"Leer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on me, and was resolved to invest my little fortune in such a way that I might have a modest competence, so that the dreadful spectre of poverty might never leer ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... a leer, seemed to imply that Alix was in the secret, a party to Cherry's foolishness, and did imply very distinctly that Martin felt himself to be more than a match for all their cunning. The woman was silent, looking straight ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... now, I ain't got no time to fool!" prompted the man, with a leer. "I'm dead onto your lay, and there's a bull comin' along ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... man is meat. To glory some advance a lying claim, Thieves of renown, and pilferers of fame: Their front supplies what their ambition lacks; They know a thousand lords, behind their backs. Cottil is apt to wink upon a peer, When turn'd away, with a familiar leer; And Harvey's eyes, unmercifully keen, Have murder'd fops, by whom she ne'er was seen. Niger adopts stray libels; wisely prone To covet shame still greater than his own. Bathyllus, in the winter of threescore, Belies his innocence, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... on the other side of the Geule. The south side was similarly defended by a wall with four strong bastions, while beyond these at the southwest corner lay a field called the Polder, extending to the point where the Yper Leer ran ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... thankful you will be to me, my lord, for having enabled him to establish the right," says Sampson, with a leer on his face. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Einstein's vicious leer was a silent answer. "Tell her she shall have a new silk dress from me, if you keep your ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... sledge were ready did Bucky utter a word. The terrific beating he had received had stunned him for a few minutes; but now he jumped to his feet, not waiting for the command from Walker, and strode up close to Billy. There was a vengeful leer on his bloody face and his eyes blazed almost white, but his voice was so low that Conway and Walker could only hear the murmur of it. His words were meant for ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... Foxey Jack Quinn standing near at hand, a leer on his wide mouth and in his pale eyes, and his nunney-bag on his shoulder. His skinnywoppers (high-legged moccasins of sealskin, hair-side inward) were glistening with moisture of melted snow, and his face was red ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... said Mr. Russell, with a diabolical leer in the direction of the unfortunate Mr. Vickers. "The paper what your father found in your box. Didn't he ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... of England's sea power; because of the unblushing, shameless, gilded corruption of the French court, which cared less for the fate of Canada than the leer of a painted fool behind her fan. But be this remembered,—and here was the hand of overruling Destiny or Providence,—the fall of New France, like the fall of the seed to the ready soil, was the rebirth of a new nation. Henceforth ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... wouldn't many hit any higher spots than him. He bet there was one little girl that would be looked on as lucky, in case she was a good little girl and encouraged him to show his natural kindness. And I was favored with a blood-curdling leer from across the camp, of which I had put as much as possible between myself and the object ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... and then at Mr Cripps's face. There was the same ugly leer about the latter, into which a spark of anger was infused as the boy still held ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... was as useless for the local pilot to look grave and recall dire happenings to Captains who had elected to effect their repairs in the outer harbour—just here, at Port William. Old Jock's square jaw was set firm, his eyes were narrowed to a crafty leer; he looked on everyone with unconcealed suspicion and distrust. He was a shipmaster of the old school, 'looking after his Owners' interest.' He had put in 'in distress' to effect repairs.... He was being ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... tears, and bung'd with gin; The Session's sentence wrung her to the soul, Nor could she lounge the gag to shule a win; The knowing bench had tipp'd her buzer queer, [8] For Dick had beat the hoof upon the pad, Of Field, or Chick-lane—was the boldest lad That ever mill'd the cly, or roll'd the leer. [9] And with Nell he kept a lock, to fence, and tuz, And while his flaming mot was on the lay, With rolling kiddies, Dick would dive and buz, And cracking kens concluded ev'ry day; [10] But fortune fickle, ever on the wheel, Turn'd up a rubber, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... the head of the canoe, just under the shark's mouth? A grinning little imp of an image; a ring in its nose; cowrie shells jingling at its ears; with an abominable leer, like that of Silenus reeling on his ass. It was taking its ease; cosily smoking a pipe; its bowl, a duodecimo edition of the face of the smoker. This image looked ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... it belonged, and struggled to recall a name. Then, almost as swiftly, he dismissed the idea. It was, however, a face of that kind which, once seen, is never forgotten—a frog-like face, with protruding eyes, and the frog's expressive leer. Somewhere, not very long ago, this face had been before him, and had stared at him in the same disconcerting manner—but where? when? In the few seconds that remained, his brain worked furiously, sped back in desperate haste over all the likely places where he might ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... lost sinner," he said, "like Jonah warned the sinners in Nineveh. I'm exhortin' him about the fall. Adam fell in the Garden of Eden." Then the leer came back into his face. "Ever hear of ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... up between us. There's my fist on it. See you soon," and, with a lurching step and a leer over his shoulder, he ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... chill of it on her burning face, and it kept her from yielding to the faintness that oppressed her. But still she could not enter, till a great, square-built Boer lounging near the doorway came up to her and looked into her eyes with an evil leer. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... cried Hen, with an ugly leer. "I know what you want to do. You want to drive me out to that shanty, so that big fellow will jump on me. Go yourself, ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... may be roused from my writing by her cry that I am making strange faces again. It is my contemptible weakness that if I say a character smiled vacuously, I must smile vacuously; if he frowns or leers, I frown or leer; if he is a coward or given to contortions, I cringe, or twist my legs until I have to stop writing to undo the knot. I bow with him, eat with him, and gnaw my moustache with him. If the character be a lady with an exquisite laugh, I suddenly ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... Russian Hercules, regaling himself after having killed the monster Caricatura, that so severely galled his virtuous friend, the heaven-born Wilkes." Hogarth's use of the word caricatura conveys a meaning which is not patent at first sight; Wilkes's leer was the leer of a satyr, "his face," says Macaulay, "was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced in their own despite to flatter him."[5] The real sting lies in the accuracy of Hogarth's portrait (a ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... who stumbles over a stony path after Death, who is his deceitful leader, and who turns back with a look of malicious glee to see his bewilderment and suffering;—and a Court Fool, whom Death, playing on bagpipes, and dancing, approaches, and, plucking him by the garment, wins him, with a coaxing leer, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the cops!" cried Carietta, her small face distorted with a leer of the most horrid satisfaction, "'Lihu's cops. 'Phrony ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... hurriedly but a few moments before. Her tottering body, clothed in bear-skins, was bent forward over a large triangular shield of polished brass, on which she leant her lank, shrivelled arms. Her head shook with a tremulous, palsied action; a leer, half smile, half grimace, distended her withered lips and lightened her sunken eyes. Sinister, cringing, repulsive; her face livid with the reflection from the weapon that was her support, and her figure scarcely human in ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... young gentleman about twenty years of age, son of a neighbouring small Squire, who lived in the doubtful capacity of parlour-boarder with Mr. Wapshot, flung himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly-made grave, and began repeating Hamlet's verses over Ophelia, with a hideous leer at Pen. The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell Major with a shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him furiously across the face with the riding-whip which he carried, flung it away, calling upon the cowardly ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their applause and admiration. Neither of the prisoners stirred. The pig's head grinned at the world with its inane, painted leer. A rumbling ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... grinned, his bloodshot eyes twinkling with an evil leer, which was never far from ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, 195 Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne. View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caus'd himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; 200 Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserv'd to blame, or ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... Monsieur," said the obese Turk with a graceful wave of the hand in my direction, "and not you, who has robbed my home of its treasure, unless," he added, and I shall always remember the hideous leer of that pulpy-nosed and small-pox pitted face, "unless Monsieur has relieved ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... up at him, an odd leer on his sophisticated face, saying no more. He made a pack on his saddle of the camp outfit, and started off along the ridge, leaving Mackenzie to follow as he pleased. A mile or more along Reid pitched upon a suitable ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... man," said the jockey, or whatever he was, turning to me with an arch leer, "I suppose I may consider myself as the purchaser of this here animal, for the use and behoof of this young gentleman," making a sign with his head towards the tall young man by his side. "By no means," said I; "I am utterly unacquainted with either of you, and ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Thinking he had come with a message from Omar Beg, a Hungarian brigadier-general in the Turkish service who was stationed here, we saluted in the usual manner. Without returning it, he walked up, stepped across us, flung himself on our rug, leaned on his elbow, and with an impertinent leer stared in our faces all round until he met Richard's eye, which partook of something of the tiger kind, when he started and turned pale. Richard called out, "Kawwasses!" The kawwasses and two wardis ran into the room. "Remove that son of a dog." They seized ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... large bass drum with the white of one clown. Then mix with a prologue and roll very thin. Fill with a circus just coming to town. One leer, one scowl and one tragical grin. Bake in a sob of Carusian size. Result: the most toothsome of ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... welter of life as he saw it now—all life, that is, other than Hazel's. Brutality, lust, cruelty—these summed up the world of good people and bad people. He rather preferred the bad ones; their eyes were less awful, and had less of the serpent's glitter and more of the monkey's leer. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... admitted into the jail by Ratcliffe. This fellow, as void of shame as of honesty, as he opened the now trebly secured door, asked her, with a leer which made her ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... an appraising leer. "Don't have to say so," he drawled, "if you ain't, what have you-alls got them dinky little canoes for, an' if you were after 'gators you'd be packing big rifles 'stead of them fancy guns. You ain't got no call to deny it, for I was aiming ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... God! as I did so, another arm was thrust forth—not mine, I swear, if I live a thousand years; and as I recoiled, I saw in that glass a fiend step back. Not me, not me!—but a fiend with bloody hands, and a foul leer upon its face, and a fierce, cruel laugh in its glittering eyes. It was he, it was he! It was the devil that had possessed me before, come back again. And as I shuddered and gasped, and turned away, and then looked ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... years, he evidently is a little vain of his person, and ambitious of conquests. I have observed him on Sunday in church eyeing the country girls most suspiciously; and have seen him leer upon them with a downright amorous look, even when he has been gallanting Lady Lillycraft with great ceremony through the churchyard. The general, in fact, is a veteran in the service of Cupid rather than of Mars, having signalised himself ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... immortal Jehosaphat!" swore Baumberger, with an ugly leer in his eyes, "I never knew before that I was so small I couldn't be seen with the ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... of the vast shadowy figure, which to Laurence's eye appeared to turn towards his niche with a leer, as if to say, "Listen to him. What a fool ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... the first-mate; who, to annoy him, seldom made his appearance on deck without making use of some execration or another. It was Mr Berecroft's custom to call down the seamen into his cabin every evening, and read to them a short prayer; and, although this unusual ceremony often caused a leer in some of the newly-entered men, and was not only unattended but ridiculed by Jackson, still the whole conduct of Berecroft was so completely in unison, that even the most idle and thoughtless acknowledged that he was a good man, and quitted the ship with regret. Such was Mr Berecroft; and ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... moment Quirk entered the store; and as Arthur looked up, he caught the leer of significant meaning, sent from a quick wink of the eye, and a momentary elongation of the visage, of his ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... moral feebleness with less brain, and her character is a study in practical psychology. Somerville, the villain of the piece, who unites the disposition of Domitian to the manners of Chesterfield, is the pitiless master of this female slave. The coquettish Mrs. Van Leer is a prominent personage of the story; and her shallow malice and pretty deviltries are most effectively represented. She is not only a flirt in outward actions, but a flirt in soul, and her perfection in impertinence almost rises to genius. All these characters betray patient meditation, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... pluck has saved your life; but remember, I've not said I won't shoot him or your father, if chance throws them in my way," he added, looking back over his shoulder with a malicious leer, as he left the arbor, then disappearing from sight among the trees ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... mouldering linen, and stiffly upended bedpoles and curtain rods which nearly filled the room. The clock of a bygone generation stood on the mantel-piece, and the black winding hole in its white face seemed to leer at him like an evil eye as the light of the torch fell on it. But nobody had been in the room. The dust which encrusted the furniture and the floor had ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... a child into the trap. "Give me time, and it will be all right," is the debtor's delusion. William thanked Crawley for not pressing him, and so compelling him to force a sale of all his hogs, fat or lean. Crawley received his thanks with a leer, returned in four days, got the judgment signed, and wriggled away with it to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Before this time he had known it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of a study by ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... She," he suggested with a leer. "Here is an address. Send a messenger boy whenever you like. Every one thinks I am a ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... dragging Lura after him. The face of the Earth-girl was pale and drawn, yet, when she saw Glavour, her head rose in an expression of defiance. Sonom saluted the Viceroy and left the room, the massive door clanging shut behind him. Glavour stared at the girl with an evil leer on his ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... begin to "tell" upon the callers, and many eccentricities, to use no harsher term, are the result. Towards the close of the day, everything is in confusion—the door-bell is never silent. Crowds of young men, in various stages of intoxication, rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in the vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the scene at some other house. Frequently, they are unable to recognize the residences of their friends, and stagger into the wrong house. Some fall ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... repeated: "And you saw something else, William?" he gave me a wicked, frightened leer, and shuffled off to feed the mules. Flattery, entreaties, threats left him unmoved; he never told me what the third thing was that he had seen behind ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... full around and gave a leer which, if possible, made her face more hideous than ever. Without thinking Harvey caught her by the arm ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... the court with a fascinating leer, which left no doubt on any one's mind that he had ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... wearing a new broad, black hat, a celluloid collar, a wrinkled suit of store clothes, and his same shrewd, evil leer. Oldham did not appear, but requested that the visitor be shown into his room. There, having closed the transom, he ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... such as our venerable granddames would recoil from as absolutely disreputable, and Madame Reuter's jolly face bore evidence that she was no exception to the rule of her country; there was a twinkle and leer in her left eye; her right she kept habitually half shut, which I thought very odd indeed. After several vain attempts to comprehend the motives of these two droll old creatures for inviting me ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... vision, sight, optics, eyesight. view, look, espial^, glance, ken [Scot.], coup d'oeil [Fr.]; glimpse, glint, peep; gaze, stare, leer; perlustration^, contemplation; conspection^, conspectuity^; regard, survey; introspection; reconnaissance, speculation, watch, espionage, espionnage [Fr.], autopsy; ocular inspection, ocular demonstration; sight-seeing. point of view; gazebo, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fitted the lid to the pot, hung the long-handled spoon upon a projection of a forked upright, and, picking up a tin pail, disappeared down the well-worn path to the river. With an evil leer the man stepped boldly into the clearing and crossed to the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... everything, especially the eider-down quilt, which rises in slow billows in front of my eyes and threatens to engulf me. When in a paroxysm of fury I suddenly cast it on the floor, it lies there still billowing, and seems to leer at me. There is something fat and sinister and German about that eiderdown. I never noticed it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... Kaiser as waiting for Nurse Cavell's death to say, "Now you can bring me the American protest," has gone behind the moustache to the face, and behind the face to the type and the spirit. The Emperor is not commanding in a lordly voice from a throne, but with a leer and behind a curtain. In the few lines of the lean, unnatural face is written the real history of the Hohenzollerns, the kind of history not often touched on in our comfortable English humour, but common to the realism of Continental art: the madness of Frederick William, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... be always having the fellow dogging us, with his dejected leer, is not agreeable. He watches us now, because my lips are close by your cheek. He should be absent; he is one too many. Speed him on his voyage with the souvenir ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... caress, and was going to shut the door, when the drunken old man turned round once more, and inquired with a cunning leer, "So you expect some one, my child? Whom do you expect, little Itzig? Is it a lad ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... continued to exhibit the bears and chuckled over his almost certain triumph. I laughed in return, and sincerely congratulated him on his nerve and probable success. I remained with him until the tenth week was finished, and handed him his $500. He took it with a leer of satisfaction, and remarked, that he was sorry I was a teetotaller, for he ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... the desk, looking at me with his small, dark eyes. He had an expression on his face that looked as if it were trying to sneer and leer at the same time but couldn't get much beyond ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... den liebe vollen becher, Und trinkt ihn froelich leer; In Gauz Europa ihr herren zecher, Ist solch, ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... the struggle between her love for a man and the ineradicable habit of her soul; but he raised his hand, made the sacred gesture over leer, and said: "Go, my child, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... looked up at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was dressed like a broken-down clergyman, in rusty black, with a neck-cloth ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... departed, followed by Loveday, leaving Aurelia standing in the middle of the hall, the old hag gazing on her with a malignant leer. "Ho! ho'! So that's the way! He has begun that work early, has he? What's your name, my lass? Oh, you need give yourself airs! I cry you mercy," and she ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... drugged as he was, and, with a triumphant leer, the man who had drugged him picked him up, and, moving as cautiously as ever, carried him to the motor boat. But he had underestimated the watchfulness of the Scout sentries. At the sudden, sharp explosions of the engine as it was started, and the launch backed off ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... the Gorilla with a leer, "as for myself, I am so confident of being considered an Apollo that I wish for nothing so much as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... and turned With sideway leer; and printing with vague step Irregular the shining sands, on strode Toward his cold home, alone; and saw by chance A little bird light-perched, that, being sick, Plucked from the fissured sea-cliff grains of ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... and its greed stood reproduced, feature for feature, line for line. It was as though Nature, for an artistic freak, had set herself the task of fashioning hideousness and beauty from precisely the same materials. Between the leer of the man and the smile of the girl, where lay the difference? It would have puzzled any student of anatomy to point it out. Yet the one sickened, while to gain the other most men ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... had disappeared Mother Guttersnipe took a drink from the broken cup, and, gathering all her greasy cards together in a business-like way, looked insinuatingly at Calton, with a suggestive leer. ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... electioneering, a subserviency to caucus direction, and a party spirit upon a level with many of the least reputable elective Chambers in the world; and beneath the imposing mask of an assembly of notables backed by the prescription and traditions of centuries we discern the leer of the artful dodger, who has got the straight ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... robust, Falstaffian humour of old England, which, I am glad to think, still exists in London and still pleases Londoners, in spite of efforts to Gallicize our entertainments and substitute obscenity and the salacious leer for honest fun and the frank roar of laughter. If you want to hear the joy of living interpreted in song and dance, then go to the first hall where the name of Harry Champion is billed, and hear him sing "Boiled Beef and Carrots," "Baked Sheep's ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... fling yourself upon me as you have upon Captain Farnsworth," he said, with an insulting leer and in a tone of prurient innuendo. "I am not susceptible, my dear." This more for Farnsworth's benefit than to insult her, albeit he was not ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... watch the growth of the carbuncle. We are warned against bad judgments; but the Admiral was certainly not sober. He made no attempt to rise when Richard entered, but waved his pipe flightily in the air, and gave a leer of welcome. Esther took as little notice of ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had a dream so odd and funny, I cannot resist recording it here.— Methought that the Genius of Matrimony Before me stood with a joyous leer, Leading a husband in each hand, And both for me, which lookt rather queer;— One I could perfectly understand, But why there were two wasn't quite so clear. T'was meant however, I soon could see, To afford me a choice—a ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... face; and on these the Shakspearian imagination of the Gothic artists seems to have let itself loose to run riot: there is every variety of expression, from, the most beautiful to the most goblin and grotesque. One has the leer of fiendish triumph, with budding horns, showing too plainly his paternity; again you have the drooping eyelids and saintly features of some fair virgin; and then the gasping face of some old monk, apparently in the agonies of death, with his toothless gums, hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes. Other ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... He had looked into her bloodshot eyes, noted the hard lines drawn around the corners of her mouth, the coarse, painted lips, dry hair, and sunken cheeks. He had heard her harsh laugh and caught the glint of her drunken leer. A cold shiver swept through him. It was as if he had stepped on a flat stone covering a grave which had tilted beneath his feet, revealing a corpse but a few months buried. Had he been anywhere else he would have sunk to the floor—not to pray, but to rest his knees, which ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no rival near the throne, View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts, that caus'd himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, others teach to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserv'd to blame or to commend, A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... assent with civil leer, And, without seeming, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... Lascar, who wore an ill-fitting slop-shop suit of blue, soaked and stained and clinging hideously to his body. His dank black hair was streaked upon his low brow; and his face, although it was notable for a sort of evil leer, had assumed in death another and ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... naval crew called his fellows, and they approached their white prisoners with ropes—vegetable vines. And with the leer of a devil, the officer leaned down and flung Barry over ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... how, is it?" said the pedler with a leer that was good-humoredly knowing. "Well, old fellow, as you've given me quite a lesson how to behave myself, I guess I must show you that I understand how to prove that I'm thankful—so here, Caesar, is a cut for you from ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... of any other man. The listeners stood with their hands in their pockets, doubting whether to hear him to the end or to take their wonted way to the public-house. One moment their eyes would be fixed upon him, filmy, unintelligent, then they would look at one another with a leer of cunning, or at best a doubtful grin. Socialism, forsooth! They were as ready for translation to supernal spheres. Yet some of them were attracted: 'percentage,' 'interest,' 'compound interest,' after ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... that one individual lingered near the May-pole. As he was especially active, we may describe him and his employment. He was apparently about fifteen. He had coarse straight white hair—a face that denoted stupidity—but with a cunning leer, which seemed to belie ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... mind goes out under this regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, if the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to brandy-and-water, which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments, and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow-eyed future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet by his wife, and though it had happened to him once or twice to come home rather late at night with a curious tendency to say the same thing twice and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... cautiously by the side door, where a barman kept watch for the police. Presently the bricklayer came out, alone. He stood on the footpath, slightly fuddled, his giddiness increased by the fresh air. Immediately Chook lurched forward to meet him, with a drunken leer. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... at the Fair were designed to be temporary, and they were superfluous when the occasion which called them into being had passed. The question of disposing of them was summarily solved. One day some boys playing near the Terminal Station saw a sinister leer of flame inside. A high wind soon blew a conflagration, which enveloped the structures, leaving next day naught but ashes, tortured iron work, and here and there an arch, to tell of the regal White City ...
— Official Views Of The World's Columbian Exposition • C. D. Arnold
... dried-up mummy of a man, the ugliness of whose countenance was, as it were, emphasized by a disagreeable leer which would ever and anon deepen into a broad grin; this man, with his dreary jokes and vapid small-talk, was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the Cheel house was about to be produced in public. It was stopped by Jonas, who rose to his feet, and with a leer and chuckle round, he said, "Neighbors and friends and all. Very much obliged for the complerment. But don't think it is all about a baby. Nothin' of the kind. It is becos I wanted all, neighbors and friends, to be together whilst I made an announcement which will be pleasant hearin' ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... to work his arm free from the close and affectionate grip of his unwelcome companion, who was regarding him with a sort of admiring leer. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... heavens answered again and drowned her supplication. One man screamed—a shrill, high neigh like that of a hurt horse. Janice caught a momentary glimpse of the pallid face of Joe Bodley shrinking below the edge of the counter. There was no leer upon his fat face now; ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... the savory, sizzling kabobs and the carpeted menzil, in comparison with the dreary tumble-down place I have just left. My first impression of the officer himself, however, is scarcely so favorable as my impression of the picture in which he is set—the picture as just described; a sinister leer characterizes the expression of his face, and what appears like a nod, with an altogether unnecessary amount of condescension in it, characterizes his greeting. Hopping down to the ground, lamp in hand, he examines the bicycle minutely, and then indirectly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... pleasant-looking fellow, with huge black whiskers and a roguish eye. He touched the guitar with masterly skill, and sang little amorous ditties with an expressive leer." ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... shuffled uneasily, but replied with a knowing leer, "Aint ye Dicky Falkner what used ter live cross the river ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... Plato, her face had worn an indescribable glow of feeling, which seemed to have come upon her from a higher and better world, and she had looked far more beautiful than now when she was fully dressed, and when her women crowded round leer—Zoe having laid aside the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as a sort of supernatural shell-fish, with human faces. In intensifying the portraiture of Giants, he had sunk quite a little capital; and, though no painter himself, he could indicate, for the instruction of his artists, with a piece of chalk, a certain furtive leer for the countenances of those monsters, which was safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentleman between the ages of six and eleven, for the whole ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... at the window looked like that of an East Indian!" declared Will. "His skin was brassy, and his eyes had the devil's leer in them just as the eyes of the Little Brass God ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... as fur as wedlock," explained Ted, with a wicked leer. "I said we'd be shouted. Eh, theer's mony a slip 'twixt cup an' lip, ye know. Margaret an' me 'ull happen fall out afore weddin' day cooms; but once Canon shouts us ye mun down wi' ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... very oddly; and then, falling grave with a startling suddenness, he began to dribble out a piratical love-story he had once before favoured me with, describing the charms of the woman with a horrid leer, his head nodding with the nervous affection of age all the time, whilst he looked blindly in my direction—a hideous and ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... welcome postern open'd on a court— Say rather, grave-yard; gloomy yews begirt Its cheerless walls; ranges of headstones show'd, Each on its hoary tablature, half hid With moss, with hemlock, and with nettles rank, The sculptured leer of that hyena face, Softening as backwards, through the waves of time, Receded generations more remote. It was a square of tombs—of old, grey tombs, (The oldest of an immemorial date,) Deserted quite—and rusty gratings black, Along the yawning mouths of dreary vaults— And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... she, with a cunning leer; "but this I know, that they had a love scene together this very morning, and that he kissed her ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... commonalty by his criticism of the bishop, to whom the prelate would fain show how little he was to be despised, how far more honored and powerful he was among men. As for Gigadibs, it is to be noticed that Browning quietly makes him do more than leer enviously at his complacent competitor from a tomb-top. The "sudden healthy vehemence" that struck him and made him start to test his first plough in a new world, and read his last chapter of St. John to better purpose than towards self-glorification beyond his fellows, is a parable of the ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... don't know much about lightin' a fire. Lemme show you. Let the White hunter learn the Injun somethin' about the woods," said he with a leer. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... out for a walk in the country. (Tournour makes a leer of contempt) Do you never go for a walk in ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... golden fringe, sweeping the furthest ends of the landscape, not with the strange glare of whiteness which it sometimes puts on as an alternative to colour, but as a splotch of vermilion red upon a leaden ground—a red face looking on with a drunken leer. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... shown, he makes a mistake of twenty years and more. John Mill is in a rage, and says that they are in a worse scrape than Croker; John Murray says that it is a damned nuisance; and Croker looks across the House of Commons at me with a leer of hatred, which I repay with ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... waved awkwardly to his log. One of the others, with a grin that was almost a leer, also rose and reached for another log at a neighboring table from which a man had risen. All about that end of the shack, the seated or standing men, mostly of the silent and aloof groups, drifted casually aside, leaving ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... then with a sidelong leer, and in a tone smooth as oil, but freighted with purpose, "The mother first; we'll look ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... appeared between the Professor's eyes—but he stood his ground defiantly. "Yes," went on Bunker thrusting out his jaw in a baleful leer at his rival, "for many years he has had the proud distinction of being the Champion ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... Commandant of Artillery, a brave officer, but a bad man; Varin, a proud, arrogant libertine, Commissary of Montreal, who outdid Bigot in rapine and Cadet in coarseness; De Breard, Comptroller of the Marine, a worthy associate of Penisault, whose pinched features and cunning leer were in keeping with his important office of chief manager of the Friponne. Perrault, D'Estebe, Morin, and Vergor, all creatures of the Intendant, swelled the roll of infamy, as partners of the Grand Company of Associates trading in New France, as their charter named them—the "Grand Company of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... he is!" cried one of the sailors, with a leer at the half-drowned man's face. "I'd like to see the lass we'd please in saving him. He's only fit ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... said Davis, with a knowing leer, "he's not the man to marry a nice gal like that 'un he's got up to the Rest. Better let her be for some lucky young feller as could make her happy. Don't ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... an insolent leer; "and his she will be who casts highest. If two, or ten, or twenty of us should cast the same, we have an ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... thinking just now that if we had let Cornwood and Boomsby escape from the steamer last night it would have saved us a world of trouble," added Captain Blastblow, with a cunning leer and a wink. ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... Crotona touched the peak of his cap, and looked from Barnabas to Cleone's flushing loveliness with eyes wide and profoundly innocent,—a very cherub in top-boots, only his buttons (Ah, his buttons!) seemed to leer and wink one to another, as much as to say: ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... unabashed, unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain; Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain: Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that blasted the ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... gave us a knowing leer as we registered separately, but I was content to let him think what he wanted. Better that he get the wrong idea about us than the right one. He fiddled around in Miss Farrow's room on the ninth, bucking for a big tip—not for good service, but for leaving us alone, which he did by demonstrating ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... squints more than "a gentleman should squint." The costume—long coat, waistcoat buttoned to the neck, knee-breeches, and stockings—is not unpleasing, but the expression of the face is something between a leer and a sneer. Walpole (Letters, 1858, vii. 274) describes another portrait (by Zoffani) as "a delightful piece of Wilkes looking—no, squinting tenderly at his daughter. It is a caricature of the Devil acknowledging Miss ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... an indelible trail behind him on the glittering streets; wherever he went he was still tethered to the house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he went he must weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope that bound him to the crime and would bind him to the gallows. The leer of the dead man came back to him with a new significance. He snapt his fingers as if to pluck up his own spirits, and choosing a street at random, stept ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... a wild-looking specimen. He had the rolling gait of the deep sea. A squinting eye gave him a villainous leer, while a bristly beard and long gray hair made him a ferocious spectacle. His age was doubtful, as the lines in his ruddy skin might have been cut by dissipation as much as age. The most prominent feature of his unlovely countenance was a nose, fiery red from prolonged exposure ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... turned his head. A gas jet above the wretched little washstand lighted the room but poorly. The door opened slowly. A tall, ungainly woman entered the room—a creature with a sallow, weather-beaten face and a perpetual leer. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... could have left the foot-print in the court, and be the owner of the shoe I had seen—could hardly pass through the Rue de Seine without drawing the eyes of all the lodgers on the street. Dried up hag faces would have met the apparition with a leer; the porters would have turned to stare, and she would have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the roof and dropped with a chug. Then the door, that hung awry like a drooping eyelid, gave a disreputable wink, and the whole front gable of the cabin loomed a giant countenance with a silly forehead and an evil leer. Now it seemed that a hand was hurling snow against the door, as a sower scatters grain,—snow that lay like beach sand on the floor, or melted into a crawling pool—red in ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... catamount and cling there, shouting to all the world to come and help you, for you had caught Black Donald and would die before you would give him up? Ah! you little vampire, how you thirsted for my blood! And you pretended to like me!" said Black Donald, eying her from head to foot, with a sly leer. ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... bamboo Hanging down from a tree, with a label that swung Conspicuous, with letters in some foreign tongue, Which, when freely translated, the same did appear Was the Chinese for saying, "A White Man is here!" And as we drew near, In anger and fear, Bound hand and foot, Johnson Looked down with a leer! ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... the Mercutian said as softly as his gutturals would permit. "There is one in particular you know a great deal about. Urga told me. A long-lost lover, no?" His gray-ridged countenance contorted into a thick disgusting leer. ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... kids, new, or cleaned daily. Parenthetically, let us ask why so many men, with coarse red wrists and big hands, persist in the white kid glove and wristband system? Baroski's gloves alone must cost him a little fortune; only he says with a leer, when asked the question, "Get along vid you; don't you know dere is a gloveress that lets me have dem very sheap?" He rides in the Park; has splendid lodgings in Dover Street; and is a member of the "Regent Club," where he is a great source of amusement to the members, to ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have been accessory to such vile work as to stab an unarmed and unsuspecting man, yet often as I thought of Alessandro's satyr leer, and the loathing bravely coupled with defiance which I had seen leap in answer to it in the face of his child Duchess, I thanked God that Lorenzino had ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... see quarrelling amongst women," returned the porter, in a bland tone, "so all three shall go in; and as to who is to play Doll Wango, the master of the ceremonies will settle that, so you need give yourself no more concern about it; but if I were called on to decide," he added, with an amorous leer at Dame Baldwyn, whose proportions so well matched his own, "I know where my choice would light. There, now!" he shouted, "Open wide the gate for Squire Nicholas Assheton of Downham, and the three ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... crucified. I built in his arms—his right arm first—and mortised the stones, then his left arm in the same way. I was careful not to look in his face. No, no! I didn't look in his face." Knightley repeated the words with a horrible leer of cunning, and hugged himself with his arms. To Wyley's thinking he was strung almost to madness. "After his arms I built in his feet, and upwards from his feet I built in his legs and his body until I came to his neck. All this ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... work was in the finishing room where a number of girls were crowded at machines and tables, filing, clipping, and packing bottles. Her task was to take the screw-neck bottles that came from the leer, and chip and file their jagged necks and shoulders until all the roughness was removed. It was dirty work, and dangerous for unskilled hands, and she found it ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... feet; but the business was over in two twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with a singular and ugly leer. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... smart if y'u was aimin' to be one of Ellen Jorth's lovers,' said Bruce, with a leer. 'Fer if y'u hedn't give y'urself away y'u ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... was he. His real name was Michael, but the children called him Barney, and the name stuck. When they were at odds, as they usually were, they shouted "Barney Bluebeard!" after him, and ran away and hid in trembling delight as he shook his key-ring at them, and showed his teeth with the evil leer which he reserved specially for them. It was reported in the alley that he was a woman-hater; hence the name. Certain it is that he never would let one of the detested sex cross the threshold of his ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves," said Raoul bitterly. "The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it... Picture it: a man who lives in a palace underground!" And he gave a leer. ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux |
