"Cynicism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and a cynicism in this last remark which caused Larry to regard the painter searchingly. "You seem to know what it is. Don't mean to butt in, Hunt, if there are any trespassing signs up—but there's a woman ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... I said to myself. But cynicism, as Mr. Aldrich says, is a small brass field-piece that eventually bursts and kills the artilleryman. I knew this, having been blown up myself more than once; so I went back to my painting and forgot the world. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... see how work keeps bubbling in my mind. Then I shall do another fifteenth century paper this autumn—La Sale and Petit Jehan de Saintre, which is a kind of fifteenth century Sandford and Merton, ending in horrid immoral cynicism, as if the author had got tired of being didactic, and just had a good wallow in the mire to wind up with and indemnify ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tenderer than hers. She perceived in their grey lights a tenderness, as affection which seemed in contradiction to his nature as she had hitherto understood it. Even the thought flashed dimly in the background of her mind that his love was truer than hers; his cynicism, which had often frightened her, seemed to have vanished; indeed, there was something different in him from the man she had hitherto known—a difference which was rendered evident by the accent with which ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... cynicism melting away like an iceberg in the Gulf-stream. An hour before he would have told you that a woman's flattery could have no effect on an intellectual man; now he felt a tremor of pleasure, an indescribable something, as he shortened his steps to keep time with the ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... had been two of them against God and man; and now, when there is only one, it makes perhaps less difference than he had expected. And so her death is not only an affliction, but one more disillusion; and he redoubles in bitterness. The speech that follows, given with tragic cynicism in every word, is a dirge, not so much for her as for himself. From that time forth there is nothing human left in him, only 'the fiend of Scotland,' Macduff's 'hell-hound,' whom, with a stern glee, we see baited like a bear and hunted down like a wolf. He is inspired and ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... altogether too amply and cheerfully with two other golden youths in their early forties. He threw up the game; no woman was worth being good for, and he astonished even himself by the strain of witty cynicism he developed. One of the other desperate blades, warmed with wine, made a facetious allusion to his disappointment, but at the time this ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... sexual desire and religious fervor as another aspect of general human depravity, extending the satire beyond the crude accusation of hypocrisy or cynicism. He argues that the confusion is a part of the human condition, allowed to go out of control by a religion that puts passion before reason. The Countess of Huntingdon, "cloy'd with carnal Bliss," longs "to taste how Spirits ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... matter, neither Britain, France, Belgium, (nor the United States with her 186-odd variants of Christianity in her 186-odd religious sects), grew out of political cynicism, least of all out of some aloof ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... then as amused cynicism. But I see a different meaning in it now. And I can recall his tone, can find a strained note which then escaped me in his usual ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... he said, putting his hand on Leigh's shoulder, much as if he were admonishing a student, "I beg you not to allow this experience to colour your views with cynicism, for cynicism hurts only the cynic, and fails to take account of all the facts of life. As you have intimated, even-handed justice, inasmuch as it implies omniscience, is an attribute of God alone, but we have not been consciously unjust to you, according to our light. Personally I regret ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... cultured thought. He had a sad, handsome face, a small wax-tipped moustache, a low voice and a listless manner, which was relieved by a charming habit of suddenly lighting up into a rapid smile and gleam when anything caught his fancy. An acquired cynicism was eternally crushing and overlying his natural youthful enthusiasms, and he ignored what was obvious while expressing keen appreciation for what seemed to the average man to be either trivial or unhealthy. He chose Walter ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... court-fool for him?" asked the melancholy mime, who had in his nature somewhat of the cynicism of Jaques, without his grand imaginings of soul. "There are many off the stage, my lord, in better practice." "True, most true," acquiesced Buckingham; "I ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Middle West and had probably seldom been out of it before. He breathed American and was as pure a type as you could find. Nothing of the cynicism of Europe about him, for he was that old-fashioned and extra-lovable product, the God-fearing man. He was kind to every one, and had the natural religion of being kind. His door-keeper and sub-clerk at the main hut was an old Russian ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... given, at least to this generation. In these Letters all sympathetic readers will find the man they have long known from his writings—the man with a heart so tender that the world often drove him back into a bitterness of opposition, into an assumed hardness and defensive cynicism. There are readers so unluckily constituted that they can see nothing in Thackeray but this bitterness, this cruel sense of meanness and power of analysing shabby emotions, sneaking vanities, contemptible ambitions. All of us ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... simple, kindly folk they have introduced new fashions, the Blackbird of being funny, the Peacock of putting on airs! Fashions which the latter in his grotesque bad taste picked up parading on the marble terraces of the vulgar rich, and the former—Heaven knows where! along with his cynicism and his slang. Now the one, travelling salesman of blighting corrosive laughter, and the other, brainless ambassador of Fashion, their mission to kill among us love and labour, the first by persiflage, the second by display,—they ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... generosity and largeness of soul enough, while abstaining themselves for conscience sake, to share in the plans and sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades? to look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed malice, at the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they yield to selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence, and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents? Or is there such a state ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the heiress resumed, with a candid smile that made her cynicism become her charmingly, "you see how it is. I want a man one can RESPECT, even if he is a peer. He may have as many titles as dad has dollars, but ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... new things under the sun; and there have been critics who have derided it for its "seven deadly sins," as there have been others who have praised its "Christian graces." The parodist who wrote the following newspaper quatrain was no enemy of the automobile in spite of his cynicism. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... herself and her city Athens. The Nurse advises her not to sacrifice herself for such a common passion; a remedy there must be: "Men would find it, if women had not found it already". "She needs not words, but the man." Scandalised by this cynicism the Queen bids her be silent; the woman tells her she has potent charms within the house which will rid her of the malady without danger to her good name or her life. Phaedra suspects her plan and absolutely forbids her to speak with Hippolytus. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... believes in the presence and sovereignty of God in all things looks hopefully to the future. He is optimistic rather than pessimistic. The presence of an exuberant vitality reveals itself in a cheerful, buoyant tone. Scott's exuberant spirit forms a pleasing contrast with Carlyle's dyspeptic cynicism. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... seventeenth century planted this shady walk. Never was a prettier approach to a town than by these low-roofed light- chequered corridors. Their only defect is that they prepare you for a town of rather more rustic coquetry than Genzano exhibits. It has quite the usual allowance, the common cynicism, of accepted decay, and looks dismally as if its best families had all fallen into penury together and lost the means of keeping anything better than donkeys in their great dark, vaulted basements and mending their ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... All absence of cynicism checked an inclination to smile at this view of human brotherhood. On the contrary, there was in the tone the melancholy natural to a man profoundly humane at heart who from duty, from conviction, and from necessity, had played his part in ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... to make a man a cynic. This reflection, it may be added, was, on the young lady's part, just the least bit acrimonious. Captain Benyon was not a cynic in any sense in which he might have shocked an innocent mind; he kept his cynicism to himself, and was a very clever, courteous, attentive gentleman. If he was melancholy, you knew it chiefly by his jokes, for they were usually at his own expense; and if he was indifferent, it was all the more to his credit that he should have exerted ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... back in his chair as he spoke, his blotched gums showing in a grin between his thin lips, his dull eyes half veiled by the drooping of the leaden-hued lids. More than ever he was a mask of death, but of a death that possessed a grim humour, malevolent in its satirical cynicism. The justice of the King. Who should know that justice so well as Commines, its minister for almost a dozen years, or who so testify to its stern implacability? None escaped the rigid iron of its wrath. Their ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... ideal holiness of the church, upheld by Montanists and Novatians, attracted kindred spirits at opposite ends of the Empire, among the Moors of the Atlas and the Gauls of Asia. Such a people will have sins and scandals like its neighbours, but very little indifference or cynicism. It will be more inclined to make of Christian liberty an excuse for strife and debate. The zeal which carries the gospel to the loneliest mountain villages will also fill them with the jealousies of endless quarrelling sects; and the Gaul of Asia clung to his separatism with all the more ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... difficult to say exactly what; perhaps by the faint wrinkles about the corners of her large and still luminous blue eyes, by a certain not yet harsh prominence of the cheek-bones, by a slight droop of the lips that hinted at passion linked with cynicism. There was a suggestion of hardness somewhere. Freshness had left this face, but not because of age. There are elderly, even old women who look almost girlish, fragrant with a charm that has its root in innocence of life. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... reason to appreciate the talent of her counsellor. His predictions, made with a cynicism that always caused the pious lady to blush, had been fulfilled ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... necessary again to refer to the charge of cynicism that is levelled against Thackeray. The mistake is, as our critic points out, 'taking a vague word and applying it precisely.' It all depends upon what cynicism really means. 'If it means a war on comfort, then Thackeray was, to his eternal ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... recollected that all the things were in the hole in the wall, and then where was his certificate of birth? He stopped to think. But such despair, and, if it may be so called, cynicism, took hold of him, that he simply shook his head and went out. The sooner over, the better. Once again in the open air, he encountered the same insufferable heat, the dust, and the people in drink rolling about the streets. ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... of triviality. She had moods of magnificence. She had moods of intense secret hostility to her urgent little husband, and moods of genial tolerance for everything there was in her life. She had moods, and don't we all have moods?—of scepticism and cynicism, much profounder than the conventions and limitations of novel-writing permit us to tell here. And for hardly any of these moods ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... nonconformist withal. He says: 'To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer is to have kept your soul alive.' Independence and optimism are vital parts of his unformulated creed. He hated cynicism and sourness. He believed in praise of one's own good estate. He thought it was an inspiriting thing to hear a man boast, 'so long as he boasts of what he really has.' If people but knew this they would boast 'more freely and with a ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... is a necessary one. We begin with ignorance and the imagination, the material of the pose novel. Later come self-knowledge, disappointments and self-consciousness, and the prodigals of fiction stay themselves upon the husks of epigram and cynicism, and in the place of artless aspiration are indeed in plain black and white very desperate characters. It is after all only another pose—the pose of not posing. We, the common clay of the world of letters, must needs write ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... frankly I had taken him to be a very much older man than that, and the only thing about him I didn't like was a certain cynicism and knowledge of the world which didn't look well in a man who ought to be thinking about the serious things of life. After this young Howard confided in me even more than before. He said that he didn't care for Mrs. Tremain in that sort of way at all. She was ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... former uses. The princely sprezzatura of its ancient occupants, careless of these unfinished courts and unroofed galleries amid the splendor of their purfled silks and the glitter of their torchlight pageantry, has yielded to sullen cynicism—the cynicism of arrested ruin and unreverend age. All that was satisfying to the senses and distracting to the eyesight in their transitory pomp has passed away, leaving a sinister and naked shell. Remembrance can but summon ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... not much satire in the Manx character, and next to no cynicism at all. The true Manxman is white-hot. I have heard of one, John Gale, called the Manx Burns, who lampooned the upstarts about him, and also of one, Tom the Dipper, an itinerant Manx bard, who sang at fairs; but in a general way the Manx bard has been a deadly earnest ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... theatre, and if she ever went at night to the coffee-house with her husband. And Therese was beginning to think he was more interesting than the others, with his apparent ignorance of her world and his superb cynicism. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... literary conscience, I was always aware they would go as soon as I had a market for everything I could manufacture. You are the genuine incorruptible artist, to whom art is sacred. I really don't know whether to be doubtful of my cynicism or your sanity." ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... official propriety compels us to be extremely guarded in our description of the interesting objects which this expedition opened to our view. There can be no harm, however, in stating that we were received by the commander of the fortress with a kind of acid good-nature, or mild cynicism, that indicated him to be a humorist, characterized by certain rather pungent peculiarities, yet of no unamiable cast. He is a small, thin, old gentleman, set off by a large pair of brilliant epaulets,—the ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this man, but as the soft voice and cultured expressions fell upon his ears, the easy-flowing, pointed criticisms on matters of public interest, the broad philosophy, sometimes faintly dashed with bitterness and cynicism, but always sound, he found it hard to associate him with the significant sobriquet of the ranch. Tea-time found him still wrestling with the unsolved problem. But, with the advent of Diane with the table and laden tray, he set it aside ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... cynicism on our unwillingness to leave her again at the mercy of the Germans, and had no more consideration of our rights or feelings than the cuckoo has for the owner of the nest in which she ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... his face indifferent or faintly lighted with an habitual cynicism. Now he broke in. "He will never be elected," he said emphatically. "It would ruin the entire industry of the South. I tell you Lincoln is thinking of his own political advancement and caring nothing for this country. The South must secede, gentlemen—if you ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... interesting to note that Euphues embodies many of the characteristics of the Byronic hero—his sententiousness, his misogyny, his cynicism born of disillusionment, and his rhetorical flatulency; but he is no rebel like Manfred because he finds consolation in his own pre-eminence in a world of platitude. Conscious of his dearly bought wisdom, he makes it his continuous duty, if not pleasure, to rebuke the over-amorous ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... Hunsden rose, and was quietly bidding me good evening; the polite, considerate manner in which he offered me his hand (a thing he had never done before), convinced me that he thought I had made a terrible fool of myself; and that, ruined and thrown away as I was, it was no time for sarcasm or cynicism, or indeed for ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... moon. The broad fields lay dark beneath, and as the music ceased, I heard the sullen roar of the sea. If my heart ached with an indefinite longing,—if it felt that the airy epicurism of the Pacha was but a sad cynicism, masquerading in smiles,—if I dreaded to ask whether the wisest were not the saddest,—if the rising moon, and the plunging sea, and the silence of midnight, were mournful, if I envied Daisy Clover her sweet sleep and vigorous waking,—why, no one need ever know ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... eyes flashed fatally, away from us, in the direction of the shy dummy; and then he went on with cultivated cynicism. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... despair; and the extreme and open-mouthed "sensibility" of his private letters, on this and similar occasions, is very valuable as an index of character, oddly as it contrasts, in the vulgar estimate, with the supposed cynicism and savagery of the critic. In yet another year occurred the somewhat ludicrous duel, or beginning of a duel, with Moore, in which several police constables did perform the friendly office which Mr. Winkle vainly deprecated, and in which Jeffrey's, not Moore's, pistol was discovered ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... night, away from home. Holly, too, was expecting him, and what he had in his bag for her. Not that there was any cupboard love in his little sweet—she was a bundle of affection. Then, with the rather bitter cynicism of the old, he wondered for a second whether it was not cupboard love which made Irene put up with him. No, she was not that sort either. She had, if anything, too little notion of how to butter her bread, no sense ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... goodness!—have not yet been eliminated from the human species, either by the artificial restrictions of Fashion on the one hand, or the undisciplined vagaries of Female Emancipationists on the other. She was too young and enthusiastic to have surrendered her habit of sympathy for the cheap cynicism that marked the culture of her day. Brimming over with sympathy, impatient for some sphere of active interest, and just sufficiently tinged with the spirit of martyrdom to be anxious to feel herself doing some work in the world, ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... the primitive man. To him we owe the realisation of the fact that while modern barbarians of genius like Mr. Henley, and in his weaker moments Mr. Rudyard Kipling, delight in describing the coarseness and crude cynicism and fierce humour of the unlettered classes, the unlettered classes are in reality highly sentimental and religious, and not in the least like the creations of Mr. Henley and Mr. Kipling. Bret Harte tells the ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... consists of the clashes between wills equally consecrated and pure. Conscientious cranks and blunderers are perhaps even more of a nuisance than out-and-out villains; they hurt every good cause they espouse and bring noble ideals into ridicule; they provoke discouragement and cynicism. There is hardly a folly or a crime that has not been committed prayerfully and with a clear conscience; the saint and the criminal are sometimes psychologically indistinguishable indeed, by which name we call a fanatic may depend upon which ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... cynicism of her speech was like her smile. It held back all intrusive curiosity. And the man's answering smile had something of the same ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... This clearly implies that a play in which there is no scene a faire is nothing but a series of newspaper sketches. Becque, one fancies, might have replied that the scene between Clotilde and Monsieur Simpson at the beginning of Act III was precisely the scene a faire demanded by the logic of his cynicism.] ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... possessions. She was not the first woman for whom he had entertained an unpractical admiration. He had been in love with duchesses and countesses, and he had made, once or twice, a perilously near approach to cynicism in declaring that the disinterestedness of women had been overrated. On the whole, he had tempered audacity with modesty; and it is but fair to him now to say explicitly that he would have been incapable of taking advantage of his ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... lean, square-jawed face, with its sensitive, bitter-looking mouth and its fine modeling of brow and temple, as though seeking there the answer to her questionings, and with a sudden, intuitive instinct of reliance, she felt that behind all his cynicism and surface hardness, there lay a quiet, sure strength of soul that would ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... awake, as usual; so she quietly dressed and, taking her book under her arm, started to make her way into the gardens. Despite Louise's cynicism she had no intention of abandoning her studies. She had decided to fit herself for a teacher before Aunt Jane's invitation had come to her, and this ambition would render it necessary for her to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... Florence could count. He it was that had ushered Messer Folco himself into this troublesome world, that is, however, less troublesome at Florence than elsewhere. He had done the like for Madonna Beatrice, and from the hour of her birth he, whom many blamed for a pagan cynicism and philosophic disdain of humanity, had watched over her life with the tenderness that watches the growth of some fair and unfamiliar flower. He was, besides being a master-physician, one that was thoroughly learned in the science of the stars, and I have always heard that the horoscope ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Mr. President, you will be able to measure with your own eyes the extent of these disasters, and the French Government will make known to you the authentic documents in which the German General Staff developed with astounding cynicism its program of pillage and industrial annihilation. Your noble conscience will pronounce a verdict on ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... they parted, he stood for a few moments, holding her hand in his big, soft grasp while he looked down on her. The suspicion and the cynicism had gone from his face, and she understood all at once why people still trusted him, still liked him, notwithstanding his reputation, notwithstanding even his repulsiveness. He was all that—he was immoral, he was repulsive—but he was ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the Boy's shortcomings he condoned. He believed the young tone-poet's power was in itself an indication of high aspirations, and those he thought were only temporarily suppressed by a boyish affectation of cynicism. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... The new cynicism and philosophy which was thus spreading even among monarchs, was soon destined to have most explosive results. It found expression first in a further revolt against the dominion of the Roman Church. Most of the sovereigns joined in a determined attack against the Jesuits, the enthusiastic and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... remind us that the duty of our generation of Americans is to renew our Nation's faith, not focused just against foreign threats but against the threats of selfishness, cynicism, and apathy. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... collection was to be amused." His face blackened with rage. "This cheerful callousness in a matter involving a total want of principle and straight-dealing as between man and man," he said, "denotes to what a point of cynicism the Parisians ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... English, or the frequent French, to characterize the event recorded, there were found to be many situations, phrases and expressions that may shock the sensitive reader; in the conceptions of the diarist, however, in his cynicism and degradation he photographs Red Russia and reveals the characteristics necessary to visualize the horror that accompanied the event. A truthful picture of this unique segment of human history can be preserved only in a word-for-word translation of this document. ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... necessities which colonial life in the tropics imposed upon all alike. The touch of cruelty here revealed produces an impression which there is little in the entire work capable of modifying. Labat seems to have possessed but a very small quantity of altruism; his cynicism on the subject of animal suffering is not offset by any visible sympathy with human pain;—he never compassionates: you may seek in vain through all his pages for one gleam of the goodness of gentle Pre Du Tertre, who, filled with intense pity for the condition ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... smuggler, like the pirate and the highwayman, was a sort of gentleman-rogue. But now it has become a very ladylike art. The extent of it is almost beyond belief, too. It begins with the steerage and runs right up to the absolute unblushing cynicism of the first cabin. I suppose you know that women, particularly a certain brand of society women, are the worst and most persistent offenders. Why, they even boast of it. Smuggling isn't merely popular, it's aristocratic. But we're going to take some of the flavour ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... doctrines of Cynicism were carried to their utmost application by Diogenes of Sinope. In early life he had been accustomed to luxury and ease; but his father, who was a wealthy banker, having been convicted of debasing the coinage, Diogenes, who in some manner shared ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... picture the fact that in the first hour of Du Maurier's mere amusement Ruskin was adding his lachrymation to Carlyle's over a society going swiftly to Gehenna. It is the entire absence of despair, bitterness, or cynicism in his work that gives it its altogether unique place in the history of social satire. Never before was there such a lenient barb on such ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... No shallow cynicism, this! Just plain, bald truth without any wig on it. The only thing that you could put your finger on that Marie really did was so to wear clothes and so to give parties as to be the barometer of her husband's prosperity. And in every city you can see lots of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... accounts for the wide popularity of Fitzgerald's "Rubaiyat." The book has been read eagerly and fondly studied, as if it were a new book of fin du siecle production: the last efflorescence of intellectual satiety, cynicism, and despair. Yet the book is eight centuries old, and it has been the task of this seer of the East to reveal to the West the heart-sickness under which the nations ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... attempt to fathom. His mind was filled with the monstrous audacity by which Charles Turold, apparently at the dictate of remorse, had sought to convince him of Sisily's innocence by directing attention to the marks on the dead man's arm which he had probably made himself. Could human cynicism go farther than that? A great wave of pity swept over the lawyer as he thought of the unhappy Sisily, and all that she had been compelled to endure. But ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... well to be affected by his little splurt of cynicism. If she could escape a cynic either in books or in society, she invariably did so. Life was still beautiful for her; and one of her father's untaught lessons was that the cynic is a one-sided creature, having lost the eye that sees ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... care to argue with him; I only felt that if the illness of genius had at any time affected ME, it was pretty well certain I should now suffer no more from its delicious pangs and honey-sweet fever. I was cured! The probing-knife of the world's cynicism had found its way to the musically throbbing centre of divine disquietude in my brain, and had there cut down the growth of fair imaginations for ever. I thrust aside the bright illusions that had once been my gladness; I forced myself to look with unflinching eyes at the wide waste of universal ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... human being, even if she had to be buried in the depths of Harpeth Valley to keep her so." There was banter in Everett's voice and a smile on his lips, but a bitterness lay in the depths of his keen dark eyes and an ugly trace of cynicism filtered through the tones of ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... with fellowship toward him after I have left him behind. There is something comradely about his amazing cynicism. People, thinks this beggar, are ashamed of themselves for being strong, for having two legs, for not being poor, brow-beaten, cheek-turning humble mendicants. People, thinks this beggar, are secretly ashamed of themselves for being part of success. And their shame is inspired ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... knew by the sure intuition which is a woman's inner and unerring vision, that jest or trifle as he might his keen brain was actively employed in some subtle investigation too obscure for her to fathom, and that behind his badinage and behind his cynicism there ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... had appealed to his cynical soul from the first. It was the apotheosis of cynicism, this reducing of a world to its lowest level. And it had amused him to see his wife, a gentlewoman born, bewildered before the ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... best in the midst of them. He was never abashed, but had a resource and an apt one in every emergency. He was absolutely intrepid before the thrusts of our sharpest examiners and as I have said could bluff it boldly and dexterously where his knowledge failed; then the odd cynicism with which he turned down great pretentions and sometimes matters of serious import, had a Napoleonic cast. In '61 he enlisted as a private but rose swiftly through the grades to the command of a regiment. At Antietam he had part of a brigade ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... and concluded that Uncle Ben was probably right. Rupert Filgee, who was a handsome boy of fourteen, was also a strongly original character whose youthful cynicism and blunt, honest temper had always attracted him. He was a fair scholar, with a possibility of being a better one, and the proposed arrangement with Uncle Ben would not interfere with the discipline of school hours and might help them both. Nevertheless he asked good-humoredly, "But couldn't ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... her. Among other things, he suspected her of being in league with Marcia to protect the Christians. To him she represented the idealism that his cynicism bitterly rejected. The mere fact of her unshakable fidelity to Pertinax was an offense in his eyes; she presented what he considered an impudent pose of morality, more impudent because it was sustained. ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... he's adopted," said the old gentleman. "The poor fellow's got something to love. All men need that—and even a few women," he chuckled. Mr. Bowdoin was addicted to portentous cynicism against the sex, which he ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... be truly genial unless he has been taught in the school where his wife, or daughter, or sister, or mother presides as a sun of radiance and beauty. It is only in this school that boorish manners are reformed, egotisms rebuked, stupidities punished, and cynicism exorcised. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... forces on the side of the greater settlement. Cynicism is never more than a half-truth, and because man is imperfect it does not follow that he must be futile. Russia is a land of strange silences, but it is manifest that whatever the innermost quality of the Czar may be, he is no clap-trap vulgar conqueror ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... he would never escape the reproach. He had no taste for taking revenge on the young woman. It would not salve his pride to visit on her pretty head the thwarted punishments due Sir Joseph and his consort in guilt. Besides, in spite of his cynicism, he had been touched by Marie Louise's sincerities. She proved them by the very contradictions of her testimony, with its history of keen intelligence alternating with curious blindness. He knew how people get themselves all tangled up in conflicting duties, how they ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... peculiar charm to us in this land and generation, for whom Hazlitt and Keats are names almost as shadowy and romantic as Amadis or Lancelot; but best of all is his noble tribute to Shelley. After speaking (Vol. II. p. 38) of the deep philanthropy which lay beneath the apparent cynicism of Hazlitt, he thus continues:—"But only imagine a man who should feel this interest too, and be deeply amiable, and have great sufferings, bodily and mental, and know his own errors, and waive the claim ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Cristich, I discovered, as our acquaintance ripened, had none of the spleen and little of the vanity of the unsuccessful artist. He seemed in his forlorn old age to have accepted his discomfiture with touching resignation, having acquired neither cynicism nor indifference. He was simply an innocent old man, in love with his violin and with his art, who had acquiesced in disappointment; and it was impossible to decide, whether he even believed in his talent, or had not silently accredited the verdict of musical Vienna, which had condemned his opera ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... and saw to it that others did likewise. She was a natural-born hostess. Talk never flagged in her neighbourhood, and her own lack of self-consciousness set the stiffest and shyest at their ease. Besides, she always enjoyed talking to Norton, whose cynicism and critical attitude she disarmed by the simple means of ignoring them. She liked the man's plain, hard-featured face, ploughed with deep lines of thought and effort, and only redeemed from ugliness by ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... instituted to deal with cowards and deserters. Thereupon the excitement seemed to subside, and people went to dinner. An hour afterwards the Boulevards were as gay as ever, thronged once more with promenaders, among whom were many officers of the Garde Mobile and the usual regiment of painted women. Cynicism and frivolity were once more the order of the day. But in the midst of it there came an unexpected incident. Some of the National Guards of the district were not unnaturally disgusted by the spectacle which the Boulevards presented only a ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... and smiled. Across their memories, across the years of war, across Anne's agony they smiled. Besides its courage and its young, candid cynicism, Anne's smile expressed her utter trust ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... because it was a little queer and imaginative—she, whose birthright it was to nourish imagination! Better to have accepted, to have tired themselves a little by the journey, than coldly to reply, "Might I come some other day?" Her cynicism left her. There would be no other day. This shadowy woman ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... and a French cynic is not without cruelty. He once told Wanda that he had seen men and women do much worse than throw their lives away, which was probably the unvarnished truth. But there must have been a weak spot in his cynicism. There always is a weak spot in the vice of the most vicious. For he sat alone in his room at the Hotel de l'Europe, at Warsaw, long into the night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and thinking thoughts which he would at any other juncture have been the first to condemn. He was thinking ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... yet she was irritated with herself. Why should she particularly care what this woman thought in ways as subtle as this? Obvious kindness was her intention, not mental charity pursued into tortuous by-paths. And, besides, her frank, boyish cynicism, its wariness, revolted, even while she felt herself flattered at the prospect of the confidences that seemed to tremble on Mrs. Denby's lips. It wouldn't do to "let herself in for anything"; to "give ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... in languages, by taking me down French books, Spanish books, German books, and reading from them all with the properest accent. Yet with this boyish pride and self-satisfaction there was mixed a tone of bitter and worldly cynicism, a belief in fortune as the sole providence. As nearly as I could make out, he was a Johnson man in American politics; upon the Mexican question he was independent, disdaining French and Mexicans alike. He was with the former from the first, and had continued ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... prow, where I leant with careless grace upon the hitcher, in an attitude suggestive of agility and strength. I arranged my hair with a curl over the forehead, and threw an air of tender wistfulness into my expression, mingled with a touch of cynicism, which I ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... jolly cruel old officer, sir," said Bones, pained by the cold cynicism of his chief. "But I'm very serious, sir. This country is full of material. And everybody says I ought to write a book about it—why, dash it, sir, I've been ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... turned upon old Tom the eye of the Big City, which is an eye expressive of cold and justifiable suspicion, of judgment suspended as high as Haman was hung, of self-preservation, of challenge, curiosity, defiance, cynicism, and, strange as you may think it, of a childlike yearning for friendliness and fellowship that must be hidden when one walks among the "stranger bands." For in New Bagdad one, in order to survive, must suspect whosoever sits, dwells, drinks, rides, walks or sleeps ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... instant his eyes glimmered with the same gay malice, and the unbelieving smile twitched at his clean-cut lips, and he raised his hand, touching the short ends of his mustache with that careless, amused cynicism which rather became him. ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... are you saying this?" I cried in horror, wringing my hands and going up to her quickly. "No, Zinaida Fyodorovna, this is cynicism. You must not be so despairing; listen to me," I went on, catching at a thought which flashed dimly upon me, and which seemed to me might still save us both. "Listen. I have passed through so many experiences in my time that my head goes round at the thought of them, ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... motives which are contrary to our preaching if not to our practice. Now at first sight this might be fairly taken as a proof of an evil nature, but when we come to consider the great antiquity of the individual it becomes doubtful if it was anything more than the natural cynicism which arises from age and bitter experience, and the possession of extraordinary powers of observation. It is a well known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the question, the older we grow ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... content that his puppets shall have the air of puppets; he stands in the arena of his circus and cracks his whip; they gallop round grimacing, and with labels on their backs. The verse comes between him and nature, as the satire comes between him and poetry. Cynicism has gone to the making of poetry more than once, but only under certain conditions: that the poet should be a lyric poet, like Heine, or a great personality in action, like Byron, to whom cynicism should be but one of the tones of his speech, the gestures ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... ruthless of tyrants; it is always in a democratic society that heresy and felony tend to be most constantly confused. One hears without surprise of a Bismarck philosophizing placidly (at least in his old age) upon the delusion of Socialism and of a Frederick the Great playing the hose of his cynicism upon the absolutism that was almost identical with his own person, but men in the mass never brook the destructive discussion of their fundamental beliefs, and that impatience is naturally most evident in those societies in which men in the mass ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... tears not yet dried upon her cheeks. While thin, frail, shadowy, with white hair and furrowed cheeks, the old man fixed his sightless orbs on space; and his face, usually only animated from the lethargy of advancing dotage by a certain querulous cynicism, now grew suddenly earnest, and even thoughtful, as ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seem to be denoted by the words, "I have tried each way singly: now for both!" (page 121); and again at page 126, where a new-born softness asserts itself. His language has, however, a vein of bitterness, sometimes even of cynicism, which belies the idea of any sustained impulse to good. He is worn in body, weary in mind, fitful and wayward in mood, and just in the condition in which men half impose on others, and half on themselves. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... to declare with affectionate cynicism that the arm had been broken by the cudgel of a Polish peasant while Castro was trying to filch a pig from a stable.... "I cut his throat out, though," Castro would grumble darkly; "so, like that, and it matters very little—it is even an improvement. See, I ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... faith, godless and yet boastful,—an Epicureanism such as Socrates attacked and Paul rebuked. It found its greatest exponent in Voltaire, the oracle and idol of intellectual Europe. In short, it was an age when general cynicism and reckless abandonment to pleasure marked the upper-classes; an age which produced Chesterfield, as godless a man as ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... scattered throughout his writings, are words in favour of that which is just, merciful, magnanimous, and even, at times, in favour of that which is pure; which proves that in Voltaire, as in most men, there was a double self—the one sickened to cynicism by the iniquity and folly which he saw around him—the other, hungering after a nobler life, and possibly exciting that hunger in one and another, here and there, who admired him for other reasons than the educated mob, which cried after ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... favorably with the confused account Eugene had rendered of the same subject. She remarked a singular composure of countenance, voice, and even position, which seemed idiosyncratic, and was directly opposed to the stern rigidity and cynicism of her guardian. She shrank from the calm, steadfast gaze of his eyes, which looked into hers with a deep yet gentle scrutiny, and resolved ere the close of the evening to sound him concerning ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... touch," though it became an office joke, also took its place as an unwritten law. Severance's calm and impersonal cynicism was transmuted into a genuine enthusiasm among the copy-readers. Headlining took on a new interest, whetted by the establishment of a weekly prize for the most attractive caption. Maximum of sensationalism was the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... rubbed his hands, for this cynicism pleased him. Suddenly his eye caught the book which the young ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... temporary spleen. Nobody loved his old books and old opinions better. Hazlitt is speaking in the character of Timon, which indeed fits him rather too easily. But elsewhere the same strain of cynicism comes out in more natural and less extravagant form. Take, for example, the Essay on the 'Conduct of Life.' It is a piece of bona fide advice addressed to his boy at school, and gives in a sufficiently ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... pursued, hoping to frighten her. "Yes that I hadn't been there at all that evening when I told you I had just come from there, and you had been looking for me at Prevost's," she replied (judging by his manner that he knew) with a firmness that was based not so much upon cynicism as upon timidity, a fear of crossing Swann, which her own self-respect made her anxious to conceal, and a desire to shew him that she could be perfectly frank if she chose. And so she struck him with all the sharpness and force of a headsman wielding his axe, and yet could not be charged ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... contrary to Peter's expectation, their distinguished friend warmed to the work of answering and explaining, became interested, was content to keep her and to talk. Yes, she took her ease; she relieved herself, with the rare cynicism of the artist—all the crudity, the irony and intensity of a discussion of esoteric things—of personal mysteries, of methods and secrets. It was the oddest hour our young man had ever spent, even in the course of investigations which had often led him into the cuisine, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... was the embodiment of the joy of life, the perfect immoralist. There was no cynicism in his nature, no cruelty, no obliquity, no remorse; nothing but sunshine with a few clouds sailing across the fathomless blue spaces—the sky of Hellas. Nihil humani alienum; and as I listened to those glad tales, I marvelled at the many-tinted experiences that could ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... those streets of provincial cities which he had hitherto loved best to paint, and gave us a sternly satiric picture of the frothy surface of fashionable life in Madrid. From the illusions of the poor, pathetic and often beautiful, he turned to the ugly cynicism of the wealthy. With his passion for honesty and simplicity, his heart burned within him at the parade and hollowness which he detected in aristocratic and bureaucratic Madrid. One conceives that, like his own Raimundo, he was invited to enter it, took his fill of its pleasures, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... word," Mr. Sabin said. Lady Carey shrugged her shoulders. The subtlety of her smile faded away. Her whole face expressed a contemptuous and self-assured cynicism. ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... term as assimilation. They had just grown to be enormously good friends. She had forgotten about Americanizing him, but she found him charming, with the fresh frank abandon of the unspoiled south-European. She liked his open admiration, she enjoyed his mature cynicism, she reveled in his buoyant enthusiasm. She had not believed that such opposing elements could dwell in one small person. In Angelo, she found them, and she ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... in her mind; and this was more particularly the case with regard to Captain Mowbray. As he looked at her there was a cold, hard light in his eyes which gave her the idea of a cruel and pitiless nature; and there was a kind of cynicism in his tone when he spoke which repelled her at once. He had all the air of a rou, yet even rous have often a savor of jolly recklessness about them, which conciliates. About this man, however, there was nothing of this; there was nothing but cold, cynical self-regard, and ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... was a part of their high bravery and privilege; but what it also appeared to attest in this wondrous manner was that they could communicate to their chosen in three minutes, by the mere light of their eyes, the same shining cynicism. He was to wonder of course, tinglingly enough, whether he had really made an ass of himself, and there was this amount of evidence for it that there certainly had been a series of moments each one of which glowed with the lucid sense that, as she couldn't like him as much as ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... to the reviewer, whose theatrical apprenticeship had been thorough, yet it never failed to awaken his deepest cynicism. Somewhere within him was a puritanical streak, and he still cherished youthful memories. He reflected now that it was he who had laid the foundation for the popularity of the girl he had come to ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... But he did evil in his life, and then the heart lost its faith, and hope utterly perished. The more he loved pleasure and pursued self, the more cynical and bitter he became. Pessimism set a cold, hard stamp upon his face, and marred his beauty. Cynicism lies like a black mark across his pages. At last, in his bitterness, the philosopher tells us the whole universe is a mirage, and that yonder summer-making sun is a bubble that repeats its iridescent tints in the colors of the rainbow. Despair ate ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... himself at ease, in congenial society, he displayed his mastery of irony and banter, neither hesitating to air his opinion of persons nor shrinking from admissions which were candid to the verge of cynicism. At such times he had not veiled his intense dislike of the Administration. After Hayes's election his conversation discovered as aggressive a spirit as he had exhibited at Rochester, speaking of the Secretary of State as "little Evarts," and charging the President ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... again, but his disbelief has not yet reconciled him to making the best of this life, or laid ghosts of the beliefs he has outworn. Clear air and sun, but not so much as to paralyse action, have made in France clearer eyes, clearer brains, and touched souls with a sane cynicism. The French do not despise and neglect the means to ends. They face sexual realities. They know that to live well they must eat well, to eat well must cook well, to cook well must cleanly and cleverly cultivate their soil. May France be warned in time ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... was made. In the agitated days that followed she saw that a profound patriotism underlay Bakkus's cynicism, and she relied much on his counsel. Every man that England could put into the field was a soldier fighting for France. She glowed at the patriotic idea. Andrew, to his great gladness, noted that no hint of the cry "What is to become of me?" passed her lips. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... from the soul of the instrument. The lad beside him also sang well, perhaps because he was young and sentiment was strong within him, but sturdy labor under the open heaven seems inimical to the development of hypercritical cynicism, and the men who at home would probably have applauded that song with an indulgent smile listened with kindling eyes and then made the long room ring with their bravos. Here, far away from the land that bred them, ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... Krevin Crood had told at last was true. He knew, too, that it would never have come out if Krevin himself had not been in danger. A feeling of almost physical nausea came over him as he remembered the callous, brutal cynicism of Krevin's last words, "If it's going to be my neck or hers, I prefer it to be hers!" A woman!—yet, a murderess; the murderess of his cousin, whose death he had vowed to avenge. But of course it was so—he saw many things now. The anxiety to get the letters; the dread of publicity ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... of the conversation grated upon Gay not a little. There was something splendidly barbaric about the girl, and yet the mixture of her childishness and her cynicism affected him unpleasantly rather than otherwise. His ideal woman—the woman of the early Victorian period—was submissive and clinging. He was perfectly assured that she would have borne her wrongs, and even her mother's wrongs, with humility. Meekness had always seemed to him the becoming mental ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... that she had a large heart. Only to her husband, and occasionally, in a fit of passion, to someone who she thought had treated her badly, did she show a lachrymose side of her nature. She was noted for her gaiety and joie de vivre and for the energy with which she pursued enjoyment. Her cynicism did not cut deep, her irony was seldom poisoned. She spoke well of people, and was generous with her money. With her time she was less generous. She was not of those who are charitable with their golden hours. "I can't be bothered!" was the motto of her life. And ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... three days," "God heals, and the doctors take the fees," "Keep your eyes open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards," "To bear other people's afflictions, every one has courage enough and to spare,"—savored of a blended irony and cynicism exceedingly attractive to men of the world and wise old women, even in New England parishes, whatever Calvinistic ministers might say of the "higher life." The sale of the almanac was greater than that of the "Pilgrim's Progress," and the wealth of Franklin ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... purpose this had been done Scawthorne could not conjecture; Mr. Percival had made no comment in his hearing. In all likelihood the will was now in this very room. Joseph surveyed every object again and again. He wondered whether Jane knew anything of the matter, but not all his cynicism could persuade him that at the present time her thoughts were taking the same direction ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... literature shared in it, he could say, with Aeneas, not only that he saw, but that himself was a great part of it. That movement was, on the whole, a downward one, from faith to scepticism, from enthusiasm to cynicism, from the imagination to the understanding. It was in a direction altogether away from those springs of imagination and faith at which they of the last age had slaked the thirst or renewed the vigor of their souls. Dryden himself ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... of her chair tightly with both hands. She was looking at Norris with a new expression, a kind of breathless fear. She knew him for a man who could not be swerved from the thing he wanted. For all his easy cynicism, he had the reputation of being a bloodhound on the trail. Moreover, she knew that he was no friend to Jack Flatray. Why had she left that running iron as evidence to convict its owner? What folly not to have removed it from the ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... at this queer turnout, the little reddish man climbed down from in front and stood watching me. His face was a comic mixture of pleasant drollery and a sort of weather-beaten cynicism. He had a neat little russet beard and a shabby Norfolk jacket. His head ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... His first, last, only disappointment in love had subsided into a gentle and not disagreeable melancholy. His trial, and the dreadful notoriety which his name had acquired, had imparted to his mild nature a gentle tinge of cynicism, which improved him. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... fine at the bridge, and coarse towards the nostrils. The iris of the eyes was beautiful, with its clear brown streaks on an orb of greenish grey; yet his eyes were the most disagreeable feature in Wyndham's face. As for Knowles, he interested her with his genial cynicism; but it was a relief to turn from these restless types to Mr. Flaxman Reed. He had the face of the ideal ascetic—sweet in its austerity, militant in its renunciation. What in heaven's name was he ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... breakfast as fine as had been the supper, and as for the coffee, the hardened man of the city and jests and cynicism found himself wondering that there should have developed jokes about what "mother used to make." The more he thought of it, the madder he became. "We are a nation of cheap laughers," he said to ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... religious truths. They find they cannot pray. Nothing seems to matter. The memory of earlier days when life seemed bright and religious faith was confident seems only to mock them. Many are beset by definite intellectual difficulties and so are tempted to a general cynicism. Envy of others will suggest itself, and though it be sternly repressed, it still adds to the general strain, while good advice from others will seem just the last straw ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... slighting by her manner the excessive meaning of her words. "I ask for myself only what I think I have a right to give you—my absolute undivided attention for those first few years. They say it never lasts!" she hastened to add with playful cynicism. ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... at this hard, cold statement. The girl could never work in a dance hall any more! And this was accepted as a calamity! Accustomed as he was to the frontier, this matter-of-fact acceptance of a dance-hall occupation as something desirable impressed him with its cynicism. Not that he doubted the virtue of many of those forlorn ones who gayly tripped their feet over rough boards, and drank tea or ginger ale and filled their pockets with bar checks to make a living as best they might, but because the whole garish, rough, drink-laden, curse-begrimed ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton |
