 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 ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... live, she wondered. She caught at that—and it gave a new current to her thoughts. Perhaps, after all —she must see him. She could not live without seeing him. Would he smile as in the old days when she loved him so; or would he sneer as when she last saw him? If be looked so, she hated him. If he should call her "Laura, darling," and look SO! She must find him. She must ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on a hand that has thrown the die and has lost; no tolerance for the player who, holding fine cards, will not play them by the rules of the game. "Manquee!" the world says, with a polite sneer, of the lives in which it beholds no blazoned achievement, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Thorn, with the same sneer. "You have rid yourself of a gentleman's means of protection, what others will ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... impels me to work, and will let me have no rest unless I am doing his behests. The honours of men I value so far as they are evidences of power, but with the cynical mistrust of their judgment and my own worthiness, which always haunts me, I put very little faith in them. Their praise makes me sneer inwardly. God forgive me if I do them ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... and the devil of a temper," said Bradwyn; "and sympathies—there never was a young woman with so many sympathies! There is an old proverb," he added, with a sneer, "'They are not all friends of the bridegroom who seem ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... half a sneer, "you think your forces inadequate. The two legions at Luceria are just detached from Caesar. Perhaps ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... for To-day! He wins the crown Whose work stands but the crucial test! Who scales the heights through sneer and frown And gives unto the world his best. Bend to your task! The steep slopes climb, And Love's true light will lead the way To perfect peace in God's ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... the ruffian, with a sarcastic sneer, "that dodge won't do. You might as well attempt to cheat the devil as deceive Bill Mathews. I know you too well. You and I have a heavy account to settle, and you shall know me better before we part. Take that—and that—and that—as an ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... He was half drunk, and in a great passion. Seizing the carriage whip in one hand and taking the bridle of the horse by the other, he lashed the trembling beast for some seconds. Mrs. Ellwell slipped out of the rear seat and half ran into the house. Bradley got out of the carriage slowly, with a sneer on his face, and nodded to Thornton. He smiled, as if to say: "Badly ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... Sweyn, with a laugh that had a little sneer in it, "put them to the test! I will not object to that, if you will only keep your notions to yourself. Now, Christian, give me your word for silence, and we will freeze here ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... my sneer at the faculty, but proceeded to strike my chest several times, with his finger tips. "Try a short cough now," said he. "Ah, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... the icy esprit that leaves the most spontaneous feeling frost-bound and stiff, that checks the most generous inspirations, and gives a sharp ring to the laughter. Their table-talk was full of bitter irony which turns a jest into a sneer; it told of the exhaustion of souls given over to themselves; of lives with no end in view but the satisfaction of self—of egoism induced by these times of peace in which we live. I can think of nothing like it save a pamphlet against mankind at large which Diderot was afraid to publish, a book ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... his upon herself. 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 wife! How strange it was! Cecilia's ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... his arguments? I don't wonder they're convincing—" But as quickly as it had come the sneer dropped, yielding to a wave of pity, the vague impulse to silence and protect her. How could he have given way to the provocation of her weakness, when his business was to defend her from it and lift her above it? He recalled his old dreams of saving her from Van Degenism—it was ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... noon, when Captain Billings came out of his cabin with his sextant, and found me all ready for him with mine, in obedience to his order, I heard Mr Macdougall utter a covert sneer behind the skipper's back ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... they vanished back into the arcade where they had lurked; Margaret's wild cry and ashen face as her father was torn away from her, and she sank fainting on to Betty's bejewelled bosom; the cruel sneer on Morella's lips; the king's hard smile; the pity in the queen's eye; the excited murmurings of the crowd; the quick, brief comments of the lawyers; the scratching of the clerk's quill as, careless of everything save ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... I relinquish here, And all the evil dreams. Ah, done am I Above all with the narrowed lips, the sneer, The heartless wit that laughed ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... who basked in the sunshine of Napoleon the Little, and laughed uproariously while their Emperor and their social institutions were being castigated by the cynical German Jew and his librettists. "He was the Beethoven of the sneer," said mil Bergerat, when Offenbach died, and then with a fantastic pencil worthy of the caricaturist Hoffmann himself, he drew a dreadful picture of Offenbach and his times; of the mighty fiddler beating time ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... an explanation—the resistance of the women. Grosse indulges in some curious antics (105-108). First he asks: "Since real capture is everywhere an exception and is looked on as punishable, why should the semblance of capture have ever become a general and approved custom?" Then he asks, with a sneer, why sociology should be called upon to answer such questions anyhow; and a moment later he, nevertheless, attempts an answer, on Spencerian lines. Among inferior races, he remarks, women are usually coveted as spoils of war. The captured ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... a little sneer which his slight foreign accent (he was speaking French) rendered almost ludicrous, "Vienna is a smart town, but it is nothing to this!" And he pointed with pride to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... would have dropped his face into his hands and would have wept over this letter; now he laughed at it. And the laugh, this first one, was the laugh men came to know as Dave Drennen's laugh. It was like a sneer and a curse and a ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... with something like a sneer, "leave the girls without protectors, and without a chance of deliverance. No," he continued, turning to our hero, "my advice is to wait here as patiently as we can until we ascertain where the girls are. Few, perhaps none, of our men are known to Harald's men; ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the mind of the messenger. He was thinking of Sylvia and smiling still at her implication that while there were larger colleges than Madison there was none better. He turned to look again at the college buildings closely clasped by their strip of woodland. Madison was not a college to sneer at; he had scanned the bronze tablet on the library wall that published the roll of her Sons who had served in the Civil War. Many of the names were written high in the state's history and for a moment they filled the young ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Leach with a sneer; "I've had no 'special order' for ten years at least! My employers trust me to do what I think best, and I've every right to act accordingly. The trees will begin to rot in another eighteen months or so,—just now they're ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... everything that he did—his rolling walk down the Court, his red colour, his football . . . and then he ruined that fellow Thompson. That was a poor game, but no one seemed to think anything of it . . . and indeed he and I seemed to be very good friends. He used to sneer at me behind my back, I know, but I didn't mind that. Any one's at liberty to sneer if they like. But he was really afraid of ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... a glance in the direction of the well-lighted building, towards which already the younger tide of humanity was setting, and his dark face took on a sneer when he noted their evident ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... her unworthy of that name—nothing that could make people say, even the most ill-natured of them—and, alas! she had lately come to learn that the world is filled, not, as she thought, with only bad and good, but with an intermediate race, which is merely ill-natured—say, with a sneer, that Dr. Grey's second ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... strength of your good right arm," supplemented the stranger, with the faintest hint of a sneer. ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... the man whom I secretly looked upon as standing between me and all preferment. He was a good-looking fellow, but he wore a natural sneer which for some reason I felt to be always directed toward myself. This sneer grew pronounced about this time, and that was the reason, no doubt, why I continued to work as long as I did in secret. I dreaded the open laugh of this man, a laugh which always ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... more and more of a nucleus, and although there is a large class who hang about missions from interested motives, there are also multitudes of quiet and contented villagers whose simplicity and remoteness shield them from the notice of the travellers who sneer at Christianity and call mission reports couleur de rose, because they have been taken in by some cunning scamp against whom any ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of Grenoble, and two presidents. The counsellor, or reporter of the State, Laubardemont, who had directed them in all, was at their head. Joseph often whispered to them with the most studied politeness, glancing at Laubardemont with a ferocious sneer. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and didactic and satiric subjects. Romanticism is characterized by less regard for form than for matter, by a return to nature, and by encouragement of deep emotion. Romanticism says: "Be liberal enough not to sneer at authors when they discard narrow rules. Welcome a change and see if variety and feeling will not ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... offspring to chance for his sake, like puppies in a pond to swim or drown according as Providence pleased; that for her part she must look herself out a place like the other servants, for my face would she never see more.' 'Nor write to me?' said I. 'I shall not, madam,' replied she with a cold sneer, 'easily find out your address; for you are going you know not ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... a pretty go!" he exclaimed, with a sneer. "So you've come here looking for work, have you? I'd like to know what you know about railroad business, anyhow? No, sir; you won't get a job on this road, not if I can help it, and I rather think I can. The best thing for you to do is to go back to Euston, and make up with the old gentleman. ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... devotion's highest flight sublime Exalt the mind, by tenderest pathos' art, Dissolve, in purifying tears, the heart, Or bid it, shuddering, recoil at crime; The fond illusions of the youth and maid, At which so many world-formed sages sneer, When by thy altar-lighted torch displayed, Our natural religion must appear. All things in thee tend to one polar star, Magnetic all thy ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... prayer-book 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... here are those of Mesdames de Montolieu and (again) de Genlis, of Ducray-Duminil, born almost as early as Pigault-Lebrun, even earlier a novelist, and yoked with him by Victor Hugo in respect of his novel Lolotte et Fanfan in the sneer noted in the last volume;[37] the other Ducange, again as much "other" as the other Moliere;[38] the Vicomte d'Arlincourt; and—a comparative (if, according to some, blackish) swan among these not quite positive geese—Paul de Kock. The eldest put in his work before the Revolution ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... moustache. He has (God knows why) a serene contempt for ordinary mortals. He is always growing black with fury, and bullying weak men. On such occasions, his lips may be observed to be twisted into an evil sneer. He is a seducer and liar: he has ruined various women, and had special facilities for becoming acquainted with the rottenness of society: and occasionally he expresses, in language of the most profane, not to say blasphemous character, a momentary regret for having ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... lips broke into a slight sneer of incredulity. "My dear brother, you do right to say this—any man in your situation would say the same. But I know that my uncle took every pains to ascertain if the report of ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Weise Gehor bei Euch zu verschaffen. But I do not think that [Greek: emauto logon poiaeso] can bear the sense of [Greek: logon tuchoimi], "get a hearing for myself." And the orator's object is, not so much to sneer at the people by hinting that they are ready to hear abuse, as to deter his opponents from retaliation, or weaken its effect, by denouncing their opposition as corrupt. Leland saw the meaning: "Not that, by breaking out into invectives, I may expose myself to the ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... a flash in her eyes. "It was an Austrian court. The Count—my husband, I should say—is an Austrian subject. His interests must be protected." She said this with a sneer on her pretty lips. "You see, my father, knowing him now for what he really is, has refused to pay over to him something like a million dollars, still due for the marriage settlement. The Count contends that it is a just and legal debt and the court supports him to this extent: ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... trees and bushes." Whereupon Washington urgently besought him to let his regulars fight the Indians in their own fashion, which would the better enable them to pick off the lurking foe with less danger to their own safety. But Braddock's only answer to this was a sneer; and some of his regulars, who were already acting upon the suggestion, he angrily ordered back into the ranks, calling them cowards, and even striking them with the flat of his sword. He then caused the colors of the two regiments to be advanced in different ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... said nothing 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 ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the wicked Godrich in his palace heard of Havelok in the kitchen. "Now truly this is the best man in England," he said, with a sneer. And thinking to bring shame on Goldboru, and wed her with a kitchen knave, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... his bridle. A more outrageous quartet it would have been impossible to find, or a more outraged one. Aggie let down her dress, which she had pinned round her waist, releasing about a quart of water from its folds, and stood looking about her with a sneer. "I don't think much of your cave," she said. "It's little and ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stranger had at last become Tired of long waiting, and of sitting dumb Upon his charger; so with greenest leer He vented his impatience in a sneer. "Is this," he said, "the glorious Table Round, And is its glory naught but empty sound? Braggarts! I put your bluster to the test, And find you quail before a merry jest!" Then the great king himself stood up in ire, With clenched hand raised, and eyes that ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... out again; but a sneer from Richard silenced him, and he obeyed the order. While he was doing so, Richard walked round the barn to satisfy himself that no one was near. They were alone, and ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... sub-prefecture of Peking, in Chihli. There Chang Fei, a butcher, who had been selling his meat all the morning, at noon lowered what remained into a well, placed over the mouth of the well a stone weighing twenty-five pounds, and said with a sneer: "If anyone can lift that stone and take my meat, I will make him a present of it!" Kuan Yue, going up to the edge of the well, lifted the stone with the same ease as he would a tile, took the meat, and made off. Chang Fei pursued him, and eventually ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... frown and tyrants sneer, The red flag is unfurled; We'll to our principles adhere ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... mentioned the fact that Webster and Choate both came from Dartmouth; that Wendell Phillips graduated at Harvard, but the university had not seen much of him since. At the mention of Wendell Phillips some of the boys from pro-slavery families began to sneer. Professor Child raised himself up and said determinedly, "Wendell Phillips is as good an orator as either of them!" He was chagrined, however, at Phillips's later public course,—his support of Socialism and General Butler. Neither did he like Phillips's Phi Beta Kappa ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... the night, he replied that there was no room in his camp for laggards; pointing to the enemy's fortress, he added: "There will be found plenty of lodging for those who come too late for any other." Saluting his Majesty very courteously, the soldier withdrew, understanding thoroughly the indirect sneer at the valour of his troops; he went back to his regiment, summoned his officers and men, and repeated to them the King's word. One and all agreed that they would, in fact, seek their night's lodging ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... unknown to fame. Stilwell was told to "stick to his boots and shoes;" and, in resentment, tailors, printers, shoemakers, and men of other handicraft, organised in support of "the working man" against the "Jackson Aristocrats." In answer to the Commercial Advertiser's sneer that Seward was "red-haired," William L. Stone, with felicitous humour, told how Esau, and Cato, Clovis, William Rufus, and Rob Roy not only had red hair, but each was celebrated for having it; how Ossian sung a "lofty race of red-haired heroes," how Venus herself was golden-haired, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... newspapers and letters, and my Bible in later life, have been all the reading that John Dangerous can boast of. Which makes me so mad against your fine Scholars and Scribblers, who, because they can turn verse and make Te-to-tum into Greek, must needs sneer at me at the Coffee House, and make a butt of an honest man who has been from one end of the world to the other, and has fought his way through it to Fortune ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... among them till Philip Ross, fixing his eyes on Eddie, said with a sneer, "So, Master Ed, though you told me one day you'd never talk to your mamma as I did to mine, you've done a good deal worse. I don't set up for a pattern good boy, but I'd die before I'd ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... the astonishment of the British officers, as they beheld Trevanion, under this gross and open insult, content himself by a slight smile and half bow, as if returning a courtesy, and then throw his eyes downward, as if engaged in deep thought, while the triumphant sneer of the French, at this unaccountable conduct, was absolutely maddening ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... discretion I dare say we took too much to drink, and I know we talked too much. We became particularly hot upon some boorish sneer of Drummle's, to the effect that we were too free with our money. It led to my remarking, with more zeal than discretion, that it came with a bad grace from him, to whom Startop had lent money in my presence but a week ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... fowk choose one thing, some another, To grace ther prose or rhyme; Some sneerin say 'at tha'lot my brother, Maks me choose thee for mine; Well, let 'em sneer owd Neddy lad, Or laff at my selection, Who fail to see ther type i' thee Are void o' mich perception.— Ther's things more stupid nor an ass, An things more badly treated, Tho' we ait beef, an' tha aits grass, May be we're just related. Throo toil an' trouble on tha jogs, An' then ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... I am not laughing! I did not doubt! It was not a sneer!" cried Eve, on her knees before her husband. "But I see plainly now that you were right to tell me nothing about your experiments and your hopes. Ah! yes, dear, an inventor should endure the long ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... neglected doing my duty, though sought so much after, he would take it upon himself to see both the girl and Thomas provided for, without any advising or letting me know anything about them; and added, with a malicious sneer, "I must take care of the child I have had by you too, or it will have but an indifferent parent to trust to in case of ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... never suspected, Audrey was very annoyed by it. She detested it and resented it. And especially the charity of Miss Thompkins. She considered that from a woman with eyes and innuendoes like Tommy's charity amounted to a sneer. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... meet this awful situation, as meet it you will, sneer gently at the puckered lips and repeat over and over that old proverb, Osculation ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh
... perhaps had better answer that question," suggested Barraclough with a little sneer. Day moved some papers ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... stolen." The witness, with great sufficiency and knowledge, as if to prove his own correctness, pointed them out upon the table before him. "And what else?" said he. He was answered that they were the whole. "And you, Mr. Witness," said he, with a sneer, "are the man of great trust, of accredited honour and honesty; and, full of your own consequence, and in high feather, you come here to follow up a prosecution against a fellow-servant, and a confidential one (you tell ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... D'y' hear? Steady, my lads! None of that 'ere! Grinning like a set of Cheshire cats! What have you got to sneer at? My word! My word! And a boy like that! That's what I call genuine British pluck! ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... are a very sagacious young man, I make no question," said the other, with a sneer—"but you'll have to pay ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... themselves, by way of distinction, Innŭee, or mankind. One day, for instance, in securing some of the gear of a sledge, Okotook broke a part of it composed of a piece of our white line, and I shall never forget the contemptuous sneer with which he muttered in soliloquy the word “Kabloona!” in token of the inferiority of our materials to his own. It is happy, perhaps, when people possessing so few of the good things of this life can be thus contented ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... the triumphant Obed, with a sneer, "I guess that settles it, don't it? Maybe you'd be willin' to turn your bills over to ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Doe treated as though he had not heard it; and Penny, certain that his victory was won, and that he had no further need of my support, kicked it away with the sneer: "Hit Doe, and Ray's bruised! What a David and Jonathan we're going to be! How we agree like steak and kidney!... Rather a nice ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Tissotianus adest!" he muttered with a sneer. "But perhaps, young sir, Latinity is not one of your subjects. The ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... him, and in an authoritative tone called to him to drive with more care. He was obliged to slacken his pace before he could understand what I said. When he had heard me repeat my injunction, which I did with no little vehemence, he looked at me first in astonishment, then with a sneer, and was raising his whip to lash the horses forward with fresh fury. Olivia caught him by the arm, and I immediately called with a voice of thunder, 'By G——, Sir, if you either injure or terrify the lady, I will pull you head ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... person of Columbus' rank in the haughty and ceremonious court of Castille. It was, indeed, the proudest moment in the life of Columbus. He had fully established the truth of his long-contested theory, in the face of argument, sophistry, sneer, skepticism, and contempt. After a brief interval the sovereigns requested from Columbus a recital of his adventures; and when he had done so, the King and Queen, together with all present, prostrated themselves on their knees in grateful thanksgivings, while the solemn ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... persons. They are usually found quite credulous regarding matters beyond their everyday field of work and thought, and accept without question the most ridiculous teachings and dogmas reaching them from the voice of some claimed authority, while they sneer at some advanced teaching which their minds are incapable of comprehending. Anything which seems unusual to them is deemed "flighty," and lacking in appeal to their much ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... living couldn't tell what either Gabriel or Joseph Chestermarke thinks about anything," answered Neale. "You know what Gabriel's face is like—a stone image! And Joseph always looks as if he was sneering at you, a sort of soft, smiling sneer. No, I couldn't say they showed surprise, and I don't know what they've found out—they're the closest, most reserved men about their own affairs ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... till doomsday, but they will never get a response from him! Let them rake the Susquehanna if they can! Perhaps, deep in its mud, they may find what the fishes have left of him!" she said, with a sneer. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... shall see," said the king with a sneer. Then he called to his guard and added, "Let this man and his companions be taken to the place prepared ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... bear, who was too stupid to perceive the genius of Pope. The grace and discrimination lavished by Francis Jeffrey over a thousand pages, weigh like a feather beside one sentence about Wordsworth's Excursion, and one tasteless sneer at Charles Lamb. Even the mighty figure of Sainte-Beuve totters at the whisper of the name Balzac. Even Matthew Arnold would have been wiser to have taken counsel with himself before he laughed at Shelley. And the very unimportant but sincere and interesting writer, whose book occupies ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... had entered his sister's carriage, in company with Madame Desvanneaux and Madame Thomery, and during the drive home, these two gentle dames—for the daughter was worthy of the mother—did not fail to sneer at the fair stranger, dilating particularly upon the impropriety of the challenging salute she had given to the General, with ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... of with a sneer. A toss of the head and a cry of "humbug," will not suffice to meet its claims and the testimony of careful, conservative men who have studied thoroughly into the genuineness of its manifestations, and have sought for the ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... girl steeped to the lips in poverty might be willing to marry Mr. Smithson's houses and yachts,' answered Lesbia, in her low sweet voice, with a faint sneer even amidst the sweetness, 'but, I think it must have been a happy release for any one to be let off the sacrifice at ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... notes] If it please your lordship—Gentlemen of the Jury,—My friend in cross-examination has shown a disposition to sneer at the defence which has been set up in this case, and I am free to admit that nothing I can say will move you, if the evidence has not already convinced you that the prisoner committed this act in a moment when to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... monks as, with their prey, they vanished back into the arcade where they had lurked; Margaret's wild cry and ashen face as her father was torn away from her, and she sank fainting on to Betty's bejewelled bosom; the cruel sneer on Morella's lips; the king's hard smile; the pity in the queen's eye; the excited murmurings of the crowd; the quick, brief comments of the lawyers; the scratching of the clerk's quill as, careless of everything save his work, he recorded ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... moment, grew as dark as a thunder-cloud, but it passed away in a sneer, and he contented himself with saying, "Are you so proud, also, my young sir?—It matters not, however. What did the Duke say to you? He showed no reluctance, I trust. We will bring his pride down farther, if ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... of Mobiles, with a scarcely concealed sneer, "so you have come out from Paris to serve? I should have imagined that there were plenty of opportunities to distinguish yourselves, there. However, you must have had good interest, to get ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... minutes; but presently the obdurate knot gave way, and, turning to gather up her shawl, there, close behind her, so close that his hot breath seemed to sear her cheek, stood her husband, clear in the moonlight, with a sneer on his face, and the lurid glow of drunkenness, that made a savage brute of a bad man, gleaming in his deep-set eyes. Hitty neither shrieked nor ran; despair nerved her,—despair turned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... has been harder than 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
... bright grey day. Paul came into the yard with his bicycle, which glittered as he walked. Usually he rang his bell and laughed towards the house. To-day he walked with shut lips and cold, cruel bearing, that had something of a slouch and a sneer in it. She knew him well by now, and could tell from that keen-looking, aloof young body of his what was happening inside him. There was a cold correctness in the way he put his bicycle in its place, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... be exemplified. The moral and political aphorisms are just and sensible, the irony in which his personal satire is conveyed is fine, yet always intelligible; but it approaches too nearly to the nature of a sneer; the sentences are cautiously constructed without the forms of connection; the 'he' and 'it' everywhere substituted for the 'who' and 'which'; the sentences are short, laboriously balanced, and ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... church-yard!' said the white gentleman, with an ambiguous playfulness, very like a sneer. 'I'm too old to play Horatio; but standing at his elbow, if the Prince permits, I have a friendly word or two to say, in my own ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... wandering out of the subject? Who will say that I exaggerate the tendencies of our measures? Will any one answer by a sneer, that all this is idle preaching? Would any one deny that we are bound, and I would hope to good purpose, by the most solemn sanctions of duty for the vote we give? Are despots alone to be reproached for unfeeling indifference to the tears ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... self-conscious in the new and gleaming suit, and because he had an absurd idea that the chauffeur might guess that he, a provincial from the Five Towns, was about to venture into West End theatrical enterprise and sneer at ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... went for nothing, however. My rival, and with him my lady love, continued to sneer at ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... against the dishonouring suspicion of not rightly appreciating pictures, even when the very phrases they use betray their ignorance and insensibility. Many will avow their indifference to music, and almost boast of their ignorance of science; will sneer at abstract theories, and profess the most tepid interest in history, who would feel it an unpardonable insult if you doubted their enthusiasm for painting and the "old masters" (by them secretly identified with the brown masters). It is an insincerity ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... Passage is a manifest Burlesque on the Invocations with which the Ancients began their Poems. Not very different is that Sneer at ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... whipper-in, was riding along in search of a gap to lead the horses through. Before I put spurs to Badger to face the hill, I turned one look towards Hammersley. There was a slight curl, half-smile, half-sneer, upon his lip that actually maddened me, and had a precipice yawned beneath my feet, I should have dashed at it after that. The ascent was so steep that I was obliged to take the hill in a slanting direction; and even thus, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... highest flight sublime Exalt the mind, by tenderest pathos' art, Dissolve, in purifying tears, the heart, Or bid it, shuddering, recoil at crime; The fond illusions of the youth and maid, At which so many world-formed sages sneer, When by thy altar-lighted torch displayed, Our natural religion must appear. All things in thee tend to one polar star, Magnetic ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... mean yourself, I suppose. I can believe in such inconstancy' (he could not help, in his own mind, giving a slight sneer at the instance before him), 'but I should be very sorry to think that Miss Kirkpatrick could ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... high-bred cruelty. Like Lamb, he "loved a fool," but it was in a mortar; and pleasant it was to see the spectacle when he really took a man in hand for the chastisement of irony. It is thus that "the seraphim illuminati sneer." And in all his controversial writing there was a brilliancy and unsparingness that will appeal to the deepest instincts of a fighting race, willy-nilly; and as one had only to read the words to feel himself among the children of light, so that our withers ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to celebrate the astounding fact of Pio Nono having exceeded the days of Saint Peter. We, who had come from Rome, where thirty upstart papers were denouncing time-honored usages and formulas, where many of the people had begun to sneer at the Papacy and to take gloomy views of the Church, were not prepared for the religious fervor and devotion to the Papal See which greeted us in the Tyrol, especially at Bruneck, where from time immemorial ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... was Hunt-Goring's turn to look surprised. He did so with an accompanying sneer. "How did you describe me, I wonder? You ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... I have the honor of knowing who it is that favors my poor dwelling, and with company like that!" said the Mayor, pointing to the child, while his upper lip contracted and the corners of his mouth drooped into a cold sneer. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... the Church was, 'Feed my lambs,'" Ernest sneered. And then, the next moment, "Pardon my sneer, Bishop. But can you wonder that we lose patience with you? When have you protested to your capitalistic congregations at the working of children in the Southern cotton mills?* Children, six and seven years of age, working every night at twelve-hour ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... Buenos Ayres I had the good luck to visit the independent province of Paraguay, which my readers must have heard spoken of, sometimes with admiration, sometimes with sneers, as the hot-bed of Jesuitism. Those who sneer say that the Jesuit fathers who left Spain under Martin Garcia formed this colony in the River Plate entirely in accordance with the principles their egotism and love of power dictated. It may be so; it is possible that the Jesuits were wrong in the conclusions they ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... would be so distinctly our inferior, so hopelessly unworthy of her, so helplessly incapable of appreciating her. I think we conceived of him as tall, with drooping fair moustaches, and contemptibly meticulous in his dress. He would probably not be of the Quarter; he would sneer at us. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... whiff behind was that sailor. He left the savour of Probity and Simplicity behind, though he took the things themselves away again. Why, why couldn't he leave us what is more wanted here than even his money? His integrity: the pearl of price, that my father, whom I used to sneer at, carried to his grave; and died simple, but wise; honest, but rich—rich in money, in credit, in honour, and eternal hopes. Oh, Skinner! Skinner! I wish ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... lodges, the practical workers of the working-girls' clubs, and the humanitarian agnostics like Dr. Leigh, who were literally giving their lives without the least expectation of reward. Even the refined ethical-culture groups had no sneer for Father Damon. The little chapel of St. Anselm was well known. It was always open. It was plain, but its plainness was not the barrenness of a non-conformist chapel. There were two confessionals; a great bronze ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Robert Johnson, a lutenist in high repute. {255b} Like its predecessor 'A Winter's Tale,' 'The Tempest' long maintained its first popularity in the theatre, and the vogue of the two pieces drew a passing sneer from Ben Jonson. In the Induction to his 'Bartholomew Fair,' first acted in 1614, he wrote: 'If there be never a servant-monster in the Fair, who can help it he [i.e. the author] says? nor a nest of Antics. He is loth ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... her heart, to parade while her entrails were torn with grief, forced to feign and to wear a mask in the presence of all who were there, and to lie to all the invited guests, indifferent and inimical, as Ramel said, and who were looking about ready at any moment to sneer and ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... disparate genres in The Dunciad, lifting it above satire that is merely "rugged" or "mischievously gay" (p. 8). (The epithet is also, perhaps, a thrust at Edward Ward, who had pinned it on The Dunciad with a sneer.)[22] Harte's claim that ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... Hegel at a window, I, being full of bubbling youth and coffee, Spoke in symbolic tropes about the stars. Something I said about "those high Abodes of all the blest" provoked his temper. "Abodes? The stars?" He froze me with a sneer, "A light eruption on the firmament." "But," cried romantic I, "is there no sphere Where virtue is rewarded when we die?" And Hegel mocked, "A very pleasant whim. So you demand a bonus since you spent One lifetime and refrained from poisoning ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... your admirers in suspense till the last moment?" said Bertie, with a covert sneer, for he was angry at her slighting behaviour to Bluebell. "What a scramble there ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... their grandchildren waiting for them. I told how I had seen them, in our New England coast towns, covered, as a ship is covered with barnacles, by grandchildren who rode on their shoulders and sat astride of their necks as they walked down the village streets. And now at last the sneer left my old man's loose lips. He had grandchildren somewhere. He twisted uneasily in his seat, coughed, and finally took out a big red handkerchief and wiped his eyes. The episode ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... is my true opinion that your understanding is one of the strongest, most manly, and clearest I ever knew; and, as I hold my own to be of a very inferior kind and know it to be incapable of sound, deep application, I should have been very foolish if I had attempted to sneer at you or your pursuits. Mine have always been light and trifling, and tended to nothing but my casual amusement; I will not say, without a little vain ambition of showing some parts but never with industry sufficient to make me ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... it displays itself in dalliance with coquettes, in susceptibility to the blandishments of a courtesan! See this fiery genius, how in six short years it hath burnt out the oil of life, and reduced his body to a living skeleton; so that passing scoffers point at him with a sneer and exclaim—"C'est l'amour qui a fait cela." Behold this bold, enterprising spirit—how it conceives and executes plans, compared to which the deeds of a Cartouche or a Howard sink into insignificance. And presently, when these precious germs of excellence ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... unfeigned respect for the memory of Falkland. Carlyle's sneer at him has always seemed to us about the most painful thing in the writings of Carlyle. Our knowledge of his public life is meagre, and is derived mainly from a writer under whose personal influence he acted, who is specially ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... getting uneasy, said nothing in answer to this. Their faces, which had become impassive, seemed made of wax behind their long whiskers. Then, the Prussian officer began to laugh. And still, lolling back, he began to sneer. He sneered at the downfall of France, insulted the prostrate enemy; he sneered at Austria which had been recently conquered; he sneered at the furious but fruitless defense of the departments; he sneered at the Garde Mobile and at the useless artillery. He ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... sufficient to batter in the forehead of a bullock. But the listless implement bounced off the head of the shark as a stick from a drum, provoking merely a contemptuous wave of the tail which seemed to signify a sneer. The axe was also employed with negative results, for the difficulty of delivering an effective blow from the boat could not ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... 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 ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... of abuse and of adulation. Daily, semi-weekly, or weekly did Fenno, Porcupine Cobbett, Dennie, Coleman, and the other Federal journalists, not content with proclaiming him an ambitious, cunning, and deceitful demagogue, ridicule his scientific theories, shudder at his irreligion, sneer at his courage, and allude coarsely to his private morals in a manner more discreditable to themselves than to him; crowning all their accusations and innuendoes with a reckless profusion of epithet. While at the same times and places the whole company ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... one hand and taking the bridle of the horse by the other, he lashed the trembling beast for some seconds. Mrs. Ellwell slipped out of the rear seat and half ran into the house. Bradley got out of the carriage slowly, with a sneer on his face, and nodded to Thornton. He smiled, as if to say: "Badly jagged, ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... knack for self-advertising that infuriated Nelson. To read this anybody would think that he was one of the dominant figures in the oil industry, and that his enterprises were immensely successful. With a sneer Nelson flung the paper aside. So, that was how it had happened. The well had been fired—Henry believed he could account for that—but a miracle had quenched the flame. Falling drill stems! Who ever ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... guests, repudiating 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, the genuine simplicity of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... 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 ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... him for an undecided moment and replied, "I'm not paid to think, Mr. Barclay," and went past him with her work. But he knew the truth. He went to his bed, and threw himself upon it, a-tremble with remorse and fear, and the sneer in his heart stilled his lips and he could not look outside himself for help. So the morning came, and another day, bringing its thousand cares, faced him, like a ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard, A traitor to the liberals, who with lip Upcurled in scorn and with a bitter sneer: "Such strife about an insult to a woman— A girl of eighteen "—Christian Dallman too, And others unrecorded. Some there were Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom And lust of ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... constitutional weakness, yet it has humiliated me that I had not the power to enable him to overcome so strange a failing. Why, I could face death for you, and he can't stand beside one whom he used to sneer at as 'little Strahan.' Yet, such is his idea of my woman's soul that he still gives me his thoughts and therefore his hopes;" and she almost stamped her ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... she was than for her to have the opportunity of worming herself into favour! Those modest airs and her way of peeping up under her eyelashes seem to make a great impression,' said Mrs. Nesbit, with a sneer. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wounded hand, then with an astounding oath he hurried up the court to the Plaza. I went up to the woman and said, "What is the cause of this? I hope the ruffian has not seriously injured you." She turned her countenance upon me with the glance of a demon, and at last with a sneer of contempt exclaimed, "Carals, que es eso? Cannot a Catalan gentleman be conversing with his lady upon their own private affairs without being interrupted by you?" She then bound up her hand with a handkerchief, and going into the room brought a small table to the door, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... peculiar. But why shouldn't she try to keep young for the sake of her dream? I think it's romantic and beautiful, and all one with her efforts to become the intellectual equal of her lost husband. Grandma and Heppie sneer after Mrs. James has been and gone, at the long words she uses, and condemn her for wanting to deceive people into thinking she's much younger than she is. But that is because they've no romance in them, and ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... lonely, too, and cold; And youth lay all behind him, a tattered funeral pall, For he was very tired, and he was growing old. It was a glowing ruby that lay upon the breast Of one who had not earned it, who wore it with a sneer; The thief was very weary, he only longed for rest; He was too wan for caring, he was too numb ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... sort. 'He must die,' he said, when the relatives of Catulus pleaded for his life. It is not unlikely that disease, and drinking, and his late hardships had made the old man insane. He had been occasionally good-natured in former days; now he seemed to gloat in carnage. For every sneer cast at him, for every wrong done to him in past years, he took a horrible revenge. When Cinna had summoned him, he had said that he would settle the question of enrolment in the tribes once for all. He wished not to select victims, but to massacre all the leading ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... to be very busy with the roses, and not to have heard him. Her uncle's sneer was not lost on her, however; she resented it but chose to ignore it for the present; and when at length she had finished arranging the flowers, she changed the conversation adroitly by questioning her relative anent the opportunities for shopping in Sequoia. The Colonel, who could ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... the truth. In the exercise of that duty which presses heavily upon every reviewer, to seem, if not to be wiser than his author, many of the English periodicals, even those most favorable to America, undertook to doubt his statements of fact, to sneer at his prophecies of the future as ludicrous exaggerations, and to term them striking and whimsical instances of Yankee braggadocio, and of the love of building castles in the air. Cooper could not well overstate the material prosperity and progress of the country, nor the inability of ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... how she does,' replied the settler, with an eagerness that betrayed his conviction that the bait had taken; 'but Mr. Grantham,'—and I could detect a lurking sneer, 'I expect at least that when you have lick'd the prize you will make my loyalty stand a little higher than it seems to be at this moment, for I guess, puttin' the dollars out of the question, it's a right loyal act I am guilty ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... win this marvellous city for England. James I. chopped in with his cold logic, and declined to believe that any golden mine existed in Guiana "anywhere in nature," as he craftily said. When Raleigh returned after his last miserable failure in May 1617, the monarch spared no sneer and no reproof to the pirate of the seas. Of course, the King was right; there was no mine of diamonds, no golden city. But the immense treasures that haunted Raleigh's dreams were more real than reality; ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... her," was the contemptuous Cornelius. Even Vavasor, who soon became a frequent caller, if he chanced to utter some admiring word concerning the pretty deft creature that had just flitted from the room like a dark butterfly, would not in reply draw from him more than a grunt and a half sneer. Yet now and then he might have been caught glowering at her, and would sometimes, seemingly in spite of himself, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... said to Natalie, "is Madame Estelle. You see, I have provided a chaperone," he remarked with something like a sneer. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... was thinking of Sylvia and smiling still at her implication that while there were larger colleges than Madison there was none better. He turned to look again at the college buildings closely clasped by their strip of woodland. Madison was not a college to sneer at; he had scanned the bronze tablet on the library wall that published the roll of her Sons who had served in the Civil War. Many of the names were written high in the state's history and for a moment they filled the young ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... libelous in that paragraph. It could be taken either way—as a piece of congratulation or as a covert sneer. So Hal and Noll concluded to let it pass as a joke, and each clipped out the paragraph to ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... temporary drawback to the contentment of the party was the shower of tears which fell at Dulcie's forcible separation from her relatives. It was forcible in the end; all the blessings had been given in the house—don't sneer, they did her no harm, no harm, but a vast deal of good—and only the kisses and tears were finished off in ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... dishonor, insult, indignity, outrage, discourtesy &c. 895; practical joking; scurrility, scoffing, sibilance, hissing, sibilation; irrision[obs3]; derision; mockery; irony &c. (ridicule) 856; sarcasm. hiss, hoot, boo, gibe, flout, jeer, scoff, gleek|, taunt, sneer, quip, fling, wipe, slap in the face. V. hold in disrespect &c. (despise) 930; misprize, disregard, slight, trifle with, set at naught, pass by, push aside, overlook, turn one's back upon, laugh in one's sleeve; be disrespectful &c. adj., be discourteous &c. 895; treat with disrespect &c.n.; set ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... last "Atlantic." If anything could make John Bull blush, I should think it might be that; but he is a hardened and villainous hypocrite. I always felt that he cared nothing for or against slavery, except as it gave him a vantage- ground on which to parade his own virtue and sneer at ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... Strefford, and of revealing to him that Nick had left her for that very reason. She was not afraid that the discovery would diminish her in Strefford's eyes: he was untroubled by moral problems, and would laugh away her avowal, with a sneer at Nick in his new part of moralist. But that was just what she could not bear: that anyone should cast a doubt on the genuineness of Nick's standards, or should know how far ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... he at the end said, "Evson, you are not yourself to-day, and I forgive you," Walter would have been in a moment as docile and as humble as a child. But as it was, he left the room quite coolly, with a sneer on his lips, and banged the door; yet the next moment, when he found himself in the court alone, unsupported by the countenance of those who enjoyed his rebelliousness, he seated himself on a bench in the courtyard, hung his head on his breast, and burst into a flood of tears. If ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... an attempt to conceal the sneer with which the young man glanced at the brown loaf gracing the platter on the Hegumen's knees. Seeing then a look of pain on the paternal countenance, he continued: "No, I have had breakfast, and came to see how you are, and to apprise you that the city is being stirred from ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Mrs. Tallboys, "that men are so much afraid of the discussion that they try to elude it with empty compliment under which is couched a covert sneer." ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with a contemptuous sneer, "Mr. Fairlegh is most fortunate in possessing such a steady and useful friend: first, when he dictates to Lawless what toasts he is to propose at his own table, and threatens the company generally with the weight of his displeasure should ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Burns, "what have we got here—a gold brick?" He rose with a vivid sneer on his red face, plunged his hands in his pockets, and took two or three nervous strides across the room. Kittrell looked at him, and slowly his eyes blazed out of a face that had gone white ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... course, the easy fashion now to sneer at Victorian standards. To my mind they embody all that is clean and sound in the nation. It does not follow that because Victorians revelled in hideous wall-papers and loved ugly furniture, that therefore ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... vapid talk could possibly accomplish. Why tie these millstones around your neck? They came yesterday to demand the head of Albert Sidney Johnston. They are organizing to drive Lee out of the army. They allow no opportunity to pass to sneer at his position as your chief military adviser since his return from Western Virginia. You know and I know that Albert Sidney Johnston and R. E. Lee ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... added as with studied sneer, his face flushing darkly, his thin mouth twisted in ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... which all out of Christ are exposed, it will be the most natural thing in the world for them to show an undying earnestness in seeking the lost. Then propriety, and reticence, and restraint, and rules of rhetoric will be thrown to the winds, and a divine passion will possess the life. The world may sneer at it as fanaticism, but it is the fanaticism of Pentecost. When the crowd saw the intensity of emotion shown by the newly-anointed disciples, they exclaimed, "These men are full of new wine." Here was shown an enthusiasm that leaps over all difficulties and rises above every discouragement—the ...
— The Art of Soul-Winning • J.W. Mahood
... said, "will you answer me truly? Do you find anything at the Thorn and Thistle better than you found in the young men's class? You sneer at religion, but religion does no one any harm; rather it always does good; anyhow, it's everything to me, and you ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... not only with Kenelm, but with the "inmate." If she, Hannah, were to marry and leave the pair instead of being herself left! Oh, the glory of it—the triumphant glory of it! How she could crush her brother! How she could gloat over and sneer at Imogene! The things she might say—she, the wife of a rich man! ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... half-playful sneer graduates into one of great ferocity when, together with a heavily frowning brow and fierce eye, the canine tooth is exposed. A Bengalee boy was accused before Mr. Scott of some misdeed. The delinquent did not dare to give vent to his wrath in words, but it was plainly ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... official than Clancy. Shrewd judge of character as he was, he could hardly be expected to guess, after such a momentary glimpse of a man of extraordinary genius in unraveling crime, that Clancy was never more discursive, never more prone to chaff and sneer at his special friend, Steingall, than when hot on the trail of some particularly acute and daring malefactor. The Chief of the Bureau, of course, knew by these signs that his trusted aide had obtained information of a really startling nature, but neither Curtis nor Devar was aware of Clancy's ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... captives—for Beatrice, too, now suddenly appeared, thrust forward through another lane among the Folk—Kamrou's keenly cruel face grew hard. His lips curled with a sneer of scorn and hate. His pinkish eyes glittered with anticipation. Full on his face the flare of the great flame fell; Stern could see every line and wrinkle, and he knew that to beg mercy from this huge barbarian (even though he ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... of spite because he was forced to come; and when we got back he would be one of the first to grin and sneer at us. I want to run back as fast as I can, but you'll stand by ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the thin lips hardened as he noted the sudden pallor of her face and the look of wild terror that flashed for a moment from her eyes. And then, almost on the instant, the girl's eyes narrowed, the firm white chin thrust forward, and the red lips curled into a sneer of infinite loathing and contempt. Instinctively, Lapierre knew that the hands within the heavy mittens had clenched into fighting fists. For an instant she faced him, and then, drawing away as if he were some grizzly, loathsome thing poisoning ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... not alone Citizen-Deputy, I see," he said, with a sneer, as his snakelike eyes lighted ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... would have complained of the tears of Coriolanus or Othello; and, with Coriolanus, he could say, "It is no little thing to make mine eyes to sweat compassion." It was the presence of the sorrow of the world which made him silent. Who dares to sneer at that? When I think of my mother,—naturally hopeful, gently merry, ever smiling,—who, while my father lived, was so glad a woman that her sparkling glance was never dimmed, and when I have to acknowledge that even she did not fill us children ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... feel, even, that I might safely claim, from Mr. Hoffman, the right, which every author has, of replying to his critic tone for tone—that is to say, of answering your correspondent, flippancy by flippancy and sneer by sneer—but in the first place, I do not wish to disgrace the World; and, in the second, I feel that I never should be done sneering, in the present instance, were I once to begin. Lamartine blames Voltaire for ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... do useful work—oh yes, you may sneer—you always have sneered! If a woman tries to do something sensible with her life, instead of cuddling and kissing you all day, she's cold and cruel. We've drifted apart—well, your fault as much as mine. More, perhaps—but it's no good going into ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... you'd be so kind," said the other, with a sneer. "But we'll be going of ourselves at the new year," he said, and ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... away who never saw Lazarus and only heard of him. With an audacious curiosity which is stronger than fear and feeds on fear, with a secret sneer in their hearts, some of them came to him one day as he basked in the sun, and entered into conversation with him. At that time his appearance had changed for the better and was not so frightful. At first the visitors snapped their fingers and thought disapprovingly of the foolish inhabitants ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... fleet, if not divided, would certainly not be led towards the main body of the enemy. Concentration of purpose, singleness of aim, was more than ever necessary, now that time pressed and a decision had been reached; but the sneer of the French officer reproduces the idle chatter of the day in London streets and drawing-rooms. These, in turn, but echoed and swelled the murmurs of insubordination and envy in the navy itself, at the departure from the routine methods of officialism, by passing over the claims of undistinguished ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... comparison), the high mountain scenery acts the part of the champagne. Unluckily, too, the teetotalers are very apt, in this case also, to sit in judgment upon their more adventurous neighbours. Especially are they pleased to carp at the views from high summits. I have been constantly asked, with a covert sneer, "Did it repay you?"—a question which involves the assumption that one wants to be repaid, as though the labour were not itself part of the pleasure, and which implies a doubt that the view is really enjoyable. People ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... this time I really did not know what I knew. Boys are greatly influenced by their surroundings, and in those days every one about me never spoke of Transcendentalism or "Germanism," or even "bookishness," without a sneer. I was borne by a mysterious inner impulse which I could not resist into this terrible whirlpool of belles- lettres, occulta, facetiae, and philosophy; but I had, God knows, little cause for pride that I read so much, for it was on every hand in some way turned against ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... men have taken their departure—one to gold-digging in California, the other to the happy hunting grounds of the Redskin, or elsewhere. Luck, in short, seems to have forsaken us. Pious folk," he added, with something of a sneer, "would say, no doubt, that God ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... would have proceeded according to law," replied Perez, with a bitter sneer. "They have been proceeding according to law for the past six years here in Berkshire, and that's why the people are in rebellion. I'm no lawyer, but I know that Perez Hamlin is as good as Jahleel Woodbridge, whatever ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... him, stopped as quickly, and let his anger vent itself in a sneer. It had occurred to him that Baumberger was not goading him without purpose—because Baumberger was not that kind of man. Oddly enough, he had a short, vivid, mental picture of him and the look on his face when he was playing the trout; it seemed to him that there was ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... sermons; and there is a disposition in mankind that would ennoble it beyond much that is more ostentatious; for men, whether lay or clerical, suffer better the flame of the stake than a daily inconvenience or a pointed sneer, and will not readily be martyred without some external circumstance and a concourse looking on. And you need not fear that your virtue will be thrown away; the people of Scotland will be quick to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fears, believing that, while protesting her friendship, she is secretly fomenting opposition to legitimate Italian aspirations in the Balkan peninsula and in the Middle Sea. (Again let me remind you that I am giving you not my own, but Italy's point of view.) You will sneer at this, perhaps, as a phantasm of the imagination, but I assure you, with all the earnestness and emphasis at my command, that this distrust of one great Latin nation for another, whether it is justified or not, forms a deadly ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... indifference to a platform with another, especially as Yancey and his own followers had seceded on the platform and not on the man; but he did not press his adversary to the wall, as he might have done, on the insincerity which Davis's sneer exposed. He was hampered by his own attitude as a candidate. Douglas, who had received 150 votes at Charleston, and who expected the whole at Baltimore, could not let his tongue wag as freely as Davis, who had received only one vote and a half at Charleston, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... law, and have found out how much we owe unto our Lord, it is not likely that we shall take our brother by the throat and say, 'Pay me that thou owest.' If any treat me badly, try to rob me, harm me, sneer at me, or turn the cold shoulder to me, who am I that I should resent that? Oh, brethren, we need, for our right relation to our fellows, a deeper conviction of our sinfulness before Him. Many of us are blessed with natural tendencies to meekness, but these are insufficient. Many ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... gun! Why the blazes couldn't you have come home and brought me a bit of peat from the pit? A fine hunter you are! I might as well have married the devil.—And his wife turned from him with a sneer. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... only master. If Augustus desired to do anything by "post-obits," let him ruin himself after his own fashion. "It is not very likely that Augustus can raise money by post obits, circumstanced as the property is," he had written to Mr. Grey, with a conveyed sneer and chuckle as to the success of his own villany. It was as though he had declared that the money-lenders had been too well instructed as to what tricks Mr. Scarborough could play with his property to risk a ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... delicate distinctions," Dr. Merrick interposed with a polite sneer. "I gather from what you said just now that the lady is shortly expecting her confinement; and as she isn't married, you tell me, I naturally infer that SOMEBODY must have seduced her—either you, or ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... laughter told me about the King's retreat, making tremendous fun of him, despite my youth, for he had confidence in me. I was astonished. We soon after met the whole company coming back; and the great people went aside to talk and sneer. I then proceeded to pay my respects to the King, by whom I was honourably received. Surprise, however, was expressed by all faces, and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... any one like you, Charles," said Herbert, with a sneer; "one would think you never had seen a hen or a cow before. If you were at our school they would call you 'lady;' for you clap your hands just as a girl does over these things. I like horses and dogs, but who cares ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples
... this instance," the sea-captain struck in with a sneer, contempt for the first time mastering ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... creed to return good for evil," answered Girty, with a strong emphasis on the word Christian, accompanied with a sneer; "but by ——! such belongs not to me, nor to those I mate with! Hark you, Ella Barnwell! I could be induced to do much for you—for I possess for you a passion stronger than I have ever before felt for any human being—but ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... to attribute to Irishmen the very qualities their critics unite in denying them. "The Irishman fights well everywhere except in Ireland," has passed into a commonplace: and since every effort of government has been directed to ensuring the abiding application of the sneer, Englishmen would find, in the end, the emasculating success of their rule completely justified in the physical submission of Ireland to the new force that held her down. With Great Britain cut off and the Irish Sea held by German squadrons, no power from within could maintain any effective resistance ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... impatiently with a shrug, she went into the nursery. The nurse had been so glad to get back that most of her old hostility toward Ethel had vanished. Still there were signs now and then of a sneer which said, "You'll soon be paying no more attention to this poor bairn than her mother did before you." And it was as well to show the woman how blind and ignorant she was—to make her see ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... remarked Mendouca, with a sneer, "so far as you can with honour, refrain, I pray you, from thrusting your nationality into my face; for I may as well tell you that I have the utmost hatred and contempt for the English; I would sweep every one of them off the face of the earth if I could; and some day, when ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... asked for business talk, General. I've given you straight business. You're asking something from some one else, just now. In politics it's nothing for nothing, and d—n-d little for a dollar! You know it just as well as I do. Now suppose we have some business talk from you!" There was a sneer in ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... Cadogan Cavendish, sneer as you like. But I tell you that's love that I've been describing. That's all. It's love. It's the realest, purest, finest thing that can happen to a man. And I know what I'm talking about. ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... his abnormal deficiency in what I may call the scientific sense, prevent him from divining its importance. Bacon could see nothing remarkable in the chief contributions to science of Copernicus or of Kepler or of Galileo; Gilbert, his fellow-countryman, is the subject of a sneer; while Galen is bespattered with a shower of impertinences, which reach their climax in the epithets "puppy" ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... the coat? Ah! true, the colour is lilac.' He held it out at arm's length. Doubtless I had been staring at the coat, but I had not even given it a thought. 'The lilac shadow!' he went on, with a sneer. 'Believe me, it is the purest coincidence.' And as he prepared to slip his arm into the sleeve I flashed the knife out of my belt. He was too quick for me, however. He flung the coat over my head. I felt the knife twisted out of my hand; he stumbled over the chair; we ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... things to my house!" repeated the miser with a sneer. "Mebbe he does. What sort of things does he kerry there? Chickens and turkeys, and surlines and ribs of beef, and sech truck! He knows I don't want sech things, and he does it jest to aggravate me. If he wants to do anything ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... the goblin school—for he kept a goblin school— declared everywhere that a wonder had been wrought. For now, they asserted, one could see, for the first time, how the world and the people in it really looked. Now they wanted to fly up to heaven, to sneer and scoff at the angels themselves. The higher they flew with the mirror, the more it grinned; they could scarcely hold it fast. They flew higher and higher, and then the mirror trembled so terribly amid its grinning that it fell down out of their hands to the earth, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Oh, no, Senorita, not until the hour that you have exchanged vows and, intoxicated by love's first kiss, he presses you to his heart, then—then, Senorita, will I lay him dead at your feet in order that you also may realize what it is to live without the one you love," he said with a sneer, a faint smile wreathing his cruel lips as he watched the effect his words had upon her. There was a malicious gleam of exultation in his eyes as he saw her draw herself together suddenly and shudder as though struck by ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... determined, savage, implacable trot. He caught up on the Carl at last, for the latter had stopped to eat blackberries from the bushes on the road, and when he drew nigh, Cael began to jeer and sneer angrily at the Carl. ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... Jackson," the sheriff remarked with a sneer, for he was out of temper at the ill success of the day's work, "that he has already laid hands on your son. It seems to me quite as likely that he will lay hands on you as you ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... no more magical lantern than a man's head," I replied, a little disconcerted by his sneer. "Chemists say there's more phosphorus in the brain than anywhere else; and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... ever impels me to work, and will let me have no rest unless I am doing his behests. The honours of men I value so far as they are evidences of power, but with the cynical mistrust of their judgment and my own worthiness, which always haunts me, I put very little faith in them. Their praise makes me sneer inwardly. God forgive me if I do ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... trying to show you I'm not a beast," Keith urged at last. "But a human being. It takes a woman to be something above a human being." He was sneering, and the sneer chilled her. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... 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
... the morning air. It seemed to press downward like an enormous invisible bat; or like the shade of buried cities, vain outcroppings of a vanished civilization, brooding menacingly over this recent flimsy accomplishment of man that Nature could obliterate with a sneer. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... on the more quickly to make war. They came to a great wood. While they were going through it, the Bladder was heard to sneer and to say, "He! you should rise above these, brothers." With these words he went upward among the tree-tops; and the thorn apple pricked him. He fell through the branches and was nothing! "You see this!" said the four, "this one could ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... down, a sly old fellow rose, and waving his long brush with a graceful air, said, with a sneer, that if, like the last speaker, he had been so unfortunate as to lose his tail, nothing further would have been needed to convince him; but till such an accident should happen, he should certainly vote in favour ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... and helping himself to a whisky-and-soda. Austin bore very little resemblance to his grim and dominant elder brother. He had a slight frail figure, very carefully dressed, and one of those thin-lipped faces which seem, to wear a perpetual sneer of superiority over commoner humanity. The movements of his white hands, the inflection of his voice, the double eyeglass which dangled from his vest by a ribbon of black silk, revealed the type of human being which considers itself something rarer and ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... contracted her eyebrows. Was Mr. Copping indulging in a sneer? Possibly some vague idea of the same kind grated on the nerves ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... phrase: 'It is nothing'. If you win a battle, 'It is nothing' If you lose one, 'It is nothing'. If you are nearly killed in an air-raid, 'It is nothing'. And if you were killed outright and could yet speak, you would say, with your eternal sneer, 'It is nothing'. You other men, you make love with the air of turning on a tap. As for your women, god knows—! But I have a horror of Englishwomen. Prudes but wantons. Can I not guess? Always hypocrites. Always holding themselves in. My god, that pinched smile! ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... question, and did it shrewdly. With the Jewish maiden and the Roman centurion going to see the strange man perform the novel rite of baptism in the river of Jordan, he looked back upon the city of Jerusalem; and further along he pointed out Judas, plodding the dusty road—squat, sullen, and with a sneer at the marvel he ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... men of the type of Gordon, but that privilege is only for the few. As the great majority of our fellow-creatures are denied it, the next best thing for them is to be able to read about these heroes, and thus endeavour to catch their spirit. Some are inclined to sneer at biographies, and to say that, speaking generally, they set forward only the good part of the character of their subjects, omitting all that is faulty. To a certain extent this is undoubtedly ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... Ben, with a sneer. "If he hadn't come up to the pasture the other day, you wouldn't thought anything 'bout him, an' he'd been out to the poor-farm where ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... of the world in caves, and on platforms fastened to columns, had not well-furbished knives and forks, nor carefully folded linen, nor, as a rule, nicely behaved nice little boys and girls, waiting with eager patience for a second helping of pudding. There is a distressing sneer at soap ("scented soap" it is always called), even in the great Tolstoi's writings, ever since he has allowed himself to be hag-ridden by the thought of death. And one speculates whether the care true saints have bestowed upon their souls, if ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... encircled by open-worked embroidery. He would find out that the ladies sometimes wore Knickerbockers. And this is what the ladies like. Exaggerate their follies as much as you please; but woe be to you, if you wrongfully accuse them! You may sneer at, you may censure, you may castigate them for what they really do, but beware of reprehending them for that which they have never done. Even Sir John Falstaff revolted at the imputation of having ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... rocks, and their opinions of TO-MORROW in words just as hard, although their opinions of to-morrow may contradict their opinions of to-day.' They are fearless of personal consequences. As free men, they will think, as free men they will speak, and as such they will act, regardless of the jibe and sneer of those who accuse them of change, of inconsistency, of being mutable and unstable of purpose. The point to the march of improvement, the advance in the actualities of life, and ask, 'When every thing else is on the move, shall we stand still? Shall the opinions of ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... uttered with a kind of sneer, which was very provoking, however, I restrained my passion during the little time he stayed; but as soon as I found myself alone gave it vent in tears and exclamations,—since which I have been mere at peace within myself; for tho' I cannot say I hate him, I am now far from loving ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... know what a bad lot is exactly, but if you mean that I've lived with women and been drunk, and lost jobs because I didn't do the work, and been generally on the loose, it's true, of course. But I meant to live decently when I came home. Yes, I did. You can sneer as much as you like. Why didn't you help me? You're my sister, aren't you? And now I don't care what I do. You've all given me up. Well, give me up, and I'll just go to bits as fast as I can go! If you don't want me there are others who do, or at any rate the bit of money I've got. You've kept ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Nature gave him such a frame, His tailor such a fit, That, whether a head or a heart his aim, He always made a hit. Wherever he went, the ladies dear Would very soon adore him, And, quite of course, the lords would sneer,— But never sneer before him! Perhaps it fared with the ladies worse Than it fared with their gallants; For he broke a vow with as slight remorse As he ever broke a lance. Thus, tilting here and jilting there, He fought a foe or he fooled a fair, But little recking how; So deadly smooth, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... counsellor, or reporter of the State, Laubardemont, who had directed them in all, was at their head. Joseph often whispered to them with the most studied politeness, glancing at Laubardemont with a ferocious sneer. ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... how, in talking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time not what one wants to but what one can? Well—that was the way I painted; and as he lay there and watched me, the thing they called my 'technique' collapsed like a house of cards. He didn't sneer, you understand, poor Stroud—he just lay there quietly watching, and on his lips, through the gray beard, I seemed to hear the question: 'Are you sure you know ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to harden and solidify, and become a part of their very bone. The neighbouring towns were jealous of this honourable supremacy, and affected to sneer at Hadleyburg's pride in it and call it vanity; but all the same they were obliged to acknowledge that Hadleyburg was in reality an incorruptible town; and if pressed they would also acknowledge that the mere fact that a young man hailed from Hadleyburg was all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... come to dinner. Nice manners they learn on the Continent! But none of us wept when he declined; not even his good aunt, my wife. Though he must have got a good deal to tell us, and an extraordinary knowledge of foreign ways. But instead of doing that, he seems to sneer at us. I can look at a question from every point of view, and I defy anybody to call me narrow-minded. But still, one must draw the line somewhere, or throw overboard all principles; and I draw it, my dear Admiral, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... made very careful inquiry," he commented with a perceptible sneer. "No doubt this was a matter of deep ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... joys of domestic life, and the duties of the citizen. In short, this very moral critic will spare no one, not even infants of tender age. He lives in the Rue Mandar with a wife who might be the Mamamouchi of the Bourgeois gentilhomme and a couple of little Vernous as ugly as sin. He tries to sneer at the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where he will never set foot, and makes his duchesses talk like his wife. That is the sort of man to raise a howl at the Jesuits, insult the Court, and credit the Court party with the design of restoring feudal rights and the right ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... confident a tone of authority that the kneeling man looked up, though with a sneer on his face. "Unless you go away from this pond at once, I'll get the men from the camp, and they'll make you go. They'll not be so polite as I am. You're just poachers, anyway. And the boys will like as not just run you clean out of the country. Will you do as I ask you, or shall I go ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... at night and in the morning did not arise. Smoke weakly gained his feet, collapsed, and on hands and knees crawled about the building of a fire. But try as she would Labiskwee sank back each time in an extremity of weakness. And Smoke sank down beside her, a wan sneer on his face for the automatism that had made him struggle for an unneeded fire. There was nothing to cook, and the day was warm. A gentle breeze sighed in the spruce-trees, and from everywhere, under the disappearing snow, came the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... aware of that. There is one thing, however, that I prize even more than that, and that is my honor. Do not take the trouble to sneer. Say, what I call my honor, if it pleases you better, and I will not leave a stain upon that, even in your mind, if I can ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Hellas have their price," was the retort, with an ill-concealed sneer. "Do not trust them. Take ten talents from me ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... business which concerns our two nations. Your appearance, I presume, is due to a desire to engage the professional services of Mr. Arima. Or perhaps you were trying to find the fortune-teller upstairs." He barely repressed his sneer. ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... Armstrong has put that notion into your head, no doubt," said Miss Granger, with the faintest suspicion of a sneer. She was not very warmly attached to the lady of Hale Castle nowadays, regarding her as the chief promoter ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... glanced past her at the middle-aged maid, and surprised a peculiar expression on the face of the woman. She had been looking straight at him, and her lips were almost curled into a sneer, while her eyes were flashing with something akin ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... you've always claimed you was," said Crabtree, with a sneer; "but, 'cordin' to some of the things I've heard about ye, you've been a mighty sportin' young feller in your day. You've lived pretty high for a youngster, and you've had dealings with sportin' people. They tell me you don't drink, you don't gamble, you don't swear, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... place was duly locked up, Tom having refrained from making any allusions to the speculum, and the work on hand, feeling as he did that his cousin would look upon it with a contemptuous sneer. Then the keys were returned to the house, and as the two lads stood in the hall they could hear the invalid talking very loudly to Uncle Richard, evidently upon some subject in which he took ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... several places, practical reformers, as bold as Joan d'Arc, have discarded the trailing skirts, and adopted the far more convenient, equally chaste, and more elegant dresses of Oriental women. Some ridicule them; others sneer contemptuously or laugh incredulously, and others commend them for their taste and courage. We are disposed to be placed in the latter category; and to show our good-will, we present, above, a sketch of ORIENTAL ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... no reason for the resolution, and her manner, without being sullen, aggravated her brother into wrath, the effusion of which was a withering sneer. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... hearing from Holzbauer that Vogler had it, I asked him to lend it to me. "With all my heart," said he; "I will send it to you to-morrow without fail, but you won't find much talent in it." Some days after, when he saw me, he said with a sneer, "Well, did you discover anything very fine— did you learn anything from it? One air is rather good. What are the words?" asked he of some person standing near. "What air do you mean?" "Why, that ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... apparel, expressed a rejection of God's Word in her countenance and manner. In the discourse the subject was changed from the wearing of gay clothing to the practise of tobacco using. When the habit of using snuff was mentioned the plain lady's smile was turned to a sneer, and the fashionable lady's sneer was turned to a smile. Afterwards in conversation the fashionable lady said she believed it was a sin to use snuff, but she could not see any evil in wearing gay and fine clothing. ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... got a situation,' repeated Mrs Griffith, with a sneer at her husband, 'and we're not to be angry or anxious, and she's quite happy—and we can write to Charing Cross Post Office. I know what sort of a ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... rise up in one body and kill and slay, kill and slay! Dem Spanish and Portuguese sailors were quite right in making slaves. I would do de same myself, suppose I were in dere place.' 'He is only a liberated!' is a favourite sneer at the new arrivals; so in the West Indies, by a curious irony of fate, 'Willyfoss nigger' is a term of abuse addressed to a Congo or Guinea 'recaptive.' But here all the tribes are bitterly hostile to one another, and all combine against the white man. After ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... course of her experience with different department heads; and she was wise beyond her years in the ways of the world. But this situation was different. Here was a girl who had been brought up "by hand," as she would have said with a sneer a few hours before, and she would have despised her for it. She raised up on one elbow and leaned over once more to watch the delicate profile of this gentle maiden, in the dim fitful light of the city night that ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... image of the Blessed Virgin and prayed—not to the polished ivory—but to the Mother of purity whose intercession it suggested, with a fervency and constancy which only they venture to ridicule who cannot record the virtues of Mary without a sneer. ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... only way I can keep her from making me utterly ridiculous." And he proceeded to read from the secretary's telegram. "'Shopped all morning. Lunched at Martingale's with man and woman unknown to me—Martingale's,'" he repeated with a sneer—"'Motored through Park with Mrs. Wilmer until five.' Mrs. Wilmer," he exclaimed, "there's a woman I've positively ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... in a little surprise at this question. A thorough New Yorker by birth, associations, alliances and feelings, he held all the old names of the colony and State in profound respect; and I had often heard him sneer at the manner in which the newcomers of my day, who had appeared among us to blossom like the rose, scattered their odours through the land. It was but a natural thing that a community which had grown in population, in half a century, from half a million to two millions and a half, and that as ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... were painted"? — Faith, no word of black was said; The lightest touch was human blood, and that, you know, runs red. It's sticking to your fist to-day for all your sneer and scoff, And by the Judge's well-weighed word you cannot ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... jeer at me, and they'll sneer at me, and they'll call me a whiskey soak; ("Have a drink? Well, thankee kindly, sir, I don't mind if I do.") A drivelling, dirty, gin-joint fiend, the butt of the bar-room joke; Sunk and sodden and hopeless — ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... people other than ignorant foreigners who must be watched in these awful times," the matron said bitterly. "There are teachers in our colleges who sneer at patriotism just as they sneer at religion. Whisper, Miss Fielding! I am told that the very man they suspect in this dreadful thing—the American who has sold a map of this sector to the Germans—came ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... There Chang Fei, a butcher, who had been selling his meat all the morning, at noon lowered what remained into a well, placed over the mouth of the well a stone weighing twenty-five pounds, and said with a sneer: "If anyone can lift that stone and take my meat, I will make him a present of it!" Kuan Yue, going up to the edge of the well, lifted the stone with the same ease as he would a tile, took the meat, and made ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... associated with Joseph of Arimathea, and with the twelve apostles of the Lamb, if he had taken the advice of John. There might have been a fragrance around his name all these centuries. But alas! when we speak of Herod, we see a sneer on the faces of those who hear us. If one had said to Herod in those days, "Do you know that you are going to silence that great preacher, and have him beheaded?" he would have replied, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do such a thing? I never would ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... sulkily down the Naab Valley (having lost, say 15,000, not by fighting, but by mud and hardship); and the rapt European Public (shilling-gallery especially) says, with a sneer on its face, 'Pooh; ended, then!' Sulkily wending, Maillebois and Saxe (October 30th-November 7th) get across the Donau, safe on the southern bank again; march for the Iser Country and the D'Harcourt Magazines,—and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Houck had said he was going to take June to her father. But he had said it with a cynical sneer on his lips. For the girl to be Jake's wife would have been bad enough, but to be his victim without the protection of legality would be infinitely worse. And that was the lot to which June was destined. She had fought, but she could fight ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... A sneer in Prof. Pattee's history, before mentioned, recalls the fact that Hamlin Garland was also a rebel in his day and bawled for the Truth with a capital T. That was in 1893. Two years later the guardians of the national rectitude fell afoul of "Rose of Dutchers' Coolly" ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... his complete satisfaction years ago, and what was good enough for his father, in school methods, is quite good enough for him. His self-satisfaction would approach sublimity, were it not so extremely ludicrous. He has a supercilious sneer for innovations. How he can bring himself to make concessions to modernity to the extent of riding in an automobile is one of ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... to inquire why savages and barbarians are capable of producing college professors, who sneer at the source from which they sprung, we may accept for the moment the masculine hypothesis of intellectual superiority. Some women have been heard to say that they wish they had been born men, but there is no man bold enough to say that he would ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... period, he asserted, when the serious attention of the house to public affairs was more imperatively demanded, and he boldly maintained that it was the duty of their lordships to lay the true state and condition of the country before his majesty. After indulging in a quiet sneer at the care the council had bestowed upon horned cattle, he remarked, that he was glad to hear that the king had reason to believe the peace of the country would be preserved, since peace could never be more desirable to a kingdom, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... her argument. We did not interrupt her, the two brothers, the photographer, and myself listening to her with admiring glances that had more to do with her beautiful face and the music of her soft, girlish voice than with what she was saying. There was a congealed sneer on the photographer's face as he followed her plea, but it was full of the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... repented. He has passed put of your sight. He has gone years and years ago. Somewhere in this great, multitudinous mass of humanity he is sinning and sinning and reduplicating and extending the sin that you did. You touched the faith of some believing soul years ago with some miserable sneer of yours, with some cynical and sceptical disparagement of God and of the man who is the utterance of God upon the earth. You taught the soul that was enthusiastic to be full of scepticisms and doubts. You wronged a woman years ago, and her life has gone out from ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... to stand up boldly for those whom the fashionable world would sneer at. She was not ashamed to recognize a plainly-dressed acquaintance in the most public thoroughfare, nor did she ever make an excuse to be pre-occupied when approached by some ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... all due to that sneer of Elisha P. Bayne's. For while this was about as batty a business proposition as I ever had put up to me, this scheme of Millie's for hockin' her hubby, I'd got more or less int'rested in her yarn. And it struck me that a girl who'd done what she had wa'n't any quitter. Elisha puts on ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... to act as my bodyguard?" she inquired with a significant sneer. "Go! I never want to ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... meantime most of us are asking, "What is the way out?" As for myself, I confess to being only a student. I have no word of sneer or scoff for any mail's honest thinking, who is sincerely trying to uplift his brothers and sisters; and yet I must say that, as yet, I have not been able to become a disciple of any of the new systems that have been presented. ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... many things to my house!" repeated the miser with a sneer. "Mebbe he does. What sort of things does he kerry there? Chickens and turkeys, and surlines and ribs of beef, and sech truck! He knows I don't want sech things, and he does it jest to aggravate me. If he wants to do anything for me, why don't he gim me the money he pays ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... His Majesty's officers shave so close," the pilot answered, with a sort of sneer I did not like. "They commonly send in hands with a ship, when they find it necessary to take her ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... myself, have so much worldly wisdom as you have," said he at last, with something like a sneer. ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... been all over that ground. There's no reef there, and if there had been it would have been found and skinned years ago," said dogmatic Billy, with a sneer. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... father, by the flash of an eye, and the charm of a face, can forsake his sacred ties of devotion and become a degenerate and outcast, with death as his only salvation. In either case Nature stands by with a sneer upon her lips, and God forgets his obligation to his children. But the final analysis proves beyond doubt that the physical attraction is responsible for this action; and who can deny that it is the chemical attraction of two forces that ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... grandest thoughts are colorless as water; they savor not of Milton, Socrates, or Menu; seem not drawn from any private cistern, but rain-drops out of the pure sky. Whim and conceit are tare and tret. It matters little whether a man whine with Coleridge, or boast with Ben Jonson, or sneer with Byron, or grumble with Carlyle, if every thought is one-sided and warped. The oddity relieves our commonplace, and pricks the dull palate; but we soon tire of exaggeration, and detest the trick. It is egotism, self-sickness, jaundice, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... begins and ends, No world's laugh or world's taunt, no pity of friends Or sneer of foes, with this my ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... then, to sneer at 'medical materialism,' and stigmatise it as superficial. Many people are constitutionally afraid of words, and there is nothing that arouses prejudice so quickly as a name. But it is really not a question of materialism, medical or non-medical. It is a mere matter ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... painted"?—Faith, no word of black was said; The lightest touch was human blood, and that, ye know, runs red. It's sticking to your fist today for all your sneer and scoff, And by the Judge's well-weighed word ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... wedding, seeing how it will purge of coarseness the picture-sheets of that artistic nation, which will hardly be able to caricature the new wife as it did poor plebeian Josephine. Such starched and ironed monarchists cannot sneer at a woman of such a divinely dry and crusted ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... years before. The book of Malthus on the Principle of Population, mainly founded on the fact that animals increase in a geometrical ratio, and therefore, if unchecked, must encumber the earth, had been generally forgotten, and was only recalled with a sneer. But the genius of Darwin recognised in it a deeper meaning, and now the thought of Malthus was joined to the new current. Meditating upon it in connection with his own observations of the luxuriance of Nature, Darwin had arrived at his doctrine of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... 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.
... of Tory Dames, did she smile on you?" The voice was harsh and rasping; looking across the table, I saw the sneer upon his lips. I had but entered a moment before the dining-room of the inn, after my long ride, and was about to take my seat, when Rodolph's ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... 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 ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... Madaline; you understand what I mean—proud of its beauty; its antiquity—proud that no shadow of disgrace has ever rested on it. To others these are simply ancient gray walls; to me they represent the honor, the stainless repute, the unshadowed dignity of my race. People may sneer if they will, but to me there seems nothing so sacred as love of ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... poetry with my whole soul." There is ten times more poetry, he thinks, in the "Essay on Man" than in the "Excursion"; and if you want passion, where is to be found stronger than in the "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard"? To the sneer that Pope is only the "poet of reason" Byron replies that he will undertake to find more lines teeming with imagination in Pope than in any two living poets. "In the mean time," he asks, "what have we got instead? . . . The Lake school," and "a deluge of flimsy ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... offence, although he gave scarcely any other reason than that he proposed to mind his. When I met his Southern mother on the piazza, she looked at me in my uniform at first as if I had been a toad. They are rebels at heart, and yet they stand aloof and sneer at the North, from which they derive protection and revenue. I made his eyes flash once though," chuckled the young fellow ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... once, and gave the idea of a very puerile, ridiculous, apron-stringy attempt at poetry. Whoever wrote that notice ought to be shot, for the books are charming pure and homely and householdy, yet not effeminate. Critics may sneer as much as they choose: it is such love as Vaughan's that Honorias value. Because a woman's nature is not proof against deterioration, because a large and long-continued infusion of gross blood, and perhaps even the monotonous pressure of rough, pitiless, degrading circumstances, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... pray, that they are perishing?" answered Tom, with something very like a sneer. "And if they were, do you honestly believe that any talk of yours can change in five minutes a character which has been forming for years, or prevent a man's going where he ought to go,— which, I suppose, is the place to which he ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... incuriously away. And her companions had been quick to recognise her difference of attitude, or they would never have dared to accuse her of sympathy with the thief, or to doubt her chorusing assertion with a sneer. For them, the gap was not very wide between understanding and doing likewise. And they were certainly right.—Oh! the last wish in the world she had was to range herself on the side of the sinner; she longed to see eye to eye with her comrades—if she had only known how to ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... not live with such an one as he. If for a moment he but enter here, He looks around him with a mocking sneer, And malice ill-conceal'd; That he with naught on earth can sympathize is clear; Upon his brow 'tis legibly revealed That to his heart no living soul is dear. So blest I feel, within thine arms, So ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... railway strike, he had passed several sweeping Acts of Parliament, he had brought into effect the iniquitous Budget, he had dismantled the British constitution by taking away the powers of the House of Lords. You may sneer at such a man, you may hate him, but you cannot ignore him. Sincere and religiously minded ladies used to write to the papers, wondering in all sincerity why Heaven permitted such a man to continue to live. A peer of the realm told his tenants that he would roast ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... of Whisky Jim that thus greeted Albert. If there was a half-sneer in the words, there was nothing but cordial friendliness in the tone and the grasp of the hand. The Superior Being was so delighted that he could only express his emotions by giving his leaders several extra slashes with his whip, and by putting on a speed that ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... way to turn hate into love and scorn into sympathy. Indifferent equilibrium in the presence of active antagonism is not possible for us. As long as we are sensitive we shall wince from a blow, or a sarcasm, or a sneer. We must bless in order to keep ourselves from cursing. The lesson is very hard, and the only way of obeying it fully is to keep near Christ and drink in His spirit who prayed 'Father, forgive them, for they know ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... of death makes for life. But the curse of the White Logic is that it does not make one afraid. The world-sickness of the White Logic makes one grin jocosely into the face of the Noseless One and to sneer at all the ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... a smile. "As the titled conductor of the Egypt tour," he explained to my dull intelligence, with a slight sneer. "So will you please be in the dining saloon just before the bugle blows the beasts in? I have to introduce you, in a short speech. It's all I can do, except say, God help you! But I don't see how He can. I suppose ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... with a trace of a harsh sneer outlined on his face. "If they get killed, I am sorry. If they live, they are useful. If they are lost, others take their places. They are merely a part of the general scheme. They are for me ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... hardly do to depend upon that," said Mr. Die, with another sneer. "Twelve thousand a-year is a ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... of his birth to the hour of his burial. Although we can gather from the tenour of his writings that the author himself belongs to the Liberals, we must give him credit for the fairness with which he describes the party to which he is opposed. There is no sneer, no expression of contempt anywhere, even when, as in the case of the Nirang, the temptation must have been considerable. What this Nirang is we may best state in the words of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... anything else your lordship would like?" he said with a sneer. "The best feather-beds are damp, and the carpets have been put away by mistake. What wines would your lordship like for your dinner and would you ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... corrected, grimly, while his inward thought was that the dry bones were Simeon's own; and then, ashamed of the disloyal—though unspoken—sneer, he went back to Deena and began talking volubly of his last letter from ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... outwitted. He had desired, coaxed, schemed, haggled, got what he wanted, and now found he had paid too much for his bargain. You don't suppose I would ask you to laugh at that man's grief? It is you, clumsy cynic, who are disposed to sneer, whilst it may be tears of genuine sympathy are trickling down this nose of mine. What do you mean by laughing? If you saw a wounded soldier on the field of battle, would you laugh? If you saw a ewe robbed of her lamb, would you laugh, you brute? It is you who are the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Mr. Bullet-head at these scandalous insinuations, I shall not attempt to describe. On the eel-skinning principle, however, he did not seem to be so much incensed at the attack upon his integrity as one might have imagined. It was the sneer at his style that drove him to desperation. What!—he Touch-and-go Bullet-head!—not able to write a word without an O in it! He would soon let the jackanapes see that he was mistaken. Yes! he would ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... latter with a sneer, "it's a finer garden than we have at our family palace. Do you know what's planted there?" he asked, turning suddenly on the little boy. "Dead bodies, cavaliere! Rows and rows of them; the bodies of my brothers and sisters, the Innocents who die like flies every year of the cholera and the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... shall I never again possess a friend, whose face will wear a smile of joy whenever I approach? Alas! how thoughtless, how dreadfully imprudent have I been! I know not which is most painful to endure, the sneer of contempt, or the glance of compassion, which is depicted in the various countenances of my own sex: they are both equally humiliating. Ah! my dear parents, could you now see the child of your ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... raised his arm with a malicious sneer, and was about to execute his threat, when one of his ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... attempt to surprise him, for always his eyes watched her. Nor did she seek to hold back or in any way to hamper him now. For, swiftly adjusting herself to the new conditions, she made her first decision: Trevors did think her a "fool of a girl," Trevors did sneer at her helplessness in that man's way of his. Let him think her a little fool; let him hold her in his contempt; let him grow to think her cowed and afraid and helpless. Then, when the ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... irregularity, it possesses unnumbered claims of attention, respect and obedience. She fills the place of the eternal God; by her lips that God is speaking; in her counsels He is conveying the most solemn admonitions; and to disregard such counsel, to despise such interference, to sneer at the wisdom that addresses you, or the aged piety that seeks to reform you, is the surest and the shortest path which the devil himself could have opened for your perdition. I know no grace that can have effect; I know not any authority upon earth to which you will listen, when once you have ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... years of age. But it was his face which chiefly caught my eye, for at that moment there was something terrible about it. It was long, thin, and deeply carved; the eyes were large, and gleamed like gold in sunlight; the mouth was small and well shaped, but it wore a devilish and cruel sneer; the forehead lofty, indicating a man of mind, and marked with a slight scar. For the rest the cavalier was dark and southern-looking, his curling hair, like my own, was black, and he wore a peaked ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... of forcing his resolutions with one breath and avowing his indifference to a platform with another, especially as Yancey and his own followers had seceded on the platform and not on the man; but he did not press his adversary to the wall, as he might have done, on the insincerity which Davis's sneer exposed. He was hampered by his own attitude as a candidate. Douglas, who had received 150 votes at Charleston, and who expected the whole at Baltimore, could not let his tongue wag as freely as Davis, who had received ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... Lizzy called upon her friend, she found her in a very unhappy state of mind. As to the ball and the people who attended, she was exceedingly captious in all her remarks. When Clinton was mentioned, she spoke of him with a sneer. Lizzy hardly knew how to take her. Why the young man should be so offensive, she was at a loss to imagine, and honestly came to the conclusion that she had been mistaken in her previous supposition that Margaret really felt an ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... operations in London were three definite motives. First of all, he really loved England. He felt that the theater there had a dignity and a distinction far removed from theatrical production in America. There was no sneer of "commercialism" about it. To be identified with the stage in England was something to be proud of. He often said that he would rather make fifteen pounds in London than fifteen thousand dollars in America. It summed up his ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... that you carry all your fortune on your back, therefore," said Alsi, looking at Havelok's gay attire with somewhat of a sneer. ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... the bard with a sneer. "Is that what Morgan is trying? Why! I thought it was first the lowing of an aged cow, and then the yelping of a blind dog, unable to find its way. ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... joke to stand as it is," he said, as he snapped his big jaws together and twisted the muscles of his mouth into a sneer. He had a habit, when he closed an emphatic speech, of twisting the muscles of his mouth in that way. When animated in talk, he was the incarnation of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... His voice as he spoke was low and soft; but at the end, with the concluding words, "I am innocent!" it flashed into strong masculinity. His eyes, shaded with long girlish black lashes, by chance met mine. "I am innocent." His curving sensuous lips drew down into a grim sneer.... ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... answered when the unpopular freshman broke through the line, grasped Jane's hand and deliberately forced a folded slip of paper into it. Then, with a mocking smile that ran into an audible sneer, she turned and sped away. Her awkward gait and frank romping so close to Wellington Hall brought questioning glances from the ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... are audacious enough to think you are richer than I." This time there was no sneer in his voice, only an ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... Miss Hazleton," he said significantly. "I'll tell you something else as long as I am pouring out my heart to you," a sneer under the words. "Before I'm done with Shandon he won't have a boot for his foot or a leg to walk on. And anybody who ties up with him is going to ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... the approbation of the Colonial Office at home. It does not matter what the colonial newspapers say, it is 'what will they say in Downing Street?' And if a despatch goes out approving of their conduct, neighbours may censure and sneer as they list. So we Christians have to report to Home, and have so to live 'that whether present or absent'—in a colony or in the mother country—'we may ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... be your stopping place," said Silas, with another sneer, as he stopped in front of a small tent. "And let me tell you it will be best for you to take it easy. You may get into trouble if you ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... question 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
... waited at Apollo's shrine: I told him what the world would say, 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 Sheridan the rogue would sneer, And swear it does not always follow, That semel'n anno ridet Apollo. I have assur'd them twenty times, That Phoebus help'd me in my rhymes; Phoebus inspired me from above, And he and I were hand and glove. But, finding me so dull and dry since, They'll call it all poetic license; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... you." And she did not know whether that were praise or a sneer. That had been a week before. And all that week he had passed in an increasing agony at the thought that those mountains, that sea, and those sunlit plains would be between him and Maisie Maidan. That thought shook ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... wings of eagles, friend Pierre,' said the younger man, glancing around, 'we must climb where we can find foothold. God will protect us; if not,' with a sneer, 'the Devil ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... into the garden of Gethsemane. There, in the darkness and loneliness of night, the full anguish of his situation rushed upon his spirit. He shrank from the rude scenes that opened before him,—from the mocker's sneer and the ruler's scourge; from the glare of impatient revenge, and the weeping eyes of helpless friendship; from the insignia of imposture and of shame; and from the protracted, thirsty, torturing death. He shrank from these,—he shrank from the rupture ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... waited to see his lip curl bitterly, and then, amused, went down the stairs. She had paid him for his sneer. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... grovelling department are at first merely out of sorts with themselves, and vent their spleen in little interjections and contortions of phrase—cry Pish at a lucky hit, and Hem at a fault, are smart on personal defects, and sneer at 'Beauty out of favour and on crutches'—are thrown into an ague-fit by hearing the name of a rival, start back with horror at any approach to their morbid pretensions, like Justice Woodcock with ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Lord, has given him outward proofs of His love and protection, and among other instances I will relate these two which I well remember. It happened once that his uncle went out a shooting with him in the woods, when the uncle began to sneer at him, saying that he, a mere stupid Indian, could not shoot, but a Christian was a different character and was expert and handy: that he, Wouter, would not shoot anything that day, but he himself would have a good hunt. To which Wouter replied, "It is well, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... Would you throw another stone at him, boys? Would you hunt the weary old man through the streets like some wild beast? Would you taunt, and sneer, and shout in his ears, "Old crazy Tim"—"Old crazy Tim?" Oh, no—no! Pick a flower and give him, as Kitty used; take his hand—poor, harmless old man—and walk along with him; maybe he'll fancy that you are little ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... the professional skill and successful [30] agricultural enterprise of Dr. Nichol, a medical officer of that Colony, with whom he became acquainted for the first time during his short stay there, our author travels out of his way to tack on a gratuitous and pointless sneer at the educational competency of all the elected members of the island legislature, among whom, he tells us, the worthy doctor had often tried in vain to obtain a place. His want of success, our author informs his readers, was brought about through Dr. Nichol "being the only man in ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... defiant "I will not," turned the whole current of his existence in the one direction or the other, towards good or evil, or towards success or failure? Who, that has fought his way against odds into the front rank, has forgotten the woman's look that gave him courage, or the man's sneer that braced nerve and muscle to strike the ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... village, I promise you. I did not think Snooks a nice looking man, by any means; for he had a low forehead, a scowling brow, a nobbly fat nose, small eyes, one of which had a cast, a large mouth always awry and distorted with a sneer, straight hair that hung over his forehead, and a large scar on his right cheek. His teeth were large and yellow, and the top ones protruded more, I thought, than was at all necessary. Nor was he generally beliked. In fact, so unpopular was this man with the poor, that it was a common thing for mothers ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... George and his English Lords have a provoking slighting tone towards Friedrich Wilhelm; they answer his violent convictions, and thoroughgoing rapid proposals, by brief official negation, with an air of superiority,—traces of, a polite sneer perceptible, occasionally. A mere Clown of a King, thinks George; a mere gesticulating Coxcomb, thinks Friedrich Wilhelm. "MEIN BRUDER DER COMODIANT, My Brother the Play-actor" (parti-colored Merry-Andrew, of a high-flying turn)! was Friedrich Wilhelm's private name for him, in after days. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sorry to disappoint your expectations," returned the Jew, with something approaching to a sneer, as he rose; and, selecting one from a pile of English newspapers, slowly read out to his companion the announcement of the failure of the firm of Hazlit and Company. "You see, my good friend, we Jews are very knowing as well as sharp. ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Catholic. We are not so contracted in our praying. We do not confine it to little comfortable places. Nay, but for seventeen hundred years and more we have prayed out of doors as much as in doors. And this our custom is no fit subject for a shallow sneer. How does the learned sergeant know that, beneath the vault of heaven at night, studded with those angelic eyes, the stars, is an unfit place to bend the knee, and raise the soul in prayer? Has he ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... beneath the dignity of a man who has had one or two articles accepted by a prehistoric magazine which nobody reads. In reality, it is one of the greatest and most splendid of all professions, fit to call out the very best of a really big man. You chuckle and sneer at Colonel Cowles and think yourself vastly his superior as an editorial writer, when, in the opinion of everybody else, he is in every way your superior. I doubt if the Post has a single reader who would ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... court, if you want to play," said Attell, "and if you've got anybody to play with," he added with a sneer. "This ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... call; their well-dressed daughters, as they rattle by to the town in basket-carriage or dog-cart, look askance at the shabby figure walking slowly on the path beside the road. They criticise the shabby shawl; they sneer at the slow step which is the inevitable result of hard work, the cares of maternity, and of age. So they flaunt past with an odour of perfume, and leave the 'old ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... dash into a burning house, or throw himself off a dock to rescue a perishing wretch, but there is a dearth of the kind of bravery that will enable either man or woman to face a laugh in defense of a principle, or succor a losing cause despite a sneer. How the best of us will retreat trailing our banner in the dust, when the hot shot of ridicule confronts us from the enemy's camp, or when some merry sentinel challenges us with the opprobrious epithet, "crank." Why, I believe ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
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