"Scoff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to scoff, I'm starvin'," groaned Nippers, "but we'll hafta lay low till the bloody tub pulls out or we'll get caught an' ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... his steady gaze?— Was there a look that harshly fell To scoff her?—or a syllable Of anger?—or the bitter phrase That myrrhs the honey of love's lips, Or curdles blood as poison drips? What made their breasts to heave and swell As billows under bows of ships In broken seas on stormy days? We may not know—nor they indeed— What mercy found ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... ground arms! kneel all! caps off! Old Blue-light's going to pray. Strangle the fool that dares to scoff! Attention! 'tis his way! Appealing from his native sod In forma pauperis to God; "Lay bare Thine arm—stretch forth Thy ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... premiership, because Tache was frail and past his prime, would rest with Macdonald. The presidency of the Executive Council, which was offered him, unless joined to the office of prime minister, was of no real importance. Some party friends throughout the country {40} would misunderstand, and more would scoff. He had parted company with his loyal personal friends Dorion and Holton. If, as Disraeli said, England does not love coalitions, neither does Canada. For the time being, and, as events proved, for a considerable time, the Liberal ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... wise the old world had gotten of late: How fools still flourish, by wealth caressed: How the noble of mind meet a pauper's fate; How the infidel heart, accursed, defies All hopes of Heaven—all fears of hell: How the saintly preach from the book of lies, And scoff at the truths ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... issuing forth so vaingloriously with his army, which he now saw clearly had foreboded the destruction of that army on which he had so confidently relied. "Henceforth," said he, "let no man have the impiety to scoff at omens." ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... is unspeakably irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect priestcraft and a ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... physicians scoff at the ancient authorities who dominated medical thinking for so many centuries. The seventeenth-century physician striving to reduce the frightful inroads that disease made into the colony at Jamestown may have been handicapped by the erroneous doctrines of the gossamer-fine ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... rail against money, Spurn its beneficent power; Bears spurn impossible honey, Foxes the grapes that are sour. Men, who can never be funny, Scoff at the funny man's dower; Lands where it seldom is sunny Find little praise ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... and schism, but who at the same time, as Milton shrewdly intimates, dreaded more the rending of their pontifical sleeves than the rending of the Church? Who shall now sneer at Puritanism, with the "Defence of Unlicensed Printing" before him? Who scoff at Quakerism over the "Journal" of George Fox? Who shall join with debauched lordlings and fat-witted prelates in ridicule of Anabaptist levellers and dippers, after rising from the perusal of "Pilgrim's Progress?" "There were giants in those days." ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... eyes and stare! But it's so. You and I may not see the day, but they'll see it. Mind I tell you; they'll see it. Nancy, you've heard of steamboats, and maybe you believed in them—of course you did. You've heard these cattle here scoff at them and call them lies and humbugs,—but they're not lies and humbugs, they're a reality and they're going to be a more wonderful thing some day than they are now. They're going to make a revolution in this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the eye. We wanted to scoff, and there was something, something perhaps in Clayton's voice and manner, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... prattling child. They think of what they have done and suffered for his sake and how the cord of love has been silently woven through the years. My love to you is my greatest bond, and, though some may grow cold, some may scoff, and some repudiate, never let the lips of any say that your rector, your old grey-headed pastor, now in his fourth and last watch, ever ceased in his love to his ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... Liberty's ancient throne, Over the human throng! You, who dared in the dark eclipse,— When the pygmy heir of a giant name Dimmed the face of the land with shame,— Speak the truth with indignant lips, Call him little whom men called great, Scoff at him, scorn him, deny him, Point to the blood on his robe of state, Fling back ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... Let no man scoff; lest he drives away the means of real information.—And let all men watch, for ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... she exclaimed; "ay, possibly! but would the scorn of any other man so have crushed self-esteem? The injuries of the wicked do not sour us against the good; but the scoff of the good leaves us malignant against virtue itself. Any other man! Tut! Genius is bound to be indulgent. It should know human errors so well—has, with its large luminous forces, such errors itself when it deigns to be human, that, where others may scorn, genius should only ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... my honour for? and that you'll attend to your duties, and stand watch and watch, and bear your proper share of the ship's work, instead of leaving it all on the shoulders of a landsman, and making yourself the butt and scoff of native seamen? Is that what you mean? If it is, be so good ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spring, a man with frozen feet Came to the marble halls of state, And told his mission but to meet The chill of scorn, the scoff of hate. "Is Oregon worth saving?" asked The treaty-makers from the coast; And him the Church with questions tasked, And said, "Why did you leave your post?" Was it for this that he had braved The warring storms of mount and sky? Yes!—yet ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... almost, had assembled in the square, despite the increasing rain. Many had come to scoff. What a farce it all would be! They did well, however, to wait two days! The rain was almost over. It would probably stop by the time they got ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... habitation again: we shall see their differing conduct presently. When the three came back, like furious creatures, flushed with the rage which the work they had been about put them into, they came up to the Spaniards, and told them what they had done, by way of scoff and bravado; and one of them stepping up to one of the Spaniards, as if they had been a couple of boys at play, takes hold of his hat, as it was upon his head, and giving it a twirl about, jeering in his face, says he to him, "And ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... water off, Or folk be cutting weed, While he doth at misfortune scoff, From every trouble freed. Or else he waiteth for a rise, And ne'er a rise may see; For why, there are not any flies To ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... have in my house a girl with the blood of the East in her veins and the influence of the West in her life. She is rebellious, rude and irreverent. Only this morning, when I gave warning what vengeance the great Buddha would send upon her for impiety, did she not toss her red head and laughingly scoff in my face." At this point I arose and rang for tea and my visitor continued: "Ah, I tremble at her daring. It is her foreign blood, her training. It will curse ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... largest cities of America she had met persons of every class—young women, old women, mothers with married sons and daughters; women of society as it is exploited in the Sunday supplements; school girls, shop girls, factory girls—all had told her their troubles; and men of every condition had come to scoff and had remained to express, more or less offensively, their admiration. Some of the younger of these, after a first visit, returned the day following, and each begged the beautiful priestess of the occult to fly with him, to live with him, to marry him. When this ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... journeyings through life, and plans formed, which were never to be realized. And perhaps all was for the best; for we are all creatures of circumstance. Not one in a thousand follows out his plans through life. Half of our existence is imaginary; and wise-acres may scoff as much as they please at what they term 'castle-building,' I believe all mankind indulge in it more or less; and it is an innocent, harmless pastime, which injures no one. I consider it the 'unwritten poetry,' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... objected to certain manipulations of the Free Gold Mining Company, his objection was likely to be based on substantial grounds. But then, as Brooks had observed, or, rather, inferred, Bill was not exactly an expert on finance, and this new deal savored of pure finance—a term which she had heard Bill scoff at more than once. At any rate, she hoped nothing disagreeable would come ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... flap of England's flag Proclaim that all around are free, From 'farthest Ind' to each blue crag That beetles o'er the Western Sea? And shall we scoff at Europe's kings, When Freedom's fire is dim with us, And round our country's altar clings The damning ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... seemed to grasp the cone, and a deep whisper that was almost a tone came from it. "You are right," this new personality said, with measured and precise utterance. "We come with the best tests of a supremely important revelation; we come as scientists from our side of the line; and you scoff, and take it all as a piece of folly, as an entertainment. Is this just? No, it is ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... technicalities from such rare and happy persons as both know and love their business. No human being[10] ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect we hear too much of it in literature. The weather is regarded as the very nadir and scoff of conversational topics. And yet the weather, the dramatic element in scenery, is far more tractable in language, and far more human both in import and suggestion than the stable features of the landscape. Sailors and shepherds, and the people generally of coast and mountain, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... accounted still adorable, Is Christ's cross only!—if the thief's would earn Some stealthy genuflexions, we rebel; And here the impenitent thief's has had its turn, As God knows; and the people on their knees Scoff and toss back the crosiers stretched like yokes To press their heads down lower by degrees. So Italy, by means of these last strokes, Escapes the danger which preceded these, Of leaving captured hands in cloven oaks,— Of leaving very souls within ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... private assassin you keep, for us, need not be hampered by mere connoisseurship in the perpetration of his duty—therefore, passe, for the execution—but he should not compromise his master's reputation for brilliancy, and print things that he who runs may scoff at. ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... everything that was given to him as a commission; he would please the public; he would make more money, he would adapt his art to meet his wife's jealous demands, that she might live in peace; he would scoff at that phantom of human ambition which men call glory. Glory! A lottery, where the only chance for a prize depended on the tastes of people still to be born! Who knew what the artistic inclinations ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... no' say it?" demanded her visitor. "And as to speaking sense—. But I'll no' trouble you. It seems you have friends in such plenty that you can afford to scorn and scoff at them at your pleasure. Good-day to you," and she rose ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... Act for our defence! It weakens, not defends; and oversea Swoln France's despot and his myrmidons This moment know it, and can scoff thereat. Our people know it too—those who can peer Behind the scenes of this poor painted show Called soldiering!—The Act has failed, must fail, As my right honourable friend well proved When speaking t'other night, whose silencing By his right honourable ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... found methods to persuade Margaret (who being sore From the doubts she'd felt before, Was prepared for mistrust) To believe her reasons just; Quite destroy'd that comfort glad, Which in Mary late she had; Made her, in experience' spite, Think her friend a hypocrite, And resolve, with cruel scoff, To renounce ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... yours; his cavalry are more skilled. Turn his flank—or, better still, bide here and await his attack, and victory will be to the soldiers of the Cross. Advance and the vision of that knight at whom you scoff will come true, and the cause of Christendom be lost in Syria. I have spoken, and ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... friends with Mammon of Unrighteousness, among the magistrates of the Gentiles, and among their mighty men; and it shall come to pass that Darsie Latimer shall be delivered, even if it were at the expense of half my substance." And I said, "Nay, my brother, go not, for they will but scoff at and revile thee; but hire with thy silver one of the scribes, who are eager as hunters in pursuing their prey, and he shall free Darsie Latimer from the men of violence by his cunning, and thy soul shall ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... who had clearly come to scoff. With her was Mrs. Bronson, whose attitude was that of a person torn between conflicting influences. Her husband had indicated to the crafty Bonner and the subtle Peterson that while he was still loyal to ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... judge to say that?" asked the doctor, trying to scoff, but not a little pleased. "I'm sure I can't tell you, Mrs. Graham, only the idea has grown of itself in my mind, as all right ideas do, and everything that I can see seems to favor it. You may think that it is too early to decide, but I see plainly that Nan is not ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... many scoff at this, because there are heathen who take this on them for gain, that they may trade more openly, or find profit among Christian folk, never meaning or caring to seek further into the faith that lies open, as it were, before them. But it ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... in that all-seeing eye, at which you are so willing to scoff; but I do not expect that I am to be allowed to see further into futurity than another; however, if I am to express an opinion, I think we should endeavour to march on Paris; if we find that the men desert us, and that others do not join ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... yet,"—with a faint wan smile. "Let me keep it a little longer. Not even Mrs. Massereene knows of it. Indeed, it is too soon to proclaim my design. People might scoff it; though for all that I shall work it out. And something tells me I ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... scoff, on every side Great hints of Him go by,— Souls that are hourly crucified On some new Calvary! O, tortured faces, white and meek, Half seen amidst the crowd, Grey suffering lips that never speak, The ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... and nervous temperament, and this fact perhaps may account for the anomaly of a mountain-boy who was a poor shot. Andy was the scoff ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... need; and the system disclosing such communication appears, upon every principle of sound philosophy, to be one of harmony, consistency, and truth. The subject, therefore, leads our attention to that inward change, so often the scoff of the profane, but to which so prominent a place is assigned in the sacred writings, in which a man is said to be created anew by a power from Heaven, and elevated in his whole views and feelings as a moral being. Sound philosophy ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... merry! All hearts that with scoff And derision have waited This day afar off; Abuses are shaking Old Errors are quaking, That cramped the free life of our manhood so long, Hail to the waking! The daylight is breaking For Truths that are mighty and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... amazing. Yourselves devilishly greedy for profits, yet you scoff at us because we go chasing after business. You fetch heaps of money across the sea, and then turn up your sublimely snuffing noses as if ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... sticks of the beadles. Nevertheless, oh Muse, if it be right to esteem the most honest and illustrious of our comic writers at his proper value, permit our poet to say that he thinks he has deserved a glorious renown. First of all, 'tis he who has compelled his rivals no longer to scoff at rags or to war with lice; and as for those Heracles, always chewing and ever hungry, those poltroons and cheats who allow themselves to be beaten at will, he was the first to cover them with ridicule and to chase them ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... unpunished you deceive, For other faults why do I loss receive. But did you not so envy[363] Cepheus' daughter, For her ill-beauteous mother judged to slaughter. 'Tis not enough, she shakes your record off, And, unrevenged, mocked gods with me doth scoff. 20 But by my pain to purge her perjuries, Cozened, I am the cozener's sacrifice. God is a name, no substance, feared in vain, And doth the world in fond belief detain. Or if there be a God, he loves fine wenches, And all things too much in their sole power drenches. ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... engendered by trumpery questions of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. I cannot hope to escape giving offence, probably on both sides; but if I can induce one or two people on either side to think twice before they scoff once, I shall ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... fifty years ago, could have imagined that to-day women would be steadily monopolizing learning, teaching, literature, the fine arts, music, the church and the theater? And yet that is the condition at which we have arrived. We may scoff at the way women are doing the work, and reject the product, but that does not alter the fact that step by step women are taking over the field of liberal culture as opposed to the field of immediately ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... the beginning of creation. Yet are men swayed hither and thither by a book concerning Antichrist, wherein it is written that the people before the last day shall fall into such error that they shall say, there is no God, and shall scoff at all that is preached of Christ and the last day. That is true, whencesoever it has been taken. But we are not so to understand it as that the whole world shall say and hold such things, but the greater part. For that time is even now at hand, and shall prevail yet more when the Gospel ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... already so ill brooks my regrets for meeting him, (when he thinks, if I had not, I must have been Mr. Solmes's wife,) would perhaps treat me with indignity: and thus, deprived of all refuge and protection, I should become the scoff of men of intrigue; a disgrace to my sex—while that avowed loved, however indiscreetly shown, which is followed by marriage, will find more excuses made for it, than ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... her cheeks as she spoke, and Wilhelm was not sufficiently blase to scoff at the doting nonsense of a love-sick woman. Love has enormous power, and at its heat all firmness, all resistance, melts away. Pilar's affection filled Wilhelm with heartfelt emotion and gratitude. He denied ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... laughed much at it, and made but a scoff thereat. 'Tush!' saith he, 'it is but an ideot knave, and such an one as lacketh his right wittes.' But when this foolish prophet had so escaped the daunger of the kinge's displeasure, and that he made no more of it, he gate him abroad, and prated thereof at large, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... The victim of infidelity and you, the bearer of a cursed existence, the scoff and scorn of the world, the monument of a broken vow and a guilty life, a being scourged by the scorpion lash of conscience, blasted by periodical insanity, pelted by the winter's storm, scorched by the summer's heat, withered by starvation, hated by man, and touched into my inmost spirit ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... to scoff at premonitions and haunting fears, but there can be no doubt that on this night an evil spirit was present in Roberta's apartment, a hideous, destructive entity that came and—wavered in its deadly purpose ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... nor Jupiter we beg For a devouring despot, lank of leg, Of prying eye, and frog-transfixing beak; Though singly we seem weak, United we are strong to smite or scoff. Off, would-be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... they should know, and desired Jeffreys to do the dirty work himself. There was something almost amusing in the artlessness of the suggestion, and had the subject been less personally grievous, Jeffreys could have afforded to scoff at the whole business. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... take up my tale, I want to anticipate the doubting Thomases of psychology, who are prone to scoff, and who would otherwise surely say that the coherence of my dreams is due to overstudy and the subconscious projection of my knowledge of evolution into my dreams. In the first place, I have never been a zealous student. I graduated last of my class. I cared more ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... enow, When shadows lengthened and the sun was low; But at the last these left her labouring, Not daring now to weep, lest some small thing Should 'scape her blinded eyes, and soon far off She heard the echoes of their careless scoff. Longer the shades grew, quicker sank the sun, Until at last the day was well-nigh done, And every minute did she think to hear The fair Queen's dreaded footsteps drawing near; But Love, that moves the earth, and ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... after Newman Street, was at a place called Westbourne Green, now absorbed into endless avenues of "palatial" residences, which scoff with regular-featured, lofty scorn at the rural simplicity implied by such a name. The site of our dwelling was not far from the Paddington Canal, and was then so far out of town that our nearest ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the scoff of friends, Or see their anger grow, Just please remember this, Perhaps they ...
— Some Broken Twigs • Clara M. Beede
... very act of advising to the commission of a crime is of itself unlawful. The presumption of law is that advice has the influence and effect intended by the adviser, unless it is shown to have been otherwise; as that the counsel was received with scoff, or was manifestly rejected and ridiculed at the time it was given. It was said in the argument that Jewett's abandoned and depraved character furnishes ground to believe that he would have committed ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... has been in my room, and nailed Matthew vii. 1, Mark x. 7, and Ezek. xviii. 20, on my wall. He found my diary, and has read it, not to profit by, alas! but to scoff." ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... and made mock of him. Whilst this was going on, behold, up came a merchant riding on a she-mule and followed by two black slaves, and brake a way through the people, saying, "O folk, are ye not ashamed to mob this stranger and make mock of him and scoff at him?" And he went on to rate them, till he drave them away from Ma'aruf, and none could make him any answer. Then he said to the stranger, "Come, O my brother, no harm shall betide thee from these folk. Verily they have no shame."[FN18] So he took him and carrying ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... multitudinous changes; in fact, without change, we could have no cognisance of our surroundings, we should have no consciousness of living. We have become so accustomed to certain sensations that we are apt to take them, as facts, and scoff at the suggestion that they are non-realities. I propose, however, to show that what we perceive are not Realities, and true conception of our surroundings depends upon the knowledge which we can bring to bear to interpret the meaning of these sensations. It is only in response to our conscientious ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... "Scoff!" Kenkenes cried. "But I can tell thee this: Rameses will put his foot on the neck of Amon-meses if the pretender trouble him, and will wed with a slave-girl if she break the armor over ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... war I'll scoff, I think I'd best begone!" And when the foe's last gun went off The battle still ...
— The Animals' Rebellion • Clifton Bingham
... scoff at a book of etiquette would be shocked to hear the least expression of levity touching the Ten Commandments. But the Commandments do not always prevent such virtuous scoffers from dealings with their neighbor of ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the cadets): Here are the rebels! Ay, Sirs, on all sides I hear that in your ranks you scoff at me; That the Cadets, these loutish, mountain-bred, Poor country squires, and barons of Perigord, Scarce find for me—their Colonel—a disdain Sufficient! call me plotter, wily courtier! It does not please their ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... clouds across the pale moon glancing, As thought on rapid thought advancing, Thrills through the maiden's trembling breast, Not doubting, and yet not at rest. Not doubting! Man may turn away And scoff at shrines, where yesterday He knelt, in earnest faith, to pray, And wealth may lose its charm for him, And fame's alluring star grow dim, Devotion, avarice, glory, all The pageantries of earth may pall; But love is of a higher ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... and R. G. told me that you had observed the same, and were indeed collecting some instances; I think, quotations from Seneca, so employed as to prove that Bacon had them from the Frenchman. It has been the fashion of late to scoff at Seneca; whom such men as Bacon and Montaigne quoted: perhaps not Seneca's own, but cribbed from some Greek which would have been admired by those who scoff ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... you prefer to take the risks, and remain chief of the guard yourself?" she said with an angry scoff. "Truly there did not seem to be many thrusting forward to strip you of the office. I shall have a fine sorting up of places in payment for this night's work. But for the present, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... last get through eating and wandered out on the front porch, where Mrs. Gilligan could not scoff at their ideas, to discuss the doings of the ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... this message was as a heavy yoke upon me, so that I wept bitterly at the thought of what I should have to pass through. While I wept, I heard a voice say, "weep not, some will laugh at thee, some will scoff at thee, and the dogs will bark at thee, but while thou doest my will, I will be with thee to ...
— Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman • Anonymous
... when you heard the raps yourself, and then you got nearly beside yourself with fright and anger, and said it was the devil. And now for the third time the same sort of thing has happened. What is the good of telling you about it? You'd only scoff and jeer as you did before, although on this occasion it is your own life that ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... and are assumed sometimes with great vigour. Such had been the case with Mrs Winterfield. No woman ever lived, perhaps, with more conscientious ideas of her duty as a woman than Mrs Winterfield of Prospect Place, Perivale. And this, as I say it, is intended to convey no scoff against that excellent lady. She was an excellent lady unselfish, given to self-restraint, generous, pious, looking to find in her religion a safe path through life a path as safe as the facts of Adam's fall would allow her feet to find. ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... he loves. The irony must, mark you, be pervading and obvious. Disraeli's great ladies and lords won't do, for his irony was but latent in his homage, and thus the reader feels himself called on to worship and in duty bound to scoff. All's well, though, when the homage is latent in the irony. Thackeray, inviting us to laugh and frown over the follies of Mayfair, enables us to reel with him in a secret orgy ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... But certain people always grow splenetic— Why, goodness knows—at everything pathetic, And scoff it down. We all know how, of late, An unfledged, upstart undergraduate Presumed, with brazen insolence, to declare That "William ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... English, and hated England, and all connected therewith, had yet much to say in thy praise, when thou wast far inferior to what thou art now, why should true-born Englishmen, or those who call themselves so, turn up their noses at thee, and scoff thee at the present day, as I believe they do? But, let others do as they will, I, at least, who am not only an Englishman, but an East Englishman, will not turn up my nose at thee, but will praise and extol thee, calling thee ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... play such pranks to draw people who scoff? It is They to whose critical words you are deaf. Though in your country you are not a prophet, is This how you make one, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... "Scoff at Founders of Systems. And cry with a glow of fine enthusiasm, 'Here are errors and misleading statements in abundance in our contemporary's work, and to what end? To depreciate a fine work, to deceive the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... some slack allegiance till this hour— But now, my sword's my own. Smile on, my lords! I scorn to count what feelings, withered hopes, Strong provocations, bitter, burning wrongs, I have within my heart's hot cells shut up, To leave you in your lazy dignities! But here I stand and scoff you! here I fling Hatred and full defiance in your face! Your Consul's merciful—for this, all thanks: He dares not touch a hair ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... sickness which attacked the crew while lying in Plymouth harbor. The brief narrative of his sickness and death is all that we know of his personality. The writer says: "He was a proud young man, and would often curse and scoff at the passengers," but being nursed when dying, by those of them who remained aboard, after his shipmates had deserted him in their craven fear of infection, "he bewailed his former conduct," ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... law of degeneracy. Its trend is downward; its centuries of history tell just this one story. The actual stage of to-day..is a moral abomination. In Chicago, at least, it is trampling on the Sabbath with defiant scoff. It is defiling our youth. It is making crowds familiar with the play of criminal passions. It is exhibiting women with such approaches to nakedness as can have no other design than to breed lust behind the onlooking eyes. It is furnishing ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... with roars of laughter, and Jack himself was at first too overcome with merriment to do more than scoff. At last, however, he went for a rope, cast it over the giant's two heads, so, with the help of a team of horses, drew them shorewards, where two blows from the sword ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... stranger. She therefore considered herself as having fallen a victim to love; and could she only save her daughter from a similar error she might yet by her means retrieve her fallen fortune. To implant principles of religion and virtue in her mind was not within the compass of her own; but she could scoff at every pure and generous affection; she could ridicule every disinterested attachment; and she could expatiate on the never-fading joys that attend on wealth and titles, jewels and equipages; and all this she did in the belief that she was acting the part of a most wise and ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Doubtless, he also, whose blood received a mingling tide from his proud mother—he, the acknowledged focus of the kingdom's wealth and nobility, had been taught to repeat my father's name with disdain, and to scoff at my just claims to protection. I strove to think that all this grandeur was but more glaring infamy, and that, by planting his gold-enwoven flag beside my tarnished and tattered banner, he proclaimed not his superiority, but his debasement. Yet I envied him. ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... him, wishing him with all my heart that little inland farm at last which is his calenture as he paces the windy deck. One evening, when the clouds looked wild and whirling, I asked X. if it was coming on to blow. "No, I guess not," said he; "bumby the moon'll be up, and scoff away that 'ere loose stuff." His intonation set the phrase "scoff away" in quotation-marks as plain as print. So I put a query in each eye, and he went on. "Ther' was a Dutch cappen onct, an' his mate come to him in the cabin, where ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... get that gold and better to care for his life. Yes, Padre, there is something that impels them, and that something is the government itself. It is you yourselves who pitilessly ridicule the uncultured Indian and deny him his rights, on the ground that he is ignorant. You strip him and then scoff at ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... front, So calm his steadfast eye,— The rabble rout forbore to shout, And each man held his breath, For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shudder Through all the people crept, And some that came to scoff at him Now ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... asking me if I was willing to do all the Prophet required. I said I was sure of it, thinking they meant to be good and worshipful. Then they would ask if I was ready to take counsel, and they said, 'Many things are revealed unto us in these last days that the world would scoff at,' but that it had been given to them to know all the mysteries of the Kingdom. Then they said, 'You will see Joseph and he will tell you what ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... you that the Chancellor gave it to me, gave it to me with his own hands, willingly,—pressed it upon me. No, don't scoff!" he went on quickly. "Listen! This is a genuine thing. The Chancellor's mad. He was lying in a fit when I left the Palace. It will be in all the evening papers. You will hear the boys shouting it in the streets ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... parents' deep concern, and earned cries to God in their behalf can forget them—they must, they do, at times, affect them. While any thing of this nature remains, there is hope. Some, who in early life, scoff at warning and counsel, are afterwards brought to repentance: And such often testify, that impressions made by parental faithfulness in their tender years, were the means of their awakening and amendment. This should encourage those whose children give ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... kinds of lovers' hearts, and that those who can understand the "New Life" of Messer Dante's are very few, and fewer still those that can live that life. But I here protest very solemnly that it was with no thought of scoff or mockery that I made my ballad, but just for the sake of saying, in my way, the things I thought about the pretty women that pleased me and teased me, and made life so gay and fragrant and variegated in those far-away, dearly remembered, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... said, "but I've got an appetite. I could scoff iron-filings an' horseshoe nails an' thank you kindly, ma'am, for ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... seems to me that they'll insult Pasha—scoff at him. 'Ah, you peasant!' they'll say. 'You son of a peasant! What's this mess you've cooked up?' And Pasha, proud as he is, he'll answer them so——! Or Andrey will laugh at them—and all the comrades there are hot-headed and honest. So I can't help thinking that something will suddenly happen. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... their unhallowed mariners. She lives cannilie and quietly; no one knows how she is fed or supported; but her dress is aye whole, her cottage ever smokes, and her table lacks neither of wine, white and red, nor of fowl and fish, and white bread and brown. It was a dear scoff to Jock Matheson, when he called old Moll the uncannie carline of Blawhooly: his boat ran round and round in the centre of the Solway,—everybody said it was enchanted,—and down it went head foremost: and had nae Jock been a swimmer ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... calculated to bring soft tears of satisfaction to the board of directors that presided over Bostock's. It was a record Christmas for Bostock's. The electric cars were thundering over the frozen streets of all the Five Towns to bring customers to Bostock's. Children dreamt of Bostock's. Fathers went to scoff and remained to pay. Brunt's was not exactly alarmed, for nothing could alarm Brunt's; but there was just a sort of suspicion of something in the air at Brunt's that did not make for odious self-conceit. People seemed to become intoxicated when they went into Bostock's, to close ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... as the voice of destiny to thee. Doubtless the course is safer far, to range 285 Our numerous host, and if a man have dared Dispute thy will, to rob him of his prize. King! over whom? Women and spiritless— Whom therefore thou devourest; else themselves Would stop that mouth that it should scoff no more. 290 But hearken. I shall swear a solemn oath. By this same sceptre,[22] which shall never bud, Nor boughs bring forth as once, which having left Its stock on the high mountains, at what time The woodman's axe lopped off its foliage green, 295 And stript its ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... death, That magic, mystic, smile! O heart of man, What strange capacities of grief and joy Are thine! How vain, how ruthless such, if given For transient things alone! O life of man! What wert thou but some laughing demon's scoff, If prelude only to the eternal grave! 'Deep cries to deep'—ay, but the deepest deep Crying to summits of the mount of God Drags forth for echo, 'Immortality.' It was the Death Divine that vanquished death! Shorn of that ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... travesty a sermon, or even repeat the language of it in the pages of a novel. In endeavouring to depict the characters of the persons of whom I write, I am to a certain extent forced to speak of sacred things. I trust, however, that I shall not be thought to scoff at the pulpit, though some may imagine that I do not feel the reverence that is due to the cloth. I may question the infallibility of the teachers, but I hope that I shall not therefore be accused of doubt as to the thing ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... wonderful. To us it seemed strange as a miracle,—this black regiment, the first mustered into the service of the United States, doing itself honor in the sight of the officers of other regiments, many of whom, doubtless, "came to scoff." The men afterwards had a great feast, ten oxen having been roasted whole ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... and subtler perceptions of justice, the rank and file and the wooden spoons must needs apply the old ethics, even against the new teachers themselves. Every truth has to fight for recognition, to prove itself not a lie. The brilliant and impatient young men who scoff at conventions because the people who hold them are unreal—not persons, feeling and passing moral truths through their own soul, but parrots—forget that just because the people are unreal, their maxims are real; that they do not represent ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the years in the gloom of their sadness Stand, frowning, 'tween me and the light of my star, And memory can feel the wild might of loves madness, Or scoff as rude Time ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... island, nor to go upon voyages of discovery. Such were some of the restrictions upon trade which Spain imposed upon her colonies, and which were followed up by others equally illiberal. Her commercial policy has been the scoff of modern times; but may not the present restrictions on trade, imposed by the most intelligent nations, be equally the wonder and the ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... for the cause of justice in his Comedies; he promises you that his precepts will lead you to happiness, though he uses neither flattery, nor bribery, nor intrigue, nor deceit; instead of loading you with praise, he will point you to the better way. I scoff at Cleon's tricks and plotting; honesty and justice shall fight my cause; never will you find me a political poltroon, a prostitute to ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... me. Until then I had remained calm; but at her words there burst from the depths of my being the voice of instinct, that voice which I had tried to stifle, almost unconsciously, by force of habit and training.... Oh, that blatant, piercing voice! It seemed to me to rend the darkness, to scoff at my heart and my sweet reasonableness! It was as though I saw all my kindly dreams of tolerance and indulgence fly into a thousand splinters! Never had I so clearly realised their brittleness. My anger was all the greater because it was still ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... far from the cities, in a lone place where none came to scoff or criticize. When it was finished, I took my place and sealed the port by which I had entered. The Adventurer spurned the Earth beneath its cradles, and in the middle of the Twenty-second century, as time is computed on Earth, man first found ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... out of fashion and the men she named Fit only to be buried and defamed Who dared hold service was true nobleness And graced their service in a fitting dress? Are manners out of date because the scullions scoff At whosoever shuns the common trough Liking dry bread better than the garbled stew Nor praising greed because the style is new? Let go the ancient orders if so be their ways Are trespassing on decency these days. So I go, rather than accept ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... of sacred blood, of yet uncounted treasure. We stand before the world this day divided by the fearful conflict, with malignant hate lighting the fires of either camp, and with hands reeking in fraternal blood—with both sections of our land more or less afflicted—with credit impaired, with the scoff and jeers of nations ringing in our ears—we stand losers of almost every thing but our individual self-respect, which has inspired both foes with the ardor and courage born within us as Americans. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Narkom, for the moment I thought you were fooling," he said in a tone of deep interest. "But I see now that you are quite in earnest, although the thing sounds so preposterous, a child might be expected to scoff at it. A man to get a magic belt, to put it on, and then to melt away? Why, the 'Seven-league Boots' couldn't be a greater tax on one's credulity. Sit down and tell me all ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... with an uplifting power which is imparted to those who bathe according to the rules which many years of experience have prescribed. Many physicians refuse to verify the waters' virtues; some openly scoff. But the fact stands that every year hundreds who come helpless cripples walk jauntily to the station on their departure, and many thousands of sufferers from rheumatic ills and the wear and tear of strenuous living return to their homes restored. I myself can testify to the surprising recuperative ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... humble, would have had neither the will nor the power to ride a-horseback; but he, against the advice of all his friends, listened only to the voice of courage, braved the fiery suns of June and August, which were the dread of the youngest knights, and made a scoff of those who could not bear the heat, although many a time, during the passage of narrow and difficult swampy places, he was constrained to get himself held on by those about him." After an obstinate struggle, and at the intervention of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... ferocious; and his curses, as they rolled up half smothered from his huge chest, were deeper and more diabolical by far than their own. He even jeered at them; but, however disgusting his frown, there was something truly apalling in the dark gleam of his scoff, which threw them at an immeasurable distance behind him, in the power of displaying on the countenance ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... blasted Paradise, and seek shelter in the lower world." But Carlyle held to the "banner with a strange device," and was either deaf or indignant. The visits passed, with satirical references from both host and hostess; for Mrs. Carlyle, who could herself abundantly scoff and scold, would allow the liberty to no one else. Jeffrey meanwhile was never weary of well-doing. Previous to his promotion as Lord Advocate and consequent transference to London, he tried to negotiate for Carlyle's appointment as his successor in the editorship of the Review, but failed ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... gone abroad that I am in correspondence with France; that I am a traitor to Holland; that I correspond with the Spanish at Antwerp. In vain have I tried to force an open accusation, in order that I might disperse it. The merchants, and others of my rank, scoff at these rumours, and have in full council denounced their authors as slanderers; but the lower class still hold to their belief. Men scowl as I walk along; the boys shout 'Traitor!' after me; and I have ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." —Pudd'nhead ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rather on the equally strenuous struggle farther south round Arras under Foch. For the line of battle stretched north from the Albert plateau for a hundred miles, and we can hardly claim that the boys and the middle-aged men, at whom some were inclined to scoff, in Flanders were the pick of the German troops sent into the fray. The glory of the defence consisted rather in the resistance of better troops to superior numbers backed by a vast preponderance of artillery. The estimates of the ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... the North and South; they talked and laid links in the West; Till the waters rose o'er Ararat's tees, and the aching wrists could rest— Could rest till that blank, blank canvasback, heard the Devil jeer and scoff, As he flew with the flood-fed olive branch, "Dry ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... thy juniors in gallantry scoff, Never heed how perverse affidavits may thwart thee, But show the young Misses thou'rt scholar enough To translate "Amor Fortis" a love, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the damsel turning right, "And what say you, my noble lord ?" quoth she. He taunting said, "I that am slow to fight Will follow far behind, the worth to see Of this your terrible and puissant knight," In scornful words this bitter scoff gave he. "Good reason," quoth the king, "thou come behind, Nor e'er compare thee ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... skilled preacher in the pulpit, he simply led you captive by his earnestness and evident thorough belief in all that he uttered; so that "those who came to scoff, remained to pray." No hard, metallic repetition by rote was his; but the plain, unvarnished story of the gospel which he felt and of whose truth he was assured, animated by a broad spirit of Protestantism that led him to extend ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of the man in the broad-brimmed hat grew grave. Scoff as he might among the men of the district when the serious ones voiced their fears to him, his own thoughts always came back to those fears. From the Red River Valley to the foothills long-smouldering ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... example of a gentleman very well known, some air of philosophy in it? He married, being well advanced in years, having spent his youth in good fellowship, a great talker and a great jeerer, calling to mind how much the subject of cuckoldry had given him occasion to talk and scoff at others. To prevent them from paying him in his own coin, he married a wife from a place where any one finds what he wants for his money: "Good morrow, strumpet"; "Good morrow, cuckold"; and there was not anything wherewith he more commonly and openly entertained those who came to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... mistake to suppose that it is the parent of modern English. This has been formed upon the dialect of Mercia, that of the Midland Counties; and it cannot be too strongly impressed upon strangers who may be inclined to scoff at West Country expressions as inaccurate and vulgar, that before the Norman Conquest our language was that of the Court, and but for the seat of Government having been fixed in London might be so still; that ...
— A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire • Wadham Pigott Williams
... Fourth Reader Class, when we all with one accord turned against "Teacher's Pet." Teacher's Pet might be dowered with all the virtues, but we of the commonality would have none of them. We chose to scoff at an excellence that ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... destroy that greatness. Once disunited, we are no longer great. The nations of the earth who have looked upon you as a formidable Power, and rising to untold and immeasurable greatness in the future, will scoff at you. Your flag, that now claims the respect of the world, that protects American property in every port and harbor of the world, that protects the rights of your citizens everywhere, what will become ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... and feared from shore to shore, The wrath of Heaven o'ertook thee in thy pride; Thou sitt'st a ghastly shadow; by thy side Thy once strong arms hang nerveless evermore. And they who quailed but now Before thy lowering brow, Devote thy memory to scorn and shame, And scoff at the pale, powerless thing thou art. And they who ruled in thine imperial name, Subdued, and standing sullenly apart, Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign, And shattered at a blow the ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... had fought several tough fights with certain lads who had dared to scoff at his red hair. Sam Jefferson, who lived down on the quay, still bore the marks of one such battle in the absence of two front teeth. But he did not take affront from womenkind. He looked over their heads, and went his ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Ellen, and swoon'd in his arms, But the PAINT-KING, he scoff'd at her pain. "Prithee, love," said the monster, "what mean these alarms?" She hears not, she sees not the terrible charms, That ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... must be confessed that going to and from school Peter was prone to lay down both books and hat, oftentimes in the mud, and square himself pugnaciously if he chanced to meet one of the boys of the "Vly Market," who were wont to scoff and tease the Broadway boys unmercifully; and fierce battles were the frequent outcome of the feeling between the two sections, and in those Peter ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... neighbours scoff, and her menace, But saddened friends grieve at her sore disgrace, Love, through their heart, in fervour rills, Each one respects this plaintivest of girls; And many a pitying soul a prayer said, That some great miracle might yet be made In favour of this ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... care about any more, but if you will let me talk to you about something— See here, Anna. Yes, I mean Anna. What nonsense for us to attempt to keep up the Miss Moore and Mr. Sanderson business. I used to scoff at love at first sight and say it was all the idle fancy of the poets. Then I met you and remained to pray. You've turned my world topsy-turvy. I can't think without you, and yet it would be folly to tell this ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... on and ceased to scoff. Money is a great dignifier, and Jim and 'Lias were making money. There had been some sniffs when the latter had hinged the front gate and whitewashed his mother's cabin, but even that had been accepted now ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... know a fellow, know his every mood and whim, You begin to find the texture of the splendid side of him; You begin to understand him, and you cease to scoff and sneer, For with understanding always prejudices disappear. You begin to find his virtues and his faults you cease to tell, For you seldom hate a fellow when you know ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... Tama,[FN127] but only as properties of matter. He acknowledged gross matter (Sthulasharir), and atomic matter (Shukshma-sharir), but not Linga-sharir, or the archetype of bodies. To doubt all things was the foundation of his theory, and to scoff at all who would not doubt was the corner-stone of his practice. In debate he preferred logical and mathematical grounds, requiring a categorical "because" in answer to his "why?" He was full of ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... looking-glass; it was the only piece of furniture of the sort that I had yet seen among them. The woman who owned it was, I am sorry to say, peculiarly untidy and dirty, and so were her children: so that I felt rather inclined to scoff at the piece of civilized vanity, which I should otherwise have greeted as ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... confirmed by a group of disappointed ladies in the churchyard, who said it was a most beautiful church inside, but that they had not seen it because it was shut. We proved the fact by trying the door, and then we came away consoling ourselves with the scoff that it was probably closed for the races. At the bookseller's, where we stopped to buy some photographs of the interior of the church we had not seen, we lamented our disappointment, and the salesman said, "Perhaps it was closed for the races." ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... taste that I cannot get rid of at my pleasure, not a desire that I do not scoff at, not a hope that does not make me smile or laugh. I ask myself why I stir, why I go hither or thither, why I give myself the odious trouble of earning money, since it does not amuse ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... all about Thorberg, he did not scoff, nor laugh, nor take it seriously either. He just considered it, with one large hand grasping his beard. "Well," he said, "some people have the gift, there's no doubt, and if your Thorberg had it not, all her mummeries would avail her nothing. You ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... the galleries of the New Art, not to scoff, but in earnest desire for enlightenment as to this thing which is so near to consciousness and yet so far. ...
— The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition • Cora Lenore Williams
... as always, my hand on the lock, The cap on the nipple, the hammer full cock; It is rusty, some tell me; I heed not the scoff; It is battered and bruised, but it always ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... notions from some source, and might have continued to scoff at religion to the last but for the experience of his intimate friend, a youth named Almond, whose life was changed by witnessing one day the happy death of a Christian believer. Decided to be a Christian himself, it was some time before he mustered ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... kinds of knowledge in use: the knowledge of arms, and the knowledge of books. The first is the scoff if the wise, whilst ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... en fergit de distress, En dem w'at stan's by ter scoff, For de harder de pullin', de longer de res', En de bigger de feed in ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... persuade mankind to live and die without religion. Suppose he had proved to the world's satisfaction that all religion is a hoax, and all men professing it are liars, how does that comfort me in my hour of sorrow? Scoffing will not sustain a man in his solitude, when he has nobody to scoff at; and disbelief is only a bottomless tub, which will not float me across the dark river. If Infidels intend to convert the world, they must give us some positive system of truth which we can believe, and ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... firmly, "and down in your soul, Braden, you believe it too. We all believe it, even the scientists who scoff. We can't help believing it. It is that which makes good men and women of us, which keeps us as children to the end. It isn't honour or nobility of character that makes us righteous, but the fear of God. It isn't death that ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Slick," he said, "I use no disguises, and it does not become a professing man like you to jeer and scoff because I reprove the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... including many officials of high estate gathered to witness it. A roaring fire was built in a pit over the mouth of which eight men held the great sack, which rolled, and beat about before the wind as it filled and took the form of a huge ball. The crowd was unbelieving and cynical, inclined to scoff at the idea that mere smoke would carry so huge a construction up into the sky. But when the signal was given to cast off, the balloon rose with a swiftness and majesty that at first struck the crowd dumb, then moved it to cheers of amazement and admiration. It went up six thousand feet and ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... did the damsel rebuke and scoff at Sir Beaumains, and would not suffer him to sit at her table. "I marvel," said the Green Knight to her, "that ye thus chide so noble a knight, for truly I know none to match him; and be sure, that whatsoever he appeareth ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... we fear not scoff or smile At meek attire of blue and grey, For the proud wrath that thrills our isle Gives faith and force ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... it out o' yer wages; she 's dreadful close," chuckled Captain Pharo, as we tucked the bag of meal away on the carriage floor. "See when ye'll scoff in my sails, and block up the ship's channel ag'in! Now then; touch and go is a good pilot," and we struck off on a divergent road ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... circumstances have been uniformly comfortable realise that the stomach is the real seat of self-respect, courage, dignity, good manners, and the higher sort of honour, not to mention the spirits and emotions. Most would scoff at the suggestion, of course, feeling that it showed the low nature of the suggester. And the thing of it is they cannot possibly test the truth of it. For, given an average share of self-control and will-power, any educated person can starve him or herself ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... gyves that bind mankind And strives to strike them off Shall gain the hissing hate of fools, Thorns, and the ingrate's scoff. ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... some new revelation, some fresh Gospel, some sign or miracle. If we use not the means given us, neither shall we be persuaded though one rose from the dead. It is sometimes the fashion in these days to sneer at the preacher, or to listen with a polite contempt. God grant that those "who come to scoff, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... you scoff at my words," murmured the old man, in soft, steady tones, "and yet there was no one to tell me on my way here that a son and heir had been born to the house of Kingsland within ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming |
