"Sardonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lies at the source of Moliere, carried this Gallic vein to an extreme in shameless imitations of The School for Women and The Misanthrope (The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer); delightful Congreve, a far more amusing companion—witty, spiritual, sardonic, writing excellently, knowing how to create a type and charming his contemporaries whilst not failing to write for posterity in his Old Bachelor, Love for Love, and ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... be under no apprehensions, that I would certainly see the fight through. A man who has much to do with that kind of politics which concerns both New York politicians and New York business men and lawyers is not easily surprised, and therefore I felt no other emotion than a rather sardonic amusement when thirty-six hours later I read in the morning paper an open letter from the officials of the very company who had been communicating with me in which they enthusiastically advocated the renomination ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... carrying his nose with that aforesaid appearance of 'sniff,' as though despising an egg which he knew he could not digest. Behind him his cousin, the tall George, son of the fifth Forsyte, Roger, had a Quilpish look on his fleshy face, pondering one of his sardonic jests. Something inherent to the occasion had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... silence behind it. The truth that all knew when spoken by her was a kind of shock. The ruffians gaped in breathless attention. Kells looked on with a sardonic grin, but he had grown pale. And upon the face of ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... ARTAXOMINOUS Was far less terrible than—well, thrasonic. To tear a thing to tatters, shout and "cuss," In an assembly callous and sardonic, Savours a bit too much of sheer burlesque, Scarce to the level of fine acting rises. The unexpected's piquant, picturesque, But a sound drama is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... Dead Man, with a sardonic grin—'this beautiful lady, who formerly showered her favors upon you, has transferred her kindness to me; I have just tasted the joys of heaven in her arms. Is she not ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... best one has been able to accomplish, there is a certain satisfaction in going after a not-so-slowly seventy-one. Every ten scores or so average up, and see what you have. Thus one can chart a sort of glacial movement upwards otherwise imperceptible to one's sardonic estimate of himself as the World's ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... declining into a spinsterhood which increased in refinement as it did in service. Sentimental persons held that she came by that manner from association with Art in her brother's studio. Others, of a more sardonic turn, said that her manner was that of one who continually smelled a bad smell, and that if she got it by looking at her brother's ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... Funeral of John Bixby," by Stephen Vincent Benet, and "The Duke's Opera," by "Jacques Belden" (the first an allegorical fantasy and the second a poetic-romance) are at the head of this division. With these should be included Don Marquis's "Death and Old Man Murtrie," for its sardonic allegory, and "The Designs of Miramon," by James Branch Cabell, for its social satire. Individual members of the Committee would have liked to include these—different members preferring different ones of the four—but the Committee as a whole saw the allegory or satire or poetry predominant ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... period the sardonic laugh was heard in the land, and the chuckling appreciation of the joke by the Red Butte rank and file, and by the Angelic soldiers of fortune who, though not upon the company's pay-rolls, still throve indirectly upon the company's bounty, lacked nothing of completeness. The Red Desert ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... Dean Swift looked sardonic on Addison's face, And Johnson tipped Boswell a wink, Walter Scott and Jane Austen hobnobbed o'er a glass, And ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... sardonic cachinnation] Ha! My beard was three and a half feet long when I was born; and a flash of lightning burnt it off and killed the ancient who was delivering me. Without a hair on my chin I became the ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... pretty much the same to me, if you could,' replies the sardonic Pipchin. 'At any rate I'm going. I can't stop here. I should be dead in a week. I had to cook my own pork chop yesterday, and I'm not used to it. My constitution will be giving way next. Besides, I had a very fair connexion at Brighton when ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... him with a sardonic smile. "I forgot to mention: the doors will be locked and barred, and of course there's ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... calm, ironical look, as though, having found life out, he considered it a phenomenon worthy only of scorn. He was seen everywhere, fastidiously attired, self-possessed, taciturn, listening to the chatter of his friends with sardonic attention, now and then throwing in a blighting comment. It was curious that these infrequent remarks of his, even though they had not remotely referred to her, always ended by bringing the conversation round to Lilla. Thereupon he fell silent, smoked one cigarette after another, and ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... man was on the train with his thin, sardonic friend, and with the old woman Lady Sellingworth had seen with him ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... that kind of antagonism. In keeping up her preconcerted attitude towards the "Northern hireling," she had been met with official brusqueness, contemptuous silence, or aggrieved indignation,—but nothing so exasperating as this. She even fancied that this elegant but sardonic-looking soldier was mocking her. She bit her red lip, but, with a scornful gesture of ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... jewel in his pocket, and when I returned the lens to him he acknowledged it with a grave inclination of the head. As I looked into his sunken eyes, in which I thought lay a sort of sardonic merriment, the fantastic idea flashed through my mind that I had fallen into the clutches of an expert hypnotist who was amusing himself at my expense, that the miniature rose was a mere hallucination produced by the same means as the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... repeated and emphasised; he had his own vanity and Huish's upon the grill, and roasted them; and as he spoke, he inflicted and endured agonies of humiliation. It was a plain man's masterpiece of the sardonic. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... nodded a brief return to Corrie's laughing salute, and directed his sardonic black eyes to Gerard's right arm, which the rolled-back sleeve left bare ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... nearly the truth. I never saw Wirz when he was not angry; if not violently abusive, he was cynical and sardonic. Never, in my little experience with him did I detect a glint of kindly, generous humanity; if he ever was moved by any sight of suffering its exhibition in his face escaped my eye. If he ever had even a wish to mitigate the pain or hardship ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... stood looking down at her with sardonic contempt, a cowed, self-conscious look on his thick, pale face. The blood began to ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Willet did not reveal his meaning. It was impossible to tell what course he meant to take, and the two lads were willing to let the event disclose itself. The same sardonic humor that had taken possession of Robert seemed to lay hold ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... asthma; and quinia, that shakes its victims like the cold hand of the miasma of the Pontine marshes. The essence of poppies, ten times sublimated, a few grains of which bring on the stupor of apoplexy; and the sardonic plant, that kills its victim with the frightful laughter of madness on ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... insisted, but to endeavor to discover the cause. It was up to Grant then to escape, if he could, and to report to Miro on Ganymede immediately with his findings. Miro was leaving by his private Service flier at once for Ganymede, to await him. Grant thought he saw a faint sardonic gleam in the Inspector's eyes at that, but paid no particular heed to it at ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... me that he could never have been anywhere but in the clouds. I explained that when the weather is foggy I walk in clouds, and that when the cloud is condensed it rains. At all such reasoning, being above his comprehension, he only laughed with a sardonic smile. Still less was he satisfied with my explanation how watery bubbles may be lifted into the air. He insisted that the clouds were solid bodies, reinforced his assertion with a text of Scripture, silenced me by authority, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... the Badger. Therewith he would be able, in his own favourite fashion, to "point a moral" (against the Demogorgon Democracy), and "adorn a tale" (of laboured waggery). He might find the subject as suggestive of sardonic chaff as ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... of one of the most sardonic of Notre Dame's gargoyles seemed to preside over everything—a terrible figure in such ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... armchair, looking up at him with a horrible sardonic grin, was his uncle James Cunningham. His wrists were tied with ropes to the arms of the chair. A towel, passed round his throat, fastened the body to the back of the chair and propped up the head. A bloody clot of hair hung tangled just above the temple. ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... there would be another mouth less for her to feed, but she remarked, with the same sardonic calmness, that Cyril's clothes would be provided for him, which would be one good thing. Cyril himself was only too glad to get away. He would have something to do, however unpalatable in itself, instead of digging ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... that it was almost impossible to operate on those low wave-lengths with the apparatus in existence at that time—hence his sardonic proposal. The amateurs, however, refused to "die out." Faced with the inexorable regulation, they set to work to devise apparatus which would operate successfully. Among them was E. H. Armstrong, a youth who at that time ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... a sardonic gleam in his eye. "Mr. Chairman, I move that Colonel Peavy and Amos Ridings escort the nominee to ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... the paving-stones and stopped at my hotel. The driver lifted his hat obsequiously. I, with sardonic smile, entered the hotel, where I was not unknown. No doubt was made as to the character of ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... professors, he avers, have an antipathy for Samuel Butler; the chief interest of Butler, he further states, was in theology. Now I am a college professor without antipathy to Samuel Butler, with, on the contrary, the warmest admiration for his sardonic genius. And furthermore Butler's antipathy for college professors, which is supposed to have drawn their fire in return, is based upon a ruling passion far deeper than his accidental interest in theology, a passion that gives the tone and also the key to the best of his writings ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... sardonic eye For all the mockeries of life, Beware, in this dark masque of things that seem, Lest even that tragic irony, Which you discern in this our mortal strife, Trick you and trap you, also, with ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... "Sardonic, as usual," retorted Fred, laughing; and then he went to find Miss Merrivale, convinced that under the circumstances the sooner he ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... BROTHERS, A SARDONIC COMEDY: Two "poor whites" quarrel violently over a worthless inheritance, and then combine in arson to prevent their mother from getting it: a disquieting and searching study of depths of shiftlessness ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... sardonic grin crept over his features. So far, so good. Now for the rest of those bankers and the mayor. Gray was working rapidly, but he knew no other way of working, and speed was essential. It seemed to him not unlikely ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... remember. The stress of my uprooting affected me far more than I knew at the time. Heron regarded my going with grave disapproval as a crazy step. He regretted it, too; and such feelings always tended to exaggerate his tendency to taciturnity, or to a harsh, sardonic vein in speech. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... more I hope to sit And smile at what our Stage retails for wit. Since few, I know, enjoy a laugh so well Sardonic slave to "Vive la Bagatelle" So that in your's like Pagan Plato's bed They'll find some book of ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... of rangers lands from Wolfe's ships and finds the Island of Orleans deserted. On the church door the cure has pinned a note, asking the English not to molest his church; and expressing sardonic regret that the invaders have not come soon enough to enjoy the fresh vegetables ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... on being persuaded." Myra's tone was intended to be sardonic. "So far it seems to me you have called to pay yourself compliments instead of to offer apologies. Apparently you explained to Mr. Standish that your love-making was intended as a compliment. Let me tell you, ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... of his way, treading heavily on our toes and wheezing, "Sorry, sorry," as he struggles to his seat, a buzz begins behind the curtain. What the players are saying is not distinguishable, but a merry girlish laugh rings out now and then, followed by the short sardonic chuckle of an obvious man of the world. Then the curtain rises, and it is apparent that we are assisting at an At Home of considerable splendour. Most of the characters seem to be on the stage, and for once we do not ask how they got there. We presume they have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... shone over Dr Humphreys' door at night was the one and only picturesque feature of Paradise Street—surely so named by an individual of singularly caustic and sardonic humour, for anything less suggestive of the delights of Paradise than the squalid and malodorous street so named it would indeed be difficult to conceive—and in the course of the four years during which it had been in position that lamp had become a familiar object to every ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... personal affair? He set his teeth and redoubled his efforts, intent on proving his own power to himself. Even as Napoleon believed in his star, Gard trusted in his luck, and it was with a smothered laugh of sardonic satisfaction that news of the first move in his ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... moment of turning he could almost have sworn that he caught sight of Ling's lips parted in a sardonic smile. Frobisher wheeled again immediately, but when he once more looked at the man, the Korean's face was as indifferently emotionless as though carved from stone, and Murray was compelled to acknowledge that the expression ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... day's work done, the Chesterton manuscripts delivered, the proofs read, the bargains driven, the giant figure returned to the tunnel, and once again was back in Adelphi, the Shaw he was when he left it—back to the Jaegers, the beard, the Socialism, the statistics, and the sardonic letters to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... through an inner wall and opened up the cellars by destroying 150 square feet of ground-floor: ten people were in the cellars, and none was hurt. Uninjured signs of cafes and shops, such as "The Good Hope," "The Success of the Day," meet your gaze with sardonic calm. ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... his great head thrust forward as if concentrating all his remaining senses in an attempt to judge the captain's talk. The doctor sat with one leg crossed, smoking a cigarette, his expression sardonic, sphinxlike. To Rainey, a little bewildered at being dragged into the affair, and annoyed at it, Captain Simms' words rang true enough. He did not know what to say, whether to speak at ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... mirrors so that his own image might be available to all of the public and Earth officials who cared to look upon it. Within the circle of mirrors he stood drawn to his full height; his eyes flashing, heavy brows lowered, and a sardonic smile—almost a leer—pulling at his thin lips. The embodiment of defiance. Yet to those who knew him well—as I was beginning to know him—there was in his eyes a gleam of irony, as though even in this situation he saw humor. A game, with worlds ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... His sardonic words were interrupted. And I realized that all this parley was a ruse of Miko's to take me alive. He had made a gesture. Hahn, watching from the turret window, doubtless flashed a signal down to the hull-corridors. The magnetizer ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... both of them that the conversation could not proceed on the strenuous level on which it had been during the walk into Tercanbury, and they fell upon a gay discussion of their common acquaintance. Alec was a man of strong passions, hating fools fiercely, and he had a sardonic manner of gibing at persons he despised, which caused ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... room he thought it over. If they could organize and stand together, they wouldn't be what they were. It was because they were morally and physically disintegrated that they were derelicts. This waste was part of the price we must pay for commercial supremacy, for money power, for—oh, sardonic jest!—for a democracy. ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... line a dark, grim, sardonic appreciation of the advantages which common minds have over those that, like the poet's own, have to endure the splendid miseries of genius,—a dark moodiness, like that of a tame Byron remorsefully recalling a wild debauch upon green tea,—that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... line of his magnificent head. His choicest curses were for the cowards of his own party before whose blanched faces he shouted out the hidden things until they sank back in helpless silence and dismay. His speech was curt, his humour sardonic, his wit biting, cruel, ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... hand in both of hers and was trying to look in his eyes, which the young man kept as resolutely averted. Mliss had a faint idea of irony, indulging herself sometimes in a species of sardonic humor, which was equally visible in her actions and her speech. But the young man continued in this strain until they had reached Mrs. Morpher's, and he had deposited Mliss in her maternal charge. Waiving the invitation of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and rest, and shading his eyes with his ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... made a raid on the dutch ovens and pails. Having filled his plate, he squatted on his heels and fell to his belated meal. He was a tall, slab-sided individual, with a lean, leathery face, a sweeping white moustache, and a grave and sardonic eye. His leather chaps were plain and worn, and his hat had been fashioned by time and wear into much individuality. I was not surprised to hear ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... covered Jimmie Dale steadily, unswervingly; in the Wolf's face was malicious and sardonic mockery—but the Wolf's eyes were no longer on Jimmie Dale's face, they seemed curiously intent upon the floor at Jimmie Dale's feet. Mechanically Jimmie Dale followed their direction—and his eyes, too, held on the floor. For a moment neither spoke. The game ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... that when Voltaire said, 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin,' he was quoting, with sardonic irony, Saint Teresa! You cannot be pleased at Mrs. Parflete's decision. The theatre in England is a sport—not an art. In France it is an art, but," he added drily, "it embraces ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... him severely. "Paul Finglemore," he said, passing sentence in his sardonic way, "you have chosen to dedicate to the service of fraud abilities and attainments which, if turned from the outset into a legitimate channel, would no doubt have sufficed to secure you without excessive effort a subsistence one degree ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... vents a sardonic laugh, and throws himself on a sofa, where he by and by falls asleep. The door is softly opened. ROUSTAN ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... classing," said his father, with a mild but slightly sardonic smile, as who should say: "I'm ready to make all allowances for youth; but I must get you to understand, as gently as I can, that you can't keep on going to Bible ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... physical anguish, and laughter denoted a mixed pleasurable feeling either in mind or body. There is a remarkable instance of this transference from the senses to the emotional feelings in the case of what is called sardonic laughter, in which a similar contortion of countenance to that caused by the pungency of a Sardinian herb is considered to denote a certain moral acerbity. Here there is an analogy established between the senses and emotions in their outward manifestation, just as there is ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... first hopeful superstition, the ring did not seem to bring him nor the camp any luck. Daily the "clean up" brought the same scant rewards to their labors, and deepened the sardonic gravity of Blazing Star. But, if Cass found no material result from his treasure, it stimulated his lazy imagination, and, albeit a dangerous and seductive stimulant, at least lifted him out of the monotonous grooves of his half-careless, half-slovenly, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... at the pension, is a journalist. He has no race or polish, and the rest rather despise him for having none of their landed traditions. He is lean and brown, with a razor-like jaw and a twisted, sardonic expression to his lips. His face is cruel. At Warsaw, where he was working, he was thrown into prison time after time on account of the radical, revolutionary character of his articles. He is well known for the strong, intellectual quality of his work. The reactionaries fear him. The slipshod ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... have you of men, Yellow Brian," came the sardonic answer, "when your own lie hidden among ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... A sardonic grin gave a momentary lurid hue to Mr. Fox's sallow face. Knowing the game to be in his own hands, he could quietly bide his time; so, assuming a tone of much moderation and dignity, he replied, he had no wish to be hard, and could be reasonable ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... review the appliances, the fabric, the actions, yes, even the very thoughts, of the entire ship. From them he selected that on which he should comment or with which he should play, always with a sardonic, half-serious, quite wearied and indifferent manner. His inner knowledge, viewed by the light of this manner or mannerism, was sometimes uncanny, though perhaps the sources of his information were commonplace enough, after ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Paradise Lost, iii. 714-719.] does the word 'quintessence' contain; and 'arsenic' the same; no other namely than this that metals are of different sexes, some male ([Greek: arsenika]), and some female. Again, what curious legends belong to the 'sardonic' [Footnote: See an excellent history of this word, in Rost and Palm's Greek Lexicon, s. v. [Greek: sardonios].] or Sardinian, laugh; a laugh caused, as was supposed, by a plant growing in Sardinia, of which they who ate, died laughing; to the 'barnacle' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... go to the factory, where an explanation is made to the men. Mr. Brent receives a check for a month's wages in advance, and a vacation. Mr. Wilmarth looks on with a sardonic suavity, saying little, and betraying surprise rather than ill-humor, but he hates Floyd Grandon to the last thread. The man has come between him and all his plans. No mere money can ever make up to him ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... and earnestly at the brig from the distance, gripping hard the brass rail in front of him, till, the two ships closing, he lost all confidence in himself, and retreating to the chartroom, pulled the door to with a crash. There, his brows knitted, his mouth drawn on one side in sardonic meditation, he sat through many still hours—a sort of Prometheus in the bonds of unholy desire, having his very vitals torn by the beak and ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... alone with the young bandit who had before guarded me: he had the same gloomy air and haggard eye, with now and then a bitter sardonic smile. I was determined to probe this ulcerated heart, and reminded him of a kind of promise he had given me to tell me the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... hesitating, time-serving statesman, with whom indecision was a substitute for prudence, and to be puzzled was to seem to deliberate. That Harley should have had the playing of a great political game {37} while Swift could only look on, is one of the anomalies of history which Swift's sardonic humor must have appreciated to the full. Swift took his revenge when he could by bullying his great official friends now and then in the roughest fashion. He knew that they feared him, and flattered him because they feared him, and he was glad of it, and ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... that would have been sardonic, were it not for a few lines around the corners of his eyes which belied any sinister suspicion, spread grimly across the big man's face as he stood looking down on Harry King in the dusk of the unlighted shed. The younger man rose quickly from the fodder where he had slept heavily after the fatigues ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... answered Nam; "all is prepared for them also": and as he spoke a sardonic smile flickered on his withered countenance that made Leonard feel very uncomfortable. What was ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... Rising and throwing the overcoat over his arm, he waved his hat at her in sardonic courtesy. "I can't say it has been a pleasure to know you but—you have made it interesting, I admit. And I bid you a very good night. The charwoman will let you out when she comes to clean up in the morning. Adieu, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... himself suddenly in the dark passage, and heard the door slammed. His first impulse was to turn, dash in the door with his foot, and take vengeance on Abel Bones, his next to burst into a sardonic laugh. Thereafter he frowned fiercely, and strode away. In doing so he drew himself up with sea-king-like dignity and assaulted a beam, which all but crushed his hat over his eyes. This did not improve his temper, but the beer had not yet robbed him of all self-control; ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... moon's unmitigated crescent, Sailing through the amethystine deeps, With a smile sardonic and senescent Down upon our Armageddon peeps; Thither, drawn by sympathy ecstatic, Like a shooting star my spirit flies From the company of gross, lymphatic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... heroes! My poor, brave man! A cup of tea, my dear," turning to William's thunderstruck mother. "And he may sit down, may he not?" She kept her face well turned towards the sardonic-looking Mr. Lewes. He must not miss a word or gesture. "How proud we are to do anything for our dear heroes! Wounded, perhaps? Ah, poor man!" She floated across to him with a cup of tea and plied him with bread and butter and cake. William sat down meekly on a chair, ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... journeys. . . . I sat up stiffly in my seat. Diagonally across the aisle sat the very chap I had met in the curio-shop! He was quietly reading a popular magazine, and occasionally a smile lightened his sardonic mouth. Funny that I should run across him twice in the same evening! Men who are contemplating suicide never smile in that fashion. He was smoking a small, well-colored meerschaum pipe with evident relish. Somehow, ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... three, perhaps you'll understand me when I say that all these people have their price! And the price is low! Tell them where the ivory is—lead them to it—and they'll swear they found it themselves, so as to keep the commission themselves! And as for you—you three"—she sneered with the most sardonic, thin-lipped smile I ever saw—"there are lions out here, and buffalo, snakes, fevers, native uprisings—more ways of being rid of you than by choking you ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... wore jewels of value; the collar of his shirt came to the tops of his ears. His conceited and even impertinent air betrayed a consciousness of hidden superiority. His pallid face seemed bloodless, his thin flat nose had the sardonic expression which we see in a death's head, and his green eyes were inscrutable; their glance was discreet in meaning just as the thin closed mouth was discreet in words. The first man seemed on the whole a good fellow compared with this younger man, who was slashing the ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... plunged at irregular intervals the wild trample of heavily-booted feet, and now and then the voices of the crew answering the shouted orders made themselves hollowly audible. In the cabin there was talking, and sometimes even laughing. Sometimes he heard the click of knives and forks, the sardonic rattle of crockery. After the first insane feeling that somehow he must get ashore and escape from his torment, he hardened himself to it through an immense contempt, equally insane, for the stupidity of the sea, its insensate uproar, its blind and ridiculous and cruel mischievousness. ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... drowsily through the second, and from the shades of dreamland in the third. Between the acts he lounged in the lobbies and heard the critics speak with sneering derision of the complimentary notices of the American Nightingale which they were about to write, while they expressed, with sardonic smiles, a longing for the day when they would be "allowed"—such was their singular expression—to "speak the truth about Miss KELLOGG as a prima donna." And while he sat with closed eyes during the third act, wondering whether he should believe ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... warmth as negroes speak of ice," retorted the Count, with a sardonic smile. "Consider that the humblest daisy has more charms than the proudest and most gorgeous of the red hawthorns that attract us in spring by their strong scent and brilliant color.—At the same time," he ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... tried to remove, but which took a far stronger hold. He was represented—and in the absence of any intimate male friends to contradict the representation, it was certain to obtain some currency—as in his artistic person a sardonic libeler of mankind, who cared only to take foibles and vices for his subjects, and who either left goodness and virtue out of sight altogether, or represented them as the qualities of fools. In private life he was held up as at the best a self-centered egotist who cared ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... for adverse argument. He belonged to the fierce class of anti-slavery men who were inspired by humane sympathy with the slave and righteous abhorrence of slavery, but also by hatred of the slaveholder. What he himself seemed to enjoy most in his talk was his sardonic humor, which he made play upon men and things like lurid freaks of lightning. He shot out such sallies with a fearfully serious mien, or at least he accompanied them with a grim smile which was not at all like Abraham Lincoln's hearty laugh ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... against the blackness, which the closed window draperies rendered absolute but for those dull, sardonic ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... giggled confusedly, and looked for assistance to a sardonic Boer whom she was going to marry, who shook his head sadly, indicating thereby that these were mysteries into which it was not well to pry. Thrown on her own resources, she plunged into the recesses of an intricate calculation, in which her fingers played a considerable part, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... throne, a magnificent, but a sardonic figure for all that. As he rose, soft, weird music came from an angle where a screen of palm-ferns was placed. Though mechanical, the music was ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... then Lucy Bostil saw Cordts across the gulch. He was not fifty yards distant, plainly recognizable, tall, gaunt, sardonic. He held the half-leveled gun ready as if waiting. He had waited there in ambush. The clouds of smoke rolled up above him, ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... two years,' continued the sourly-sardonic accents of Pierre Nadaud; 'six hundred ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... peppery little pen we wield! What could that have been out of the Sardonic Dean? What other child of that age would have used "beloved" as she does? This power of affection, this faculty of beloving, and wild hunger to be beloved comes out more and more. She perilled her all upon it, and it may have been as well—we ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... wife during the first few months of our marriage. By and by I heard the sound of violent hysterical sobbing, accompanied by the noise of hurrying footsteps and the rapid whisking about of female garments. In a few moments the doctor entered with an expression of sardonic amusement on his face. "Yes!" he said in reply to my look of inquiry, "hysterics, lace handkerchiefs, eau-de-Cologne, and attempts at fainting. All very well done! I have assured the lady there is no fear of contagion, as under my orders everything will be thoroughly disinfected. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... is that they want to spread contagion here, eh? Doesn't anybody"—his tone was sardonic—"doesn't anybody urge that they be massacred as an act ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... pocket of the cab for amusement on the homeward route. He didn't take them out, and forgot their existence until some other wag, on their return from the races, fired a volley into Sam's sad face; upon which salute, after a few oaths indicative of surprise, he burst into a savage and sardonic laugh. ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... followed by his dark, saturnine friend. They approached like men sure of a welcome, Sarle smiling in his disarmingly boyish fashion, the other man smiling too: but with a difference. There was some quality of sardonic amusement and curiosity in his glance ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... hand. The music-room resounded with five-finger improvisations and with vocalists who had little but their voices left. They howled, "Keep your head down, Fritzie boy," or, "We gave them hell at Neuve Chapelle, and here we are and here we are again," or moaned love-songs with a sardonic irony. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... thought without a moment's delay, and while the wagon was en route made a quick search of his unfortunate cousin's apartment, a sardonic smile of triumph lighting his face. And as he transferred the money to his pocket, a sudden thought rushed through his brain—a thought that for the instant ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... would allow me the story of the fire and of my flight from Henrietta, not forgetting the generosity of the cashier in the dairy lunch-room. She listened in silence, and when I had finished I thought I saw the repression of a smile, which may or may not have been of the sardonic order. Then she motioned me to follow her through the long, gloomy hall to the rear of the house, where, turning an angle, we came to a staircase down which a flood of sunlight streamed from the big window on the landing. The sunlight ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... This sardonic truth was brought home to him in a discussion with these young St. Justs. They pointed out his mistakes, impertinently enough, by comparing him to the "Astrologer ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... in the TEMPEST, is an expression which sets aside, as if it were unknown, the conception of an endless transmutation of matter, in a context where the thought would naturally suggest itself to one who had met with it. Where Hamlet is merely sardonic in the plane of popular or at least exoteric humour, Dr. Tschischwitz credits him with pantheistic philosophy. Where, on the other hand, Hamlet speaks feelingly and ethically of the serious side of drunkenness,[134] ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... signed by Herresford!" cried Swinton, hotly. "This is some sardonic jest, in keeping with his donation of a thousand dollars to the Mission Hall, given with one hand and taken away with the other. It nearly landed ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... there felt the influence of the blessed words except one. General Melac was neither awed nor touched; his pale eye was as cold, his sardonic mouth as ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... all assent), at some of my lectures, 'The Harmonious Blacksmith.' My dear one had a great favour for this honest Darwin always; many a road to shops, and the like, he drove her in his cab, in those early days when even the charge of omnibuses was a consideration, and his sparse utterances, sardonic often, were a great amusement to her. 'A perfect gentleman,' she at once discerned him to be, and of sound worth and kindliness, in the most unaffected form." He died in 1881, aged 77, leaving no memorial to the public of his undoubtedly great abilities. ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... he said with a sardonic smile, while I felt his grasp tighten on my shoulder, "the villains have been balked of their prey, have they? We shall see, we shall see. Now, you whelp, look yonder." As he spoke, the pirate uttered a shrill whistle. In a second or two it ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... in his lightest mood of sardonic gaiety. The sins of the vendors recalled those of "your vermin press itself"; the association was wilfully unfair, the favourite phrase a studied insult; but the English boy was either dense or indifferent, and Phillida's great eyes ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... recent fiction have been; a genuinely great though repellent personality—a man whom it would have been at once an event to have met and a pleasure to have kicked. Mr. MAUGHAM has certainly done nothing better than this book about him; the drily sardonic humour of his method makes the picture not only credible but compelling. I liked especially the characteristic touch that shows Strickland escaping, not so much from the dull routine of stockbroking (genius has done that often enough ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... like magic lantern slides with little connection, but spectacular effects. The satire of the book is directed at that immoral confusion between greatness and goodness, the rascally Jonathan being pictured in grave mock-heroics as in every way worthy—and the sardonic force at times almost suggests the pen ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... queer look on your face," replied Cadet Pierson. I couldn't tell whether it were a diabolical look or merely a sardonic grin." ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... one of the most long-suffering of mortals; but I'll admit that I was annoyed at the sardonic interruption. "Really, Holmes," said I severely, "you are a little ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... enough there now, depend upon it," replied Marat, with his sardonic laugh. "King Louis the well beloved has given this palace to his wife, in order that she may establish there a larger harem than Trianon; that miserable, worthless little mouse-nest, where virtue, ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... than that to which fate handed you over. I fancy there need have been no deceit in your fond simple little heart, could it but have been given into other keeping. But you were consigned to a master, whose scorn and cruelty terrified you; under whose sardonic glances your scared eyes were afraid to look up, and before whose gloomy coldness you dared not be happy. Suppose a little plant, very frail and delicate from the first, but that might have bloomed ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his rich and successful rival to be arrested for lunacy, and married the disputed young person while the other was raging in the mad-house. This play is performed to enthusiastic audiences; but for the most part the favorite drama of the Burattini appears to be a sardonic farce, in which the chief character—a puppet ten inches high, with a fixed and staring expression of Mephistophelean good-nature and wickedness—deludes other and weak-minded puppets into trusting him, and then beats ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... have to admit that she did in fact care for one thing. That one thing was the look on her brother's face when he should learn that she, the faithful sardonic sister, having incomprehensibly become indispensable and all in all to a bank cashier, meant to desert him. She was afraid of that look. She trembled at the ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... his harsh voice was pitched in one sardonic monotony of tone. Mercy took an instantaneous dislike to this hobbling, ugly old man, staring at her rudely through his ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... sense of the word? As to the bull-dog, I say little. He at least is a good water-dog, and, when he is taught, he will retrieve birds through the heaviest sea as long as his master cares to shoot. But his appearance is sardonic, to say the least of it; he puts me in mind of a prize-fighter coming up for the tenth round when he has got matters all his own way. Happily he is not often kept as a pet; he is usually taken out by fast young men in riverside places, for his company is believed to give an air of dash and fashion ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... good old times. The smallpox had riddled his face with numberless dints, and spoilt the shape of his nose by imparting to it a gimlet-like twist; it was a countenance by no means lacking in character, very evenly tinted with a diffused red, lighted up by a pair of bright little eyes, with a sardonic look in them, while a certain sarcastic twitch of the purpled lips gave expression to ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... a short, thick, rare sort of man, of quick and precise movements, sardonic countenance; and one look from his sharp round set of eyes, tells you at once that you must not trifle with him. Of a temper that must have cost him some pains to keep under control, he hates humbug and all sort of yabber-yabber. His round head of tolerable size, is of German mould, for ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... the way of moonshine when fusel oil abounds, as it does invariably in new whisky distilled by furtive amateurs working in secret and with neither the facilities nor the knowledge for its scientific manufacture. There is grim significance in the sardonic humor of the man who first named it White Mule. The kick is certain and terrific; frequently it is fatal as well. The worst of it is, you never know what the effect will be until you have drunk the stuff; and after you have drunk it, you are in no condition ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... represents the beginning of the battle on the side of the French. There on a slight elevation, in the wheatfield of June, sitting on his white horse, with his triangular hat lifted in silent salutation, surrounded by the princes and marshals of his Empire, sits the sardonic somnambulist, while before him on the left the Cuirassiers of the Guard, on their tremendous horses gathered out of Normandy, plunging at full gallop, bearing down through the broken wheat, with buglers in the van and sabers flashing high and bearded ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... crossed the brow of the Constable, and Guarine, when he beheld a sardonic smile begin to curl Vidal's lip, could keep silence no longer. "Vidal," ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... sometimes was called, was past his sixtieth year. For twenty years he had been in command of the army. One had but to look at his strong, sardonic face to know that he was a fearless leader, a savage fighter. His eyes were black, piercing and never quiet; his hair and close-cropped beard were almost snow-white; his voice was heavy and without a vestige of warmth. Since her babyhood Yetive had stood in awe of this grim old warrior. It was no ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... splendid forehead with the puissant furrow in the middle that great plans and thoughts and deep meditations engrave on the brow of genius; an olive complexion streaked with red; a square nose; eyes of fire; gaunt cheeks with two long wrinkles, full of suffering; a mouth with sardonic smile, and a small, thin, abnormally short chin; crow's feet at the temples; sunken eyes (he repeats himself a little) rolling beneath their beetling arches and resembling two burning globes; but, despite all these signs ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... you were to do so, Crackenfudge," replied the baronet, with a grim, sardonic smile, or rather a sneer, "I assure you, that such a measure would become a very general and heavy impost upon the country. But goodby, now; I shall remember your wishes as touching the magistracy. You shall ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... her going with a sardonic smile, but when his wife, after waiting for her to be quite gone, came out to him, he ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... needs pointing out. It perhaps needs pointing out, however, that strong feeling of almost any kind produces this result. It is not a sense of the ludicrous, only, which does it; nor are the various forms of joyous emotion the sole additional causes. We have, besides, the sardonic laughter and the hysterical laughter, which result from mental distress; to which must be added certain sensations, as tickling, and, according to Mr. Bain, cold, and some kinds of ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... the miscreant was facing Sally as he bent over the table and fumbled with the lock of the jewel-case, and she made good use of this chance to memorise a countenance of mildly sardonic cast, not unhandsome—the face of a conventional modern voluptuary, self-conscious, self-satisfied, selfish—rather attractive withal in the eyes of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... with the violation of all poetic justice? From beginning to end it is the story of disillusion, for it sorts all humanity into two great classes, fools who are cheated and knaves who cheat. Some people think that Shakespeare wrote it in a gloomy, pessimistic mood, with the sardonic laughter of a disappointed, world-wearied man. Others, on rather doubtful grounds, believe it a covert satire on some of Shakespeare's ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... was Estelle the dancer, with whom Emile allowed her a slight acquaintance. He neither approved of women in general nor of their friendships. Estelle was the bonne amie of the sardonic Manager, who occasionally beat her, after which ceremony it was her custom to drink absinthe. Sometimes, for this reason, she was unable to appear on the stage. She would come into Arithelli's dressing room and weep, and ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... spring (she wanted our names), and would not be worth your accepting but for the fact of their not being purchaseable anywhere.[39] A few copies were sent out to us lately. Half I draw back my hand as I give you this little pamphlet, because I seem to hear dear Mr. Martin's sardonic laughter at my phrase about the Czar. 'If she wink, &c.' Well, I don't generally sympathise with the boasting mania of my countrymen, but it's so much in the blood that, even with me, it exceeds now and then, you observe. Ask him to be as gentle ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... that he refused the subject in hand, that he eschewed expression upon it and resolutely drove the argument in other directions, that he achieved such superbly un-Arplike inconsistency; and with such rich material for his sardonic humors, not at arm's length, not even so far as his finger-tips, but beneath his very palms, he rejected it: this was ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... been afoot for exactly twenty hours, in pursuit of his usual business of curing imaginary ailments by means of medicine and suggestion, and leaving real ailments to nature aided by coloured water. His attitude towards the medical profession was somewhat sardonic, partly because he was convinced that only the gluttony of South Kensington provided him with a livelihood, but more because his wife and two fully-developed daughters spent too much on their frocks. For years, losing sight of the fact that ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... see the Phoenician bending over them with a sardonic smile, and behind him the tall form of Issachar, who stood regarding them, his arms ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... found some inner source of pleasure that brought out a sardonic smile. "He's a slap in the face at both ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... presents, and the great desirability that its progress and developments should be observed and its history written; also of C. N———, who, it appears, is passing through a new moral phasis. He is silent, inexpressive, talks little or none, and listens without response, except a sardonic laugh; and some of his friends think that he is passing into permanent eclipse. Various other matters were considered or glanced at, and finally, between five and six o'clock, Mr. Emerson took his leave. I then went out to chop ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to anticipate the knife-grinder's innocent confession, "Story? God bless you! I have none to tell, sir!" in a sardonic paraphrase of half a score of volumes, he actually possessed the narrative faculty in an extraordinary degree. He does not merely show this in his famous inset short stories, accomplished as these are: ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... liked to fool him to the top of his bent. What would a certain young kinswoman of his have said could she have seen her dear, good, great Robert—her Coriolanus—just now? Would she have acknowledged in that mischievous, sardonic visage the same face to which she had looked up with such love, which had bent over her with such gentleness last night? Was that the man who had spent so quiet an evening with his sister and his cousin—so suave to one, so tender to the other—reading ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... thanks for it," said Sir Hugh, his face lighting with a sardonic satisfaction. "Let the little beggar go, and give this fellow a dozen in his place—an honest dozen, well laid on." The King was in the act of entering a fierce protest, but Sir Hugh silenced him with the potent remark, "Yes, speak up, do, and free thy mind—only, mark ye, that for each word ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with sardonic immensity his colleagues, yet with an under-play worthy of the Devil, our Otto proceeded to make these owlish and absurd gentlemen puppets in the hands ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel |
