"Sneer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rocks, and their opinions of TO-MORROW in words just as hard, although their opinions of to-morrow may contradict their opinions of to-day.' They are fearless of personal consequences. As free men, they will think, as free men they will speak, and as such they will act, regardless of the jibe and sneer of those who accuse them of change, of inconsistency, of being mutable and unstable of purpose. The point to the march of improvement, the advance in the actualities of life, and ask, 'When every thing else is on the move, shall we stand still? Shall the opinions of ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... uttered with a kind of sneer, which was very provoking, however, I restrained my passion during the little time he stayed; but as soon as I found myself alone gave it vent in tears and exclamations,—since which I have been mere at peace within myself; for tho' I cannot say I hate him, I am now far from loving ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... know what a bad lot is exactly, but if you mean that I've lived with women and been drunk, and lost jobs because I didn't do the work, and been generally on the loose, it's true, of course. But I meant to live decently when I came home. Yes, I did. You can sneer as much as you like. Why didn't you help me? You're my sister, aren't you? And now I don't care what I do. You've all given me up. Well, give me up, and I'll just go to bits as fast as I can go! If you don't want me there are others who do, or at any rate the bit of money I've got. You've kept ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Nature gave him such a frame, His tailor such a fit, That, whether a head or a heart his aim, He always made a hit. Wherever he went, the ladies dear Would very soon adore him, And, quite of course, the lords would sneer,— But never sneer before him! Perhaps it fared with the ladies worse Than it fared with their gallants; For he broke a vow with as slight remorse As he ever broke a lance. Thus, tilting here and jilting there, He fought a foe or he fooled a fair, But little recking how; So deadly smooth, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... counsellor, or reporter of the State, Laubardemont, who had directed them in all, was at their head. Joseph often whispered to them with the most studied politeness, glancing at Laubardemont with a ferocious sneer. ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... how, in talking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time not what one wants to but what one can? Well—that was the way I painted; and as he lay there and watched me, the thing they called my 'technique' collapsed like a house of cards. He didn't sneer, you understand, poor Stroud—he just lay there quietly watching, and on his lips, through the gray beard, I seemed to hear the question: 'Are you sure you know ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to harden and solidify, and become a part of their very bone. The neighbouring towns were jealous of this honourable supremacy, and affected to sneer at Hadleyburg's pride in it and call it vanity; but all the same they were obliged to acknowledge that Hadleyburg was in reality an incorruptible town; and if pressed they would also acknowledge that the mere fact that a young man hailed from Hadleyburg was all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... come to dinner. Nice manners they learn on the Continent! But none of us wept when he declined; not even his good aunt, my wife. Though he must have got a good deal to tell us, and an extraordinary knowledge of foreign ways. But instead of doing that, he seems to sneer at us. I can look at a question from every point of view, and I defy anybody to call me narrow-minded. But still, one must draw the line somewhere, or throw overboard all principles; and I draw it, my dear Admiral, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... made very careful inquiry," he commented with a perceptible sneer. "No doubt this was a matter of deep ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... joys of domestic life, and the duties of the citizen. In short, this very moral critic will spare no one, not even infants of tender age. He lives in the Rue Mandar with a wife who might be the Mamamouchi of the Bourgeois gentilhomme and a couple of little Vernous as ugly as sin. He tries to sneer at the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where he will never set foot, and makes his duchesses talk like his wife. That is the sort of man to raise a howl at the Jesuits, insult the Court, and credit the Court party with the design of restoring feudal rights and the right ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... confident a tone of authority that the kneeling man looked up, though with a sneer on his face. "Unless you go away from this pond at once, I'll get the men from the camp, and they'll make you go. They'll not be so polite as I am. You're just poachers, anyway. And the boys will like as not just run you clean out of the country. Will you do as I ask you, or shall I go ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... at night and in the morning did not arise. Smoke weakly gained his feet, collapsed, and on hands and knees crawled about the building of a fire. But try as she would Labiskwee sank back each time in an extremity of weakness. And Smoke sank down beside her, a wan sneer on his face for the automatism that had made him struggle for an unneeded fire. There was nothing to cook, and the day was warm. A gentle breeze sighed in the spruce-trees, and from everywhere, under the disappearing snow, came the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... aware of that. There is one thing, however, that I prize even more than that, and that is my honor. Do not take the trouble to sneer. Say, what I call my honor, if it pleases you better, and I will not leave a stain upon that, even in your mind, if I can ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Hellas have their price," was the retort, with an ill-concealed sneer. "Do not trust them. Take ten talents from me ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... retorted Rosenheim, with an oily sneer, "I owe the money all right, but I don't own a thing in the world. Everything in this room belongs to my wife. The amount of money I owe is really something shocking. Even what is in the safe"—he nodded to a large affair on the other side of the ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... business which concerns our two nations. Your appearance, I presume, is due to a desire to engage the professional services of Mr. Arima. Or perhaps you were trying to find the fortune-teller upstairs." He barely repressed his sneer. ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... Armstrong has put that notion into your head, no doubt," said Miss Granger, with the faintest suspicion of a sneer. She was not very warmly attached to the lady of Hale Castle nowadays, regarding her as the chief promoter ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... glanced past her at the middle-aged maid, and surprised a peculiar expression on the face of the woman. She had been looking straight at him, and her lips were almost curled into a sneer, while her eyes were flashing with something akin ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... unfeigned respect for the memory of Falkland. Carlyle's sneer at him has always seemed to us about the most painful thing in the writings of Carlyle. Our knowledge of his public life is meagre, and is derived mainly from a writer under whose personal influence he acted, who is specially responsible for the most questionable step that he took, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... you've always claimed you was," said Crabtree, with a sneer; "but, 'cordin' to some of the things I've heard about ye, you've been a mighty sportin' young feller in your day. You've lived pretty high for a youngster, and you've had dealings with sportin' people. They tell me you don't drink, you don't gamble, you don't swear, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... place was duly locked up, Tom having refrained from making any allusions to the speculum, and the work on hand, feeling as he did that his cousin would look upon it with a contemptuous sneer. Then the keys were returned to the house, and as the two lads stood in the hall they could hear the invalid talking very loudly to Uncle Richard, evidently upon some subject in which he took ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... several places, practical reformers, as bold as Joan d'Arc, have discarded the trailing skirts, and adopted the far more convenient, equally chaste, and more elegant dresses of Oriental women. Some ridicule them; others sneer contemptuously or laugh incredulously, and others commend them for their taste and courage. We are disposed to be placed in the latter category; and to show our good-will, we present, above, a sketch of ORIENTAL ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... no reason for the resolution, and her manner, without being sullen, aggravated her brother into wrath, the effusion of which was a withering sneer. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... hearing from Holzbauer that Vogler had it, I asked him to lend it to me. "With all my heart," said he; "I will send it to you to-morrow without fail, but you won't find much talent in it." Some days after, when he saw me, he said with a sneer, "Well, did you discover anything very fine— did you learn anything from it? One air is rather good. What are the words?" asked he of some person standing near. "What air do you mean?" "Why, that ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... apparel, expressed a rejection of God's Word in her countenance and manner. In the discourse the subject was changed from the wearing of gay clothing to the practise of tobacco using. When the habit of using snuff was mentioned the plain lady's smile was turned to a sneer, and the fashionable lady's sneer was turned to a smile. Afterwards in conversation the fashionable lady said she believed it was a sin to use snuff, but she could not see any evil in wearing gay and fine clothing. ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... got a situation,' repeated Mrs Griffith, with a sneer at her husband, 'and we're not to be angry or anxious, and she's quite happy—and we can write to Charing Cross Post Office. I know what sort of a ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... rise up in one body and kill and slay, kill and slay! Dem Spanish and Portuguese sailors were quite right in making slaves. I would do de same myself, suppose I were in dere place.' 'He is only a liberated!' is a favourite sneer at the new arrivals; so in the West Indies, by a curious irony of fate, 'Willyfoss nigger' is a term of abuse addressed to a Congo or Guinea 'recaptive.' But here all the tribes are bitterly hostile to one another, and all combine against the white man. After ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... course of her experience with different department heads; and she was wise beyond her years in the ways of the world. But this situation was different. Here was a girl who had been brought up "by hand," as she would have said with a sneer a few hours before, and she would have despised her for it. She raised up on one elbow and leaned over once more to watch the delicate profile of this gentle maiden, in the dim fitful light of the city night that ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... image of the Blessed Virgin and prayed—not to the polished ivory—but to the Mother of purity whose intercession it suggested, with a fervency and constancy which only they venture to ridicule who cannot record the virtues of Mary without a sneer. ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... only way I can keep her from making me utterly ridiculous." And he proceeded to read from the secretary's telegram. "'Shopped all morning. Lunched at Martingale's with man and woman unknown to me—Martingale's,'" he repeated with a sneer—"'Motored through Park with Mrs. Wilmer until five.' Mrs. Wilmer," he exclaimed, "there's a woman I've positively ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... in a little surprise at this question. A thorough New Yorker by birth, associations, alliances and feelings, he held all the old names of the colony and State in profound respect; and I had often heard him sneer at the manner in which the newcomers of my day, who had appeared among us to blossom like the rose, scattered their odours through the land. It was but a natural thing that a community which had grown in population, in half a century, from half a million to two millions and a half, and that as ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... were painted"? — Faith, no word of black was said; The lightest touch was human blood, and that, you know, runs red. It's sticking to your fist to-day for all your sneer and scoff, And by the Judge's well-weighed word you cannot ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... jeer at me, and they'll sneer at me, and they'll call me a whiskey soak; ("Have a drink? Well, thankee kindly, sir, I don't mind if I do.") A drivelling, dirty, gin-joint fiend, the butt of the bar-room joke; Sunk and sodden and hopeless — ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... people other than ignorant foreigners who must be watched in these awful times," the matron said bitterly. "There are teachers in our colleges who sneer at patriotism just as they sneer at religion. Whisper, Miss Fielding! I am told that the very man they suspect in this dreadful thing—the American who has sold a map of this sector to the Germans—came ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... There Chang Fei, a butcher, who had been selling his meat all the morning, at noon lowered what remained into a well, placed over the mouth of the well a stone weighing twenty-five pounds, and said with a sneer: "If anyone can lift that stone and take my meat, I will make him a present of it!" Kuan Yue, going up to the edge of the well, lifted the stone with the same ease as he would a tile, took the meat, and made ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... associated with Joseph of Arimathea, and with the twelve apostles of the Lamb, if he had taken the advice of John. There might have been a fragrance around his name all these centuries. But alas! when we speak of Herod, we see a sneer on the faces of those who hear us. If one had said to Herod in those days, "Do you know that you are going to silence that great preacher, and have him beheaded?" he would have replied, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do such a thing? I never would ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... sulkily down the Naab Valley (having lost, say 15,000, not by fighting, but by mud and hardship); and the rapt European Public (shilling-gallery especially) says, with a sneer on its face, 'Pooh; ended, then!' Sulkily wending, Maillebois and Saxe (October 30th-November 7th) get across the Donau, safe on the southern bank again; march for the Iser Country and the D'Harcourt Magazines,—and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Houck had said he was going to take June to her father. But he had said it with a cynical sneer on his lips. For the girl to be Jake's wife would have been bad enough, but to be his victim without the protection of legality would be infinitely worse. And that was the lot to which June was destined. She had fought, but she could fight ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... A sneer in Prof. Pattee's history, before mentioned, recalls the fact that Hamlin Garland was also a rebel in his day and bawled for the Truth with a capital T. That was in 1893. Two years later the guardians of the national rectitude fell afoul of "Rose of Dutchers' Coolly" ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... his complete satisfaction years ago, and what was good enough for his father, in school methods, is quite good enough for him. His self-satisfaction would approach sublimity, were it not so extremely ludicrous. He has a supercilious sneer for innovations. How he can bring himself to make concessions to modernity to the extent of riding in an automobile is one of ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... to inquire why savages and barbarians are capable of producing college professors, who sneer at the source from which they sprung, we may accept for the moment the masculine hypothesis of intellectual superiority. Some women have been heard to say that they wish they had been born men, but there is no man bold enough to say that he would ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... period, he asserted, when the serious attention of the house to public affairs was more imperatively demanded, and he boldly maintained that it was the duty of their lordships to lay the true state and condition of the country before his majesty. After indulging in a quiet sneer at the care the council had bestowed upon horned cattle, he remarked, that he was glad to hear that the king had reason to believe the peace of the country would be preserved, since peace could never be more desirable to a kingdom, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... her argument. We did not interrupt her, the two brothers, the photographer, and myself listening to her with admiring glances that had more to do with her beautiful face and the music of her soft, girlish voice than with what she was saying. There was a congealed sneer on the photographer's face as he followed her plea, but it was full of the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... repented. He has passed put of your sight. He has gone years and years ago. Somewhere in this great, multitudinous mass of humanity he is sinning and sinning and reduplicating and extending the sin that you did. You touched the faith of some believing soul years ago with some miserable sneer of yours, with some cynical and sceptical disparagement of God and of the man who is the utterance of God upon the earth. You taught the soul that was enthusiastic to be full of scepticisms and doubts. You wronged a woman years ago, and her life has gone out from ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... to stand up boldly for those whom the fashionable world would sneer at. She was not ashamed to recognize a plainly-dressed acquaintance in the most public thoroughfare, nor did she ever make an excuse to be pre-occupied when approached by some ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... all due to that sneer of Elisha P. Bayne's. For while this was about as batty a business proposition as I ever had put up to me, this scheme of Millie's for hockin' her hubby, I'd got more or less int'rested in her yarn. And it struck me that a girl who'd done what she had wa'n't any quitter. Elisha puts on ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... to act as my bodyguard?" she inquired with a significant sneer. "Go! I never want to ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... meantime most of us are asking, "What is the way out?" As for myself, I confess to being only a student. I have no word of sneer or scoff for any mail's honest thinking, who is sincerely trying to uplift his brothers and sisters; and yet I must say that, as yet, I have not been able to become a disciple of any of the new systems that have been presented. ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... many things to my house!" repeated the miser with a sneer. "Mebbe he does. What sort of things does he kerry there? Chickens and turkeys, and surlines and ribs of beef, and sech truck! He knows I don't want sech things, and he does it jest to aggravate me. If he wants to do anything for me, why don't he gim me the money he pays ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... His Majesty's officers shave so close," the pilot answered, with a sort of sneer I did not like. "They commonly send in hands with a ship, when they find it necessary to take her ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... myself, have so much worldly wisdom as you have," said he at last, with something like a sneer. ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... been all over that ground. There's no reef there, and if there had been it would have been found and skinned years ago," said dogmatic Billy, with a sneer. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... father, by the flash of an eye, and the charm of a face, can forsake his sacred ties of devotion and become a degenerate and outcast, with death as his only salvation. In either case Nature stands by with a sneer upon her lips, and God forgets his obligation to his children. But the final analysis proves beyond doubt that the physical attraction is responsible for this action; and who can deny that it is the chemical attraction of two forces that ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... grandest thoughts are colorless as water; they savor not of Milton, Socrates, or Menu; seem not drawn from any private cistern, but rain-drops out of the pure sky. Whim and conceit are tare and tret. It matters little whether a man whine with Coleridge, or boast with Ben Jonson, or sneer with Byron, or grumble with Carlyle, if every thought is one-sided and warped. The oddity relieves our commonplace, and pricks the dull palate; but we soon tire of exaggeration, and detest the trick. It is egotism, self-sickness, jaundice, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... begins and ends, No world's laugh or world's taunt, no pity of friends Or sneer of foes, with this my ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... then, to sneer at 'medical materialism,' and stigmatise it as superficial. Many people are constitutionally afraid of words, and there is nothing that arouses prejudice so quickly as a name. But it is really not a question of materialism, medical or non-medical. It is a mere matter ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... painted"?—Faith, no word of black was said; The lightest touch was human blood, and that, ye know, runs red. It's sticking to your fist today for all your sneer and scoff, And by the Judge's well-weighed word ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... wedding, seeing how it will purge of coarseness the picture-sheets of that artistic nation, which will hardly be able to caricature the new wife as it did poor plebeian Josephine. Such starched and ironed monarchists cannot sneer at a woman of such a divinely dry and crusted ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... years before. The book of Malthus on the Principle of Population, mainly founded on the fact that animals increase in a geometrical ratio, and therefore, if unchecked, must encumber the earth, had been generally forgotten, and was only recalled with a sneer. But the genius of Darwin recognised in it a deeper meaning, and now the thought of Malthus was joined to the new current. Meditating upon it in connection with his own observations of the luxuriance of Nature, Darwin had arrived at his doctrine of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... into their neighbors are very apt to be contemptuous; but men who see through them find something lying behind every human soul which it is not for them to sit in judgment on, or to attempt to sneer out of the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of Tory Dames, did she smile on you?" The voice was harsh and rasping; looking across the table, I saw the sneer upon his lips. I had but entered a moment before the dining-room of the inn, after my long ride, and was about to take my seat, when Rodolph's ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... law helps us to understand how such institutions as the Grange and farmers' institutes are doing a work that the church cannot do. They are doing a work that needs doing. They are serving human need. No pastor can afford to ignore them, much less in sneer at them as unclean; he may well apply the lesson of Peter's vision, and accept them as ministers of the kingdom. (2) He may encourage and stimulate them. The rural pastor may throw himself into the van of those ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... Madaline; you understand what I mean—proud of its beauty; its antiquity—proud that no shadow of disgrace has ever rested on it. To others these are simply ancient gray walls; to me they represent the honor, the stainless repute, the unshadowed dignity of my race. People may sneer if they will, but to me there seems nothing so sacred as love of ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... poetry with my whole soul." There is ten times more poetry, he thinks, in the "Essay on Man" than in the "Excursion"; and if you want passion, where is to be found stronger than in the "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard"? To the sneer that Pope is only the "poet of reason" Byron replies that he will undertake to find more lines teeming with imagination in Pope than in any two living poets. "In the mean time," he asks, "what have we got instead? . . . The Lake school," and "a deluge of flimsy ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... offence, although he gave scarcely any other reason than that he proposed to mind his. When I met his Southern mother on the piazza, she looked at me in my uniform at first as if I had been a toad. They are rebels at heart, and yet they stand aloof and sneer at the North, from which they derive protection and revenue. I made his eyes flash once though," chuckled the young fellow ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... once, and gave the idea of a very puerile, ridiculous, apron-stringy attempt at poetry. Whoever wrote that notice ought to be shot, for the books are charming pure and homely and householdy, yet not effeminate. Critics may sneer as much as they choose: it is such love as Vaughan's that Honorias value. Because a woman's nature is not proof against deterioration, because a large and long-continued infusion of gross blood, and perhaps even the monotonous pressure of rough, pitiless, degrading circumstances, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... pray, that they are perishing?" answered Tom, with something very like a sneer. "And if they were, do you honestly believe that any talk of yours can change in five minutes a character which has been forming for years, or prevent a man's going where he ought to go,— which, I suppose, is the place to which he ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... incuriously away. And her companions had been quick to recognise her difference of attitude, or they would never have dared to accuse her of sympathy with the thief, or to doubt her chorusing assertion with a sneer. For them, the gap was not very wide between understanding and doing likewise. And they were certainly right.—Oh! the last wish in the world she had was to range herself on the side of the sinner; she longed to see eye to eye with her comrades—if she had only known how to ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... not live with such an one as he. If for a moment he but enter here, He looks around him with a mocking sneer, And malice ill-conceal'd; That he with naught on earth can sympathize is clear; Upon his brow 'tis legibly revealed That to his heart no living soul is dear. So blest I feel, within thine arms, So ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... any one like you, Charles," said Herbert, with a sneer; "one would think you never had seen a hen or a cow before. If you were at our school they would call you 'lady;' for you clap your hands just as a girl does over these things. I like horses and dogs, but who cares for ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples
... railway strike, he had passed several sweeping Acts of Parliament, he had brought into effect the iniquitous Budget, he had dismantled the British constitution by taking away the powers of the House of Lords. You may sneer at such a man, you may hate him, but you cannot ignore him. Sincere and religiously minded ladies used to write to the papers, wondering in all sincerity why Heaven permitted such a man to continue to live. A peer of the realm told his tenants that he would roast ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... of Whisky Jim that thus greeted Albert. If there was a half-sneer in the words, there was nothing but cordial friendliness in the tone and the grasp of the hand. The Superior Being was so delighted that he could only express his emotions by giving his leaders several extra slashes with his whip, and by putting on a speed that ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... way to turn hate into love and scorn into sympathy. Indifferent equilibrium in the presence of active antagonism is not possible for us. As long as we are sensitive we shall wince from a blow, or a sarcasm, or a sneer. We must bless in order to keep ourselves from cursing. The lesson is very hard, and the only way of obeying it fully is to keep near Christ and drink in His spirit who prayed 'Father, forgive them, for they know ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... of death makes for life. But the curse of the White Logic is that it does not make one afraid. The world-sickness of the White Logic makes one grin jocosely into the face of the Noseless One and to sneer at all the ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... a smile. "As the titled conductor of the Egypt tour," he explained to my dull intelligence, with a slight sneer. "So will you please be in the dining saloon just before the bugle blows the beasts in? I have to introduce you, in a short speech. It's all I can do, except say, God help you! But I don't see how He can. I suppose ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... with a trace of a harsh sneer outlined on his face. "If they get killed, I am sorry. If they live, they are useful. If they are lost, others take their places. They are merely a part of the general scheme. They are for me ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... hardly do to depend upon that," said Mr. Die, with another sneer. "Twelve thousand a-year is a ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... of his birth to the hour of his burial. Although we can gather from the tenour of his writings that the author himself belongs to the Liberals, we must give him credit for the fairness with which he describes the party to which he is opposed. There is no sneer, no expression of contempt anywhere, even when, as in the case of the Nirang, the temptation must have been considerable. What this Nirang is we may best state in the words of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... A sneer, quickly disguised in a grin, ran over Fortune's face. The hounds howled and tugged; Giles stepped rapidly across the open space where the knoll sloped down to the meadow. It was ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... anything else your lordship would like?" he said with a sneer. "The best feather-beds are damp, and the carpets have been put away by mistake. What wines would your lordship like for your dinner and would you ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... corrected, grimly, while his inward thought was that the dry bones were Simeon's own; and then, ashamed of the disloyal—though unspoken—sneer, he went back to Deena and began talking volubly of his last letter from ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... outwitted. He had desired, coaxed, schemed, haggled, got what he wanted, and now found he had paid too much for his bargain. You don't suppose I would ask you to laugh at that man's grief? It is you, clumsy cynic, who are disposed to sneer, whilst it may be tears of genuine sympathy are trickling down this nose of mine. What do you mean by laughing? If you saw a wounded soldier on the field of battle, would you laugh? If you saw a ewe robbed of her lamb, would you laugh, you brute? It is you who are the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Mr. Bullet-head at these scandalous insinuations, I shall not attempt to describe. On the eel-skinning principle, however, he did not seem to be so much incensed at the attack upon his integrity as one might have imagined. It was the sneer at his style that drove him to desperation. What!—he Touch-and-go Bullet-head!—not able to write a word without an O in it! He would soon let the jackanapes see that he was mistaken. Yes! he would ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... latter with a sneer, "it's a finer garden than we have at our family palace. Do you know what's planted there?" he asked, turning suddenly on the little boy. "Dead bodies, cavaliere! Rows and rows of them; the bodies of my brothers and sisters, the Innocents who die like flies every year of the cholera and the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... shall I never again possess a friend, whose face will wear a smile of joy whenever I approach? Alas! how thoughtless, how dreadfully imprudent have I been! I know not which is most painful to endure, the sneer of contempt, or the glance of compassion, which is depicted in the various countenances of my own sex: they are both equally humiliating. Ah! my dear parents, could you now see the child of your ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... raised his arm with a malicious sneer, and was about to execute his threat, when one of his ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... attempt to surprise him, for always his eyes watched her. Nor did she seek to hold back or in any way to hamper him now. For, swiftly adjusting herself to the new conditions, she made her first decision: Trevors did think her a "fool of a girl," Trevors did sneer at her helplessness in that man's way of his. Let him think her a little fool; let him hold her in his contempt; let him grow to think her cowed and afraid and helpless. Then, when the ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... irregularity, it possesses unnumbered claims of attention, respect and obedience. She fills the place of the eternal God; by her lips that God is speaking; in her counsels He is conveying the most solemn admonitions; and to disregard such counsel, to despise such interference, to sneer at the wisdom that addresses you, or the aged piety that seeks to reform you, is the surest and the shortest path which the devil himself could have opened for your perdition. I know no grace that can have effect; I know not any authority upon earth to which you will listen, when once you have ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... years of age. But it was his face which chiefly caught my eye, for at that moment there was something terrible about it. It was long, thin, and deeply carved; the eyes were large, and gleamed like gold in sunlight; the mouth was small and well shaped, but it wore a devilish and cruel sneer; the forehead lofty, indicating a man of mind, and marked with a slight scar. For the rest the cavalier was dark and southern-looking, his curling hair, like my own, was black, and he wore a peaked ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... of forcing his resolutions with one breath and avowing his indifference to a platform with another, especially as Yancey and his own followers had seceded on the platform and not on the man; but he did not press his adversary to the wall, as he might have done, on the insincerity which Davis's sneer exposed. He was hampered by his own attitude as a candidate. Douglas, who had received 150 votes at Charleston, and who expected the whole at Baltimore, could not let his tongue wag as freely as Davis, who had received ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... Lizzy called upon her friend, she found her in a very unhappy state of mind. As to the ball and the people who attended, she was exceedingly captious in all her remarks. When Clinton was mentioned, she spoke of him with a sneer. Lizzy hardly knew how to take her. Why the young man should be so offensive, she was at a loss to imagine, and honestly came to the conclusion that she had been mistaken in her previous supposition that Margaret really felt an ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... operations in London were three definite motives. First of all, he really loved England. He felt that the theater there had a dignity and a distinction far removed from theatrical production in America. There was no sneer of "commercialism" about it. To be identified with the stage in England was something to be proud of. He often said that he would rather make fifteen pounds in London than fifteen thousand dollars in America. It summed up his ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... that you carry all your fortune on your back, therefore," said Alsi, looking at Havelok's gay attire with somewhat of a sneer. ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... the bard with a sneer. "Is that what Morgan is trying? Why! I thought it was first the lowing of an aged cow, and then the yelping of a blind dog, unable to find its way. ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... joke to stand as it is," he said, as he snapped his big jaws together and twisted the muscles of his mouth into a sneer. He had a habit, when he closed an emphatic speech, of twisting the muscles of his mouth in that way. When animated in talk, he was the incarnation of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... His voice as he spoke was low and soft; but at the end, with the concluding words, "I am innocent!" it flashed into strong masculinity. His eyes, shaded with long girlish black lashes, by chance met mine. "I am innocent." His curving sensuous lips drew down into a grim sneer.... ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... sneer well enough," retorted Theron, "but that can pass. The main point is, that you did me the honor to send these plants—or to smuggle them in—but never once deigned to hint to me that you had done so. No one told me. Except by mere accident, I should not have known to ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... answered when the unpopular freshman broke through the line, grasped Jane's hand and deliberately forced a folded slip of paper into it. Then, with a mocking smile that ran into an audible sneer, she turned and sped away. Her awkward gait and frank romping so close to Wellington Hall brought questioning glances from the ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... are audacious enough to think you are richer than I." This time there was no sneer in his voice, only an ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... Miss Hazleton," he said significantly. "I'll tell you something else as long as I am pouring out my heart to you," a sneer under the words. "Before I'm done with Shandon he won't have a boot for his foot or a leg to walk on. And anybody who ties up with him is going to ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... the approbation of the Colonial Office at home. It does not matter what the colonial newspapers say, it is 'what will they say in Downing Street?' And if a despatch goes out approving of their conduct, neighbours may censure and sneer as they list. So we Christians have to report to Home, and have so to live 'that whether present or absent'—in a colony or in the mother country—'we may ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... be your stopping place," said Silas, with another sneer, as he stopped in front of a small tent. "And let me tell you it will be best for you to take it easy. You may get into trouble if you ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... was thankful to say, and his thankfulness on the point was proof to him of how years and circumstances had estranged him from Evelyn; for, though he would not obstruct or forbid, it would be impossible for him to keep a sneer out of his face when she told him she had been to the sacraments or refrained from meat on Friday. "What a strange notion it is to think that a priest can help one," he said, thinking then that his presence would be a sneer, however he might control his tongue or his face; she would feel ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... 'I think I'll choose another regiment. I'm not hungry for the cat-o'-nine tails, and I should earn it if I were under this brute's command five minutes. You'd be a handsome chap in your own way, Major, if it were not for that silly sneer you're pleased to carry about with you. But I warn you that, under any circumstances whatsoever, if you should presume upon any difference in our rank to insult me by a word, a gesture, or a look I'll spoil your ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... question men have to meet and face; and if we can trust Matthew's statement, an utterance of his in later years called out by the sneer of a Pharisee, shows how he had made the old poet's ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... waited at Apollo's shrine: I told him what the world would say, If Stella were unsung to-day: How I should hide my head for shame, When both the Jacks and Robin came; How Ford would frown, how Jim would leer, How Sheridan the rogue would sneer, And swear it does not always follow, That semel'n anno ridet Apollo. I have assur'd them twenty times, That Phoebus help'd me in my rhymes; Phoebus inspired me from above, And he and I were hand and glove. But, finding me so dull and dry since, They'll call it all poetic license; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... you." And she did not know whether that were praise or a sneer. That had been a week before. And all that week he had passed in an increasing agony at the thought that those mountains, that sea, and those sunlit plains would be between him and Maisie Maidan. That thought shook ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... wings of eagles, friend Pierre,' said the younger man, glancing around, 'we must climb where we can find foothold. God will protect us; if not,' with a sneer, 'the Devil ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... into the garden of Gethsemane. There, in the darkness and loneliness of night, the full anguish of his situation rushed upon his spirit. He shrank from the rude scenes that opened before him,—from the mocker's sneer and the ruler's scourge; from the glare of impatient revenge, and the weeping eyes of helpless friendship; from the insignia of imposture and of shame; and from the protracted, thirsty, torturing death. He shrank from these,—he shrank from the rupture ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... waited to see his lip curl bitterly, and then, amused, went down the stairs. She had paid him for his sneer. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... grovelling department are at first merely out of sorts with themselves, and vent their spleen in little interjections and contortions of phrase—cry Pish at a lucky hit, and Hem at a fault, are smart on personal defects, and sneer at 'Beauty out of favour and on crutches'—are thrown into an ague-fit by hearing the name of a rival, start back with horror at any approach to their morbid pretensions, like Justice Woodcock with ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Lord, has given him outward proofs of His love and protection, and among other instances I will relate these two which I well remember. It happened once that his uncle went out a shooting with him in the woods, when the uncle began to sneer at him, saying that he, a mere stupid Indian, could not shoot, but a Christian was a different character and was expert and handy: that he, Wouter, would not shoot anything that day, but he himself would have a good hunt. To which Wouter replied, "It is well, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... Would you throw another stone at him, boys? Would you hunt the weary old man through the streets like some wild beast? Would you taunt, and sneer, and shout in his ears, "Old crazy Tim"—"Old crazy Tim?" Oh, no—no! Pick a flower and give him, as Kitty used; take his hand—poor, harmless old man—and walk along with him; maybe he'll fancy that you are little ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... the professional skill and successful [30] agricultural enterprise of Dr. Nichol, a medical officer of that Colony, with whom he became acquainted for the first time during his short stay there, our author travels out of his way to tack on a gratuitous and pointless sneer at the educational competency of all the elected members of the island legislature, among whom, he tells us, the worthy doctor had often tried in vain to obtain a place. His want of success, our author informs his readers, was brought about through Dr. Nichol "being the only man in ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... defiant "I will not," turned the whole current of his existence in the one direction or the other, towards good or evil, or towards success or failure? Who, that has fought his way against odds into the front rank, has forgotten the woman's look that gave him courage, or the man's sneer that braced nerve and muscle to strike the ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... village, I promise you. I did not think Snooks a nice looking man, by any means; for he had a low forehead, a scowling brow, a nobbly fat nose, small eyes, one of which had a cast, a large mouth always awry and distorted with a sneer, straight hair that hung over his forehead, and a large scar on his right cheek. His teeth were large and yellow, and the top ones protruded more, I thought, than was at all necessary. Nor was he generally beliked. In fact, so unpopular was this man with the poor, that it was a common thing for mothers ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... George and his English Lords have a provoking slighting tone towards Friedrich Wilhelm; they answer his violent convictions, and thoroughgoing rapid proposals, by brief official negation, with an air of superiority,—traces of, a polite sneer perceptible, occasionally. A mere Clown of a King, thinks George; a mere gesticulating Coxcomb, thinks Friedrich Wilhelm. "MEIN BRUDER DER COMODIANT, My Brother the Play-actor" (parti-colored Merry-Andrew, of a high-flying turn)! was Friedrich Wilhelm's private name for him, in after days. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the sensation in high finance just now," Stuart said, with an unconscious sneer. "They say he's destined to ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... sorry to disappoint your expectations," returned the Jew, with something approaching to a sneer, as he rose; and, selecting one from a pile of English newspapers, slowly read out to his companion the announcement of the failure of the firm of Hazlit and Company. "You see, my good friend, we Jews are very knowing as well as sharp. ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Catholic. We are not so contracted in our praying. We do not confine it to little comfortable places. Nay, but for seventeen hundred years and more we have prayed out of doors as much as in doors. And this our custom is no fit subject for a shallow sneer. How does the learned sergeant know that, beneath the vault of heaven at night, studded with those angelic eyes, the stars, is an unfit place to bend the knee, and raise the soul in prayer? Has he ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... beneath the dignity of a man who has had one or two articles accepted by a prehistoric magazine which nobody reads. In reality, it is one of the greatest and most splendid of all professions, fit to call out the very best of a really big man. You chuckle and sneer at Colonel Cowles and think yourself vastly his superior as an editorial writer, when, in the opinion of everybody else, he is in every way your superior. I doubt if the Post has a single reader who would ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... court, if you want to play," said Attell, "and if you've got anybody to play with," he added with a sneer. "This ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... call; their well-dressed daughters, as they rattle by to the town in basket-carriage or dog-cart, look askance at the shabby figure walking slowly on the path beside the road. They criticise the shabby shawl; they sneer at the slow step which is the inevitable result of hard work, the cares of maternity, and of age. So they flaunt past with an odour of perfume, and leave the 'old ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... dash into a burning house, or throw himself off a dock to rescue a perishing wretch, but there is a dearth of the kind of bravery that will enable either man or woman to face a laugh in defense of a principle, or succor a losing cause despite a sneer. How the best of us will retreat trailing our banner in the dust, when the hot shot of ridicule confronts us from the enemy's camp, or when some merry sentinel challenges us with the opprobrious epithet, "crank." Why, I believe ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... The sneer returned to Sara's voice. "You ask Jim if he ever heard of locking the barn too late? Tell him to bring on his ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow |
