"Cynic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Bernard Shaw, the Voltaire of the twentieth century, with the intellectual brilliancy and moral shallowness of the great cynic, attempts to justify Bernhardiism by resort to the unconvincing "et tu quoque" argument. He contends that England also has had its "Bernhardis," and refers to a few books which he affects to think bear out his argument. That these books show that there ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... others. The simplicity and enthusiasm of his feelings, with respect to nature, renders him bigotted and intolerant in his judgments of men and things. But it happens to him, as to others, that his strength lies in his weakness; and perhaps we have no right to complain. We might get rid of the cynic and the egotist, and find in his stead a common-place man. We should "take the good the Gods provide us:" a fine and original vein of poetry is not one of their most contemptible gifts, and the rest is scarcely worth thinking of, except as it may be a mortification to those who expect perfection ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... endeavours are still undeniably too vague in thought, too crude in practice, and the enthusiast of hygiene or education or temperance may have much to answer for. But so, also, has he who stands outside of the actual civic field, whether as philistine or aesthete, utopist or cynic, party politician or "mug-wump." Between all these extremes it is for the united forces of civic survey and civic service to find the middle course. [Page: 114] We observe then in the actual city, as among its future citizens, ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... upon poverty as its invariable concomitant. The moralist declaims against it as the source of irregularity, and the frugal citizen dreads it more than bankruptcy itself, for he considers it as the parent of extravagance and beggary. The Cynic will ask of what use it is? Of very little perhaps: no more is a flower garden, and yet it is allowed as an object of innocent amusement and delightful recreation. A woman, who possesses this quality, has received ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... presence of this one young man seemed to put all the servants on their mettle. The cook sent up such meals as she did not at any other time. "Sure Sir Shawn and her Ladyship never minded what they would be atin," she said. The gardener, a gruff old cynic usually, gave his best grapes and peaches for "Master Terry"; even the small sewing maid who sat in a slip of a room at a remote corner of the house, mending the house-linen under the supervision of the housekeeper, was known ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... change has taken place, and Shakespeare is now generally recognized, even in France, as one of the greatest of poets. Yes, some anti-Gallican cynic will say, the French rank him with Corneille and with Victor Hugo! But let me have the pleasure of quoting a sentence about Shakespeare, which I met with by accident not long ago in the Correspondant, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... essentially craving and insatiable. Its appetite was enormous, and it devoured too greedily for health. I rejected all guidance in my studies. I already fancied myself a misanthrope. I had taken a step very common for boys of my age, and strove with all my might to be a cynic." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... an attitude of mind which a critic or a cynic might be justified in assuming, for it is the attitude of one who desires rather to observe the world than to shoulder any of its burdens; but it is a posture of exceeding danger to anyone who lacks tenderness or sympathy, whatever ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... quote that passage in Schweighauser upon the Molossian dogs in general, and the dog of Alcibiades in particular. But it proves beyond a doubt, that, in every ancient literary institute, learned dogs were highly estimated; and there was even a philosophical Academy called the Cynic,—that is, Doggish, or Dog-school, of which Diogenes was the most eminent professor. He, you know, went about with a lantern looking for an honest man, and could not find one! Why? Because the Society ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to his wants he had attained a certain cleanliness. Nevertheless, in the disorder of his toilet and his hatred of everything that passed the bounds of the strictest necessity (though he could not have been charged with immodesty, which had always been odious to him), the cynic of the old days was still apparent. His beard was shining like silver. His bald skull was so polished that the moon was reflected in it as in water. He walked slowly, with his hands behind his back and ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... the cynic, "I had a selfish motive: I wished to appear generous—I wished to be praised—I wished to attach you to my service, in order to employ you, when the time came, in ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... greeting. He, all brawn and beef, WILLIAM of Malwood, bears the banner high, But scarce looks fired, with conquest's ecstasy. JOHN of Newcastle, reins a restive horse; He's none too eager for another course. The one-armed Irish Chief looks pale and grim; E'en cheery LARRY, of the cynic whim, Hath a less careless chuckle than his wont. "Beshrew me! but they bear a gallant front!" Mutter the pikemen ranged in order round. Sore-battered RITCHIE,—may he soon be sound!— Bates not a jot of courage; that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... bound for the ordinary, my lord?" said the cynic;—"weel, ye canna do better—there is choice company there, and peculiarly selected, as I am tauld, being, dootless, sic as it is desirable that young noblemen should herd withal—and your noble father wad have been blithe to see you keeping such ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... have its meed, let's leave no statue here, That might from other lips than ours provoke a cynic sneer: If temples must be built to crime, we'll worship there alone, Nor leave a mark of loyalty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... declared solemnly. "I wouldn't spoil your prospects for worlds. Run along, my little cynic, and warm your hands. Life's good at your age—better than when I found ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... comfortable tradition and sure faith. Would he not betray himself an alien cynic who should otherwise portray Main Street, or distress the citizens by speculating whether there may not ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... never shrank from the evil in the world, why indeed he expended so much of his mind and art on the analysis and dissection of every kind of evil, laying bare for us the working of the mind of the criminal, the hypocrite, the weakling, and the cynic; because he ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... is bliss 'tis folly to be wise end quote comma said a poet who was also a cynic period. Many poets are comma but not the greatest period. Because of their—turn back to the beginning of the paragraph, please, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... don't mind me," went on the kindly cynic. "I'm coming in with you. I'll light up while you weep, and then you must tell me all about it. That will do you a ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... himself as he came to think better of all others. For he had thought less of all the world because he had thought so little of himself. He had overestimated his own faults, had made them into crimes in his own eyes, and, observing things in others of similar import, had become almost a cynic in intellect, while in heart he had remained, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sneer at ourselves and scoff at our own pretensions. The first person of our dual consciousness has been smirking and rubbing his hands and felicitating himself on his innumerable superiorities, until we have grown a little tired of him. Then, when the other fellow, the critic, the cynic, the Shimei, who has been quiet, letting self-love and self-glorification have their perfect work, opens fire upon the first half of our personality and overwhelms it with that wonderful vocabulary of abuse of which he is the unrivalled master, there is no denying that he enjoys it ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... critics of every sort and kind; socialists who denounced him as an individualist, land nationalisers who had not realised the difference between communal and national ownership, or men who denounced him as an arm-chair cynic, careless of the poor and ignorant of the meaning of labour. Mr. Spencer considered the chief attack to be directed against his position; the regimental ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... This first interchange of thought upon a topic of literature did not tend to slacken my previous disposition to retreat into solitude; a solitude, however, which at no time was tainted with either the moroseness or the pride of a cynic. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the great, he would scorn his vegetables. Tell me, which maxim and conduct of the two you approve; or, since you are my junior, hear the reason why Aristippus' opinion is preferable; for thus, as they report, he baffled the snarling cynic: "I play the buffoon for my own advantage, you [to please] the populace. This [conduct of mine] is better and far more honorable; that a horse may carry and a great man feed me, pay court to the great: you beg for refuse, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... matter. But I'm infernally lazy myself, and it's easy to preach. It's even easier to create a counter-philosophy of condonance and individualism, and I'm alternately an ethical egoist, a Fabian socialist and a cynic. Moreover, I'm a creature of whims and inconsistencies and there are black nights in my temperament when John Barleycorn lightens the gloom; and there are other nights when he treacherously deepens it—but I'm peculiarly ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... which more than any other has caused La Rochefoucauld to be criticized severely as a cynic, if not a misanthrope, appeared only in the first two editions of the book. In the others, published in the author's lifetime, it was supprest. In defense of the author, it has been maintained that what he meant by the saying was that the pleasure derived from a friend's misfortunes ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... be very much of a cynic in these matters; I mean that it is impossible to believe in the permanence of man's or woman's love. Or, at any rate, it is impossible to believe in the permanence of any early passion. As I see it, at least, with regard to man, a love affair, a love for any definite woman—is something ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... justified. There is very little intelligent design in the majority of marriages; but they are none the worse for that. Intelligence leads people astray as far as passion sometimes. I know you are not a cynic." ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... of a brawl.—There was that in the Admiral that would have when it could outward no less than inward magnificence. He could go like a Spartan or Diogenes the Cynic, but when the chance came—magnificence! With him from Spain traveled a Viceroy's household. He had no less than thirty personal servants and retainers. Hidalgos here at Isabella had also servants, but no one more than two or three. It was among these folk that first arose our amazing jealousies ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... paid to the gods. This, however, can hardly have been the case, supposing the edict against philosophers was as severe as his biographer represents. In that case neither Apollonius, nor Demetrius the Cynic, who joined him after his arrival, would have been permitted to remain in Rome; certainly not Apollonius, after his acknowledgment of his own magical powers in the ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... nom de plume that is known and loved by almost every boy of intelligence in the land. We have seen a highly intellectual and world-weary man, a cynic whose heart was somewhat embittered by its large experience of human nature, take up one of OLIVER OPTIC'S books, and read it at a sitting, neglecting his work in yielding to the fascination of the pages. When a mature and exceedingly ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... appeared at the opening, followed by a sweet, smiling face, while just behind it peered another, only a trifle older and more serious, yet every whit as pretty. Wing raised his old felt hat and mentally cursed the luck that had sent him down there in his ragged shirt-sleeves. Pike, the cynic, busied himself in getting the buckets from underneath the stout spring wagon, and bumped his head savagely against the trunk-laden boot as ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... know so well how to develop. That it was a rich red only added to its distinction, and to his. He was noted for being a hard worker and a wit, but feeling about him was sharply divided. One could not be neutral; either one hailed him as a prophet and seer, or one hated him as an abandoned cynic, a vicious and arbitrary egoist whose presence in the community was a menace. There appeared to be evidence in support of either view. It was true that the Dean's office was frequently absorbed by problems of his making. He had a weakness, to illustrate, for calling his students liars ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... Borrodaile made ready to do the honours of the house to a lady who had had so little profit of her visit. Beeching carried off the reluctant Farnborough. Mrs. Freddy kept up her spirits until after the exodus; then, with a sigh, she sat down beside Vida. 'It's true what that old cynic says,' she admitted sorrowfully. 'The scene has put back the Reform ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... professor in Trinity College, Dublin, a cynic and a humorist, is reported once to have wondered "why the old Irish, having a good religion of their own, did not stick to it?" Living in the "Celtic twilight," and striving to pierce backward into the dawn, reading romance, tradition and history, I have endeavoured to solve ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... scowl of a cynic would soften, His pulse beat its way to some eloquent words, Alas! my poor accents have echoed too often, Like that Pinafore music you've some of ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a very good one, in the sense of being valuable. Whatever your mood may be, that of the moralist, cynic, satirist, humourist, whether you love, pity, or despise your fellow-man, here is grist for your mill. It ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... I have to say, if you weren't a model of (several, if not) all the virtues, you'd say, "I told you so!" But you're a cynic at head, not at heart, and you allow yourself to be sarcastic only in the privacy of your own brain-pan as ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... Like It,' which quickly followed, is a dramatic adaptation of Lodge's romance, 'Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie' (1590), but Shakespeare added three new characters of first-rate interest—Jaques, the meditative cynic; Touchstone, the most carefully elaborated of all Shakespeare's fools; and the hoyden Audrey. Hints for the scene of Orlando's encounter with Charles the Wrestler, and for Touchstone's description of the diverse shapes of a lie, were clearly drawn from a book ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... true. A little more and she would have been a bitter cynic at eighteen. Even now when she just begins to respond, like a frost-bitten plant, I am not ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... it, my lad. La Rochefoucauld said that there are convenient marriages, but no delightful ones. You don't know the comfort of seeing through and through a thundering liar and rotten cynic like that fellow. Ha, ha! Now off with you to the park, and write your poem. Half past one, sharp, mind: we never ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... the passage below, less the space taken up by the old-fashioned wooden staircase; and was lighted by a narrow casement on the street and a bull's-eye window looking into the yard. The chief characteristic of the apartment was a cynic simplicity, due to money-making greed. The bare walls were covered with plain whitewash, the dirty brick floor had never been scoured, the furniture consisted of three rickety chairs, a round table, and a sideboard stationed between ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... our names; to be backed at once by a ring of laughter from the hidden 'prompter' thereupon revealed. O happy, happy home! may God for ever smile upon you! There should be a special grace for happy homes. George's set us 'collecting' such, with results undreamed of by youthful cynic. Take courage, Reader, if haply you stand with hesitating toe above the fatal plunge. Fear not, you can swim if you will. Of course, you must take care that your joint poetry-maker be such a one as George's. One ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... John Westonhaugh, "since you are the accused, pray define what you mean by a cynic, and then Mr. Isaacs, as the accuser, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... Still, the first day the ladies would not swim. They had the trunks to open, they said, and the closets to arrange. And the four men and the fourteen boys went to that bath of baths alone. And as Felix, the cynic grumbler, ran races naked on the beach with his boy and the boy beat him, even Felix was heard to say, "How little man needs here below to ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... old cynic, "matters can't be mended by swearin' at 'em, is advice I often give myself, but never take. I s'pose it's bed-time. To-morrow we will take another squint at your ugly fortunes, and see which side pints toward ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... in the world-wide operations of commerce and industry is the assurance of peace. The skeptic may scoff and the cynic point to Mexico and the Balkans, but the Industrial Revolution has produced a multitude of influences that are knitting the nations into an indissoluble unity. Men are beginning to realize the integrity of mankind, and a world-consciousness ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... of Heine's poems and ballads, which was generally accepted as the best version of that untranslatable poet. Very curious is the link between that bitter, mocking, cynic spirit and the refined, gentle spirit of Emma Lazarus. Charmed by the magic of his verse, the iridescent play of his fancy, and the sudden cry of the heart piercing through it all, she is as yet unaware or only vaguely conscious of the of the real bond between them: ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... uncovering some new tragic element in life. Anything optimistic falls flat. The literary men of Europe are recklessly underbidding each other in the attempt to show that life is sadder, or meaner, or baser, or emptier than had been supposed. The cynic and the pessimist share public attention. Not that European writers are insincere. The authors and thinkers themselves have been the first to feel the Zeitgeist. They have written as they have because they have ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... selfishness that eats like a corroding poison into the purer metal of the rich man's nature. Your wealth will only bring you happiness in so far as you use it to benefit others less fortunate though equally deserving. It is given you as a trial, not as a reward.'—To you, oh Cynic, this message have I also: 'Your eyes see but through a veil of dulled and vainglorious senses. Some truths you have learned, but in the passage through your mind they take the colour and shape of a distorted and ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... new day with such a bubbling cheerfulness. It is certainly congestion that makes night hideous with visions, all the chambers of a many-storeyed caravanserai, haunted with vociferous nightmares, and many wakeful people come down late for breakfast in the morning. Upon that theory the cynic may explain the whole affair—exhilaration, nightmares, pomp of tongue and all. But, on the other hand, the peculiar blessedness of boyhood may itself be but a symptom of the same complaint, for the two effects are strangely similar; and the frame of mind of the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Incited by this feeling, he soon joined her and the group that was with her. He had expected to find her sad and comparatively silent, but he had never seen her in a more lively mood, full of light talk and jest and a gay good-humor that could not have failed to infect the most hardened cynic. Certainly he did not escape its influence, nor did he seek to do so, but as he watched her he thought there was a slight touch of feverishness to her high spirits, as if she had just escaped ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... What a man Tim was, and how blind I had been and selfish! He stood before me tall and strong, watching me with his quiet eyes, and as I looked at him I thought of Weston, the lanky cynic, with his thin, homely face and loose-jointed, shambling walk. Then I wondered at it all. Then I said to myself, "Is ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... Chasseuse sat mute and downcast. This personal development came as a complete surprise to her. Pride would not permit her to plead her own cause. Dubois glanced at her covertly. He was still annoyed and defiant; but even he, hardened scoundrel and cynic though he was, could not find words ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... just escape from the law, to sink, without redemption, the name. However this be, there is nothing in Randal's present course of life which forbodes any deeper fall. He has known what it is to want bread, and his former restlessness subsides into cynic apathy. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the Latin, a walking index of books, has all the libraries in Europe in his head, from the Vatican at Rome, to the learned collection of Dr. Salmon at Fleet-Ditch; but at the same time, he is a cynic in behaviour, a fury in temper, impolite in conversation, abusive and scurrilous in language, and ungovernable in passion. Is this to be learned? Then may I be still illiterate. I have been in my time, pretty ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... forefathers. For not only did our forefathers rebel against that conception again and again, till they finally trampled it under their feet, and so appear, prima facie, as offenders to be judged at its bar; but the conception itself is one which takes the very same view of nature as that cynic conception of which we spoke above. Man, with the Romish divines, is, ipso facto, the same being as the man of Voltaire, Le Sage, or Beaumarchais; he is an insane and degraded being, who is to be kept in order, and, as far as may be, cured and set to work by an ecclesiastical ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... you will preach to me a long sermon about what I have just written, and so will you, moralist: and you, stern sage: you, stoic, will frown; you, cynic, sneer; you, epicure, laugh. Well, each and all, take it your own way. I accept the sermon, frown, sneer, and laugh; perhaps you are all right: and perhaps, circumstanced like me, you would have been, like me, wrong. The ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... hundred-faced and hydra-headed prodigy, at once defies and derides all definitive comment. This however we may surely and confidently say of it, that of all Shakespeare's offspring it is the one whose best things lose least by extraction and separation from their context. That some cynic had lately bitten him by the brain—and possibly a cynic himself in a nearly rabid stage of anthropophobia—we might conclude as reasonably from consideration of the whole as from examination of the parts more especially and virulently ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to licking your raw tongue up and down the cynic's saw edge! Put a spur to your broncho there and ride ahead ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... outward impassiveness and inward contempt. A realist, a cynic, and an absolute genius with a Colt .45, he was well known along the border for his dare-devil exploits and reckless courage. The brainiest men in the Secret Service, Lewis, Thomas, Sayre, and even old Jim Lane, the local chief, whose fingers at El Paso felt every ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... the poet, the cynic, who carried more power of sarcasm and irony than any man of his generation, was so moved by the book that he seems to have returned to the reading of the Bible, and to Christ the Consoler, in the hour when night and death ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... is a cynic, in South America an overworked slave, in Africa a citizen, but in India an imp,—I mean to the eye of the Western stranger, for in the estimation of the native he is mythologically a demigod, and socially a guest. At Ahmedabad, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... acid, witty little sketch for him. . . . Has she not matured? might it not have "done," after all? The nosegay was not so insipid! . . . But suddenly, while she mocks, the deeper "truth of that" invades her soul, and she must cease from cynic gibes, and yield the word ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... distinctly enough that the vanity of wishing to be singular, in both the parts that he plays, had some share in his liberal self-forgetfulness, as well as in his anchoritical seclusion. This is particularly evident in the incomparable scene where the cynic Apemantus visits Timon in the wilderness. They have a sort of competition with each other in their trade of misanthropy: the Cynic reproaches the impoverished Timon with having been merely driven by necessity to take to the way of living which he himself had long been following of his ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... said; 'you are a young man of parts and promise, though, as was to be expected from one of your years, you lack experience. There is stuff in you, senor, and you have a heart, which is a good thing, for the blunders of a man with a heart often carry him further than the cunning of the cynic; also you have a will and know ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... it's in the temperament. I might never lose my head in just that way. We're not made alike, you see. Now I should be struck with a dumb devil, and grow surly and cynical as time went on, and of all contemptible men a cynic is the worst. You will have your burst of passion, and carry a tender spot to your grave, but you can't squeeze all the sunshine out of your soul, any more than ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... of the other man, the incarnation of the thing that is, with a cynic's contempt for dreams and dreamers, had given voice to her own rebellion ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... great wisdom of that sturdy beggar the Cynic with the long beard; for at first he abstained from lupines and radishes, saying that Virtue ought not to be a slave to the belly; but when he saw a snowy womb dressed with sharp sauce before his eyes, which at once stole away his sagacious intellect, ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... 'Plain-dealing; no subterfuge! Begin with foul falsehood? No. I would not have you burdened, madame, with the shadow of a conventional untruth on our account. And when it would be bad policy? . . . Oh, no, worse than the sin! as the honest cynic says. We will go down to Madame von Rudiger, and she shall make acquaintance with the man ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... A cynic, considering the fact that women was the last thing made by God, asserts that the product shows both His experience ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... carping cynic here Will greet my homely image with a sneer. Well—let us see—I would the monster view: Man with umbrageous whiskers, is it you? Ah, no—I was mistaken: every brow Beams with benevolence and kindness now; Beauty and fashion all the circles ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... world. From the forest rose a continuous rending crash. The whiplash of the tempest cracked the tree trunks as a child beheads a row of daisies. Piled up, falling, riven asunder, torn out by the wind, the giant trees joined the toys which the cynic storm gathered in its hands and bore along until such time as it should please to crush ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... His one idea has been the unity of Germany under the primacy of Prussia; and here he encountered Austria, as he now encounters France. But in that larger unity where nations will be conjoined in harmony he can do less, so long at least as he continues a fanatic for kings and a cynic towards popular institutions. ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... sitting at the feet of a philosopher, noticed a cynic smile tugging at the silence of ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... novel," said the gaunt young recruit from Grand Rapids. He was a cynic who had tried newspaper work, and who still maintained that the generals did not have as much ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... most noble cynic, is a prodigious personage. Shall birth-days and coronations be recorded in immortal odes, and Montem not have its minstrel 1 He, sir, is Herbertus Stockhore; who first called upon his muse in the good old days of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... travelled with Claudius had he affected the costume of a shoeblack. He knew that the man was very rich, and he respected his eccentricity for the present. To accomplish the transformation of exterior which he contemplated, from the professional and semi-cynic garb to the splendour of a swell of the period, Mr. Barker counted on some more potent influence than his own. The only point on which his mind was made up was that Claudius must accompany him to America and create ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... life which seems to have much to commend it. But it has at the best serious limitations, and at the worst it may issue in a tragedy. The wrong knight may be unhorsed. The award may go to him of the black plume. Pitting one experience against another has gone to the making of many a cynic and not a few despairing souls. The compensative interpretation of joy and sorrow may bring an answer of peace to a man's soul, or it may not. But in this matter we are dealing with things in which we cannot afford to risk an equivocal ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... characteristic tenets? Thou mightest as well seek to illustrate the habits of animals by establishing a menagerie in which panthers should eat grass, and antelopes be dieted on rabbits. An Epicurean without his female companion, unless by his own choice, is no more an Epicurean than a Cynic is a Cynic without his rags and his impudence. Wilt thou take from me my Pannychis, an object pleasing to the eye, and leave yonder fellow his tatters ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... Saturday reviewers and their antagonists was carried on with a frequent use of the nicknames 'prig' and 'cynic' upon one side, and 'buffoon' and 'sentimentalist' upon the other. Phrases so employed soon lose all definite meaning, but it is, I think, easy to see what they meant as applied either by or to Fitzjames. The 'comic writers' ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... their last meal to-day, bartered some more of their clothes for dogs. We reached a small outpost called Berens House on the 23d, where we procured a couple of sturgeon, and a dog valued at ten shillings, for which I gave my note of hand. I had a preein of this cynic mutton at breakfast; and could not help thinking it would have made a most appropriate and philosophical addition to the larder of the wise man of the tub. The men, however, having been for some time on short commons, seemed to ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... the cynic or think meanly of my fellow-man shall come, my mind will hark back to those two unpretending fellows and bow in reverence before the selflessness and immensity of the human soul. Needing bread, they gave it freely away; needing strength, they poured ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... said Marcia. "He says, 'Give me either a firebrand or a cynic!' He has no use for other sorts of people. And perhaps Sir Wilfrid will help us, too—with ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... through life burdened with the reflection that it would have been better not to have been born, albeit such sentiments are not altogether inconsistent with the power of deriving a certain amount of enjoyment from living. It was that pleasure-loving old cynic, Madame du Deffand, who said: "Il n'y a qu'un seul malheur, celui d'etre ne." Nevertheless, the avowed joyousness bred by the laughing tides and purple skies of Greece is certainly more conducive to human happiness, though at times even ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Never at all good-looking though certainly not ugly, she had been afraid of the effect of her wealth upon men. And because she was so rich she had never chosen to marry. She was possibly too much of a cynic, but she had always preserved her personal dignity. No one had ever legitimately laughed at her, and no one had ever had the chance of contemptuously pitying her. She must have missed a great deal, but now in middle-age she was surround by friends ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... interruption just here. The Masked Lady and Mr. Literal were there, after all, standing close behind Everychild. And Mr. Literal was saying: "She seems to be a bit of a cynic. That reference to women on the go . . . what period should you say she ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... 'you are a hypocrite of the other sort. You pretend to be cruel, and callous, and careless of all that's good—a cynic and a mocker. But I have found you out: you are really gentle ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... them presents and dismissed them unhurt. He also sent Onesikritus to the most renowned of them, who lived a life of serene contemplation, desiring that they would come to him. This Onesikritus was a philosopher of the school of Diogenes the cynic. One of the Indians, named Kalanus, is said to have received him very rudely, and to have proudly bidden him to take off his clothes and speak to him naked, as otherwise he would not hold any conversation with him, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... older residents of Warehold, they had only words of praise for the turnout. Uncle Ephraim declared that it was a "Jim Dandy," which not only showed his taste, but which also proved how much broader that good-natured cynic had become in later years. Billy Tatham gazed at it with staring eyes as it trundled down the highway and turned into the gate, and at once determined to paint two of his hacks bright yellow and give each driver a lap-robe with the letter ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that I approve of it because I cite it), and which she professed in entire good faith. We felt that the coming man would misapprehend both it and her—though he would not hesitate to make a convenience of it. Ugh, the cynic! ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... towards life after he had come to forty year; and he might have become either a merely intelligent and respectable person, which is most probable, or an elderly youth, which is of all things most detestable, or a caterwauler, or a cynic, or a preacher. From all these fates the gods mercifully saved him, and he abides with us (the presentation being but slightly marred by the injudicious prodigality of his editors) only as the poet of Medora's musical despair lest Araminta ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... I had excuse enough if I wanted to belong to that tribe. But you're young. You mustn't mind my sayin' that; if you was old, of course, I wouldn't talk about ages. But you are young and this is your first church. So you must start right. I'm no cynic, bless you. I've got trust in human nature left—most kinds of human nature. If I hadn't, I'd have more money, I s'pose. Perhaps you've noticed that those who trust a good deal are usually poor. It's all right, Mr. Ellery; you go and take ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... who has seen the world, and drunk deeply of the wine of life, there is nothing half so sweet in the whole of his existence as a good dinner. "A hard heart and a good digestion will make any man happy." So said Talleyrand, a cynic if you like, but a man who knew the temper of his day and generation. Ovid wrote about the art of love—Brillat Savarin, of the art of dining; yet, I warrant you, the gastronomical treatise of the brilliant Frenchman is more widely read than the passionate songs of the Roman poet. ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... Sanford stood with tear-dimmed eyes at the window, gazing far out over the prairie at the long blue column disappearing in the dust over the "divide." By her side stood Grace Truscott, twining her arms around that slender waist and clinging to her with a new and sweeter sympathy. Who, who was the cynic that wrote that even as she stood at the altar plighting her troth to the husband she had chosen, no woman yet forgave the man whom, having rejected, she knew to have consoled himself with another? Grace never for a moment admitted that ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... "You are a cynic," Sogrange declared. "You would throw cold water upon any enterprise. Anyway, our detective is coming. We must make use of him, for I have engaged ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... please, it continually sinks into Court government, and ever will." Finally he urged a limitation of armaments, and prophesied that wars would cease when nations had their freely elected Conventions. The cynic will remember with satisfaction that, two months later, began the war between France and Austria, which developed into the most tremendous series ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... not long after the publication of the "Vestiges," a shrewd and sarcastic countryman of the author defined it as "cauld kail made het again." A cynic might find amusement in the reflection that, at the present time, the principles and the methods of the much-vilified Vestigiarian are being "made het again"; and are not only "echoed by the dome of St. Paul's," but ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... acquaintance with the dialect of the natives. I have always carried with me a peasant as a guide, who has been intrusted with the small sums of money I wanted for my immediate purposes, and my baggage has been little more than a Cynic philosopher would have carried with him; and when I have been unable to walk, I have trusted myself to the conduct of a vetturino, a native of the province, with ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... ever since and nobody has missed him, I'm sure. I remember him dimly as a tall dark man who used to lounge about alone in his garden and was always reading books. Sometimes he came into our garden and teased us children. He is said to be a cynic and to detest society. If this latter item be a fact I almost feel a grim pity for him. He may detest it, but he will be dragged into it. Rich bachelors are few and far between in Riverton, and the mammas will ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... such a camp that is deeply interesting. The student of nature, the mental and moral philosopher, the anthropologist, and the philanthropist—ay, even the cynic—might each find much food here suited to his particular tastes and powers of mental digestion. At present, however, we have chiefly to do, good reader, with that which interests you and me—namely, Olaf and Snorro, who were prisoners of war in a ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... are maintainable with the existing means of existence, would be wholly applicable to man if man, instead of straining his brains and enlisting the services of technical arts for exploiting air, land and water, grazed like cattle, or like monkeys indulged his sexual impulses with cynic shamelessness,—in short, if he reverted to the monkey order. In passing be it observed that the fact that, besides man, monkeys are the only beings with whom the sexual impulse is not fixed to certain periods, is a striking proof of the relationship ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... fourth century at the very latest; and, perhaps, a hundred or two hundred years before, for they put a note at the end, by which the reader is given to understand, to his mighty surprise, that the manuscript was in the hands of that illustrious Heathen Philosopher, Salustius, not the Syrian and Cynic, of whom an account is given by Suidas, Photius, Fabricitis and others, for he lived in the fifth century, but the Gaul and Platonist, who flourished in the preceding century, of whom Fabricius said that he would "rather ascribe to him who was the friend of the Emperor Julian ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... creatures, below the platitudes and conventionalities. He is richly endowed with the divine gift of sympathy, the supreme art of discrimination, yet occasionally reveals the witty spirits of the cynic, who is ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... the prince of cynics, the very personal and very haughty Diogenes, have had the right to charge another cynic, as rent for this same place in the sunshine, a bone for twenty-four hours of possession? It is that which constitutes the proprietor; it is that which you fail to justify. In reasoning from the human personality and individuality ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... there fell upon him—alas! what a thing it is to be a coward—a new fear. The fear was not the fear of Basterga, the bully and cynic, whom he had known and fawned on and flattered; but of Basterga the dark and dangerous conspirator, of whom he now heard, ready to repay with the dagger the least attempt to penetrate his secrets! On his entrance he had flung himself face downward on his pallet in ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... enact the Cynic philosopher to Moriarty and Butler, and the aristocratic man with a 'past' to Mrs. Beaudesart; with the satisfaction of knowing that each of these was acting a part to me. Such is life, my fellow-mummers—just like a poor player, that bluffs and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... disciple of Socrates, the master of Diogenes, and founder of the Cynic school; affected to disdain the pride and pomp of the world, and was the first to carry staff and wallet as the badge of philosophy, but so ostentatiously as to draw from Socrates the rebuke, "I see your pride looking out through the rent of your ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... was that he knew nothing about books, and was one of those jeering cynics who are so common under one guise or another. Fine cynics are endurable, and give a certain zest often to society, which might become too civil without them; but your coarse cynic is not pleasant. Mr. Copperhead's eye was as effectual in quenching emotion of any but the coarsest kind as water is against fire. People might be angry in his presence—it was the only passion he comprehended; but tenderness, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... sense undistinguished. On this position Chesterton lays great stress. It was this, he thinks, that made him an optimist. It was the same position that made Browning an optimist. It is the disbelief in the Divine image in Man that makes the cynic ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... long-pent murmur went forth, and the philosophers that were mingled with the people, muttered their sage contempt; there might you have seen the chilling frown of the Stoic, and the Cynic's sneer; and the Epicurean, who believeth not even in our own Elysium, muttered a pleasant jest, and swept laughing through the crowd: but the deep heart of the people was touched and thrilled; and they trembled, though they knew not why, for verily the stranger had the voice ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... is, supposed to be growing in intelligence and simplicity, and yet voluntarily taking upon itself this artificial burden in an already overtaxed life! The angels in heaven must admire and wonder. The cynic wants to know what is gained for any rational being when a city-full of women undertake to make and receive formal visits with persons whom for the most part they do not wish to see. What is gained, he asks, by leaving cards with all these people and receiving their cards? When a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... molasses, in which the sweet and the nauseous are so equally balanced, that the patient is in doubt whether to spit or to swallow. I was, however, exceedingly flattered with the notice bestowed upon me by this literary cynic, as he was never before known to speak well, even moderately, of any author, except natives of Boston, or ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... kind, you old cynic! I shan't tell you another thing about it." But still she went on: "We've taken the old Laurence house on the corner of Garfield Avenue and Pine Street, and it's to be fitted up to accommodate any sort ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... months, and the strain was beginning to tell. Ukridge became uncannily silent. Mrs. Ukridge, though she did not understand, I fancy, the details of the matter, was worried because Ukridge was. Mrs. Beale had long since been turned into a soured cynic by the lack of chances vouchsafed her for the exercise of her art. And as for me, I have never since spent so profoundly miserable a week. I was not even permitted the anodyne of work. There seemed to be nothing to do on the farm. The chickens were quite happy, and only asked to ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... half Jewess, might well have set a man's heart beating and brought him, suppliant, to her feet. To Alban there returned for a brief instant all that spirit of homage and of awe with which he had first beheld her on the balcony of the house in St. James' Square. The cynic in him laid down his robe and stood before her in the garb of youth spellbound and fascinated. He dared to say to himself, she loves me—it is to me that these words ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... Colonel, somehow, grew cool towards us, and to look askance upon the little band of Clive's friends. It seemed as if there were two parties in the house. There was Clive's set—J. J., the shrewd, silent little painter; Warrington, the cynic; and the author of the present biography, who was, I believe, supposed to give himself contemptuous airs; and to have become very high and mighty since his marriage. Then there was the great, numerous, and eminently respectable set, whose names ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... species." Marat seemed to have concentrated in himself all the evil passions which ferment in a society in a state of decomposition: he constituted himself the permanent representative of popular hate. By pretending this, he kept it up, writing all the while with bitterness and ferocity. He became a cynic in order the more intimately to know the masses. He assumed the language of the lowest reprobates. Like the elder Brutus, he feigned idiocy, but it was not to save his country, it was to urge it to the uttermost bounds of madness, and then control it by its very insanity. All his pamphlets, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... happier than when I have more to think of and to do than I can manage in a given period'. Idleness and insouciance had few temptations for them, cynicism was abhorrent to them. Even Thackeray was perpetually 'caught out' when he assumed the cynic's pose. Charlotte Bronte, most loyal of his admirers and critics, speaks of the 'deep feelings for his kind' which he cherished in his large heart, and again of the 'sentiment, jealously hidden but genuine, which extracts the venom from that formidable ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... cynic, who thinks himself a Stoic. Thus Maud was made to be unpopular with the author's countrymen, who conceived a prejudice against Maud's lover, described by Tennyson as "a morbid poetic soul, . . . an egotist with the makings of a cynic." That he is "raised to sanity" ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... uncalculating and generous desire to help gifted men to find their true place in the world where they might do their largest work. This, in an age when competition and jealous rivalry in public and in private life was as common as it is now, may give pause to the cynic and joy to the ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... as skilful as Salmasius or Scaliger, but still more learned in the language of abuse. This cynic was the Attila of authors. He boasted that he had occasioned the deaths of Casaubon and Scaliger. Detested and dreaded as the public scourge, Scioppius, at the close of his life, was fearful he should find no retreat in which ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... said that Solomon and Job have best spoken of the misery of man, the former the most fortunate, the latter the most unfortunate of creatures. And yet it seems strange to me that John Benham, the millionaire, Jerry's father, cynic and misogynist, and Roger Canby, bookworm and pauper, should each have arrived, through different mental processes, at the same ideal and philosophy of life. We both disliked women, not only disliked ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... too much he couldn't understand. Moreover, he was a lone wolf. Had been since the Second Interplanetary War wrenched him from the quiet backwater of his country home an eternity of eight years before and hammered him into hardness—a cynic who trusted nobody and ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... old cynic. If she had any snobbery in her she'd be here to-night, rubbing elbows with the women who never knew of her existence twenty years ago, although their husbands did. It has satisfied her ironic French soul ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... meal proceeded, Quickened by the savory food, Uncle Tom, from cynic terseness, Fell into a happier mood. "I was overseer in slave time, And a mean un, so dey say, Strapped Ma' Ann so much, ha! ha! She ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various
... they cried; "how very ridiculous!" and the little Lizard, who was something of a cynic, laughed outright. ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... his note on these lines, quotes the proverbial saying 'As wise as the Waltham calf that went nine times to suck a bull.' He quotes also from The Spectator, No. 138, the passage where the Cynic said of two disputants, 'One of these fellows is milking a ram, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... is to be a merchant, a wholesaler, a banker and all the rest of it he is no longer a farmer. Is nobody else to have a right to live?" enquires the Cynic. "Did these Grain Growers fight the elevator combine of the early days in order that they could establish a Farmers' Combine? Is one ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... decision and positiveness which a hesitating and undecided sex know how to admire, and in an instant had dexterously and gracefully swung her to the ground and again lifted her to the platform. An audible chuckle on the box, I fear, came from that other cynic, Yuba Bill, the driver. "Look keerfully arter that baggage, Kernel," said the expressman, with affected concern, as he looked after Colonel Starbottle, gloomily bringing up the rear of the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... watching and with wrestlings and with grief, Even of these, of these in chief, The stale breath sickens reeking from the shard. Nothing is left. Aye, how much less than naught! What shall be said or thought Of the slack hours and waste imaginings, The cynic rending of the wings, Known to that froward, that unreckoning heart Whereof this brewage was the precious part, Treasured and set away with furtive boast? O dear and cruel ghost, Be merciful, be just! See, I was yours and I am in the dust. Then look not so, as ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... is a cynic, who can blame him? He alone of created things has an intimate knowledge of all live things' love affairs, from when Eve shook back her hair and lifted up her lips, to the last girl kissed in Japan. The canoe drifting out of a scarf of mist ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... polisson, Experience would seek for it among the choice representatives of the class in question,—ay, and find it, too. Nor would the ardor of search be chilled by the suggestion of scarcity conveyed in the practical sarcasm of the sly old cynic, when he scorched human nature with a horn lantern by instituting a search with it on the sun-bright highways for an unauthenticated type of man. And yet the rowdy, like many another ugly and repulsive thing, may have his use. In the East Indies, it is customary to keep a live turtle in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... character, which seems to have interested your curiosity. The truth is, his disposition and mine, which, like oil and vinegar, repelled one another at first, have now begun to mix by dint of being beat up together. I was once apt to believe him a complete Cynic; and that nothing but the necessity of his occasions could compel him to get within the pale of society — I am now of another opinion. I think his peevishness arises partly from bodily pain, and partly from a natural excess of mental sensibility; ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... might otherwise be hidden under its rank, and remain unknown by its title? Our illustrious list of literary noblemen is far more glorious than the satirical "Catalogue of Noble Authors," drawn up by a polished and heartless cynic, who has pointed his brilliant shafts at all who were chivalrous in spirit, or related to the family of genius. One may presume on the existence of this intellectual nobility, from the extraordinary circumstance that the great have actually felt a jealousy of the literary rank. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Prince," he liked to take men unawares, he enjoyed a grim joke at their expense, though whether he ever showed signs of merriment, at least in after life, is not so much in the memories of those who knew him, as his eccentricities. He is more associated with the character of an ogre and a cynic who shunned his fellow-men, yet there are some of his employees still living who give him a good word as a ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... facts, a breach of some sort might have been anticipated. A game of gallantry in which the natural parts are inverted, and the gentleman acts the sentimentalist to the lady's performance of the shrewd cynic, is likely to have awkward results. Pope brooded over his resentment, and years afterwards took a revenge only too characteristic. The first of his Imitations of Horace appeared in 1733. It contained a couplet, too gross for quotation, making the most outrageous imputation ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... as yet. Mr. Kipling is the more audacious, which is probably a matter of training. He was brought up in India, where one's beard grows much quicker than at Oxford, and where you not only become a man (and a cynic) in a hurry, but see and hear strange things (and print them) such as the youth of Oxford miss, or, becoming acquainted with, would not dare insert in the local magazine of the moment. So Mr. Kipling's first work betokened a knowledge of the world that is by no means to be found in ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... scar just under the edge of his chin to the right. When he compressed his lips, this scar, not especially noticeable at other times, lifted up into his face, became of a sickly, bluish white, and transformed a careless, good-humored cynic into a man ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... my opinion, however, that people of a certain size should cultivate the hilarious rather than the unhappy. Diogenes, with the proportions of Alderman Gobble, could not have succeeded as a Cynic. ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... share his beliefs. She was a stern realist, a sneering sceptic, in the most literal sense a cynic. ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... must get on. You rest if you like though; there isn't anybody waiting for you; but Mabel, she 's waiting for me and I must try and get back. She would be disappointed else. Grieve! of course she'll grieve if I'm lost. All the world isn't a cynic ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... is sometimes to a cynic that there go two words to a bargain. In the convent of St. Sebastian all was gratitude; gratitude (as aforesaid) to the hidalgo from all the convent for his present, until at last the hidalgo began to express ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... a monster, he is a villain. When a man has done a wrong like that, he ought to pay the indemnity. Isn't it his place rather than ours to look after the girl?—who, to tell you the truth, seems to me rather questionable; there are plenty of better men in Alencon than that cynic du Bousquier. A girl must be depraved, indeed, to ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... you are! Listen to me—it is savage to fight—you must excuse me, but it is abominable. Yet, I must tell you, in this case you made a happy selection. You have thrashed a rake, a cynic, a parasite—a man who ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... Crates, the celebrated Cynic philosopher, got such a box on the ear from Nicodromus, the musician, that his face swelled up and became black and blue; whereupon he put a label on his forehead, with the inscription, Nicodromus fecit, which brought much disgrace to the fluteplayer who had committed such a ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... was a cynic. He had cultivated a superb contempt for those beliefs which other people cherish; he rejoiced in an open rebellion against convention, and manifested this hostility in an exaggerated carelessness of dress and ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... was a philosopher, an unconscious cynic, so greatly had he simplified his life. Two pairs of shoes, a pair of boots, a couple of suits of clothes, a dozen shirts, a dozen bandana handkerchiefs, four waistcoats, a superb pipe given to him by Pons, with an embroidered tobacco-pouch—these were all his belongings. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Taine is a cynic who charges Thackeray with cynicism, all in the choicest of biting phrase. It is a beautiful example of sinners calling the righteous to repentance—a thing that is often done, but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... national faith, and accordingly preach with all manner of mental reserves and symbolical interpretations. These are in reality politicians, not priests. But Peak belongs to neither class. He is an acute cynic, bent on making the best of this world, since he believes in no other. How he must have chuckled after every visit to this house! He despises you, one and all. Believe me, he ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... replied the cynic; "without it, few pursue successfully, and fewer are themselves pursued.—Stop!" he said to Miss Vere, as her companions moved off, "With you I have more to say. You have what your companions would wish to have, or be thought ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... taste and imagination interested him; her freshness, her freedom from any sense of his importance in the world fascinated him, and there was a keener pleasure than he dreamed in the novel sensation of breathing the perfume of what he, the one time cynic, would have staked his life on being unsullied purity. Their relations were to him a delightful variation upon the intimacy of master and pupil. Either he was listening to her or was answering her questions—and ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... leading to the place of building. Yet he himself had no thought of there being any touch of heroic splendour in his way of looking at it. He was not capable of drama. Behind his shut doors of immovability and stiff coldness, behind his cynic habit of treating all things with detached lightness, the generations and the centuries had continued their work in spite of his modernity. His British obstinacy would not relinquish the long past he and his had seemed to own in representing ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hoped she was proud of her handiwork. That was one Thomas Sandys, the one, perhaps, who put on the velvet jacket in the morning. But it might be number two who took that jacket off at night. He was a good-natured cynic, vastly amused by the airs this little girl put on before a man of note, and he took a malicious pleasure in letting her see that they entertained him. He goaded her intentionally into expressions of temper, because she looked prettiest then, ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... very proud of his freedom from those weak scruples that prevented rival business men from underbidding the F. C. C. He congratulated himself on the fact that at thirty-four he was much more of a cynic than men of sixty. He held no illusions, and he rejoiced in a sense of superiority over those of his own class in college, who, in matters of business, were still ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... many years ago. He was suffering very much at the time through a woman. Now he will tell you he has become a cynic." ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... several steps [that] have been taken to bring this poor country into ruin and disgrace, or they are of the number of those who have had a share in the actings and contrivances against it; for my lord, he must rather be an insensible stoic than an angry cynic, who can survey the measures of some men without horror and indignation—To see men act as if they had never taken an oath of fidelity to their king, whose interest is inseparable from that of his people, but had sworn to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... before Our Lady between two angels. This monument, which was broken during the religious wars of the sixteenth century and repaired shortly afterwards, was removed in the eighteenth century, and, Joan of Arc then received a fresh insult; the poetry of a cynic was devoted to the task of diverting a licentious public at the expense of the saint whom, three centuries before, fanatical hatred had brought to the stake. In 1792 the council of the commune of Orleans, "considering that the monument in bronze did not represent the heroine's ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... large wealth combined with his free and prodigal nature to subdue all hearts to his love; men of all minds and dispositions tendered their services to Lord Timon, from the glass-faced flatterer whose face reflects as in a mirror the present humor of his patron, to the rough and unbending cynic who, affecting a contempt of men's persons and an indifference to worldly things, yet could not stand out against the gracious manners and munificent soul of Lord Timon, but would come (against his nature) to partake of his royal entertainments and return most rich in his own estimation ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Hoyden playing Cleopatra. I should judge her to be incapable of truth. In private life a girl of this description embroils the peace of families, walks attended by a troop of scowling swains, and passes, once at least, through the divorce court; it is a common and, except to the cynic, an uninteresting type. On the throne, however, and in the hands of a man like Gondremark, she may become the authoress of ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cried Staniford, cheerfully. "Social genius and sensibility are two very different things; the cynic might contend they were incompatible, but I won't insist so far. I dare say she may regret the natal spot; most of us have a dumb, brutish attachment to the cari luoghi; but if she knows anything, she hates its surroundings, and must be glad ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells |
