"Mockery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... try to hide it, you will see it; and perhaps you will attribute to wrong causes the sadness I may not be able to suppress with uniform heroism. You pained me deeply yesterday, when you advised me to go out a little 'to distract my thoughts.' To distract my thoughts from you, Edmee! What bitter mockery! Do not be cruel, sister; for then you become my haughty betrothed of evil days again . . . and, in spite of myself, I again become the brigand whom you used to hate. . . . Ah, if you knew how unhappy I am! In me there are two men who are incessantly waging a war ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... expended so much enthusiasm and passion that when at last victory was theirs they had not enough of either to rejoice: it left them dry of energy and broken for life. Their hopes had been so high, their eagerness for sacrifice had been so pure, that triumph when it came had seemed a mockery compared with what they had dreamed. To such single-minded creatures for whom there could exist but one truth, the bargaining of politics, the compromises of their heroes had been a bitter disappointment. They had seen their comrades in arms, men whom they ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... many who have learned their catechism and deplore the ignorance of others, make the least effort to place their chief end even in the direction of that of their creation? Is it not the constant thwarting of their aims, the rendering of their desires futile, and their ends a mockery, that alone prevents them and their lives from proving an absolute failure? Sir George, with his inveterate, consuming thirst for whisky, was but the type of all who would gain their bliss after the scheme of their own fancies, instead of the scheme ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... so-called moral order in the universe, and they unhesitatingly declare that existence is an evil. They would have us therefore exchange our hopes for insight, and warn us that even this is very circumscribed at best. For not only is happiness a mockery, but knowledge is a will-o'-the-wisp. Mankind resembles the bricklayer and the hodman who help to raise an imposing edifice without any knowledge of the general plan. And yet the structure is the outcome of their labour. In like manner this mysterious ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... niece Margarita—what to do, I ask you, of this young person? She is Cuban, she is fanatic, she is impossible. I apply myself to instruct her as her station and fortune demand, as befits a Spanish lady of rank; she insubordinates me, she makes mockery of my position as head of her house. She teach her parrot to cry "Viva Cuba Libre!" She play at open windows her guitar, songs of Cuban rebels, forbidden by the authorities. I exert my power, I exhort, I command,—she laughs me at the ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... passed by, and Cleotos, arousing from his apathetic despair, felt more strongly that, if the lapse of love into mere friendship is a misfortune, the offer of friendship as a substitute for promised love is a mockery and an insult: his soul rebelled at being made a passive party to such a bargain; and he began himself to play the retaliatory part which a wronged nature naturally suggests to itself. Like Leta, he learned to hold out the limpid hand in careless greeting, or to mutter ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... glitter of ice and snow about it. Just a glorious finishing of an idyllic Kansas autumn rounding out in the beauty of a sunshiny mid-December day. But to the man who stood there, waiting for nothing at all, the day was a mockery. Behind the fine scholarly face a storm was raging and there was only one ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... strength.' But the Apostle uses a very uncommon word here, at least uncommon in the New Testament, and another place where he uses it will throw light upon what he means: 'Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.' Then is it so vain a mockery to tell a poor, weak creature like me to become strong, when you can point me to the source of all strength, in that 'Spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind'? We have only to take our weakness there to have it stiffened into strength; as people put bits ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... against a petty provincial ruler, whilst the proud democrat of Athens would console himself under a sentence of death for a supposed violation of the national faith—which no one understood and which at times was the subject of the mockery of all—or the banishment from his home, his family, and his country with or without an alleged cause, that it was the act not of a single tyrant or hated aristocracy, but of his assembled countrymen. Far different is the power of ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... that terrible and eventful day, and, as if in mockery of those who saw no beauty in its golden beams, arrayed in all the gorgeous softness of its autumnal glory. Sad and heavy were the hearts of many within that far distant and isolated fort, as they rose, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the Wilhelmstrasse, ought to be satisfied with the assurance that Austria would not impair the territorial integrity of Serbia or mar her future existence as an independent State. What a hollow mockery such a promise would seem, when the whole country had been ravaged by fire and sword! Surely it was decreed that, after this "exemplary punishment," Serbia should become the lowly vassal of her redoubtable neighbour, living a life that was no life, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... fancies that he hears a cry of despair from one of the visitors. "Dieux immortels! Pourquoi n'ai-je amene ma femme a la fete?" That is quite proper and allowable. It is the general tone of levity in the most sentimental moments, the undercurrent of mockery at his own feelings in this man of feeling, which is so shocking to Sensibility, and yet it was precisely this ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... decorated for a dance. Already, when Lady Dauntrey and her impromptu train arrived, forty or fifty men were assembled on a deck screened in by flags and masses of palms and flowers. A Hungarian band imported from Paris was playing, not dance music, for that would have been a mockery in the circumstances, but gay marches and lively airs to cheer drooping spirits. Of all the women invited (some of whom Mrs. Holbein scarcely knew) only Lady Dauntrey and her house-party had accepted, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... than this sojourn with persons whom she in every way respected—with whom there was not the least temptation to exhibit her mere dexterities. In London, during this past season, she had sometimes talked as a young, clever and admired girl is prone to do; always to the mockery of her sager self when looking back on such easy triumphs. How very easy it was to shine in London drawing-rooms, no one knew better. Here, in the country stillness, in this beautiful old house sacred to sincerity of heart and mind, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... go on a little while and a little way farther); take out the time spent in sleep—in practical nonentity—and the remainder is a pitiful handful of years, so few, that to number them seems like a mathematical mockery, like ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... frogs said, whenever this frog-catching boy came in sight, "Here comes Hawkins!—here comes Hawkins! Look out!—look out!" and a row of boys, perched on a log in the water, would sound this warning in mockery of the frogs or their foe, and plump one after another in the depths, as frogs follow their leader in swift succession. They had nothing against Hawkins. They all liked him, for he was a droll, good-natured fellow, always up ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... and the hour when they were again laid bare and exposed to our curious and admiring eyes. Yet we behold them, stamped upon the rock, distinct as the track of the passing animal upon the recent snow; as if to shew that thousands of years are but as nothing amidst eternity—and, as it were, in mockery of the fleeting, perishable course of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... hidden bird among the branches of the solitary park whistles mockery.... We feel the shadow of a dream in our wine-glass, and something that is earth in our flesh feels the dampness of the garden ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... all was a desert, so there, where their fury had not spread, all was a garden. Afar, at the foot of the mountains, the fugitive herds were grazing; the cranes, flocking back to the pools, renewed the strange grace of their gambols; and the great kingfisher, whose laugh, half in mirth, half in mockery, leads the choir that welcome the morn—which in Europe is night—alighted bold on the roof of the cavern, whose floors were still white with the bones of races, extinct before—so helpless through instincts, so ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... other in a tone of mockery. "Oh yes, I'll give you my name. I don't see why I should hide it; do you? I've been away a good long time; but I mean to have my rights now. My name is Mrs. Wyvis Brand: what do you think of ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... we should, between where we then were, and some distant sand hills, again find ourselves travelling over a salt formation. The evening had closed in with a cloudy sky, and the wind at W.N.W., and during the night we had two or three flying showers, but they were really in mockery of rain, nor was any vestige of it to be seen in the morning, which broke with a clear sky, and the wind from ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... magazine would praise him and his company highly; but he knew the shallowness of all the patter of praise. He knew that he paid for it in one way or another, and he grew cynical; and in his lonely afternoons on the river, often he laughed at the whole mockery of his career, smiled at the thought of organized religion, licking his boots for money like a dog for bones, and then in his heart he said there is no God. Once, to relieve the pain of his soul's woe, he asked aloud, who is God, anyway, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... coulde not. For it was faste lockt, and Qualitees had the key away with him. Now begynne they a freshe to fret and fume: nowe they swere and stare: now they stampe and threaten: for the locking in greeued them more than all the losse and mockery before: but all auayle not. For there muste they abide, till wayes may be founde to open the gate, that they maye goe out. The maidens that shoulde haue dressed theyr maisters suppers, they wepe and crye; boyes and prentises ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... As though in mockery at his words, the long, even reverberations changed to a quick, harsh, discordant ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... circus comes here you shall go, certain sure, and Betty too," said Ben, feeling mean while he proposed what he knew was a hollow mockery. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... sins is full, The scarlet-vested whore! Thy murderous and lecherous race Have sat too long i' the holy place; The knife shall lop what no drug cures, Nor Heaven permits, nor earth endures, The monstrous mockery more. Behold! I swear it, saith the Lord: Mine elect warrior girds the sword— A nameless man, a miner's son, Shall tame thy pride, thou haughty one, And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... mere mockery. If you placed ten thousand dollars in his hands, would you ever expect to see the first copper ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... upon a child that seems to me the very negation of that motherhood in whose name this "right" is enforced. And for what purpose is a child to be brought into the world under conditions so imperfect? To "fulfil the nature" of its mother; to complete her experience; to meet her need. Is there any mockery of motherhood more complete than this sacrifice of the child to the mother? Why, our physical nature itself is less selfish! When a woman conceives, her child receives first all the nourishment it needs; whatever it does not demand, the mother has. A woman herself undernourished can, if the ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... could scarcely be called gay, yet few persons more tended to animate the general spirits of a convivial circle. He seemed, by a kind of intuition, to elicit from each companion the qualities in which he most excelled; and a certain tone of latent mockery that characterized his remarks upon the topics on which the conversation fell, seemed to men who took nothing in earnest to be the language both of wit and wisdom. To the Frenchmen in particular there was something startling in his intimate knowledge of the minutest ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... alas, that the idle dreamings of some people are worth more than their serious efforts. Well, what is unpoetically called the working-out section—to call it free fantasia in this instance would be mockery—reminds me of Goethe's "Zauberlehrling," who said to himself in the absence of his master, "I noted his words, works, and procedure, and, with strength of mind, I also shall do wonders." How the apprentice conjured up the spirits, and made them do his bidding; how, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... are not destroyed quickly they will live to laugh at our laws and our scheme of justice. We must strike terror into the heart of every foreign-born criminal; we must clean the city with fire, unless we wish to see our institutions become a mockery and our community overridden by a band of cutthroats. The killing of Dan Donnelly is more than a mere murder; it is ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... 'The Poetaster,' a play in which Dekker and Marston were mercilessly ridiculed. Dekker replied shortly in 'Satiromastix, or the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet,' a burlesque full of good-natured mockery of his antagonist. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... "To say nothing false, to omit nothing true." Our colleague contented himself in society with the first half of the precept. Never did mockery, bitterness, or severity issue from his lips. His manners were a medium between those of Lacaille and the manners of another academician who had succeeded in not making a single enemy, by adopting the two axioms: ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... thought now and then of having him "seen to," and made to keep regular hours and be respectable; but, somehow, I seem to have grown to love him as he is with his daring mockery ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... impenetrable mask! How she hated him! The effrontery of it all! And she could do nothing, say nothing: dared not tell them then and there what he truly was, a despicable scoundrel! The son of her father's dearest friend; what mockery! A friend of the ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... of them containing furniture and mantel-pieces brought from New York, arose in two or three years. The name of New Jerusalem had been given to the same locality some years before, but it seemed a mockery to the Loyalists when they found that the place they had chosen for their new home was quite unsuited for settlement. A beautiful harbour lay in front, and a rocky country unfit for farmers in the rear of their ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... mass floated immediately before his eyes, and he felt the cold clammy nose of the dog, scenting about his face. The admirable instinct, or we might better say, the excellent training of Nettuno, told him that his services were not needed here, and, barking with wild delight, as if in mockery of the infernal din of the tempest, he sheered aside, and swam swiftly on. A thought flashed like lightning on the brain of Sigismund. His best hope was in the inexplicable faculties of this animal. Throwing forward an arm, he seized ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... out rapidly for Attwater's house. As he went, he considered with himself eagerly, his thoughts racing. The man had understood, he had mocked them from the beginning; he would teach him to make a mockery of John Davis! Herrick thought him a god; give him a second to aim in, and the god was overthrown. He chuckled as he felt the butt of his revolver. It should be done now, as he went in. From behind? It was difficult to get there. From across the table? No, the captain preferred ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appearance of stripes on the shoulder and legs of several species of the horse genus and in their hybrids!"—(p. 473.) He tells us that to suppose that each species was created with a tendency "like this, is to make the works of God a mere mockery and deception"; and he satisfies himself that all difficulty is gone when he refers the stripes to his hypothetical thousands on thousands of years removed progenitor. But how is his difficulty really affected? for why is the striping of one species a less real difficulty ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... stood for everything that he despised, a way of life that had made a mockery of everything he had been taught to believe in. The menace that had eaten at the world's vitals like a cancer, the menace whose existence had been enough to drive some men to hysteria and others to the brink of suicide. His own ...
— Decision • Frank M. Robinson
... The mockery of a trial was over. The prisoner had been condemned. The penalty pronounced against him was death. Already the noose was dangling from a tree, and some soldiers were bringing from the school-house a table to serve as a scaffold. Silas Ropes, who had a feather stuck in ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... of the actress corespondent has not been given to the press. It was good of Mr. McAllister to attempt that separation of wheat from chaff which at one time rendered his verdicts of such dread power among social aspirants; it may be the irony of mockery that to-day his family are conspicuous upon only two points. One relative goes clamorously into the divorce court while another wins celebration by the showy style of ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... servile population more incendiary than the Bible, if they could only read it. Will not our Southern brethren take alarm? The Society is reduced to the dilemma of either denying that the African has a soul to be saved, or of consenting to the terrible mockery of assuring him that the way of life is to be found only by searching a book which he is ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... despair; then clouds of sadness close 380 In one dark settled gloom, and all the man Droops, in despondence lost. Aerial tints Please most the pensive poet: and the views He forms, though evanescent, and as vain As the air's mockery, seem to his eye Ev'n as substantial images, and shapes, Till in a hurrying rack they all dissolve. So in the cloudless sky, amusive shines The soft and mimic scenery; distant hills 390 That, in refracted light, hang beautiful ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... vote of two-thirds of both Houses; but it has a right to demand that the President shall exercise his constitutional power and arrest it if his judgment is against it. If he surrender this power, or fail to exercise it in a case where he can not approve, it would make his formal approval a mere mockery, and would be itself a violation of the Constitution, and the dissenting State would become bound by a law which had not been passed according to the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... lie in the melodious aves, and under the robes of Rome? The sordid friars, with their shaven pates, grin at him; some Rabelais head of a priest in the confessional-stall leers at him with mockery: and yet the golden letters of the great dome gleam again with the blazing legend, AEdificabo meam Ecclesiam!—and the figure of the Magdalen yonder has just now murmured, in tones that must surely have reached ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... In spite of their mockery of him, Gilian always loved the children of the town. At first when they used to see him come through the arches walking hurriedly, feeling his feet in unaccustomed shoes awkward and unmanageable, and the polish of his face a thing unbearable, they ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Buckingham, without any question, wove the net in which this lion fell; he seduced the very officers of the court; he invited Richmond over, assuring him of a popular uprising, which was proved to be a mere mockery by the miserable handful that rallied around him, until Richard fell at Bosworth. And after Buckingham's death, Richmond merely followed his plans, used the tools he had prepared, headed the conspiracy which this unmitigated ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the window, in her hand the book he had laid down. A hundred thoughts were busy in her brain—of her father; of the woman who had just left; of her lover over the hills. The woman's voice came to her again—a far-off mockery. She opened the book mechanically and turned over the pages. Presently her eyes were riveted to a page. On it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it is quite impossible to sort us all out at a time like this," remarked a plaintive Caledonian in an upper cot; "but I fail to see why the R.A.M.C. authorities should go through the mockery of asking every man in the train where he wants to be taken, when the train can obviously only go to one place—or perhaps two. I was asked. I said 'Edinburgh'; and the medical wallah said, 'Righto! ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... maiden in her chair of gold. When the ambassadors saw the fair Princess Helena they fell on their knees before her and said: "Empress of Rome, all hail!" But Helena half rose from her seat in anger as she said: "What does this mockery mean? You seem to be men of gentle breeding, and you wear the badge of messengers: whence comes it, then, that ye mock me thus?" But the ambassadors calmed her anger, saying: "Be not wroth, lady: this is no mockery, for the Emperor of Rome, the great lord Maxen Wledig, has ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... animalised victims. Some of these no doubt they could press into their service against me if need arose. I knew both Moreau and Montgomery carried revolvers; and, save for a feeble bar of deal spiked with a small nail, the merest mockery of a mace, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... he was drawn bolt upright as if by an inner shout, was an assurance that could be depended on, that wouldn't break and break and leave him nothing but a feeling of inscrutable mockery. He wanted to understand himself, and, in that, Fanny and the children ... and Savina. Obviously they were all bound together in one destiny, by a single cause. Why had he stopped loving Fanny and had no regret—but a ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... gone into Regnault's cry—into Regnault's protest. For his own enchanted island had seemed to him often in the days of his wooing to be but floating on the surface of a ghastly sea, whence emerged all conceivable shapes of ruin, mockery, terror, and disease. It was because of the tremulous adoration which filled him from the beginning that the vice of Paris had struck him in this tragical way. At another time it might have been indifferent to him, might even ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the arrival of the distinguished visitor, and having assembled them, they proceeded together toward the coast to meet and receive the unhappy fugitive with the honors becoming her rank, though such honors must have seemed little else than a mockery in ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... much pride, was covered with vials, to make room for which some pretty trifles had been hastily thrust aside. I remembered what I had once said to Mrs. Cabot about having tasteful things about me, with a sort of shudder. What a mockery they are in the awful presence ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... the saddle, his strong, well-knit body swaying gracefully, his eyes, shaded by the brim of his hat, narrowed with slight mockery and interest as he gazed steadily at the town that ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... bitterly that they had been cheated of the right to govern themselves. That no power whatsoever should tax them without their own consent was the basic principle of English liberty. Yet it was but a mockery to contend that men who had sold themselves to the governor and whom they were given no opportunity to oust from office, were their true representatives in ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... comes the tragic part of a most pathetic story enacted out at a time when the name civilization, applied to the French and English, is a mockery. "In December she was carried to Rouen, the headquarters of the English, heavily fettered, and flung into a gloomy prison, and at length, arraigned before the spiritual tribunal of the Bishop of Beauvais, a wretched ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... away quick. Meester Dailey, he old man, he run all same young one. His old woman she run all same man. Get horse. Run away quick. Hu-hu!" and Sarah's rich mockery sounded again. No tragedy had happened this time, and the squaw narrated her story greatly to the relish of Mr. Long. This veteran of trails and mines had seen too much of life's bleakness not to cherish whatever of mirth his ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... to jest upon his own deformity, was but ill inclined to tolerate those who even hinted at his defects. As the trooper persevered, his victim grew pale and trembled with suppressed rage. The man perceived the effect his cruel mockery produced, and continued to revile and take to pieces the mis-shapen portions of his body with most merciless anatomy. Robin offered, in return, neither observation nor reproach;—at first trembling and ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... published in Monitor of Freemasonry (Chicago, 1860), where it is added that "the brethren assembled round the tomb of Hiram, is a representation of the disciples lamenting the death of Christ on the Cross." Weishaupt, founder of the eighteenth-century Illuminati, also showed—although in a spirit of mockery—how easily the legend of Hiram could be interpreted in this manner, and suggested that at the periods when the Christians were persecuted they enveloped their doctrines in secrecy and symbolism. "That was necessary in times and places where the Christians lived amongst the heathens, for example ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... those who know me know I can sometimes put on, I shouted out, "Hark ye men and women—I am this lady's truest knight—her husband I hope one day to be. I am commander, too, in this fort—the enemy is without it; another word of mockery—another glance of scorn—and, by heaven, I will hurl every man and woman from the battlements, a prey to the ruffianly Holkar!" This quieted them. I am a man of my word, and none of them stirred or looked disrespectfully from ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her packing to do and left shortly afterward. The Canon, who seemed to be really depressed, sat on with me and made plans for Lalage's immediate future. From time to time, after I exposed the hollow mockery of each plan, he complained of the tyranny ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... for twenty years you have pretty well run the whole gamut of mockery, humiliation and failure. You understand the stammerer's feelings, his ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... until 200,000 prisoners were crowded within these republican Bastiles. At Paris the dungeons were emptied of their victims and room made for fresh ones, by the swift processes of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which in mockery of justice caused the prisoners to be brought before its bar in companies of ten or fifty. Rank or talent was an inexpiable crime. "Were you not a noble?" asks the president of the court of one of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... don't you see that, even if that cursed box remains unopened, and nothing ever comes of its theft, the seeds of distrust are sown thick in my breast, and I must always ask: 'Was there a moment when my young bride shrank from me enough to dream of death?' That is why I cannot go through the mockery of this rehearsal." ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... won her heart, she is already bound. It is mockery to talk as the world talks, of the sense of honour that leaves a woman 'free.' She is not free. She is as much bound as if she were married to him. Tell him so! Bid him take her to his heart, that, come what will, she may ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... the whole, was worthwhile. Life was not the mockery she had thought it three days ago. There was room for her, after all, in this crowded selfish world of pleasure whence, so short a time since, her poverty had seemed to exclude her. These people whom she had ridiculed and yet envied were glad to make a place for her in the charmed ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... was done sullenly, with foreboding of the coming exposure. The whole account of the wild invocations of the priests may suggest some of the characteristics of idolatry, and touch our hearts with pity, as well as with the sense of its absurdity, which animated Elijah's mockery. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and the way in which she said 'we' in speaking of herself and of him, revolted me. I saluted him silently. He shook hands with me directly, with a smile that seemed to me full of mockery. He explained to me that he had brought some scores, in order to prepare for the Sunday concert, and that they were not in accord as to the piece to choose,—whether difficult, classic things, notably a sonata by Beethoven, or ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... we gaze in vain! 1770 In life itself she was so still and fair, That Death with gentler aspect withered there; And the cold flowers[235] her colder hand contained, In that last grasp as tenderly were strained As if she scarcely felt, but feigned a sleep— And made it almost mockery yet to weep: The long dark lashes fringed her lids of snow, And veiled—Thought shrinks from all that lurked below—Oh! o'er the eye Death most exerts his might,[236] And hurls the Spirit from her throne of light; 1780 Sinks those blue orbs in that long last eclipse, But spares, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... voice from the silent grave!" she said, "but it could be no more than mockery. No, no, 'tis a just punishment for letting the image of the creature fill the place that should be occupied only with the Creator. Ah! Miss Howard, Miss Plowden, ye are both young—in the pride of your beauty and loveliness—but little do ye know, and ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was right about appearances. To have your shirts laundered regularly makes a man a different being. People that only noticed me before with a sort of surreptitious mockery now began to treat me with surprised respect. Professors invited me even more—the more conservative of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... carcass of some animal. It was horrible, horrible! His wife might be dying, his baby might be starving, his whole family might be perishing in the cold—and all the while they were ringing their Christmas chimes! And the bitter mockery of it—all this was punishment for him! They put him in a place where the snow could not beat in, where the cold could not eat through his bones; they brought him food and drink—why, in the name of heaven, if they must punish him, did they not put his family in jail ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... express by the sounds, as nearly as possible, the mockery and bursts of laughter from the ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... your master, the shallow Duke of Alencon," responded Perrotte coldly. "False, hollow ambition all! And ye call that the cause of religion—Mockery! Yes, I know you well, Philip de la Mole, who in the hour of bloodshed," she continued, growing more and more excited, "could approve the hellish deed, and who now can babble of sacrifice and self-offering in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... taking no notice of the mockery. But when, the next day, it was known that Dieulecresse had committed suicide in the night, the priests did not spare the publication of the fact, with the comment that Saint Frideswide had taken vengeance on her enemy, and that her honour was ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... etc., their daily lives could not be affected. Left to themselves, and assisted by their own methods, they knew that blows struck across the immense roadless spaces were so diminished in strength, by the time they reached the spot aimed at, that they became a mere mockery of force; and, just because they were so valueless, paved the way to effective compromises. Being adepts in the art which modern surgeons have adopted, of leaving wounds as far as possible to heal themselves, they ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... complex; its analysis, I fear, may baffle us. It must have seemed to you—as it certainly seemed to Mistress Winthrop—that he made a mock of her; that in truth he was the impudent, fleering coxcomb she pronounced him, and nothing more. Not so. Mock he most certainly did; but his mockery was all aimed to strike himself on the recoil—himself and the sentiments which had sprung to being in his soul, and to which—nameless as he was, pledged as he was to a task that would most likely involve his ruin—he ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... consequence. The practice of meeting for worship and to celebrate "Sankirtans" was now instituted; the meetings took place in the house of a disciple Sribas, and were quite private. The new religionists met with some opposition, and a good deal of mockery. One night on leaving their rendezvous, they found on the door-step red flowers and goats' blood, emblems of the worship of Durga, and abominations in the eyes of a Vaish.nava. These were put there by a Brahman named Gopal. Chaitanya cursed ...
— Chaitanya and the Vaishnava Poets of Bengal • John Beames
... you a moment?" said Turnbull, stepping forward with a respectful resolution. But the shoulders of the Master only seemed to take on a new and unexpected angle of mockery as he ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... of gross immorality that prevailed at this time ought not to be described, if language had the power. The profligacy of Rome in its worst days was comparatively thrown into the shade. Religion and marriage became a mockery, and every form of impure and vindictive passion walked abroad, with the consciousness that public opinion did not require them to assume even a slight disguise. The fish-women of Paris will long retain an unenviable celebrity for the ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Britain amply shows, has always more deeply interested British subjects than any other. Sir, on the unspeakably important subjects of religion and education our constitutional right of legislation has, by the arbitrary exercise and influence of Executive power, been made a mockery, and our constitutional liberties a deception; and it is to the influence over the public mind of the high religious feelings and principles of those classes of the population who have been so shamefully calumniated by the Episcopal clergy and their party scribes, that the inhabitants of Upper Canada ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... see that I am laughing myself to death?" Field's "I am smiling!" was almost demoniacal in its mixture of wrath, vindictiveness, and impatience. There was the snarl of a big animal about the grin with which he exposed his teeth in the mockery of mirth. His whole countenance glowered at the invisible artist in lines of suppressed rage, that seemed to bid him cut short the exposure or ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... nuptial honors, he should die. But as Ramabai lifted the veil of this last woman the colonel nodded sharply; and Kathlyn, for a brief space, gazed into her father's eyes. The same thought occurred to both; what a horrible mockery it all was, and where ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... Archie; but not even the most acute political heads are guided through the steps of life with unerring directness. That would require a gift of prophecy which has been denied to man. For instance, who could have imagined that, not a month after he had received the letter, and turned it into mockery, and put off answering it, and in the end lost it, misfortunes of a gloomy cast should begin to thicken over Frank's career? His case may be briefly stated. His father, a small Morayshire laird with a large family, became recalcitrant and cut off ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the older woman was almost ashamed of her victory. She knew that she could afford to be kind. She felt that she would like to tell her that under any other circumstances she knew none whom she would rather trust as Arthur's wife; but to say so would have been a bitter mockery. She waited in silence while Gabrielle mastered her own feelings and raised, at last, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... and purposeful path had been blazed through the tangled complexities of life for him, yet he could make no move to take advantage of it. It meant that the door of his delivery had been swung wide, with its mockery of open and honest sunlight, and yet his feet were to remain fettered in that underworld gloom he had grown to hate. He must still stay an unwilling prisoner in this garden of studied indolence, this playground of invalids and gamblers; he ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... hypocrisy, as it relates to their pretensions to liberty, and with ingratitude, as it relates to that God who gave them to be free. This, indeed, makes all the institutions of America, civil and religious, little better than a solemn mockery, a tragical jest for the passers-by of other nations, who, seeing two millions and a half of slaves held in fetters by vaunting freemen and ostentatious patriots, wag the head at the disgusting sight, and cry out deridingly to degraded America, 'The worm is spread under thee, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... note was gone, and, though the tune was the same, the voices were harsh, and there was a dreadful mockery of woe in the stave that ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... imaginative boy, by whose side she had gazed at night on the moonlit waters and rosy skies of the soft Parthenope! How does time, after long absence, bring to us such contrasts between the one we remember and the one we see! And what a melancholy mockery does it seem of our own vain hearts, dreaming of impressions never to be changed, and affections that never ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a voice which contained just as much sadness as mockery, with a quiet, a slightly sad, a slightly mocking voice: "Soon, Govinda, your friend will leave the path of the Samanas, he has walked along your side for so long. I'm suffering of thirst, oh Govinda, and on this long path of a Samana, my thirst has ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... effect of his measures. He kept up no longer the solemn mockery of a court, in which a degraded long must always have been the lowest object. He retired to the Isle of Wight: his only companions were sailors and fishermen, among whom he became extremely popular. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... them for their supreme indifference—for they were human shapes, the human form divine was manifest in each fairest limb and lineament. The perfect moulding brought with it the idea of colour and motion; often, half in bitter mockery, half in self-delusion, I clasped their icy proportions, and, coming between Cupid and his Psyche's lips, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... young woman whom I did not know playing and smiling with a new-born child, unconscious that she played upon a grave, that her smiles were turned to tears in the eyes of a passer-by, and that so much life seemed as a mockery of death.... Since then, at night, I have returned; and every year I still return, approach that wall with faltering steps, and touch that door; and then I sit on the stone bench, and watch the lights, and listen to the voices from above. I sometimes fancy that I see the light reflected ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... only brutes are treated now. To us it is incomprehensible how the whole band should have been called together merely to gloat over the sufferings of a fellow-creature and to turn His pain and shame into brutal mockery. This, however, was their purpose; and they enjoyed it as schoolboys enjoy the terror of a tortured animal. It must be remembered that these were men who on the field of battle were inured to bloodshed ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... When she was alone with me, and had no inquisitive eyes to dread, the poor girl showed a depth of feeling, which I was unable to reconcile with the motives that could alone have induced her (as I then supposed) to consent to the mockery of our marriage. On occasions when I was so far able to resist the languor that oppressed me as to observe what was passing at my bedside—I saw Susan look at me as if there were thoughts in her pressing for utterance which she hesitated to express. Once, she herself ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... perhaps You to yourself incomprehensiblest, But rest in the assurance of your own Sane waking senses, by these witnesses Attested, till the story of it all, Of which I bring a chapter, be reveal'd, Assured of all you see and hear as neither Madness nor mockery— ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... drape she had used before swayed down into sight, I grasped it to steady it. Her bare legs followed, and now her voice came to me with a sweet mockery: ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... know, how they managed to administer the Sacrament to a mixed congregation? He replied, Oh! very easily; that the white portion of the assembly received it first, and the blacks afterwards. 'A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.' Oh, what a shocking mockery! However, they show their faith at all events, in the declaration that God is no respecter of persons, since they do not pretend to exclude from His table those whom they most certainly would not admit ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... whole kingdom, for ages; because the evasion of the old statute of Westminster, which authorized perpetuities, had more sense and utility than the law which was evaded. But an attempt to turn the right of election into such a farce and mockery as a fictitious fine and recovery, will, I hope, have another fate; because the laws which give it are infinitely dear to us, and the evasion ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... mother's love is sacred. To many, all that is implied in the word religion. To a few, sexual passion and the great manifestations of human genius in poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Exactly in proportion as these things are profaned by jest and mockery, is the light of the soul quenched and man degraded to the level of the beast. Considering how large a part the sex-passion plays in the lives of most men and women; considering how it permeates the literature and art of the World and is—as the basis of the home—the most ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... would lay down her life, and to soothe whose delirium she had consented to this abhorrent sacrifice of herself. The marriage thus planned was to take place thus; it was to be a hideous, a ghastly mockery—a frightful violence to the solemnity of sorrow. She was not to be married—she was to be sold. The circumstances of that old betrothal had never been explained to her; but she knew that money was in some way connected ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... already in progress and should have at least tempered his optimism, he himself assured me that the results as a whole would yet afford a most splendid demonstration of the stern temper of the people that would never trust and would never accept the mockery of reforms proceeding from a "Satanic" Government. He was deaf to my suggestion that, even if the temper of the Indian people was such as he believed it to be, it would have been demonstrated in a manner far more intelligible to the political mind of the West had his followers taken ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... even he (hart-hearted as he usually was) started, and shuddered with horror and compassion, whilst the barbarous priests and the populace, far from being moved to pity, continued their insults and mockery. When Jesus had ascended the stairs, Pilate came forward, the trumpet was sounded to announce that the governor was about to speak, and he addressed the Chief Priests and the bystanders in the following words: 'Behold, I bring him forth to you, that ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... both stared at the coach, the empty plain, and at each other! After their tedious ascent, their long detour, their protracted expectancy and their eager curiosity, there was such a suggestion of hideous mockery in this vacant, useless vehicle—apparently left to them in what seemed their utter abandonment—that it instinctively affected them alike. And as I am writing of human nature I am compelled to say that they both burst into a fit of laughter that ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... are quite right and that this sentiment is praiseworthy; but that as he and Walter were unable to honor these heroic souls in their own language, to attend such a service would be a mockery. ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... and Moslem shops, there was a quaint place kept by an old Moor, who had some of the rarest and most beautiful treasures of Algerian workmanship in his long, dark, silent chambers. With this old man Cecil had something of a friendship; he had protected him one day from the mockery and outrage of some drunken Indigenes, and the Moor, warmly grateful, was ever ready to give him a cup of coffee in the stillness of his dwelling. Its resort was sometimes welcome to him as the one spot, quiet and noiseless, to which he could ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... mass of drift-wood, caught by a ledge of rock, jutting out into the river. I had apparently been hurled there, by the force of the current, stunned and bruised; the sunshine had aroused me, bringing me back to that life which was a burden and a mockery. ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... mockery. "I don't let live creatures suffer when I can help it. Are you going to give me ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... boughs with green; Their leaves the dews of evening quaff,— And when the wind blows loud and keen, I've seen the jolly timbers laugh, And shake their sides with merry glee— Wagging their heads in mockery. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... Lawson wending his way to "Sunnybank." What a mockery the name seemed to convey. The golden sunshine was afraid to enter, save by stealthy glimpses through the ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done. . . . To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail, In monumental mockery." ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... dare turn back right then, and pretended not to hear her. Later on I'd managed to get a fresh grip on myself, and even smiled a little, though I tell you that was the most ghastly smile I ever knew, for it was a hollow mockery, Jack." ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... is a burlesque poem,— a long lampoon, a laboured caricature,— in mockery of the weaker side of the great Puritan party. It is an imaginary account of the adventures of a Puritan knight and his squire in the Civil Wars. It is choke-full of all kinds of learning, of the ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... turned towards the shore, and oh! bitter disappointment, the object which my eager fancy had transformed into an angel of relief stalked from the water, an enormous pelican, flapped its dragon-wings, as if in mockery of my sorrow, and flew to a solitary point farther up the lake. This little incident quite unmanned me. The transition from joy to grief brought with it a terrible consciousness of the horrors of my ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... the other, his deadly fury breaking in a moment through the thin mockery of courtesy; "come up then, and be shot like ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... leaders. A large and respectable minority of the House of Lords pronounced the prisoner not guilty. The multitude, which a few months before had received the dying declarations of Oates's victims with mockery and execrations, now loudly expressed a belief that Stafford was a murdered man. When he with his last breath protested his innocence, the cry was, "God bless you, my Lord! We believe you, my Lord." A judicious observer might easily have predicted that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... but instead of "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York" being given, Cooke, in a respectful but decided tone, requested that "God save the King" might be played by the orchestra prior to the commencement of the play. The proposal at first but excited mockery and laughter, which, however, gave way to far different feelings, on Cooke firmly and composedly declaring, that, until his request was complied with, he was determined not to proceed; and, should it be absolutely refused, he was resolved to retire. The fury of the Bostonians was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... Laughter and oaths resounded. Mr. Tubbs, with a somewhat anxious air, endeavored to keep himself well to the fore, claiming a share in the triumph with the rest. There was only the thinnest veil of concealment over the pirates' mockery. "Old Washtubs" was ironically encouraged in his role of boon companion. His air of swaggering recklessness, of elderly dare-deviltry, provoked uproarious amusement. When they sat down to supper Mr. Tubbs was installed at the head of the table. They hailed him as the discoverer who had ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... prosperous sailing of the few first days, were bold, independent, and defiant of danger, no sooner did they see their comrades thrown overboard, after a few hours' sickness, than their hearts failed within them, their tone of defiance was turned into despair, their mockery of religion ceased, and that priest of God, whom they ridiculed, insulted, and despised for the first few days, was now respected, confided in, and regarded by them with ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... assume the proportions of a new evangel, an hysterical hallucination that bade defiance to law, doctors, even the decencies of life. Terrible stories reached the Vatican, and when it was related that one of his symphonic pieces delineated Zarathustra's Cave with its sinister mockery of prelate and king, the hated Quirinal was approached for assistance, and Illowski ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker |
