"Leering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now hanging in the Salon. He could see it, one of his visions realized,—David and Saul. The deep, rich shadows, the throne, the tiger skin, the sandaled feet of the remorseful king resting on the great fanged and leering head, the eyes of the king looking hungrily out from under his forbidding brows, the cruel lips pressed tightly together, and the lithe, thin hands grasping the carved arms of the throne in fierce restraint,—all this in the deep shadows between the ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... his revolver with a sigh. "I guess you're right," he admitted, "but, I declare, it makes me mad the way that big brute is leering up ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... some grand white angel, who had stepped down from a cathedral altar, as she stood erect and stately with a gravely pitying expression in her lovely eyes, confronting the sable-draped, withered, leering hag, who fixed upon her a steady look of the ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... red-roofed shrine, and tell the wooden beads of the Buddhist rosary, chanting the perpetual refrain of "Pain, Sorrow, Unreality," as a warning against the temptations of Maya, the world of illusion. The brown faces raised imploringly to the presiding deity, a leering demon with green face and yellow body, inspire the hope that the grotesque monster may prove his own unreality by vanishing from the hearts of his devotees into the limbo of nightmares from which he has emerged, for the philosophic quietism of Buddhist creed offers no disguise ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... either brother since their departure for Hunker Creek, therefore Joe's black visage leering through the window of the cashier's ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... what must come, no other city in America so gaily set forth upon the road to ruin as did patriotic New York. And from that dreadful hour when, through the cannon smoke on Brooklyn Heights, she beheld the ghastly face of ruin leering at her across the foggy water—from that heart-breaking hour when the British drums rolled from the east, and the tall war-ships covered themselves with smoke, and the last flag flying was hacked from the halyards, and ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... 'im for sossingers, 'e's so 'ily in 'is flavour." Well, sir, to cut a long story short, I agrees to take my pootty darter to the Quaker gent's studero; an' I takes 'er nex' day, an' 'e puts her in a pictur. But afore long,' continued the old woman, leering round at Cyril, 'lo! and behold, a young swell, p'raps a young lord in disguise (I don't want to be pussonal, an' so I sha'n't tell his name), 'e comes into that studero one day when I was a-settlin' up with the Quaker ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... child, and she cursed them in the name of all these, if they dared steal her children from her. They should take them over her old dead body, she swore, though her knitting-needles and her eyes were her only weapons, and then she turned her eyes full upon them, with the evil spirit leering and laughing out of them, and the soldiers, one of whom was an officer, fell on their knees and shook like leaves, and prayed her to forgive them; saying that they were sure her boys were good sons, and no banditti. And while they knelt crouching there, La Madre ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... pasteboard the wife had seen a crime which the mother could never forgive, the partner had seen a crime which the friend could never forgive. Think of a loved face suddenly melting before your eyes into a grinning skull, then into a mass of putrefaction, then into the ugliest fiend of hell, leering at you, distorted with all the marks of vice and shame. That is what I saw, that is what ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... already taken off his coat and stood leering down upon Isaac who felt that he could never retreat now; that he would always despise himself as a coward, a traitor to the heroes of his race. Setting his teeth for the drubbing he felt certain he would receive, he struck out blindly. Then he felt a hand ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... into the bushes at the edge of the path, and he passed with his eyes on the ground, or he must have seen—a blotched, dark-visaged, leering creature, living in an insane world of his own. They waited until he was far out of sight before creeping, all of a tremble, from their shelter, only to hear another footfall unexpectedly near:—the pad, pad, pad of a runner, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... Kappelman, deceived by a new softness and slowness of riposte and parry in Mary Adrian, tried to kiss her. Instantly she slapped his face with such strength and cold fury that he shrank down, sobered, with the flaming red print of a hand across his leering features. And all sounds ceased, as when the shadows of great wings come upon a flock of chattering sparrows. One had broken the paramount law of sham-Bohemia—the law of "Laisser faire." The shock came not from the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... arrayed a mass of miserable and distorted humanity, the sight of which would have impelled Dore to more diabolical flights of fancy than he ever succeeded in achieving. It was a welter of rags and filth, of all manner of loathsome skin diseases, open sores, bruises, grossness, indecency, leering monstrosities, and bestial faces. A chill, raw wind was blowing, and these creatures huddled there in their rags, sleeping for the most part, or trying to sleep. Here were a dozen women, ranging in age from twenty years to seventy. Next a babe, possibly ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... him with apprehension by looking at the house which sheltered him, but the sight of his bicycle, propped in a drunk and incapable attitude against the doorway, humping its rackety mud-guard and leering at them with its darkened lantern eye, drove them away—so it seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver—to the spacious swallow of the Golden Dragon. The young lady was riding very slowly, but the other man in brown had a bad puncture and was ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... it was dangerous to keep one's hat on his head, for it hazarded plucking off and shying here and there. At the chamber-windows aforesaid, crowded the tipsy occupants, men and women, red-eyed with drinking, and leering stupidly upon the surging heads below. Some asked if Calcraft did the "job," and others volunteered sketches of Calcraft's life. One man boasted that he had taken a pot of beer with him, and another added that the hangman's children and his own ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... little girl—well, well, let's see her," said the colonel, with a leering and thoroughly wicked look, which proved to a man of Vinet's quality how little respect the old trooper could feel for ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... mountains were no longer sterile-seeming. The road coiled up and up snakily, between rows of leering cactus; and far below the densely wooded heights lay lovely plains through which a great river wandered. There was a homely smell of mint, and the country did not look to Stephen like the Africa he had imagined. All the hill-slopes ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... very serious deformity is often the result of the operation for convergent squint, and is associated with a fixed, leering, and prominent eye, and frequently ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... one of these little creatures was shaped so as to bear resemblance to some one of the letters of the alphabet. One tall, long-legged fellow seemed like the letter A; a burly fellow, with a big head and a paunch, was the model of B; another leering little chap might have passed for a Q; and so on through the whole. These fairies—for fairies they were—climbed upon the hunchback's bed, and clustered thick as bees upon his pillow. 'Come!' they cried to him, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... fell on him; little scenes piteously clear rose before him, of the road by Rusper convent, Layton's leering face, a stripped altar; and for each there was a tale if he could but tell it. And still ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... portrait upon which poor Toinon the Virtuous had lavished such loving glances. And yet the photograph was flattering. The lens had failed to convey the expression of low cunning that distinguished the man's features, the impudence of his leering smile, and the mingled cowardice and ferocity of his eyes, which never looked another person in the face. Nor could the portrait depict the unwholesome, livid pallor of his skin, the restless blinking of his eyelids, and the constant movement of ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... the face too, a winking, blinking, leering, little face much like the one that had grinned at Ann from the post of the big bed not ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... up there, and that they were constantly 'craning' their necks to look at one another—as if they would inquire, 'I say, how do you like being there?'" My favourite figure, St. John, upon which I bestowed extra pains, the provoking man would have it, was St. Mary Magdalene, leering at the apostle next to her, or at the one opposite—it did not seem quite clear to him which; but her head was down on one side ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... downright lucky for him that he's got sech a bright gal as you to look after things. He is a smart sight better off than I should have been under the circumstances;" and Oily Dave struck an attitude of respectful admiration, leering at Katherine from his ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... appeared. One was that of a Chinaman in a green robe scarcely distinguishable from the cushions surrounding him, who crouched upon the divan to the left of the central door, smoking a long bamboo pipe. His face was the leering face of a yellow satyr. But, dominating the composition, and so conceived in form, in color, and in lighting, as to claim the attention centrally, so that the other extravagant details became but a setting for it, was ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... called "the Grenadier," took ten pails and still persisted in leering with dripping gray mouth beyond the headboard, trying to reach more. As Wrennie was carrying a pail to the heifers beyond, the Grenadier's horn caught and tore his overalls. The boat lurched. The pail whirled out of his hand. He grasped an iron ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... I could do something. Our futile weapons! They were all here—four or five heat ray hand projectors that could send a pencil ray a hundred feet or so. I shot one diagonally up at the turret where Johnson was leering down at our rear window, but he saw my gesture and dropped back out of sight. The heat beam flashed harmlessly up and struck the turret room. Then across the turret window came a sheen of radiance—an electrobarrage. And ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... longing seized him to look once again on the shady nest of all his hopes and labors. He hated the life he led. He hated the noisy Tartar women that surrounded him,—aquatic and disgusting as crawfish,—brown, stupid, and leering. He hated the feline yawling of their music. He hated the yellow water, swarming with boats, and settled with junks. He hated their pagodas, and their hideous effigies of their ancestors, looking like dumb idols. Their bejewelled Buddhas, their incense-lamps, their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... "With leering looks, bull-faced, and speckled fair, With two left legs and Judas-coloured hair, And frowzy pores that taint ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... a good look at his face as he sat leering at me through his glasses. From the congested look of it, I could quite believe that he had sampled this mixture, or others of a similar alcoholic nature, sufficiently to give an opinion on the point; his bloodshot eyes also testified ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... man, is away, as a matter of course, doing a man's only possible duty under the circumstances. This leaves 'Nri and 'Seph, who through physical or mental shortcomings are denied the proud privilege, and shamble about in the muck and mud of the farm, leering or grumbling, while Madame exhorts them to further activity from the kitchen door. They take their meals with the family: where they sleep no one knows. External evidence suggests ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... now, kids, tell us the truth," ordered the leering spokesman, advancing a pace nearer. "Tell us how many went away in your boat and how soon they'll ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... of those leering and vindictive vampires of the air, the church pretended to defend mankind. Pursued by these phantoms, the frightened multitudes fell upon their faces and implored the aid of ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... hated most was the men—the men leering and blathering at you across tables, trying to buy you with Wuerzburger or Extra Dry, according to their estimate of your price. And the men in the audiences, clapping, yelling, snarling, crowding, writhing, gloating—like a lot of wild beasts, with their eyes fixed on you, ready to eat you up if ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... a sail on that sharp straight line that marks the steel of the sky; Never a wing flees in from death to crouch in the rattling reeds; In the shaggy heads of the black coast pines the frozen spume drives high; And even the hand of the leering sun lies cold on the ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... government emissary's continuous winnings, disastrous losses of the young subalterns inveigled into gambling through fear of his official displeasure, were not unknown to Hugh. A civil declination was on his lips; but keenly searching the shrivelled face leering into his own, Hugh saw written there something that compelled consideration, challenged a refusal. Promptly and in affirmative speech he reversed ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... became conscious that my eyes were leering—leering in one fixed direction: and instantly, the mere fact that I had a sense of direction proved to me that I must, in truth, have heard something! I strove—I managed—to raise myself: and as I stood upright, feebly swaying ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... shall we play for?" asked Feodor, as he cast a look of ill-concealed contempt on his young companions, who so little understood the art of drinking the cup of pleasure with decency, and rolled about on their seats with lolling tongues and leering eyes. ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... the city's fool! A juggling, tooth-drawing, prating mountebank! And at a public window! where, whilst he, With his strain'd action, and his dole of faces, To his drug-lecture draws your itching ears, A crew of old, unmarried, noted letchers, Stood leering up like satyrs; and you smile Most graciously, and fan your favours forth, To give your hot spectators satisfaction! What; was your mountebank their call? their whistle? Or were you enamour'd on his copper rings, His saffron jewel, with the toad-stone in't, Or his embroider'd suit, with the ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... word, Donald slipped the gloves from his hands, and leaped upon Tom, smashing him to right and left with one well-directed blow after the other. The Indian was unarmed, and no match for the captain. But not so his mother. Almost imperceptibly, the leering hag crept closer to the combat, one ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... professor had noticed something. Now there comes back to him that tall figure stooping over Perpetua, the handsome, leering face bent low—the ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... then another. O'Malley was still taking care of himself and Stan was doing all right, but his gasoline gauge was leering at him and its needle was rolling steadily around. When the fourth Thunderbolt broke into flames, Stan knew it was time to go home. He probably would not make it, ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... old comedy is to the comedy of to-day, precisely what an old beau, padded, painted, simpering with false teeth, and leering with rhumy eyes, is to a handsome, gallant young fellow, such as Mr. LESTER WALLACK impersonates ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... tin, sagacious Tyler!" But the old experienced file, Leering first at Clay and Webster, Answered, ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... rapidly along. In front of every saloon was a group of young men almost fascinatingly common to Alexina's cloistered eyes, their hats tilted over their foreheads at an indescribable angle, rank black cigars in the corners of their mouths, or cigarettes hanging from their loose lips, leering at "bunches" of girls that passed unattended, appraising them cynically, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... grim, From cloud to cloud along her beat, Leering her battered and inveterate leer, She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, Her horrible old man, Mumbling old oaths and warming His villainous old bones with villainous talk - The secrets of their grisly housekeeping Since they ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... He stood still, leering foolishly on us, just in our way; I could not bear to look at him, and would have slipt on one side; but Althea looked sternly at ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... inclined to run towards the prophet-like figure —it was Ranulph's father; next she drew back with dislike—his smile was leering malice under the guise of amiable mirth. But he was old, and he looked feeble, so her mind instantly changed again, and she offered him a seat on a bench beside the arched ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... by rote a coded praise, Unto a leering two-faced god falls prone, And smears with lust and fear his alternate days For monstrous imaginations to atone; For you, most instant, most ardent,—you are flown Like fumes to his clownish brain, and in his fear He dreams you a eunuch carved of pallid stone Warning, "Beware ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... wondered how I could ever have feared it. I could go into the world now, and laugh and shout with the best among them. I knew I was mad, but they did not even suspect it. How I used to hug myself with delight, when I thought of the fine trick I was playing them after their old pointing and leering, when I was not mad, but only dreading that I might one day become so! And how I used to laugh for joy, when I was alone, and thought how well I kept my secret, and how quickly my kind friends would have fallen from me, if they had known the truth. I could ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... he might not escape if he would. In a later day we hear of the Lorelei singing on her rock, striking chords on her golden harp, and, as the raptured fisherman steered close, with eyes filled by her beauty and ears by her music, he had a moment's consciousness of a skull leering at him and harsh laughter clattering in echoes along the shore; then his boat struck and filled, and the dark flood curtained off the sky. Wagner has made familiar the legend of the Rhine daughters, singing impossibly ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... she had at first been conscious, at the man's evil leering smile which repelled her suddenly culminated in a pang of intuition. This man ... It must be ... Hawk Kennedy—the man who ... She stared at him with a new horror in the growing pallor of her face and Hawk Kennedy saw the look. It was as though some devilish ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... laid his pen down to think, gazing quietly on the blue hills and sunlit sea. A feeling of hope and repose stole over him;—when suddenly he saw at the door, which was ajar, the leering eyes and ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... before," she said, leering up into Lovaway's face. "I've seen worse. I've seen a strong man tying himself into knots with the way they had him held, and there's no cure ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... appearance, but the manners also, of Foreign Affairs, may be copied with signal benefit. Two of their accomplishments will be found eminently serviceable—the art of looking black, and that of leering. These physiognomical attainments, exhibited by turns, have a marvellous power of attracting female eyes—those of them, at least, that have a tendency to wander abroad. The best way of becoming master of these acquisitions is, to peruse with attention ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... telling me to-night a long story of machinations against him in the club; the perspicacity with which he detected them, the odious repartees he made, the effective counter-checks he applied. "I was always a combatant," he says, with a leering gaiety. Then the next moment he is girding at the whole crew for their stupidity, their ingratitude, their malignity; and it never seems to cross his mind that he can be, or has been in the smallest degree, to blame. It distressed me profoundly, and my mind and heart ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in Sebenico is the cathedral, which was begun when America had yet to be discovered. The chief glory of the cathedral is its exterior, with its superb carved doors, its countless leering, grinning gargoyles—said to represent the evil spirits expelled from the church—and a broad frieze, running entirely around the edifice, composed of sculptured likenesses of the architects, artists, sculptors, masons, and master-builders who participated ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... Zola sketches a living character. Take the picture of old Mere Fetu. One really feels her disagreeable presence, and is annoyed with her whining, leering, fawning, sycophancy. One almost resents her introduction into the pages of the book. There is something palpably odious about her personality. A pleasing contrast is formed by the pendant portraits ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... Indians sprang from the squatting groups around the fire and ran to meet us. They were black shapes that I could not recognize. I leaped from my canoe and held up my hand in greeting. But an arm reached out and tore my musket from me. I looked up. A leering ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... of fine folks he oft row'd in his wherry, 'Twas cleaned out so nice and so painted withall, He always was first oars when the fine city ladies, In a party to Ranelagh went, or Vauxhall. And oft-times would they be giggling and leering, But 'twas all one to Tom their jibing and jeering, For loving or liking he little did care, For this Waterman ne'er was in want ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... has been converted. Comus and his wicked satyrs and leering fauns have disappeared, and fled into the lowest haunts; and Comus's lady (if she had a taste for humor, which may be doubted) might take up our funny picture-books without the slightest precautionary squeamishness. What can be purer than the charming fancies of Richard Doyle? In all ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Past. Tiptoeing to the niche in the rock she drew away the sheltering boughs and branches she had placed there one golden September day. The leaves had been red and yellow then; they were stiff and brown now. The leering skull confronted her as it had in the past and changed her at once ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... it is not they who pack the Palace nightly to see her powder her legs and bosom. They may be there, but most of them are at the bar. If you look at the circle and stalls, they are full of elderly, hard women, with dominant eyebrows, leering through the undressing process, and moistening their lips as Gaby appears ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... any vestige of human recognition in that face. There was no longer any trace of the man who had been Gaddon. There was only the monster now. The twisted, leering lips of ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... we have described him, was enthroned as a monarch, in an elbow-chair, placed, on the dining-table, his scratch wig on one side, his head crowned with a bottle-slider, his eye leering with an expression betwixt fun and the effects of wine, while his court around him resounded with such crambo scraps of verse as ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... over the table just on the other side of the palms, pulling back the chairs; slouching into their places were three men. Mart's eyes opened at sight of them, for they were no other than old Jerry Smith, the one-eyed seaman Birch, and Yorke, the old seaman with the twisted, leering mouth that was ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... of another match, shielded by the ranger s hands, Larry looked into the scowling, villainous face he had seen earlier in the day. There could be no mistaking those leering, cruel eyes nor the ratlike, shifty look of the face, not to mention the long scar ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... leering contentiously at them all, was exclaiming in very audible tones: "Take your hands off. Who are you? What the devil have you got to do with this? Don't you think I know what I'm about? She knows me—don't ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... know where Lily was, and he anticipated the interview with a sort of grim humor. There might be another fight; certainly Akers would try to get back at him for the night before. But he set his jaw. He would learn where Lily was if he had to choke the knowledge out of that leering devil's thick white throat. His arrival in the foyer of the Benedict Apartments caused more than a ripple ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... insignificant little chambermaid of a Queen—thou wilt live to be consoled by thy Barbara! She wishes to be a Queen, and not a Queen Dowager, my gracious Lord!" And hanging upon poor Giglio's arm, and leering and grinning in his face in the most disgusting manner, this old wretch tripped off in her white satin shoes, and jumped into the very carriage which had been got ready to convey Giglio and Rosalba to church. The cannons roared again, the bells pealed triple-bobmajors, the people came out flinging ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it, but his opponent's great arms were around him now and held him too tightly. He tried to pull himself loose, but could not. Then he rolled partly over again, and met Targo's eyes above, leering triumphantly down at him. He looked away and wrenched his right arm free. Across the room he could see the girl still crouching in the corner. His right hand sweeping along the floor struck something heavy lying there. His fingers closed over it; ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... his teeth suddenly in a loud laugh, leering at the slim, young figure before him. The ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... aged man with as much admiring awe as if they had each been nothing less than a lord mayor of London at the very least. But now they leaned their heads together and spoke in lowered tones, but something in the leering eyes of the one, and the smiling lips of the other, told me that it was not ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... even from light and air; and when the sheriff let her in through the clanging outer gate she started back at sight of the tanks. Within high walls of concrete a great, wrought-iron cell-house rose up like a square box of steel and, pressed against the bars, were obscene leering eyes staring out for a look ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... opened and a burly warrior appeared in the opening—a hulking fellow, with thick lips and an evil, leering face. The slave girl sprang ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... white goat and the janitress of the tenement on the corner. Being crowded up against the wall by the animal, bent on exploring her pockets, she beat it off with her scrubbing-pail and mop. The goat, thus dismissed, joined a horse at the curb in apparently innocent meditation, but with one leering eye fixed back over its shoulder upon the housekeeper ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... what predominated, he told me, was the South Italian type of young man, with a colourless, clear complexion, red lips, jet-black little moustache and liquid black eyes so wonderfully effective in leering or scowling. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... streets; followed by the mixed rabble, to the meeting hall, probably in the neighborhood of the temple. He is brought in and faces these men. How some of those eyes must have gloated out their green leering! Here are the men He had not hesitated to denounce openly with the severest invective ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... fell into the inky sea. Swift as a bird, his own ship went by him; he saw the mocking face of the pirate chief leering at him from over the rail; in a few minutes he was alone, all, all alone in the wide, wide sea. For some time he swam about, and by great good luck discovered a log of wood strong enough to bear his weight, floating near at hand. ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... the middle of its banks of glistening mud, and there in the corner the pinched old rogue in his ragged bodygear scraping away at 'Barbara Allen,' or 'When first I saw thy face,' or 'The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington,' while the leering rascals in the pilot coats and the flap-eared caps huddled together over their filthy tables, and swigged their strong drink and thumbed their greasy cards and swore horribly in all ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... his eyes and lo! they looked directly into the leering countenance of the monstrous image. Yet there seemed something curiously encouraging and even beneficent about the aspect of the demon. But so often as Gilles de Retz passed the triple array of his victims with his back to the image, ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... town of him,' rapped out Nutter, with an oath, leering at his own shoebuckle, and tapping the sole ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... insanity. Her girl's mind—like sweet bells jangled out of tune—brought no longer the high message of reason into her heart. We sitting here in this sunny courtroom, gentlemen, can think and reason. But Pauline Pollard, struggling in the embrace of a leering savage, listening to his fiendish mockeries of her virtue—the virtue he had stolen from her—ah! the soul and brain of Pauline Pollard vanished in a darkness. The law is the law, gentlemen. There is no one respects it more than I. If this girl killed a man coldly ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... away merrily, the bishop all the while in great delight, noddling his head, and beating time with his foot, till the bride and bridegroom appeared. The bridegroom was richly apparelled, and came slowly and painfully forward, hobbling and leering, and pursing up his mouth into a smile of resolute defiance to the gout, and of tender complacency towards his lady love, who, shining like gold at the old knight's expense, followed slowly between her father and mother, her cheeks pale, ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... think we are human only in virtue of open windows. Without fresh air, you only require a bad heart, and a remarkable command of the Queen's English, to become such another as Dean Swift; a kind of leering human goat, leaping and wagging your scut on mountains of offence. I do my best to keep my head the other way, and look for the human rather than the bestial in this Yahoo-like business of the emigrant train. But one thing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... roar, and the hot silent night was turned to pandemonium. I dashed out of the tent, shouting for Ingleby. Good God! It was like hell! The yelling swearing Tommies, making up for the long enforced silence and inaction; the hordes of dark devilish faces, leering in their fury, and jeering at our discomfiture; for inside their outer wall, was a rampart of double the strength, and we were no ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... a pretty fellow you are!" he said, leering at Julio with eyes which could no longer distinguish things except in a shadowy way. "You are the living image of my poor dead wife. . . . Have a good time, for Grandpa is always here with his money! If you could only count on what your father gives you, you would live ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... noisy with wheels and the everlasting Neapolitan chattering of a thick-lipped, loud, degenerate dialect. There the little one-horse cabs tear hither and thither, drivers lashing their wretched beasts, wheels whirling, arms gesticulating, bad eyes flashing and leering, thick lips chattering everlastingly: and the tram-cars roll along, crowded till the people cling to one another on the steps; and the small boys dodge in and out between the cars and the carriages and the horses and the foot-passengers, some screaming out papers for sale, some looking ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... of the Jack-o'-Lantern, he paused. It was dark, save for a single round window. In an upper front room a night-lamp, turned low, gave one leering eye to the grotesque exterior ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... went on, as if moved by an impulse of self-defense, the half-leering, half-sneering smile still on his face, "that a man has the right to sample all the pleasures that come within his reach. It's the only way by which he can come into full knowledge of himself, ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... desire, that quenches all other spark of the spirit, that is boundless; love of a hideously grotesque and deformed sort; love defiled, twisted, misshapen as though Eros had become an ugly, malformed, leering monstrosity. That love which is the expression of the last degree of selfish greed, since it demands all and gives nothing; that love which is like a rank weed, choking tenderer growths; or more ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... fantastic awfulness of his position smote him with redoubled force,—and he felt as a madman may feel when his impending doom has not entirely asserted itself,—when only grotesque and leering suggestions of madness cloud his brain,—when hideous faces, dimly discerned, loom out of the chaos of his nightly visions,—and when all the air seems solid darkness, with one white line of fire cracking it asunder in the midst, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... standing, the multitude extended to the sides and the rear of my position for many hundred metres until it seemed quite lost under the glowing lights in the distance. Before us a huge curtain hung. Emblazoned on its dull crimson background of subdued socialism was a gigantic black eagle, the leering emblem of autocracy. Above and extending back over us, appeared in the ceiling a deep and ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... inch-length, where he kept it in subjugation with shears. The gutters of his scars were seen through it, and the ends of them ran up, on both cheeks, to his eyes. A knife had gone across one of these, missing the bright little pupil in its bony cave, but slashing the eyebrow and leaving him leering on that side. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... emotion; and out of the mist she looked about her and saw the faces of tormenting demons, leering. "Well," she demanded, "are we going ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... loved mirth and mockery; their Greek theatre was remarkable for irreverent farce, for parodies of the great drama of Athens. And here is testimony to the fact: all manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into impossible grins, eyes leering and goggling, noses extravagant. I sketched a caricature of Medusa, the anguished features and snaky locks travestied with satiric grimness. You remember a story which illustrates this scoffing habit: how the Roman Ambassador, whose Greek left something to be ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... beautiful young lady as yourself, Modam, can't find it difficult to put 'er 'and on five hundred pounds," murmured Mrs. Piper, and as she said the words there came a leering smile over ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... fashionable equipages began to flash past. He'd probably see his wife driving with Mrs. Ferrall or with Miss Caithness, or perhaps with some doddering caryatid of the social structure; and he'd sit there, leering with gummy eyes out of the club windows, while servants in silent processional replenished his glass from time to time, until in the early night the trim little shopgirls flocked out into the highways in gossiping, fluttering coveys, trotting away ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... out my spectacles, and put them on for my own purpose, and against his direction and desire. I looked at him, and saw a huge bald-headed wild boar, with gross chops and a leering eye—only the more ridiculous for the high-arched, gold-bowed spectacles, that straddled his nose. One of his fore hoofs was thrust into the safe, where his bills payable were hived, and the other into his ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... rose the sun to noon; and ever, like one of the dead, The priest lay still in his house, with the roar of the sea in his head; There was never a foot on the floor, there was never a whisper of speech; Only the leering tikis stared on the blinding beach. Again were the mountains fired, again the morning broke; And all the houses lay still, but the house of the priest awoke. Close in their covering roofs lay and trembled the clan, But the aged, red-eyed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... And the darkness deepened, darkness in which there was a vision of fire, the vision of a man, fantastic and menacing. He was the genius of this room. This room sang of him. Yes, even now the twisted silver goblins, the curved monstrosities on the cabinet, the crouched Indian boys, the leering pictures, and always the dull red cloud on wall and carpet, cushion and hanging. And then a strange deception overtook the doctor and shook his usually steady nerves. The red cloud seemed to his observing eyes to tremble, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... "Frisco," and were bent upon getting to one of these places. They condemned the rich and begged and stole from the poor, talked swaggeringly of their personal courage and ran whimpering and begging before country constables. One of them, a tall, leering youth in a grey cap, who came up to Sam one evening at the edge of a village in Indiana, tried to rob him. Full of his new strength and with the thought of Ed's wife and the sullen-faced son in his mind, Sam sprang upon him and had revenge for the beating ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... embarrassed at his position, and bewildered by the dashing speeches of his companion. A dozen pair of leering eyes were fixed upon him; a dozen mouths were wrinkled into sottish smiles, called up by his sufferings at that critical moment. He reached forth his hand, and grasped the slender stem of the wine-glass; but his arm trembled more than that of ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... LEER, leering or "empty, hence, perhaps, leer horse, a horse without a rider; leer is an adjective meaning uncontrolled, hence 'leer drunkards'" (Halliwell); according to Nares, a leer (empty) horse meant also a ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... my mind to depart when the man Sach arose, crossed the cafe and seated himself insolently between the Algerian and the woman to whom the latter was talking. Turning his back upon the brown man, he addressed some remark to the woman, at the same time leering ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... I couldn't reach him through his vanity. I flattered him, feigned a passionate interest in his melons. And he was taken in, and used to discourse on them by the hour. On fine days he was driven to the green-houses in his pony-chair, and waddled through them, prodding and leering at the fruit, like a fat Turk in his seraglio. When he bragged to me of the expense of growing them I was reminded of a hideous old Lothario bragging of what his pleasures cost. And the resemblance was completed by ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... overlooked. What a delightful squint he had! What a ridiculous likeness there was between him and the roast pig he was carving! I was wondering all dinner-time how that man contrived to cut up that pig; for one eye was fixed upon the ceiling, and the other leering very affectionately at me. It was very ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... it was a bit further on," said the cabby, leering down cheerfully. "Nice night, sir, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... playhouse, where Shirley floundered out first, after the ungallant manner of many sere-and-yellow beaux. He swayed unsteadily, teetering on his cane, as Helene leaped lightly to the sidewalk beside him. The driver stood by the door of the car, leering at him. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Hate, deadly, relentless, glared in his eyes, and with a yell of exultation he swung up his long rifle and struck savagely at my head with the stock. I caught it partially on my barrel, breaking its full force, and even as it descended upon my shoulder, jabbed the muzzle hard into his leering face. With a snarl of pain he dropped his gun and grappled with me, but as his fingers closed about my throat, something swirled down through the maze, and the maddened brute staggered back, his arms uplifted, his red ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... bohunks[1] were existing there now, five hundred of the wildest foreigners even Torrance had handled. But they were his gang. And Mile 130 was his camp. That thought had impelled him once to punch the head of a leering engineer who rashly ventured to call it "Torrance's pig-sty" in Torrance's hearing. The camp might go to perdition so far as he was concerned, but he wasn't going to have any ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... revived the new-comer. He stared at Pelliter, and as he stared he grinned, ugly yellow teeth leering from between his matted beard. The look cleared Pelliter's brain. For some reason which he could not explain, his pistol hand fell to the place where he usually carried his holster. Then he remembered that his service revolver was under ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... grip only seemed to tighten, and then he realized that he was on the edge of the raft. He was powerless. He wondered vaguely why the rest did not come to his assistance. He felt his head and shoulders slip over the edge, and then opening his eyes he saw the madman's leering face, flushed with rage and triumph, staring into his own. His eyes closed with a shudder as he seemed to feel the icy waters close over him. Then the grasp on his throat suddenly relaxed, ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... Bartas Book, Minerva this, and wish't him well to look, And tell uprightly which did which excell, He view'd and view'd, and vow'd he could not tel. They bid him Hemisphear his mouldy nose, With's crack't leering glasses, for it would pose The best brains he had in's old pudding-pan, Sex weigh'd, which best, the Woman or the Man? He peer'd and por'd & glar'd, & said for wore, I'me even as wise now, as I was ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... them all fly! One day, by a blow, He was conquered, I know; But no wonder at last he should yield to a foe: He yielded, poor fellow! The conquering bellow Resounds in my ears as my poor father's knell—Oh!" A Fox then replied, While, leering aside, He laughed at his folly and vapouring pride: "My chattering youth, Your nonsense, forsooth, Is more like a funeral sermon than truth. Let history tell How your old father fell; And see if the narrative sounds as well. Your folly surpasses, Of monkeys ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... from my Nazi ancestors of four hundred and fifty years ago. Hideyoshi's going to treat King Yoorkerk to a movie-show. Want to bet he won't loosen up and release Procyon and Northern Lights and unblockade the Grank Residency after he sees that shot of Firkked's head leering at him off the point of that overgrown asagai? As I said, that's only the last scene, too. I've been having scenes shot all through this fight; some of them ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... bent upon her: the mutual understanding; the rights once relinquished which might now be urged again; the memory of things past, were all suggested in this look. She thought of Ludlow, with his lofty ideals and his great gifts, and then she looked at this little grinning, leering wretch, and remembered how he had once put his arm round her and kissed her. It seemed impossible—too cruel and unjust to be. She was scarcely more than a child, then, and that foolish affair had been more her mother's folly than her ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... it. Whenever I look toward the shores of England, I fancy I descry the Danaids there, toiling at the replenishment of their perforated vases, and all the Nereids leering and laughing at them in the mischievous ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... sat leering at the ashes, trying with all his might to overhear what was said, but feigning abstraction as the 'Governors Both' ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... think you will fight when the time comes?" half-sneered another, rather evil-featured fellow, leering at Dick. "I'd be willing to wager that you'll do ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... remained under the purao. Now they would write a word or two, now scribble it out; now they would sit biting at the pencil end and staring seaward; now their eyes would rest on the clerk, where he sat propped on the canoe, leering and coughing, his pencil racing glibly on ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne |
