"Flout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nation Once since hath entered Ville Marie, But we avenged that desecration At Chrystler's farm and Chateauguay— Peace! peace! 'tis cowardly to flout Our triumphs in a cousin's face: That page was long since blotted out And Friendship written ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... responsibility of her success. Who does? My dear Charmian, who wrote the successful novel of last year, do you not already repent your rash act? If you do not write a better novel this year, will not the public flout you and jeer you for a pretender? Did the public overpraise you at first? Its mistaken partiality becomes now your presumption. Last year the press said you were the rival of Hawthorne. This year ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... will never be beaten. You find a marriage license in the pockets of a murdered man, rush off in a taxi to the address of the lady named therein, marry her, punch a frantic rival on the nose, take the fair one to a hotel, flout her father, a British peer, and hold a banquet at which the Chief of the New York Detective Bureau is an honored guest; and then you have the hardihood to tell me that your actions constitute an immaterial side issue in the biggest sensation New York has produced this year. Young ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... that rises to my touch, So like a cushion? Can it be a cabbage? It is, it is that deeply injured flower, Which boys do flout us with;—but yet I love thee, Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout. Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air; But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau, Stripped of his ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... Then flout full high to their parent sky those circled stars of ours, Where'er the dark-hulled foeman floats, where'er his emblem towers! Speak for the right, for the truth and light, from the gun's unmuzzled mouth, And the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... some jury duty. You shirk fatherhood, and all its happy and sacred obligations! You deny posterity! You strike a blow at it! You flout it! You menace the future of this Republic! Your inertia is a crime against the people! Instead of pro bono publico your motto is pro bono tempo—for a good time! And, dog Latin or not, it's the truth, and our ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... at once from schoolroom's form. Instead of all this angry storm, Another might have thanked you well For saving prey from that grim cell, That hollowed den 'neath journals great, Where editors who poets flout With their demoniac laughter shout. And I have scolded you! What fate For charming dwarfs who never meant To anger Hercules! And I Have frightened you!—My chair I sent Back to the wall, and then let fly A shower of words the envious ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... together these Like thunderclouds outlightening, thrilling the air. With shattering trumpet-challenge, when the blasts Are locked in frenzied wrestle, with mad breath Rending the clouds, when Zeus is wroth with men Who travail with iniquity, and flout His law. So grappled they, as spear with spear Clashed, shield with shield, and man on man ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... thou would'st view fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight; For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey. When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruin'd central tower; When buttress and buttress, alternately, Seem framed of ebon and ivory; When silver edges the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... marvel-bloom to be worn on head! * Though a stranger among you fro' home I fled: Make use of wine in my company * And flout at Time who in languish sped. E'en so cloth camphor my hue attest, * O my lords, as I stand in my present stead. So gar me your gladness when dawneth day, * And to highmost seat in your homes be I led: And quaff your cups in all jollity, * And ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Nellie escaped so much better than many of her friends, that in time she seemed to forget it and didn't rebel at Malcolm's advent, or Elizabeth's, but by that time I had been practically ostracized from the nursery; governesses were empowered to flout and insult me; I scarcely saw my children, and what I did see made me furious, so I vetoed more orphans bearing my name, and gave up doing anything. Then came the tragedy of Elizabeth. Surely you understand 'just ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... girl I left to wait on them, seeing the table set With all supplies myself, and then retired. But such their confidence; their talk so loud And free, I could not help but hear some words That raised suspicion; then I listened close And heard, 'mid gibe and jest, the enterprise That was to flout us; make the Loyalist A cringing slave to sneering rebels; make The British lion gnash his teeth with rage;— The Yankee, hand-on-hip, guffawing loud The while. At once, my British blood was up, Nor had I borne their hated presence more, But for the deeper cause. My husband judged ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... offer sacrifice; Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high; Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies;[64] The shouts are France, Spain, Albion, Victory! The Foe, the Victim, and the fond Ally That fights for all, but ever fights in vain,[65] Are met—as if at home they could not die— To feed the crow on Talavera's plain, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... were not able to enjoy the shout of laughter over his discomfiture which would surely have gone up from Paris and Strasburg and Basel and Zurich. Estienne and Gessner would hardly have felt acute sorrow at a flout put upon Julius Caesar Scaliger. Crooked-tempered as he was, Cardan, compared with Scaliger, was as a rose to a thistle, but there were reasons altogether unconnected with the personalities of the disputants which swayed the balance to Cardan's advantage. The greater part of Scaliger's ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... And D may be dull, and E's very thick skull Is as empty of brains as a ladle; While F is F sharp, and will cry with a carp, That he's known your best joke from his cradle! When your humour they flout, You can't let yourself go; And it does put you out When a person says, "Oh! I have known that ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... His father's an honest man, a worshipful fishmonger, and so forth; and now does he creep and wriggle into acquaintance with all the brave gallants about the town, such as my guest is (O, my guest is a fine man!), and they flout him invincibly. He useth every day to a merchant's house where I serve water, one master Kitely's, in the Old Jewry; and here's the jest, he is in love with my master's sister, Mrs. Bridget, and calls her mistress; and there he will sit you a ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... if any one here her birth doe disdaine, Her father is ready, with might and with maine, To proove shee is come of noble degree: Therfore never flout att prettye Bessee." ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... was condemned at a Council at Soissons presided over by the papal legate (1121). It was twenty years before he was again subjected to the censures of the Church. But, meanwhile, he had more than once fallen foul of Bernard, and had not hesitated to flout with his gibes the one man before whom the whole of Catholic Europe bent in awestruck reverence. But the time came when Bernard, noting the spread of the Petrobrusian heresy, determined to strike at the source ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... feast I do not fawn, Nor if the folks should flout me, faint; If wonted welcome be withdrawn, I cook no kind of a complaint: With none disposed to disagree, But like them ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... to destroy his admiration for her had directly the opposite effect. He swore, and he swore vengeance; but he swore, too, that there was no woman in the East so worth a prince's while as this one, who dared flout him with ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... Monsieur Guillaume—"a headache. And is it so very amusing to see in a picture what you can see any day in your own street? Don't talk to me of your artists! Like writers, they are a starveling crew. Why the devil need they choose my house to flout it in ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... unfamiliar America. And it would be a barer America. In spite of our brood of special magazines for the literati and the advanced, which Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer praises so warmly, we are not so well provided with the distributive machinery for a national culture as to flout a recognized agency with a gesture and a sneer. But the family magazine has undeniably lost its vigorous appeal, and must be reinvigorated. The malady is due to no slackening of literary virility in the country; indeed there has probably not been so much literary ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... he had never heard of nobler atonement for unmitigable surname. He could not help thinking that this Phillida did not look the one to flout a fellow, after the fashion of the only other Phillida he had ever heard of, and then that it was beastly cheek to start thinking of her like that and by her Christian name. But he was of the age ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... the table with his fist: "You are the limit!... The take-the-cake limit!... You flout me! You practise on my credulity!... Now you would steal a march on me! Try it on—will you?... Ah! You are not Corporal Vinson!... No?... You are a journalist!... You have got to prove that!... Even if you do prove it, you have got yourself into a pretty pickle ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... John, solemnly; "for an Other's sake. We know that the world hated Him before it hated us. Bishop Poynet is not the man they aim at; he is but a commodious handle, a pipe through which their venom may conveniently run. He whom they flout thus is an other Man, whom one day they as well as we shall see coming in the clouds of Heaven, coming to judge the earth. The question asked of Paul was not 'Why persecutest thou these men and women at Damascus?' It is not, methinks, only 'Inasmuch as ye did' this good, but ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... omens had been more favourable. Pride, pride was his last and truest safeguard. He, a descendant of the companion of Aeneas, to fear the Carthaginian sword! he, a Roman noble, about to face death for his country, to waste his thoughts upon a silly girl who chose to flout him! ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... follows." Does he glory in the present? he reverently bows before the past also. Does he sound the call of battle for the Union? but he nourishes the sick and wounded of the enemy as well. Does he flout at the old religions? but he offers a larger religion in their stead. He is never merely negative, he is never fanatical, he is never narrow. He sees all ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... which my friend Bagster finds himself is a very common one. It is no longer true that the good die young; they become prematurely middle-aged. In these days conscience doth make neurasthenics of us all. Now it will not do to flout conscience, and by shutting our eyes to the urgencies and complexities of life purchase for ourselves a selfish calm. Neither do we like the idea ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... me be most foolish myself, and one whom Democritus may not only laugh at but flout, if I go one foot further in the discovery of the follies and madnesses of the common people. I'll betake me to them that carry the reputation of wise men and hunt after that golden bough, as says the proverb. Among whom ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... laws which thou despisest. But try the plan, it merits praise, Success may crown its winning ways! The lady must be blind indeed, With whom such offers of neglect, And cool, habitual disrespect Would not succeed. But come no longer here to flout us, Since, truly, thou canst do without us; For dignity is lost in sport, An outlaw for contempt of court; We banish thee with all thy pride Until thy ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... not their words, but would frown and flout, and go back to his companions, and lead them. And his companions followed him, for he was fair, and fleet of foot, and could dance, and pipe, and make music. And wherever the Star-Child led them they followed, ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... and made her laughter but part of a gay duet. "I know I have gone too fast, have said things I should have waited to say; but, ah! remember the small chance I have against the others who can see you when they like. Don't flout me because I try to make the most of a rare, stolen ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... of the universe they ignore, complacent in their ignorance until it leads them to place the evening star within the arc of the crescent moon, when they are annoyed to be told that the moon does not grow from this shape to the full orb once a month. But ofttimes, though the artist may not flout the universe, he shows his carelessness of natural fact and needs the snubbing. It is in this range that the little critic walks triumphantly posing as a shrewd and a discerning one. He holds up inconsistencies with his deft thumb and finger and cries, ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... misread the essay 'Of Love,' and felt herself bound in honor to bring the philosopher to his knees at her feet. It is credible that from the outset of their sentimental intercourse, she intended to win and then to flout him. But coquetry cannot conquer the first laws of human feeling. To be a good flirt, a woman must have nerve and a sympathetic nature; and doubtless the flirt in this instance paid for her triumph with the smart of a lasting wound. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... manifestation of that power which ordains life and all its privileges and abolishes all the noisesomeness of death. Alive, he nourishes, comforts, consoles, corrects us. Dead, all that is mortal he transforms into ethereal and vital gases. Obey him, and he blesses; flout him, and you perish. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... on your heads doth show, Yet homeless[FN237] am I in your land, I trow. Make drink your usance in my company And flout the time that languishing doth go. Camphor itself to me doth testify And in my presence owns me white as snow. So make me in your morning a delight And set me in your houses, high and low; So shall we quaff ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... businesslike precision about the American soldier that stood San Francisco in good stead. The San Francisco water rat thug and "Barbary Coast" pirate might flout a policeman, but he discovered that he could not disobey a man who wears Uncle Sam's uniform without imminent risk of being counted in that abstract mortuary list usually designated as ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... not conceal their lack of respect for the Upper House, and used revolutionary threats against it as a relic of mediaevalism which should no longer be tolerated in a free state. But the time had passed when the peers could flout an aroused nation. When the Third Reform Bill was ready for passage, the ministers secured the King's promise to frustrate the opposition of the Lords by filling up the House with new peers created expressly to vote ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... sturdier growth, So between earth and heaven stand simply great, 35 That these shall seem but their attendants both; For nature's forces with obedient zeal Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will; As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, And turn mad Pucks to flout ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... sentimental, much more when it ceases to exist at all, then the hour of that people's decay and doom hast struck. On this anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, let us remember and vow never to forget that when it becomes general or popular among us, as it has become common, to flout at the Declaration and its principles; whenever the nation commits itself to courses which for the sake of consistency and respectability invite and compel its disparagement; when our politics does not match our poetry and cannot be sung; when Washington and Jefferson and Sumner and Lincoln cease ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... my renown, However the wits may flout— As wide almost as this blessed town" (But he winced as if with gout). "I paid 'em like sin For to put me in, But it's O, and O, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... nor are its laws pliant to our wills, as the pragmatists do vainly talk. It is a divinely ordered system, which includes man, the roof and crown of things, and Christ, in whom is revealed to us its inner character and meaning. It is not the province of faith either to flout scientific knowledge, or to contaminate the material on which science works by intercalating what M. Le Roy calls 'transhistorical symbols'—myths in fact—which do not become true by being recognised as false, as the new apologetic seems ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... pause for thought, every man who chose to go contrary to the will of Tahn-te, found himself well nigh helpless in the Indian land, his infernal gods were so strong that the Castilians were none too eager to flout them, only Yahn Tsyn-deh seeing the crisis of things, crept ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... study, the whole vast world of living creatures is ours, throughout all zones and all lands. It is not ours to flout, to abuse, or to exterminate as we please. While for practical reasons we do not here address ourselves to the invertebrates, nor even to the sea-rovers, we can not keep them out of the background of our thoughts. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... quite one thing for a man to assert his own independence, and to show his bride at the outset on whose feet the highest-heeled boots would be, but quite another to flout the customs of the ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the benefit of courtiers and ladies, to whom his work is principally addressed, translations of their names; several of which would require to be retranslated for the benefit of the modern reader, as for example the three following, all figures of derision:—"The fleering frump;"—"The broad flout;"—"The privy nip." At the present day, however, the work of Puttenham is most of all to be valued for the remarks on language and on manners, and the contemporary anecdotes with which it abounds, and of which some examples may be quoted. After observing ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... our hearts began With ne'er a word translate the words complete:— Did Lesbia find them half so sweet? A hundred kisses, said he?—hundreds more, And then confound the telltale score! So may we live and love, till life be out, And let the greybeards wag and flout. Yon failing sun shall rise another morn, And the thin moon round out her horn; But we, when once we lose our waning light,— Ah, Love, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... promise of the King... It is the King's authority they flout... They arrogate to themselves the whole sovereignty in Brittany. The King has dissolved them... These insolent nobles defying their sovereign ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... then, to front that law (From which your sophists draw Their only right to flout one human creed) That nothing can proceed— Not even thought, not even love—from less Than its own nothingness? The law is yours! But dare you waive your pride, And kneel where you denied? The law is yours! Dare you re-kindle, then, One faith for faithless ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... haughty paramour's meek slave. Freeborn am I, yet see! mine arms are chained!— Through the long, troubled nights, upon my couch I lie and weep; each morn, as the bright sun Returns, I curse my gray hairs and my weight Of years. All scorn me, flout me. All I had Is gone, save heavy heart and scalding tears.— Nay, I will speak, and thou ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the Vote— Are things on which the swains all dote. Fearing to flout or slight. She dances, having now her way, No bygone Easter holiday E'er saw so fine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 1, 1893 • Various
... starch; Savans, lorettes, deputies, Arch- Bishops, and there together range Sous-lieutenants and cent-gardes (strange Way these soldier-chaps make change), Mixed with black-eyed Polish dames, With unpronounceable awful names; Laces tremble and ribbons flout, Coachmen wrangle and gendarmes shout— Bless us! what is the row about? Ah! here comes Rosy's new turnout! Smart! You bet your life 'twas that! Nifty! (short for magnificat). Mulberry panels,—heraldic spread,— Ebony wheels picked out with red, And two gray mares ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... brewers of the force of public opinion is a recent affair. In former years they were totally indifferent to it, if indeed they did not openly flout it. Even now their appeal to public sentiment is mainly a special plea for defensive purposes, and has little or no educational value. Brewers have opposed practically every effort to effect a change in excise laws, often without any ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... sake, don't flout the Almighty in that wicked manner! If you would only be baptized and take refuge in prayer, as every Christian should, you would find peace for your poor, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... being governed by a vice-legate, was considered as foreign territory. There he found his daughter, Madame d'Urban, who did all she could to induce him to stay with her; but to do so would have been to flout Louis XIV's orders too publicly, and the marquis was afraid to remain so much in evidence lest evil should befall him; he accordingly retired to the little village of l'Isle, built in a charming spot near the fountain of Vaucluse; there he was lost ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... wife, why dost thou flout? Now is now, and then was then: Seek now all the world throughout, Thou ken'st not clowns from gentlemen. They are clad in black, green, yellow, or gray, So far above their own degree: Once in my life I'll do as they, For I'll have ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... shall he escape me? Shall he mock My queenship? He, an alien, flout my sway? Will no one arm and chase them, or undock The ships? Bring fire; get weapons, quick! Away! Swing out the oars! Ah me! what do I say? Where am I? O, what madness turns my brain? Poor Dido, hath thy folly found its prey? Thy sins, alas! they sting thee, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... of us carries a carcase), but the horror of sudden death is above them: a man may strangle with his thoughts cleaner than with his pair of hands. And as "matter" is but the stuff wherewith Nature works, and she is only insulted, not defied, when we flout or mangle it, so it is against the high dignity of Art to insist upon the carrion she must use. She will press, here the terror, there the radiance, of essential fact; she will leave to us, seeing it in her face, to add mentally the poor stage properties we have grown ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth? Think'st thou I jest? Hold, take thou ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... recovered from her surprise. Her worst suspicions were confirmed. Her wits were alert, sharpened by the hideous necessity of placating this amazing creature she dared not openly flout. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... not the dreamy rush Of the rain: Touch not the marring doubt Words bring, to the certainty Of its soft refrain, But let the flying fringes flout Their gouts against the pane, And the gurgling throat of the water-spout Groan ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... here her birth do disdain, Her father is ready, with might and with main, To prove she is come of noble degree: Therefore never flout ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... rouse your phlegmatic blood, my Britons; sit down, with your thumbs in your mouths, my masters, and allow a coterie to flout you at will, whilst the Frenchmen, the Germans, the Russians alternately laugh at and pity you. Pity you, the sons of the men who chased their fathers half over Europe at the point of the blood-red bayonet! Have you grown tame, have you waxed fat and foolish ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... place apart Behind light words that tease and flout, But oh, the agitated heart Till someone find us really out. 'Tis pity if the case require (Or so we say) that in the end We speak the literal to inspire The understanding of a friend. But so with all, from babes that play At hide-and-seek to God ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... English minister came forward from the town to flout us with an address of welcome in which he used not our incognitos but our ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... his reputation had preceded him, and made his task all the easier. Bannuchi and Waziri tribesmen had carried a faithful report of his doings to their more northern compatriots, and the word quickly went round that "Nikalseyn" was a dangerous man to flout. There were some, as it happened, who ventured to cross swords with him, but the result taught them that this stern-faced, black-bearded giant of a sahib was their master every whit ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... flout at his dreams, and his cowardice, and his good-for-nothingness, the dame hurried to serve her customers. Jeremiah heard her loud voice addressing them, and their hoarse tones answering. She came out again for two pints to draw some beer, and commanded him to follow her ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... "Ye flout me! Ye who will have for a husband, one whom thou canst not name!" She laughed derisively. That hurt Elsa very much because it was true. Ortrud had remained with her through the night, and had continued to say so many things which had aroused ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... be, of course," he said, after a pause. "Human nature is weak, engagingly weak, Guildea. And you're inclined to flout it. I could understand a certain class of lady—the lion-hunting, the intellectual lady, seeking you. Your reputation, ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and care less for gregarious games than isolated or lonely adventures. They would rather go trespassing than play cricket; they would organise a secret raid before a public pastime. Intuitively they desire romance, and feeling that law and order is opposed to romance, find the need to flout law and order in measure of their strength, and, of course, applaud the successful companion who does so ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... (contempt) 930. vilipendency|, vilification, contumely, affront, dishonor, insult, indignity, outrage, discourtesy &c. 895; practical joking; scurrility, scoffing, sibilance, hissing, sibilation; irrision[obs3]; derision; mockery; irony &c. (ridicule) 856; sarcasm. hiss, hoot, boo, gibe, flout, jeer, scoff, gleek|, taunt, sneer, quip, fling, wipe, slap in the face. V. hold in disrespect &c. (despise) 930; misprize, disregard, slight, trifle with, set at naught, pass by, push aside, overlook, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... claims some sympathy. Sometimes when I listen to him speak, hear the almost piquant sadness of his words, watch the spirit of isolation which, by design or otherwise, shows in him, for the moment I am conscious of a pity or an interest which I flout in wiser hours. This is his art, the potent ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... terms of visual acquaintance. The reigning beauty of the hour, her portrait was enjoying a vogue of its own in the public prints. Furthermore, Lady Diantha Mainwaring was moderately the talk of the town, in those prim, remotely ante-bellum days—thanks to high spirits and a whimsical tendency to flout the late Victorian proprieties; something which, however, had yet to lead her into any prank perilous ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... involving sums of more than twenty thousand livres, as well as all criminal cases of the third order (estate). The representations of the provincial assembly of Dauphiny severely criticised the impropriety of this measure. "The ministers," they said, "have not been afraid to flout the third estate, whose life, honor, and property no longer appear to be objects worthy of the sovereign courts, for which are reserved only the causes of the rich and the crimes of the privileged." The number of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... loath to be kept in Russian leading-strings. Their last act, in 1885, had been to annex the Turkish province of Eastern Roumelia without asking the consent of the Tsar. At the moment they could safely flout the Sultan of Turkey, their nominal suzerain; but diplomatists doubted whether they could, with equal safety, ignore the Treaty of Berlin and the wishes of their Russian protector. The path was full of pitfalls. The Austrian Government was on the watch to embarrass ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... enough to find her premature airs and graces a fine joke indeed. She ruled them all with her temper and her shrewish will. She would have her way in all things, or there should be no sport with her, and she would sing no songs for them, but would flout them bitterly, and sit in a great chair with her black brows drawn down, and her whole small person breathing ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... They wheel about and whirl, They jeer at me, they fleer at me, They flout me as they swirl! As whirling fast or swaying slow, Reeling, wheeling, to and fro, Around, around the corpse they go, They chill me with their chants! These be neither men nor ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... Hartford, with a soul as far away from bric-a-brac as ever the soul of man was. He went home by an early train, and he lost no time in writing back to the three divine personalities which he had so involuntarily seemed to flout. They all wrote back to him, making it as light for him as they could. I have heard that Emerson was a good deal mystified, and in his sublime forgetfulness asked, Who was this gentleman who appeared to think he had offered him some sort of annoyance! But I am not sure that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... They flout me as half-English—a disgrace For which scarce all your virtues can atone, Mother, in whom I find no flaw but one, That you are Saxon!—but this fault of race Fell not on me nor yet, I fear, your grace Of English speech, else had more smoothly run These echoes of Welsh Lyrics, ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... little knows what dirty clo'es May kiver up a poet; What fires may burn an' flout an' skurn, An' no wan iver ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... so great wrong already, and that you hold me, your lawful Lord, here a prisoner and in chains! Ye know well, as I cannot doubt, that you are doing an evil and a wicked thing, so I pray you go your way, and cease to flout me." "Good my Lord Argon," said Boga, "be assured we are not mocking you, but are speaking in sober earnest, and we will swear it on our Law." Then all the Barons swore fealty to him as their Lord, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... more bold advanc'd his head, And saw the monarch of the flood Lying half smothered in the mud. He calls the croaking race around: "A wooden king!" the banks resound. Fear once remov'd they swim about him, And gibe and jeer and mock and flout him; And messengers to Jove depute, Effectively to grant their suit. A hungry stork he sent them then, Who soon had swallow'd half the fen. Their woes scarce daring to reveal, To Mercury by night they steal, And beg him to entreat ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... faster than they intend," said Henry. "When Roger Mortimer took Simon's doings in wrath, and vowed that his sister should never wed a Montfort, he knew not what he did. He and his proud wife could flout and scorn my Isabel—they might not break her faith to me. Thou knowst, perhaps, Richard, since thou art hand and glove with our foes, that like a raven to the slaughter, the Lady Mortimer came as near the battle-field as her care for her dainty person would ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Tennyson.' In course of time Byron was forgotten, or only remembered with disdain; and when Thackeray, the representative Briton, the artist Philistine, the foe of all that is excessive or abnormal or rebellious, took it upon himself to flout the author of Don Juan openly and to lift up his heavy hand against the fops and fanatics who had affected the master's humours, he did so amid general applause. Meanwhile, however, the genius and the personality of Byron had come to be vital influences ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... one side of the shield; there is a reverse side, at least equally prominent and alarming. The second side upholds maidenly claims, finds nothing good enough to match with them, and is tempted to scout and flout, laugh and mock at the rival claims of the lover upon trial. This is true even in the most innocent of dove-cots, where satire is still as playful and ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... Lindhorst's garden, he could not help wondering how all this had once appeared so strange and marvelous to him. He now saw nothing but common, earthen flowerpots, quantities of geraniums, myrtles, and the like. Instead of the glittering party-colored birds which used to flout him, there were only a few sparrows fluttering hither and thither, which raised an unpleasant, unintelligible cry at sight of Anselmus. The azure room also had quite a different look; and he could not understand how that ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... shalt not wrong good men so," interrupted Mary, her fair face coloring a little. "The leaders aye must lead, and the younger and simpler aye must follow in every community, and I mark not that those you flout for speaking so well fail of their share in the labor, nor do I think John Alden or the rest would do well to thrust their advice upon their betters. At all rates, yon boat had not slid down so merrily if John Alden had not put his shoulder to ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... I was then but a lad, that she would never give over fretting herself at the thought that I was to be lord of all the broad acres and wide moors of Beechcot, and that Jasper would be but a landless man. And so, though she never dare flout or oppress me in any way, for fear of Sir Thurstan's displeasure, she, without being openly unfavorable, wasted no love on me, and no doubt often wished me out ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... pressed it openly and been repulsed," she replied in a low voice. "But if he could have carried me to some far fortress, how should I flout him there, that is, if I still lived? There, with no price to pay in gold or lands or power, he would have been my master, and I should have been his slave till such time as he wearied of me. That is the fate from which you have saved me, Prince, or rather from death, for I am not ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... thou need a friend about thee To cheer and comfort when she flout thee. So, an thou wilt a-wooing wend, I'll follow thee like trusty friend. In love or fight thou shalt not lack A sturdy arm to 'fend thy back. I'll follow thee in light or dark, Through good or ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... creature moving in a world of horrible unreality; voluble people issuing from a cafe, the queue at theatre doors, Sunday cabfuls of second-rate pleasure-seekers, the bedizened ladies of the pavement, the show in the jewellers' windows—all the familiar sights contributing to flout his own unhappiness, want, and isolation. At the same time, if he be at all after my pattern, he is perhaps supported by a childish satisfaction: this is life at last, he may tell himself, this is the real thing; the bladders on which I was set swimming are now empty, my own weight ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... does a man who loves as I do, care for the conventions of the sham world you and I have left so far behind. I adore you. And you flout me." ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... his upper lip, And coming up close to her, said at last: "Girl, for I see ye scorn my courtesies, Take warning: yonder man is surely dead; And I compel all creatures to my will. Not eat nor drink? And wherefore wail for one, Who put your beauty to this flout and scorn By dressing it in rags? Amazed am I, Beholding how ye butt against my wish, That I forbear you thus: cross me no more. At least put off to please me this poor gown, This silken rag, this beggar-woman's weed: I love that beauty should ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... confidentially consulted the Warden when a cousin had blundered into the hands of the police, embarrassing that flustered official with torrents of half intelligible speech, the purport of which generally was to flout the proceedings with evidence of indubitable alibi? All this he translated to his countrymen as proof of personal influence with court authorities, and, what was more to the point, made ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Italy,— Die and count no friend? Is it true,—may it be spoken,— That she who has lain so still, With a wound in her breast, And a flower in her hand, And a grave-stone under her head, While every nation at will Beside her has dared to stand, And flout her with pity and scorn, Saying "She is at rest, She is fair, she is dead, And, leaving room in her stead To Us who are later born, This is certainly best!" Saying "Alas, she is fair, Very fair, but dead,—give place, And so we have room for the race." —Can it be true, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... have sworn To keep my heart hard and my knees unworn. Enough you have of jester, player, priest: I as the skeleton attend your feast, In the mad revelry to make a lull With shaken finger and with bobbing skull. However you my services may flout, Philosophy disdain and reason doubt, I mean to hold in customary state, My dismal revelry and celebrate My yearly rite until the crack o' doom, Ignore the cheerful season's warmth and bloom And cultivate an ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... throw down no Altar, nor never do falter, So much as to change a Gold-chain for a Halter; Though some Men do flout us, and others do doubt us, We commonly bear forty Pieces about us; But many good Fellows are fine and look fiercer, And owe for their Cloaths to the Taylor and Mercer: And if from the Harmans I keep out my Feet, [4] I fear not the ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... so good a maid as thou, will never stay long without friends. Thou wouldst never flout an honest fellow's love and draw him on, and turn him back, and use him worse than a baby doth its puppet. The man who loves ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... circle that shut me out— Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!" The Shoes ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... fragrancy and fair!" A Maiden-blush, which heard him, said, With face unwontedly flushed red. "Tell me, for what committed wrong Am I the metaphor of song? I would you could write rhymes without me, Nor in your ecstacies so flout me. In every ditty must we bloom? Can't you find elsewhere some perfume? Oh! does it add to Chloe's sweetness To visit and compare my meetness? And, to enhance her face, must mine Be made to wither, peak, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... those who misname themselves "evangelical" and flout their new-found liberty: Have you put down the tyranny of the Pope and obtained liberty in Christ through the Anabaptists and other fanatics? Or have you obtained your freedom from us who preach faith ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... said he, "there is something in your attitude which I admit puzzles me. I ask you in all honor, I ask you on the hilt of that sword which I know you will never disgrace, why did you thus flout the Lady Catharine Knollys? Why did you scorn her and take up with this ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... voluntary acts, for even the supposition that he is wholly free does not dispose of the massive fact that God made him as he is, and that God could have made him a saint if He had so desired. To deny this is to flout omnipotence—a crime at which, as I have often said, I balk. But here I begin to fear that I wade too far into the hot waters of the sacred sciences, and that I had better retire before I lose my hide. This ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... to fall into the Annals of Cicely or no, this must I needs say—and Jack may flout me an' he will (but that he doth never)— that I do hate, and contemn, and full utterly despise, this manner of dealing. If I love a man, maybe I shall be bashful to tell him so: but if I love him not, never will I make lout nor leg afore him ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... you know. There is no disgrace attached to laying down a dollar here and there—we all do it. That is part of our amusement, in Benton." She halted. "You are game, sir? What is life but a series of chances? Are you disposed to win a little and flout the ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... is the lure of all Egypt, and he who hath been transplanted to her would flout the favor of the gods, did he make homesick ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... to answer for it to my God—" He stretched out his arms and looked haggardly at Paul. "But it is God's will. It is God's will that I should voice His message to the Empire. Paul, Paul, my beloved son—you cannot flout ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the old man, raising protesting hands up toward the very distant, quite invisible sky. "How could I, a humble priest of the Lord, range myself with those who would flout ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... good manners, and association with vivisection led these dignitaries and editors to flout and insult a man whose shoe strings they were not worthy to tie. Time is merciful and their ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... in their name; yet they persistently refuse to adopt them. The great employers of labor, the cormorants of competition, know through what hideous injustice they enrich themselves; but speak to them of fair play, and they flout you from their presence. The wealthy corporations owning these street car lines in New York see that their drivers and conductors are kept on the rack from sixteen to eighteen hours every day of the week, including Sundays; but when a bill is brought ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... watched her with reluctant admiration. The child had all the thoroughbred points of a Ludlow. All the same she should be shown that, even in the twentieth century, young girls could not break away from discipline and flout authority without punishment. The smile became almost gleeful at the thought of the little surprise that was in ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... horses was remarkable. No animal that man has broken to his use is keener to recognize a master and flout a coward than the horse. No coward has ever been able to do anything with ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Against every kind of authority, but particularly against bishops. He's always got his knife into them, and I dare say he's glad of the chance of flouting them. High Church parsons are, aren't they? I expect if you were a bit higher you'd flout them too. And if you were a bit lower, the C.G.'d take you as a padre. You're just the wrong height, old thing, that's what's ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... been but one Thoreau, and we should devoutly thank the gods of New England for the precious gift. Thoreau's work lives and will continue to live because, in the first place, the world loves a writer who can flout it and turn his back upon it and yet make good; and again because the books which he gave to the world have many and very high literary and ethical values. They are fresh, original, and stimulating. He ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... discretion's there. If, by a monstrous chance, we learn That this illustrious vaunt's a lie, Our minds, by which the eyes discern, See hideous contrariety. And laugh at Nature's wanton mood, Which, thus a swinish thing to flout, Though haply in its gross way good, Hangs such a ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... you. 'Tis not till the ape hath mounted the tree that she, shows her tail so plain. Nay, there sits the servant; God help him! And while so it is, fear not thou his kin will ever be so poor in spirit as come where the likes of you can flout their dole." And casting one look of mute reproach at her cousin for being so little of a man as to sit passive and silent all this time, she turned and went haughtily out; nor would she shed a single tear till she got home and thought of it. And now here were two ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... was his sincere conviction that it belonged there, ready to apprize him of the vibrations of the popular will. Roosevelt was the born leader with an innate instinct of command. He did not scorn or flout the popular will; he had too confirmed a conviction of the sovereign right of the people to rule for that. But he did not wait pusillanimously for the popular mind to make itself up; he had too high a conception of the duty of leadership for that. He esteemed it his peculiar function as the man entrusted ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... wise old Gascon suggests that it is the part of wisdom to give your affection to one who is both plain and elderly—one who is not suffering from a surfeit of love, and one whose head has not been turned by flattery. "Young women," says the philosopher, "demand attention as their right and often flout the giver; whereas old women are ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... dialect way the knights of the Gray Gave a flout at the buckeye bandana, And the buckeye came back with a gosh-awful whack, And that's what's ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... who must supply the leisure, the independence, the setting, the background for the women. All Europe says that our women are spoiled, that they are tyrants, that they treat us men badly, that they flout us, do not do their duty by us, and finally divorce us. We can afford to let them say it! We have given our women an independence that many of them abuse, it is true. We perhaps give them more than their share to spend, and more of luxury than ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... availed, for wings could not outstrip fear. The one went under, and the other, flying, turned his breast upward. Not otherwise the wild duck on a sudden dives when the falcon comes close, and he returns up vexed and baffled. Calcabrina, enraged at the flout, kept flying behind him, desirous that the sinner should escape, that he might have a scuffle; and when the barrator had disappeared he turned his talons upon his companion, and grappled with him above the ditch. But the other was indeed a sparrowhawk ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... Wakes to mock at us and flout us That so coldly do delay: When the very birds are mating, Pray you, why should we be waiting— We that might ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... Office. The Munitions Ministry in due course did splendid work. Chancellor of the Exchequer become lord-paramount of a great spending Department of State, its chief was on velvet. "Copper" turned footpad, he knew the ropes, he could flout the Treasury—and he did. But it is a pity that unwarrantable claims should have been put forward on behalf of the department in not irresponsible quarters at a time when they could not be denied, claims which have tended to bring the department ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... Vine had struck a Fibre; which about It clings my Being—let the Sufi flout; Of my Base Metal may be filed a Key, That shall unlock the Door he ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Whidden had a passion For eating of his iron ration— A thing, you know, which isn't done (Except, just now and then, for fun), Because there is a rule about it And decent people rarely flout it. But Tom was greedy and each day He'd put a tin or two away, Though duty told him, clear and plain, To keep them safe as brewers' grain, For eating as a last resort When eatables were running short. His Corporal said, "My lad, don't do it!" His Sergeant groaned, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... town-folk, and what he would show them was what a big man he was. For, like most scorners of the world's opinion, Gourlay was its slave, and showed his subjection to the popular estimate by his anxiety to flout it. He was not great enough for ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... cheap!" said Tim, red in his fury. "You'll flout me and mock me and throw my offers for your good in ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... myself," he said, "I come pretty nigh knowin' what I'm talkin' about. Kun'l Gid Ward can never flout and jeer that the man that has married his sister was nothin' but a prop'ty-hunter. I'm knowin' to it that Cap'n Sproul has got thutty thousand in vessel prop'ty of his own, 'sides what his own uncle Jerry ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... discourse ought to be as a field, without coming home to any man. I knew two noblemen, of the west part of England, whereof the one was given to scoff, but kept ever royal cheer in his house; the other would ask of those that had been at the other's table, "Tell truly, was there never a flout or dry blow given?" To which the guest would answer, "Such and such a thing passed." The lord would say, "I thought he would mar a good dinner." Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him with whom ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... her fate?" replied E-Med. "Have I not heard? Did she not flout the great jeddak, heaping abuse upon him? By my first ancestor, I think O-Tar might make a jed of the man who subdued her," and ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sailor the Caribbean Sea was a happy hunting-ground where he might indulge at his pleasure any propensities to lawless adventure. If in 1588 he had helped to scatter the Invincible Armada, he now pillaged treasure ships on the coasts of the Spanish Main; if he had been with Drake to flout his Catholic Majesty at Cadiz, he now closed with the Spaniards within their distant cities beyond the seas. Thus he lined his own pockets with Spanish doubloons, and incidentally curbed Philip's power of invading England. Nor must we think these mariners the same ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... become nervous lest we should miss our supply of ice. The fly, the murrain, the potato-rot, and the grasshoppers, all have a divine office in tipping over our calculations. The phantom host of the great North come out for parade without announcement, and shoot their arrows toward the zenith, and flout the stars with their rosy flags, and retire, leaving us looking into heaven and wondering. Long weeks of drought parch the earth, and then comes the sweet rain, and sets the flowers and the foliage dancing. All the seasons ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... thou outrageous Moor, Hast broken thy false prophet's rule, and so Fell into unused drink, that thus thou darest To flout me with thy cloudy menaces? What mean'st thou, sir? And what have I withheld From thy vile touch? By heavens, I pass my days In seeking thy dusk corpse, I deemed well drilled Ere this, but ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... silver frocks Do flout the sonsy clover; The humble bee Consorts wi' me And hails me for ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... lambing season, for with the sheep he proved a fair wonder same as he done with everything else. And nothing was a trouble. For a fortnight the man never slept, save a nod now and again in the house on wheels, where he dwelt in the valley among the ewes. And old shepherds, with all the will to flout him, was tongue-tied afore the man, because of his excellent skill and ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... pearly bite? You hardly know perhaps; but Chloe knows, And pours you out the necessary dose, Meticulously measuring to scale, The cup of Circe or the Holy Grail— An actress she at home in every role, Can flout or flatter, bully or cajole, And on occasion by a stretch of art Can even speak the language of the heart, Can lisp and sigh and make confused replies, With baby lips and complicated eyes, Indifferently apt to weep or wink, Primly pursue, provocatively shrink, Brazen or bashful, as ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... it in our cool libraries, that all the agents with which we deal are subalterns, which we can well afford to let pass, and life will be simpler when we live at the centre and flout the surfaces. I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other that they are like grass and trees, and ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... this quiet port and its brooding solitude with religious veneration. Then he recalled the miraculous stories with which his mother used to lull him to sleep—the great miracle wrought upon these waters by a servant of God to flout the hardened sinners. Saint Raymond of Penafort, a virtuous and austere monk, became indignant with King Jaime of Majorca who was basely enamored of a certain lady, Dona Berenguela, and who remained deaf to holy counsels. The friar determined ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... they met, and himself opened the topic of the Norwegian jaunt. Urquhart took up the ball. "I think you might come. Your wife and boy will love it, and you'll kindle at their joy. 'They for life only, you for life in them,' to flout the bard. Besides, you are not a fogey, if I'm not. I believe our ages tally. You shall climb mountains with me, Macartney, and improve the muscles of your calves. You don't fish, I think. Nor do I. I thought I should catch your brother-in-law with that bait—but ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... teardrops as they fall; I flout my daytime fears; I mumble thanks to God for all These gibes and happy jeers. But, when the warning dawn awakes, Begins my wandering; With stealthy strokes through tangled brakes, A ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... it not sin against secrecie, I would say it were a peece of gentlemanlike knauery. I must goe to Pedringano and tell him his pardon is in this boxe! Nay, I would haue sworne it, had I not seene the contrary. I cannot choose but smile to thinke how the villain wil flout the gallowes, scorne the audience, and descant on the hangman, and all presuming of his pardon from hence. Wilt not be an odde iest, for me to stand and grace euery iest he makes, pointing my figner at this boxe, as who [should] ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... world have brushed the dew off her belief that she could trust him. And, now that he had fixed his own gaze elsewhere, and she was in this bitter trouble, he felt on her account the rancour that a brother feels when Justice and Pity have conspired to flout his sister. The voice of Frith the chauffeur roused him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... my master and my dame That doth such cheer afford; God bless them, that each Christmas they May furnish thus their board. My stomach having come to me, I mean to have a bout, Intending to eat most heartily; Good friends, I do not flout. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... We must therefore surrender all titles of honour, all honorary offices. It will constitute an emphatic demonstration of the disapproval by the leaders of the people of the acts of the Government. Lawyers must suspend their practice and must resist the power of the Government which has chosen to flout public opinion. Nor may we receive instruction from schools controlled by Government and aided by it. Emptying of the schools will constitute a demonstration of the will of the middle class of India. It is far better for the nation even to neglect the literary instruction ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... Sovereign Will! But stranger and more mysterious and tragic still is it that we should choose to exercise that power and find pleasure, and fancy that we shall ever find advantage, in refusing to listen to His entreaties and choosing to flout ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... to be the size of another. But all disappear like will-o'-the-wisps when the search-party arrives on the scene, and none but ordinary specimens, that have no reputation to maintain, are there to flout ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... were either Black Negroes or Cophtic Christians, and they used me with Decent Civility; nor did the Master of the Musicians—otherwise a most cruel Moor—go out of his way to flout, much less smite me with his Rattan. If he had dared but to lay one Stripe upon me, I would have sprang upon the Wretch and dashed out his Brains with my Cymbals, even if I had been put upon the Pale for it half an ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... creation gives him clue to nothing older: Naked, life receives him—wondering beholder Of the world about him—and ere aught is certain, Time and mystery flout him; and death ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... Father Lasse that he was obsessed by a sense of unfaithfulness. But there was no alternative; if he wanted to get on he must adapt himself in everything, in prejudices and opinions alike. But he promised himself to flout the lot of them so soon ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Harte! Come, Sims, though gigmen flout thy labours! Tom Hardy, blow the clouds apart With sound of rustic fifes and tabors! Dick Blackmore, full of homely joy, Come from thy garden by the river, And pelt with fruit and flowers, old boy, These dismal bores who drone ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... here put an argument in the favour of what do now be doubted and scorned by some. I will but say that I have seen and know that which hath been wrought by these hags o' the broom and of their power which they held at their beck and wink the which is not to be set on one side at the flip and flout of our young masters and misses, fresh from some teaching drove into their brain pans by some idiotick and skeptick French teacher. I therefore say no more ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... no man flout, The wisest Kings have all some folly; Nor let his piety any doubt; Charles, like a Sov'reign, wise and holy, Makes young men judges of the bench, And bishops, those ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... said he. "I will make no words about it. Neither will I shun her sight. I will face it out, and shame them who think to flout me thus." ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... master of so rich a store May laugh at Croesus and esteem him poor; And with his smoky sceptre in his fist, Securely flout the toiling alchemist, Who daily labors with a vain expense In distillations of the quintessence, Not knowing that this golden herb alone ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... extempore. He were as good have let me had the best part, for I'll be revenged on him to the uttermost, in this person of Will Summer, which I have put on to play the prologue, and mean not to put it off till the play be done. I'll sit as a chorus, and flout the actors and him at the end of every scene. I know they will not interrupt me, for fear of marring of all; but look to your cues, my masters, for I intend to play the knave in cue, and put you besides all your parts, if you take not the better heed. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... wind about, and in and out, Along the crowded pavement, While here and there the mockers flout My costume ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... for if you give her breath, she'l scorn and flout you, seem how she will, this is the way to win her, ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... their respective countries from depths of humiliation to undreamt of heights of triumph. The first thing was to restore the prestige of their States. No people can be strong in action that has lost belief in its own powers and has allowed its neighbours openly to flout it. The history of the world has shown again and again that politicians who allow their country to be regarded as une quantite negligeable bequeath to some abler successor a heritage of struggle and war—struggle for the nation to recover its self-respect, and war to regain ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... be clearer," said he imperturbably. "This lad is your betrothed. He is at heart a good lad, an honourable and honest lad—at times haply over-honest and over-honourable; but let that be. To please a whim, a caprice, you set yourself to flout him, as is the way of your sex when you behold a man your utter slave. From this—being all unversed in the obliquity of woman—he conceives, poor boy, that he no longer finds favour in your eyes, and to win back this, the only thing that in the world he values, he behaves foolishly. You flout ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... in the matter of the Regency Bill as if the dearest wish of his heart were to flout the King's wishes and to wound his feelings. The King wished, lest he should again be stricken with illness while the heir-apparent was still an infant, to be given the right to name a regent by will. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... whose aim is at the leadership of the English people know, that however truly based the charges of hypocrisy, soundness of moral fibre runs throughout the country and is the national integrity, which may condone old sins for present service; but will not have present sins to flout it. He was in tune with the English character. The passion was in him nevertheless, and the stronger for a slow growth that confirmed its union of the mind and heart. Her counsel fortified him, her suggestions opened springs; her phrases ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... porphyry, that are there, and the tombs and the door of San Giovanni, which was locked, Messer Betto and his company came riding on to the piazza of Santa Reparata, and seeing him among the tombs, said:—"Go we and flout him." So they set spurs to their horses, and making a mock onset, were upon him almost before he saw them. Whereupon:—"Guido," they began, "thou wilt be none of our company; but, lo now, when thou hast proved that God does not exist, what wilt thou have achieved?" ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... make me amends in public for the foul words that knave uttered. That they should both sue to me for pardon: that it should be showed to the world what manner of man it is that they have dared to flout.' ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... conspicuous charms. In fact, she had lived up to them pretty furiously, until time began to take a ruthless toll of her contrasting points. From the concert-platform she still seemed to discount, almost to flout, the years, but in secret she yielded ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the reins, a bright-eyed, well-built lad, a pupil at the old Grammar-School, where he used the desk at which his father had sat before him. Whatever fault of boyhood showed itself in Harry Morton, he knew not the common temptation to be ashamed of his mother, or to flout her love. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing |
