"Smirk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Keren Happuch's work and feel nothing added to her toil," was the sharp response. "Small use are her hands in any kitchen. We had better make up our minds to wed her to a fine gentleman, who wants naught of his wife but to dress up in grand gowns, and smirk and simper over her fan; for no useful work will he get out of her. If rushes are wanted, she had better go quickly ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... One of the army carried a bright green bucket, on which were painted in white letters the words "Cyclone Al. Wolmann." A moment later there was another, though a far lesser, uproar, as Kid Brady, his pleasant face wearing a self-conscious smirk, ducked under the ropes and sat ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... avoiding such curiosity,—reasons well enough founded, for instantly grins, broader than before, widened the mouths of the two married ladies, while even Miss Thrale began a titter that half choaked her, and Augusta, nodding to me with an arch smirk, said, "Miss Burney, I ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... grew dim with rapture, alarm, and ineffable delight. I was ashamed in presence of the old woman, who began to smirk and wink odiously, and I flew like an arrow to the loneliest nook of the garden. There I threw myself on the grass beneath the hazel-bushes and read the note again, repeating the words by heart, and then re-reading them over and over, while the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... (Sends a glance to the Vaynor man, who tries vainly to combine a mouthful of ice pudding, a smirk of self-satisfaction, a glare of intense devotion, and the stolidity ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... now y'are entered; see the coddled cook Runs from his torrid zone to pry and look And bless his dainty mistress: see The aged point out, "This is she Who now must sway The house (love shield her) with her yea and nay": And the smirk butler thinks it Sin in's napery not to express his wit; Each striving to devise Some gin wherewith to catch ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... coming round," said Meagle with a smirk. "By the time I have done with him he will be a confirmed believer. Well, who will go and get some water? Will ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... Charles, tauntingly, with a wink at his companions; "a pretty piece of heraldry, a bold escutcheon, a dainty poniard—pale as a lily, and how he did sigh and drop his lids and smirk and smirk and dance your latest galliard to surpass De Grammont. Ask brother James how ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... there came to him for the first time that hatred of inequalities which, repulsive though it is in theory, is yet the true nerver of the strong right arm of progress. It is as characteristic of the homely, human countenance of Democracy as the supercilious smirk is of the homely, inhuman countenance of caste. Arthur did not want to get up where Ross was seated in such elegant state; he wanted to tear Ross, all the Rosses down. "The damn fool!" he fumed. "He goes lounging about, wasting ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... was a young man of Dunbar, Who playfully poisoned his Ma; When he'd finished his work, He remarked with a smirk, "This will cause ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... just escaped from the string. Then he raged and swore, said he was being mocked at, dabbed his hat on his head, and made a pretence of gathering up his samples and rushing off. The mayor watched the scene with a quiet smirk on his face: he knew that he would somehow get the trousers. I have no doubt that he did have them, but I walked out instead of waiting to see the end of the battle. When I returned, the haggling was over, the hostess and the pedlar were on the most affable terms, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... said with his vain smirk. "No weight whatever. This entire platform together with its huts is lighter than air. If I should tear loose this little door it would float out of my hands instantly and go straight up to the stars. The substance—I have called ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... saw that we were talking of the boy, her interest in the conversation vanished, even more quickly than her appetite. She had to go, she said suddenly; she was so sorry, and the discontented curiosity of her look gave place again to the smirk of ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... arrival, he found that everything appeared to be in great confusion; indeed an event was occurring which had astonished the whole household; the butler made a profound bow to the captain; the footmen forgot their usual smirk when he alighted. Captain Delmar was ushered in solemn silence into the drawing-room, and his aunt, who had notice of his arrival received him with a stiff, prim air of unwonted frigidity, with her arms crossed before her on her ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... apprehensions of gentlemen of your appearance," said the divine, with a smirk. "It is ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... not a traitor to your mind. Who, knowing innocence in danger, dares Not turn his eye, for fear of smirk, or stares, By other courts, is Justice's statue blind, That to the wall, not Bench, should be assigned. Oft, Precedent is Folly with gray hairs; So you, recalling Junius, heard the prayers Of friendless Stilow; ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... of us smirk in a chiffon shop, and some of us teach in a school; Some of us help with the seat of our pants to polish an office stool; The merits of somebody's soap or jam some of us seek to explain; But all of us wonder what we'll do when we have to ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... and living soft, Grew plump and able-bodied; Until the grave churchwarden doff'd, The parson smirk'd and nodded. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Matterhorn. Often, indeed, his vanity leads him to imagine the thing done, and he admits by winks and blushes that he is a bad one. But at the bottom of all that tawdry pretence there is usually nothing more material than an oafish smirk at some disgusted shop-girl, or a scraping of shins under the table. Let any woman who is disquieted by reports of her husband's derelictions figure to herself how long it would have taken him to propose to her if left to his own enterprise, and then let her ask herself if so pusillanimous a creature ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... down for hours and hours, Tells that our globe, this quivering crystal world, Is slowly dying. What if, seconds hence, When I am very old, yon shimmering dome Come drawing down and down, till all things end?" Then with a weazen smirk he proudly felt No other mote of God had ever gained Such giant ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... help 'em!) 'at wander throo th' streets, An cut sich a dash an a swell,— Who simper an smirk at each chap 'at they meet, Flingin baits to drag victims to Hell. They may laff, they may shaat, they may join in a dance, They may spooart ther fine clooas an seem gay; But ther's sorrow within,—yo ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... Ocklebourne, with a smirk at her hostess, who was supremely uncomfortable, "and I do so want to know your dear wife, bishop. So does Major Joicy. He's tremendously interested in the Something Society, which looks after the poor black things out in Nigeria—that ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... matter what a girl might be doing, she began hurriedly to do something else the moment she spied Witherspoon coming toward her. The quick signs of flirtation, signals along the downward track of morality, subsided whenever this ruler came within sight; and the smirk bargain-counter miss would actually turn from the grinning idiocy of the bullet-headed fellow who had come in to admire her and would deign to wait on a poorly dressed woman who had failed ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... a stupid-looking young fellow with a sly, twisted smirk which gives him the appearance of perpetually winking his eye, detaches himself from a group on the right. All join in with urging exclamations: "Go on, Peters! Go to it! Pedal up, Pete! Give us a rag! That's the boy, ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... pleasure.] Rejoicing. — N. rejoicing, exultation, triumph, jubilation, heyday, flush, revelling; merrymaking &c. (amusement) 840; jubilee &c. (celebration) 883; paean, Te Deum &c. (thanksgiving) 990[Lat]; congratulation &c. 896. smile, simper, smirk, grin; broad grin, sardonic grin. laughter (amusement) 840. risibility; derision &c. 856. Momus; Democritus the Abderite[obs3]; rollicker[obs3]. V. rejoice, thank one's stars, bless one's stars; congratulate oneself, hug oneself; rub one's hands, clap one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... with a hideous smirk. He had directed the Emperor's attention to the mosaic pavement in the steward's room, and had shamelessly accused Keraunus of having offered to sell him a work that belonged to the palace, contrasting ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seemed fantastic, and fantastic indeed was his end. Milburgh, with his perpetual smirk, his little stoop, his broad, fat face and half-bald head; Mrs. Rider, a pale ghost of a woman who flitted in and out of the story, or rather hovered about it, never seeming to intrude, yet never wholly separated from its tragic process; Ling Chu, imperturbable, ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... he would make a mistake and were ready to jeer and laugh at him. But to our great annoyance his salute was perfect, affectedly perfect. As he came back to the ranks he leered horribly at the Sergeant and then looked at us with a smirk ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... around. No matter what happened, he was always cheerful. Nobody ever heard of his losing his temper, though to be sure he was sometimes the means of other peoples losing theirs. But let a body be as angry as he pleased with Mr. Frog, Mr. Frog would continue to smile and smirk. ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... go near her so long as that odious actor is hanging about. His smirk at me the other ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... football team of my old school. The lout with the sheepish smirk, holding the ball, is myself as I was before the cares ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... fact, during my last visit I found that Alexyei Sergyeitch had aged very greatly; even the pupils of his eyes had acquired a milky hue—like that in infants—and on his lips there appeared not the discerning smile of former days, but that strainedly-sweet, unconscious smirk which never leaves the faces of very old ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... fat Hindu money-lender, his folded account-book in a cloth under his arm. With an oily smirk: 'It is well to be kind to ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... seemed dreary and forlorn by day, it was far more so by night. The faded figures in the tapestry had an uncanny look; especially one, a hunter, who might have passed for an assassin, just taking aim at his victim. The smile on his startlingly red lips, in reality only a self-satisfied smirk, was fairly devilish in that light, and his ghastly face horribly life-like. The lamp burned dimly in the damp heavy air, the wind sighed and moaned along the corridors, and strange, frightful sounds came from the deserted chambers close at ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... easily and simply she carried herself in a dress and a company entirely strange to her. She had no mauvaise honte, for she made no pretence; she was not self-conscious, for she deceived nobody; she did not smirk nor make herself in any way ridiculous. She was still herself, put in a position where—as she had the wit to see—staidness was the natural thing; therefore staid she was. I would have defied any fine gentleman of London to have known her for the little half-naked peasant ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Corp's house she found husband and wife at home, the baby in his father's arms; what is more, Gavinia was looking on smiling and saying, "You bonny litlin, you're windy to have him dandling you; and no wonder, for he's a father to be proud o'." Corp was accepting it all with a complacent smirk. Oh, agreeable change since last we were in this house! oh, happy picture of domestic bliss! oh—but no, these are not the words; what we meant to say was, "Gavinia, you limmer, so you have got the better of that man of ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... a lawyer. When customers did not die, it was pastime to be dallying with the living. In adding up a bill with haste, how many times will four and four make nine? They generally did with Jehu. The best are liable to errors. It cost a smirk or smile; Jehu had hundreds at command, and the accident was amended. How easy is it sometimes to give no bill at all! How very easy to apply, a few months afterwards, for second payment; how much more easy still to pocket it without a word; or, if discovered and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... midst of her distress she put on a complacent smirk, straightened her emaciated form, and sat there, looking like the very ghost of pride, wrapped in an old ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... waiting for them—an oily smirk on a face smooth save where a thin fringe of white whiskers dangled from his jaw-bone, ear to ear; fat, damp hands rubbing in anticipation of the large fee that was to repay him for celebrating the marriage and for keeping quiet about ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... the same rule in art, only varying the objects—are smirking. In fact,' said Miss La Creevy, sinking her voice to a confidential whisper, 'there are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk; and we always use the serious for professional people (except actors sometimes), and the smirk for private ladies and gentlemen who don't care so ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Dalton. Then, catching the trace of a smirk in Hank's eyes, the rascal shook his fist at the ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... to the picture—an afterthought, I understand, and scarcely a fortunate one; at least in the manner of its presentment. The figure is cleverly merged in half shadow, but the treatment of the face is brusque, and a most unpleasant smirk distorts the child's mouth. It is the portrait of the mother that carries the picture, and its superiority to many of Miss Beaux's portraits consists in the sympathy with her subject which the painter has displayed."—Charles ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... For a smirk of the face, or a favor, Still shelters the cheat where he crawls; And the truth we began with needs braver ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... wore a white cravat, and no collar. He had light hair closely cut, and his face was as smooth as a woman's. His shirt was whiter than any shirt I have ever seen before or since, and it was made of very fine material. He carried an agreeable smirk upon his countenance, and he disinterred, now and then, some very long and extraordinary word from the dictionary, when he was particularly desirous either to make himself understood or conceal his meaning. I had almost omitted to add, that he was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Except for the unmistakable smirk which fatigue had clawed into her plastic young mouth-lines there was certainly nothing special the matter ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the novice's smirk," she remarked. "A moment ago I heard him tell his neighbour that he preferred not to discuss the war. He probably thinks that there is a ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... your cousin Martin!" said the man, advancing upon them with a smirk that was like ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... felt the little seeking mouth at her breast, although it was as if a stream of icy-cold water were running down her. But then, when her husband had appeared, had placed himself near the bed in which she lay so feeble, so weak, so at his mercy, and had said with such a satisfied smirk, "Psia krew, we've done that well!" then she could not restrain herself any longer. She had uttered a cry, a feeble, plaintive, yet piercing cry, and had [Pg 26] reared herself up with her last strength, so that the little creature on her breast had begun to whimper ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... was smiling at the idea of all this brandy drunk at the expense of another. He was smiling the contented smirk of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... replied a brisk young man, with a bright eye, peculiar smirk, spotted neckcloth, and gray gaiters with pearl buttons. "Cars ready for Boston and way stations. All aboard. Now's your time—quick, or you'll lose ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... in the town. Would yer like Darlin' fer a bridesmaid—and grog and angel-cake? Me jest settin' ready ter kiss yer every time yer passes it. I 'm blowed! You are wickeder than ol' Flint's lantern. It must be Red Joe. Him with the smirk! There 's a young feller 'round here, Betsy, as wants ter look out ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... plays. Thought you was some stuff, didn't you?" The man paused for breath, and Connie scrutinized his face, but could not remember to have seen him before. He shifted his glance to the other, who had returned to the edge of the bunk, and was regarding him with a sneering smirk. ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... As though an artificer, after contriving {200} A wheel-work image as if it were living, Should find with delight it could motion to strike him! So found the Duke, and his mother like him: The lady hardly got a rebuff— That had not been contemptuous enough, With his cursed smirk, as he nodded applause, And kept off ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... effect on Felix. For a moment the knife trembled in his grasp with an almost irresistible impulse. He could hardly restrain himself, as he heard those horrible, incredible words, and saw the loathsome smirk on the speaker's face by which they were accompanied, from leaping then and there at the savage's throat, and plunging his blade to the haft into the vile creature's body. But by a violent effort he mastered his indignation and wrath for the present. Planting himself full in front of Tu-Kila-Kila, ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... dignity of wifehood; but the dignity bore traces of diligent rehearsal, and left singularly little to the imagination. By her side, Scott, looking down upon his fellow townsmen, wore the self-conscious smirk of a sheepish schoolboy; and the best of his fellow townsmen respected him the more on that account. Catia was the more impressive of the two, they told themselves; but there was no especial sense in a pair of young things like these, trying to act as if their getting married ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... drover thought he would get it thrown at his head. However, O'Hagan rose to his feet, made a bow to the company, and made an apology to the drover. He stood there, a blackguard on the face of him, but a gentleman in spite of that undefinable and vaguely repulsive smirk which played about his straight and refined mouth. He ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... his back, "Our old forefathers went through worse trials than this when they eat their cartridge boxes and friz themselves at Valley Forge," and he fingered some of them bows and ornaments on his breast agin with a vain, conceited smirk of satisfaction. I wuz at my wits' end; I glanced at the door; there wuz no lock on it; what should I do? Religion and common sense wouldn't move him, and as for my sharpest weepon—good vittles—here I wuz hampered, I couldn't cook 'em for ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... passed like the stings of scorpions through Waverley's sensorium, the worthy divine was startled in a long disquisition on the battle of Falkirk by the ghastliness which they communicated to his looks, and asked him if he was ill? Fortunately the bride, all smirk and blush, had just entered the room. Mrs. Williams was none of the brightest of women, but she was good-natured, and readily concluding that Edward had been shocked by disagreeable news in the papers, interfered so judiciously, that, without exciting suspicion, she drew off Mr. Twigtythe's ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... spots which many small pictures had left on the walls, paintings by famous masters of the XVIII century. The banded brigand must also have passed these by as too insignificant to carry off, but the smirk illuminating the Count's face ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... cried one of the women. She was dressed as a Spanish dancer and in one hand held a tambourine and castanets. "They fight," she gave a little smirk of vanity, "about me." ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... he said with a smirk and bow, taking off his broad brimmed hat, and running his fingers through his hair, making it fluff out more than ever, "I have lost a bolt out of part of my wagon, and I'm afraid to go on lest I break down. It dropped somewhere in the dust, but I ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... Toad used to smirk and stare about the room; and whenever they didn't laugh or jest enough with her, she would plant herself right in the middle of the floor, and turn herself about in all her finery to attract notice, and ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... himself; and that was the funniest thing of all, for he turned his head up, down, from side to side, and drew in his chin with prinky little jerks and tilts. He would stretch his neck, throw up his head, turn it to one side and smirk—actually smirk, the most complacent and self-satisfied smirk that anyone ever saw on the face of a bird. It was so comical that Freckles and the Angel told the Bird Woman of ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... is there much difference of sm in smooth, smug, smile, smirk, smite; which signifies the same as to strike, but is a softer word; small, smell, smack, smother, smart, a smart blow properly signifies such a kind of stroke as with an originally silent motion, implied in sm, proceeds ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... response of the black, with a significant smirk upon his lip, and with a cunning emphasis; "enty I see; wha' for I hab eye ef I no see wid em? I 'speck young misses hab no 'jection for go too—eh, Mass Ra'ph! all you hab for do ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... would have to tell more fibs, and brand new ones, too, since not even a blind man would believe him ill now! It was something of a coincidence that Don should run across Walton in the corridor a few minutes later. Don was for passing by with no recognition of the other, but Walton, with a smirk, placed himself fairly ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... work No burning faith I find; The deeper thinkers sneer and smirk, And give my toil no mind; From nod and wink I read they think That I am ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... herself was of a nondescript type, not a real personage, clever, good-looking, tasteful, a social climber. The two Simms children (little girls) had been taught all the social graces of the day—to pose, smirk, genuflect, and the like, to the immense delight of their elders. The nurse in charge was in uniform, the governess was a much put-upon person. Mrs. Simms had a high manner, eyes for those above her only, a serene contempt for the commonplace world ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... say the man was expensively dressed in a flashy way. His oily, pimple-garnished face wreathed itself in a smirk of patronising familiarity, and with the bow of a dancing master he advanced. I saw her give a quick start, bite her lip and shrink back. "Good for you, little girl," I thought. But the man was in no way ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... too well," said Humphreys with his ghastly smirk. "You think that I care too much for appearances. I do. It is a weakness of mine which comes from ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... gray, set smirk, and his eyes took on a steely glint. He knew when the naked, unadorned truth was spoken to him. Words came slowly to his lips, but he said: "You'll be glad to come to me for ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... around as Jimmie quietly slipped away. Baxter leaned over the table to smirk into the face ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... square, and he had a very firm pair of bow-legs, which in some men is not displeasing. He knew his job; his voice rolled like the deep notes of an organ; we knew what he meant for us to do, and we did it. The other man was narrow and chicken-breasted, his long legs weak, his smile a smirk, his pronunciation so affected that we disgraced him because we blundered from pure lack of comprehension. Why is it that men's outsides so often correspond to their innards? And how did the latter of these two get his job? I suppose he has done ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... or two interesting scenes. The best actor was he who represented the blind man. The chief actress is an overgrown dame, all fat and dimples, who kept up a constant sobbing and heaving of her chest, yet never getting rid of an eternal smirk upon her face. A bolero, danced afterwards by two Spanish damsels in black and silver, was ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... orange, wasn't he? But he was very good, I thought. Dress your ladies in cheerful dresses, not quite so vulgar as Chalon's. . . . I heard from my sister that you had finished Wilkinson to the perfect content of all: I had charged her particularly not to allow Mrs. W. to intercede for any smirk or alteration whatever. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... carefully folding and arranging his garment. In the course of this, and in moving about the narrow cabin, he took apparently casual glances at Baxter and the Frenchman, and I saw from his satisfied, quiet smirk that each was sound and fast asleep. And then he thrust his feet into a pair of bedroom slippers, as loud in their colouring as his pyjamas, and suddenly turning down the lamp with a twist of his wicked-looking fingers, he glided out of the door ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... brothers, Reuben and Burke And Nathan and Jotham and Solomon, lurk Around the corner to see him work,— Sitting cross-legged, like a Turk, Drawing the waxed end through with a jerk, And boring the holes with a comical quirk Of his wise old head, and a knowing smirk. But vainly they mounted each other's backs, And poked through knot-holes and pried through cracks; With wood from the pile and straw from the stacks He plugged the knot-holes and calked the cracks; And a bucket of water, which one would think He ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... shouting, and ushers responding, gradually subsided into a whisper of, "That's Jorrocks! That's Cheatum!" as the belligerent parties took their places by their respective counsel. Silence having been called and procured, Mr. Smirk, a goodish-looking man for a lawyer, having deliberately unfolded his brief, which his clerk had scored plentifully in the margin, to make the attorney believe he had read it very attentively, rose to address ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... social successes in London, they had been reluctant to meet her. Now, they put on their best clothes, and precipitated themselves into the Manor grounds like a flock of sheep seeking land on which to graze,—all wearing their sweetest propitiatory smirk—all gushing forth their admiration of "that darling Lady Errington"—all behaving themselves in the exceptionally funny manner that county people affect,—people who are considered somebodies ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... The body belonging to this prepossessing face was swollen and unshapely, and its owner moved with a limp and a muttered curse towards the place assigned him. He was followed by a sallow-faced, long-nosed man, with black oily hair and an affected smirk which twitched the corners of his thin lips. Singling out his master's family with a furtive glance from a pair of sinister greenish eyes, he made a low bow and stepped ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... polite," he growled. "By God, I'll be polite! One may be suffering the tortures of the damned, but one must smirk ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... aristocratic disrespect for homely & unpretending English. Every time I use "go back" you get out your polisher & slick it up to "return." "Return" is suited only to the drawing-room—it is ducal, & says itself with a simper & a smirk. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a long breath. She had not recognized him! The dim light of the candle showed him that the same dazed expression still remained in her faded eyes. The smirk on her face, the crouch of her emaciated figure, about which the rags swirled in the wind, the dismal hut, and the loneliness of her surroundings, made such a picture of woe that Everett shuddered and hastened to get the information, ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... Paine, somewhat hard to draw out of his shell; Bonnycastle, Dr. George Fordyce, Mr. George Anderson, Dr. Geddes, and a host of other prominent artists, scientists, and literary men. Their meetings were informal. They gathered together to talk about what interested them, and not to simper and smirk, and give utterance to platitudes and affectations, as was the case with the society to which Mary had lately been introduced. The people with whom she now became acquainted were too earnest to lay undue stress on ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... smirk, and a blush on her face, "I'll promise to wed the boy Who takes me to-morrow to Epsom Race!" (Which I would ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... mouth down at the corners; deceit had given it a foolish smirk; spite had plowed an ugly frown in her brow; while she had tried so many arts to make her rich brown skin as delicately white as Hilda's, that it was changed to the ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... hall and adjacent rooms all manner of cloaking and shawling was going on, and the Barchester folk were getting themselves gone. Mrs Proudie did her best to smirk at each and every one, as they made their adieux, but she was hardly successful. Her temper had been tried fearfully. By slow degrees, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... chances do great events turn! But for the brown paper in my bag, there would have been a catastrophe. As it was, when his eye lighted on that rough, globular paper parcel he handed me my bag with an apologetic smirk and received his own in exchange. But after that, I kept my property in my hand until I was safe within the ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... within four feet of her, she perceived that this was an illusion created by the proportion and thickness of his body. He was, in fact, half a head taller than she, and Stella stood five feet five. His gray eyes met hers squarely, with a cool, impersonal quality of gaze. There was neither smirk nor embarrassment in his straightforward glance. He was, in effect, "sizing her up" just as he would have looked casually over a logger asking him for a job. Stella sensed that, and resenting it momentarily, failed to match his manner. She flushed. Fyfe ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... arch smirk on her countenance, and she continued looking at me with so much latent meaning in the expression of her eye, that I was fairly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... was an arched alcove closed in by deep red curtains, and containing a lofty four-post bedstead with a kind of grand baldacchino covering it in. The sight of this reminded me that I had been six hours on horseback, and undressing with a self-satisfied smirk on my ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... all my moral superiority betraying itself in the self-satisfied smirk which fixed itself on my face in accordance with the sense of duty which the Philistine feels so keenly in ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... lugs at this appeal, and, looking as wise as if he had been Solomon's nephew, gave a knowing smirk, and said— ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... reckoning, Dent, but the cleverest part of the business was letting old Parrish think he'd got away from me. I knew he'd telephone Lucille. You know, I always had the brains of the outfit, Dent," he continued, with a smirk of self-satisfaction. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... will as surely meet with no unpleasant encounter, nor be compelled to forego the search from fear of mortification, as they trace their family line through long generations of intelligent American farmers. Superficial 'Young America' and 'our best society' may smirk, snicker, sneer, and live on, slaves to fashion and the whims of Mrs. Grundy, in their fancied secure social position for all time. But ere long the balance of man's better judgment, the best society of great men, and representatives for history of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Tourniquet and Tuci," said the Frau Kupferkram one morning, with a duck and a smirk, "do us the honour of supping with us this evening? There will be a few friends, for this is the 'nahmenstag' of our dear Gottlob, now ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... the mood: There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk, The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth, The titter stifled in the hollow palm Which rubbed the eye-brow and caressed the nose, When I first told my tale; they meant, you know— 'The sly one, all this we are bound believe! Well, ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... knew all about it! But that hanging up of the gittern—. One would fain have put it off, had falling hairs, and marriage-vows, and obesity have permitted it. Nay, is it not so, old friend of the grizzled beard? Dost thou not envy that smirk young knave with his five lustrums, though it goes hard with him to purchase his kid-gloves? He dines for one-and-twopence at an eating-house; but what cares Maria where he dines? He rambles through the rye with his empty pockets, and at the turn ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... It should not be just an affected smirk, but a smile of genuine friendliness for all the world. Please by wearing inconspicuous clothes that are faultless in taste, fit, and cleanliness; and of a quality suited to your vocation. Show also that you take good care of what you wear, for that makes a pleasing impression. You ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... Carvel was but just left for Upper Marlboro with a cavalcade of four coaches-and-six and some dozen gentlemen with their servants. I am sure my mistake was pardonable, Mr. Carvel," he concluded with a smirk; "this gentleman was plainly of the first quality, as was he to whom I was directed. And as he was about to leave town for I knew not how long, I hope I was in the right in bidding the black ride after him, for I give you my word the business was most pressing for him. I crave your forgiveness, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... however, for almost before the last words were out of its mouth the sloth-bear was snoring peacefully with a contented smirk on its face. ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... a near-gold ring with a smirk almost of recklessness, a plain gold ring whose worn appearance called to mind the finger taken from a dead Kurd's cartridge pouch. It may be that Measel bought it, but neither Fred nor I spoke to him again, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... bitterly disgraced and humiliated as she turned to obey; and it needed not Arthur's triumphant chuckle nor the smirk of satisfaction on Enna's face to add to the keen suffering of her wounded spirit; this slight punishment was more to her than a severe chastisement would have been to many another child; for the very knowledge of her father's ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... one drop of hot blood in you, you'd be just as thrilled as we are. Just because you've been around and around the world until you got dizzy or something, you needn't stand there with that 'See-the-little-children-play' smirk on your face. You don't really care whether we lose Pirate's Haven ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... of its triumphant union with the antique; and Raphael's grand gods and goddesses, his exquisite Eros and radiant Psyche of the Farnesina, are indeed succeeded but too soon by the Olympus of Giulio Romano, an Olympus of harlots and acrobats, who smirk and mouth and wriggle and sprawl ignobly on the walls and ceilings of the dismantled palace which crumbles away among the stunted willows, the stagnant pools, and rank grass of the marshes of Mantua. But this is no more the fault of antiquity than it is the fault of the Middle Ages; it is the fault ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... of droll fancies. She always insisted on her dolls joining our studies. It used to be a little embarrassing to me at first to see myself surrounded by the vacant waxen faces staring at us, with every variety of smirk and bland fatuous expression: the flaxen heads nid-nodded over open lesson-books, propped up in limp, leathery arms. When Flossy grew impatient for a game of play, he would drag two or three of them down with a vicious snap and a stroke of his feathery paws. Flurry would shake her head at him disapprovingly, ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the lid. Lily felt for these objects the same distaste which the prisoner may entertain for the fittings of the court-room. It was here that her aunt received her rare confidences, and the pink-eyed smirk of the turbaned Beatrice was associated in her mind with the gradual fading of the smile from Mrs. Peniston's lips. That lady's dread of a scene gave her an inexorableness which the greatest strength of character could not have produced, since it was independent ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... suppose a man, with the best pages of his life rooted out, is likely to look out upon his fellows from the point of view of a philanthropist? Do you suppose that the man, into whose soul the irons of bitterness have gnawed and eaten their way, is likely to come out with a smirk and look around him for the opportunity of doing good? Rubbish! My aim is to encourage suffering wherever I see it, to create it where I can, to make sinners and ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was a man of about thirty; tall, slender, lithe, swarthy, with thin, expressive lips that were twisted upward at one corner in an insincere smirk. This taller man came close to the wagon and paused in ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... returning manuscripts with editors' regrets, were on their way to poor devils of scribblers living in the altitude of unrecognised genius and a garret. There were cringing, fawning epistles, written with a smirk and sealed with a scowl; some there were couched in a refinement of cruelty that ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... follows the triumphant "Before and After" inscription. All the fitness has gone, all the individuality, all the clever adaptation of indigenous material, all the artistic and human interest; and a self-conscious smirk of superiority radiates over made-by-the-million factory garments instead. Whenever I see such contrasting photographs there comes over me a shamed, perverse recollection of a pair of engravings by Hogarth, usually suppressed, which a London bookseller once pulled ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... Delmour, while we stood in a respectful semi-circle before her, modestly conscious of our worth, our toes turned out, and each man's features wreathed with that politely unnatural smirk which masculine features assume when confronted by feminine beauty. "Gentlemen, on the eve of your proposed departure for Baffin Land in quest of living specimens of the five-spotted Philohela quinquemaculata, I have been instructed by Professor Bottomly ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... a pretty shade of plum. "Weener, youre a thief, a petty, cadging, sly, larcenous, pilfering, bloody thief. You take the Daily Intelligencer's honest dollars without a qualm, aye, with a smirk on your imbecile face, proposing with the cool impudence of the born embezzler to return no value for them. Weener, you forget yourself. The Intelligencer picked you out of a gutter, a nauseous, dungspattered and thoroughly fitting gutter, and pays you ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... evident that faults of training or, perhaps, of temperament, were to be set off against the actress' unquestionable merits. The elegant artificiality of the American school, a tendency to pose and be self-conscious, to smirk even, if the word may be permitted, especially when advancing to the footlights to receive a full measure of applause, were fatal to such sentiment as even so stilted a play could be made to yield. It was but too evident ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... is easily done, and it is as much to your brother as to myself. It is a letter which, methinks, Fulk would not have read out of the family, of which I may call myself one," and he gave a sort of smirk at Agnes;—"but he writes so crabbedly, that I, for one, cannot read two lines,—and I would not willingly give it to a clerk, who might be less secret. So methought, as 'twas the Baron's affair, I would even bring it here, and profit by ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had just dined at the station and drunk a little too much lay down on the velvet-covered seat, stretched himself out luxuriously, and sank into a doze. After a nap of no more than five minutes, he looked with oily eyes at his vis-a-vis, gave a smirk, and said: ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... When she laughs her loudest the look is still there. The same look can be seen in the eyes of Russian peasants; and those of us left will see it some day on Gabriel's face when he comes to blow us up. It is a look that should wither and abash man; but he has been known to smirk at it and offer flowers—with a string tied ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... with a rapier is quite another thing," he went on. He smirked and made a face at the parakeet who did its best to smirk back. "That is a graceful and fine art. Refined, and not at all degrading to ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... worth while when there are so many real women, ready made, out where I come from. This girl would be exactly the wife for you, though. Just as she is, she'd help you mince about from parlor to parlor, and smirk and jabber and waste time. She's been educating for the job ever since she was born." He laid his hand in gracious, kindly fashion on his friend's shoulder. "Think it over. And if you want my help it's yours. I can show her what a fine fellow you are, what a good husband you'd make. For ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... And I have seen a pert little whipper-snapper ask a venerable clergyman what he thought of a certain outrageous lay-preacher, and receive the clergyman's reply, that he thought most unfavorably of many of the lay-preacher's doings, with a self-conceited smirk that seemed to say to the venerable clergyman, "I have been reckoning you up: you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... told it? She was too far above me before, and now she is gone quite out of my reach. But why come and fling it in my face? Can't you give a poor, undone man one hour to draw his breath in trouble? And when you know I have got to play the host this bitter day, and smile, and smirk, and make you all merry, with my heart breaking! O Christ, look down and pity me, for men are made of stone! Well, then, no; I will not, I cannot say the word to give her up. She will discharge me, and then ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... the hotel is but a few hours, but eleven domestics range themselves in a row to wait upon our departure and to smirk and extend their palms for tips as we prepare to go. No country under the sun save the Caucasus could thus muster eleven expectant menials on the strength of one meal served and but three hours actual occupation of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... contemporaries either of Sappho or Pindar. And it is more probable that the sculptors of Aegina were still embarrassed about the modelling of lips and cheeks than that, having Homer by heart, they imagined his heroes to die silently and with a smirk. ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... smirk as he went off with it?" asked Jeremy. "Golly, he thinks we're fools! The theory is that we two had betrayed you, Rammy, and swapped the letter against his bare promise to pay us in Damascus. He chucked in a little blackmail ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... help without any injury to vanity. The majority of men love their inferiors, those whom they help; to give flatters self-esteem; but they hate their superiors, and lend to the word "patron" an intolerable smirk of condescension. Shakespeare should ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... leap I was beside Thurid, and ere the devilish smirk had faded from his handsome face I had caught him full upon the mouth with my clenched fist; and as the good, old American blow landed, the black dator shot back a dozen feet, to crumple in a heap at the foot of Kulan Tith's throne, spitting blood ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
