"Sarcasm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mark," said Frank, with cool sarcasm, "that you should be inconvenienced about your meals. Perhaps you will excuse it, as my poor mother is so sick that she requires extra attention from the servants. Deborah, if possible, don't let Mark wait much longer. It seems to be ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... said, in a tone of plaintive sarcasm. "This is a perty way to do!" (He was alluding to the personal spitefulness of the elements.) "I'd like to know what's the sense of it—ole sun pourin' down every day in the week when nobody needs it, then cloud up and rain all Saturday! ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... Brasher with thinly disguised sarcasm. "'Member the job of yours near Yonkers, where you got in with a rope hooked around a chimney and climbin' irons. 'Member ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... he said with elaborate sarcasm. "This bein' yo' school-house over hyeh, an' me not bein' a scholar, I reckon I'm ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... he was poor, I didn't mention him," replied Mendel, with unintentional sarcasm. "But I've heard from him several times. We both came over from Poland together, but the Board of Guardians sent him and a lot of others on to ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... with biting sarcasm, "we are acquainted with both your courage and your resource." He sat silent and thoughtful for some moments, then with a sudden sharp glance ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... happy, easy years he had passed in his old home; of the worn-out, aged men whom he had succoured; of his good intentions; and of his work, which had certainly been of the lightest. He thought of these things, doubting for a moment whether he did or did not deserve the sarcasm. He gave his enemy the benefit of the doubt, and did not rebuke him. He merely observed, very tranquilly, and perhaps with too much humility, that the duties of the situation, such as they were, had, he believed, been done to the satisfaction of the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... settlements, unless they would likewise empty their offal upon our tables? What must we think of that board, which has advised the repeal of every law we have hitherto made to prevent this deluge of wickedness overwhelming us; and with this cruel sarcasm, that these laws were against the public utility, for they tended to prevent the improvement and well peopling of the colonies! And what must we think of those merchants, who, for the sake of a little paltry gain, will be concerned in importing and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Nicholas "Chamfort" (1741-94), a French miscellaneous writer, whose brilliant conversation, power of sarcasm, and epigrammic force, coupled with an extraordinary career, render him one of the most interesting and remarkable men of his time. Schopenhauer undoubtedly owed much to this writer, to ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of a surety—if, indeed, it is lost,' he added with bitter sarcasm. 'And surely your Excellency cannot require the boy's blood at our hands ere your Excellency ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... can read, and write, and count, can ye?" repeated the captain, with deep sarcasm. "If ye had said ye could feed, and fight, and shout, it would have bin more ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... then stared before him with knitted brows. "Why, what's the matter with the man?" he said to himself. And then he read the letter over again, weighing its every phrase. "Did he think my letter was sarcasm?" he wondered. "Did he think ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... should invade my house at such an hour, this matter must indeed be of singular importance," he said stiffly. Then, in a voice quivering with sarcasm, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... the expression of his friend's countenance. Brandon's face was one which, however pliant, nearly always wore one pervading character,—calmness; whether in the smoothness of social courtesy, or the austerity of his official station, or the bitter sarcasm which escaped him at no unfrequent intervals, still a certain hard and inflexible dryness stamped both his features and his air. But at this time a variety of feelings not ordinarily eloquent in the outward man struggled in his dark face, expressive of all the energy and passion of his powerful ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thrust his handkerchief into his tail-pocket, and all the father awoke within him. "Ho, will 'e?" he said, with fierce sarcasm. "Ho, indeed! And wot about my daughter? I 'ave 'eard of such things as breach o' promise. Before Mr. Teddy gets married 'e's got to 'ave a ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... with admirable effect, but it was Swift the reviler, not Swift the jester. He says that he made a "wooden Oxford audience laugh aloud with two pages of Heine's wit"; but the lecture, as we read it, shows more of mordant sarcasm than of the material for laughter. Scott he knew by heart, and Carlyle he honestly revered; but he admired the one for his romance and the other for his philosophy. Thackeray, sad to remember, he "did not ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... surely, be Wellington in disguise!" added Mr. Effingham, with a sarcasm of manner that ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... it!" and Violet glanced her over with a kind of sullen sarcasm. "I'm bound to please Lennie when I ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... dare say," Bending said, with more than a touch of sarcasm. "As a matter of fact, you'd pretty much have to suppress the Converter, ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... get to Beatonville, where Oak Farm is located, and as this is the only road that goes there, I'm afraid we'll have to take that train, whether it's on track thirteen or not," declared Mr. Pertell. "Unless," he added with gentle sarcasm, "you can get the company to switch ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... happening to dine with young Landor's father one day, assailed Porson, and, with self-assumed superiority, thinking to annihilate the old Grecian, exclaimed "We have no opinion of his scholarship." Irate at this stupid pronunciamento against so renowned a man, young Landor looked up, and, with a sarcasm the point of which was not in the least blunted by age, retorted, "We, my Lord?" Of course such unheard of audacity and contempt of my Lord Bishop's capacity for criticism was severely reprobated by Landor Senior; but no amount ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... life, and plainly the Higher life has no need of him. Of course,' he added with covert satire, 'your Highness believes in a Higher life?' 'Of course, of course!' responded the Royal creature, unconscious of any veiled sarcasm; 'We must be Christians before anything!' And that same evening this hypocritical Highness 'rooked' a foolish young fellow of over ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... polar bears, wolf and monkey had studied themselves, as we advise you to study yourself, they might have escaped the sarcasm of the sharpest tongue ever born in ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... bride, Donna Elvira, tries to forget himself in debauches and extravagances. His servant Leporello, in every manner the real counterpart of his master, is his aider and abettor. A more witty, a more amusing figure does not exist. His fine sarcasm brings Don Juan's character into bold relief; they ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... turned up his lip, and smiled out of a little battery of sarcasm: "And you think," said he, after a pause, "that these colonists would no longer revel in those little prejudices and sectionalisms so dear to every American heart, if they were transplanted to your own favored ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... idiota. Neighbours, also, and fellow-servants, remarked with malicious curiosity or degrading pity, the disfigured shape, loose dress, and pale cheeks, of the once beautiful and still interesting girl. But to no one would she grant her confidence, answering all taunts with bitter sarcasm, and all serious expostulation with sullen denial, or ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Ida; "this day six months I shall be prepared to become your wife, Mr. Cossey. I believe," she added with a flash of bitter sarcasm, "it is the time usually allowed for the redemption of ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... notice, or did not care for, the slight touch of sarcasm in the Intendant's tone. "Thanks, Bigot!" drawled he. "My eggs shall be hatched to-night down at Menut's. I expect to have little more left than the shell of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... know I would!" said Cap, as if speaking to herself, but by her tone and manner clothing these simple words in the very keenest sarcasm. ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... the weary, heart-sick young girl, before whom there stretched a vista of long years of toil, the lesson of patience was less easy to learn. Mary never forgot these words, nor did she heed their bitter sarcasm. Often and often, in her after trials, they returned to her, carrying with them peace ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... supernatural systems of theology, and proceed to construct purely natural systems in their place as devoid of vitality and inspiration as dead tree-trunks are of vital saps. So conceive this dramatic monologue, and the baleful humor appears, and is captivating in its biting sarcasm and unanswerable argument. Caliban is, in his own opinion, omniscient. He trusts himself absolutely. He is as infallible as the Positivists, and as full of information as the Agnostics, absurd as such an attitude on their part must appear; for, as Romanes has shown in his "Thoughts on Religion," ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... Yard," he said, and the tone was heavy with dull sarcasm. "I am at your service, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... was oblivious to sarcasm just then. He was gazing at the daguerreotype in a sentimental sort of way, blowing the dust from the glass, and tilting it up and down so as to bring it to ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... it can easily be divined of what nature was her influence and how she gained and held her power over the king. She won Louis XIV. entirely by her sensual charms, provoked him by her imperious exactions, her ungovernable fits of temper, and her daring sarcasm; always extravagant and unreasonable, she talked constantly of balls and fetes, the glories of court and its scandals. Most exacting, yet never satisfied, she had no regard for the interests or honor of the weak king, to whose lower nature ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... I dare say, Mr. Langley," observed the officer last named, (a Captain of Light Infantry) with a slight degree of sarcasm, for he liked not the vulgar familiarity of the recently-joined Ensign's address; "however, be that as it may, I will wager a score of flour barrels, or even pork barrels, if you prefer them, that you cannot ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... his power in wounding those he hated, his glances at Nicholas would have shown it him, in all its force, as he proceeded in the above address. Innocent as the young man was of all wrong, every artful insinuation stung, every well-considered sarcasm cut him to the quick; and when Ralph noted his pale face and quivering lip, he hugged himself to mark how well he had chosen the taunts best calculated to strike deep into a young and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... most kind," said Zoe, a touch of sarcasm in her tones: "it must be a very sympathetic nature that has enabled you to remember so long ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... but the point. This omission did not arise from the want either of memory or of humour, but solely from a deficiency in the malice natural to all jesters. He could not persuade his lips to repeat a sarcasm hurting even the dead or the ungrateful; and when he came to the drop of gall which should have given zest to the story, the milk of human kindness broke its barrier despite himself, and washed it away. He was a fine ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... angrily at the exponent of such heresy, and was about to annihilate her with sarcasm, when he suddenly changed his mind. After all, she was right. It was what she called "the rough" that helped to make her voice unlike the voices of ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... palls on Frenchmen. Because he is too single-minded, candid, theoretical, and speculative, too ready to believe in the power of words and of ideas, too expansive and confiding; while at the same time he is lacking in the qualities which amuse clever people—in sarcasm, irony, cunning and finesse. He is an idealist reveling in color: a Platonist brandishing the thyrsus of the Menads. At bottom his is a mind of no particular country. It is in vain that he satirizes Germany and abuses England; he does ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a certain sarcasm, of which Marthe felt the sting. But, before she had time to retort, Philippe appeared in ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... keen look into her face. She returned his gaze frankly, and he found sarcasm neither in ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... in a tone of sarcasm—"so I supposes, for it's on them that a man usually goeses; but what caused you for to desart ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... though he had ceased to take a too personal view of them, had left him subject to an intermittent contempt; and the class to which he had belonged—the carriage class—especially excited his sarcasm. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had shown himself hostile and ready. But seeing Jacqueline's coolness he melted out of his somewhat theatrical bristling, lest her sarcasm ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... was satiated with women's tears. In the fleeting amatory adventures of the past weeks and months, he had seen so many—some genuine, some sham, all superfluous. And so instead of consoling her, he conceived a feeling of sarcasm and nausea: "Now ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... to nonchalance. If his address had any fault in it, it was rather a deficiency of earnestness. A slight spirit of mockery played over his speech even when you deemed him most serious; you were startled by his sudden transitions from profound thought to poignant sarcasm. A very singular freedom from passion and prejudice on every topic on which they treated, might be some compensation for this want of earnestness, perhaps was its consequence. Certainly it was difficult to ascertain ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... look for the hour with impatience when the vehicle will be worthy of the spirit,—when the word will be as simple, and so as resistless, as the thought,—and, in short, when your words will be one with things. I have no hope that you will find suddenly a large audience. Says not the sarcasm, "Truth hath the plague in his house"? Yet all men are potentially (as Mr. Coleridge would say) your audience, and if you will not in very Mephistophelism repel and defy them, shall be actually;* and whatever the great or the ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... by a fitful temper that had cut her to the quick; now kind; now barely civil; courting her company to-day; to-morrow avoiding her, as if there were contagion in her presence. Then, after the meeting at Millbank, there had come a coldness so icy, a sarcasm so cutting, that for a long time she had thought he hated as much as he despised her. She had withered in his contempt. His unkindness had overshadowed every hour of her life, and the longing to cry out to him ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... impossible to convey in cold print the biting sarcasm, the vindictive bitterness, and the reckless disregard of justice, with which Douglas spoke on February 14th. He sneered at this new profession of the Monroe Doctrine. Why keep repeating this talk about a policy which the United States has almost ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... of equal, or sometimes into one of higher rank than his own. Hence arose great difficulty in arranging the marriages of girls and sometimes the payment of a price to the bridegroom; while in order to retain the favour of the Bhats and avoid their sarcasm, lavish expenditure had to be incurred by the bride's father on presents to these rapacious mendicants. [469] Thus a daughter became in a Rajput's eyes a long step on the road to ruin, and female infanticide was ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... advertisement of Tommy Dodd whisky, and recited the rule on vibration. Herbert strenuously denied that any such phenomenon had taken place, and when James appealed to its author he was met with such an outburst of elephantine sarcasm that he refrained from further contesting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." The hypercritical Pharisees were left to make their own application of the rejoinder, which some may have understood to mean that their self-righteousness was arraigned and their claims to superiority derided. Aside from the veiled sarcasm in the Master's words, they ought to have perceived the wisdom enshrined in His answer and to have profited thereby. Is not the physician's place among the afflicted ones? Would he be justified in keeping aloof from the sick and the suffering? ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... very ill and worn?" demanded Claudia, with elaborate sarcasm. "Have I faded away? Make your mind easy, Mr. Lane. You will not have another girl's death ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... People enjoyed his hospitality, for they knew that it was disinterested; and admired his acquirements, for they felt that they were unobtrusive. Sometimes (as in his dialogue with the Cynic) the whim of the moment, or the sting of a sarcasm, drew from him a hint at his station, or a display of his eccentricities; but, as he was always the first soon afterwards to lead the laugh at his own outbreak, his credit as a noble suffered nothing by his infirmity as a man. Gaily and attractively he moved in all grades ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... against the Lufton-Grantly alliance. She had been pretty sure that he would do so in the event of his suspecting that a plot was being laid to catch him; and now it almost appeared that he did suspect such a plot. Why else that sarcasm as to Griselda doing very well for ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... a great deal of money, take up all his leisure and some part of the time which he would otherwise devote to his business and, as usually happens, procure him from his fellow citizens and from not a few scientific men more annoyance, unfair criticism and sarcasm than consideration or gratitude. His work is preeminently the disinterested and thankless task ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... ladyship. Poor Lady Julia had suffered early from a spine disease, which had kept her for many years to her couch. Being always at home, and under her mother's eyes, she was the old lady's victim, her pincushion, into which Lady Kew plunged a hundred little points of sarcasm daily. As children are sometimes brought before magistrates, and their poor little backs and shoulders laid bare, covered with bruises and lashes which brutal parents have inflicted, so, I dare say, if there had been any tribunal or judge, before whom this poor patient lady's heart could have ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on faster and would not say another word, although Madelon besought him hard to assure her that he believed her, and that Burr should not be hanged, until they reached the Hautville house. Then he turned on her and said, with keen sarcasm that stung more than a whip-lash, "'Tis Parson Fair's daughter and not mine that should come down the road in broad ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and a harsh vein of sarcasm running through Sir Marmaduke's talk. It was the speech of a disappointed man, who had hoped, and striven, and fought once; had raised longing hands towards brilliant things and sighed after glory, or riches, or fame, ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... his triumph. In a word, it deserves to be regarded as an effusion of Saturnalian licentiousness, rather than of poetry. With respect to the Iambics of Catullus, we may observe in general, that the sarcasm is indebted for its force, not so much to ingenuity of sentiment, as to the indelicate nature of the subject, or coarseness ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... getting expensive." Having convinced himself that his eyes had not deceived him, Joel relieved his feelings by heavy sarcasm. "It's a pity you can't afford cloth enough to cover you. I guess it's true that modesty's getting to be a lost art when a woman of your age will ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... secure, the Clergy were specially enjoined, that however else they might vary their prayer or exhortation to prayer before the sermon, they were in any case to mention the King by name. It was said—whether in sarcasm or as a grave reality—that the semi-Jacobite parsons, of whom there were many, found satisfaction in discovering a mode by which they could 'show at once their duty and their disgust'[1198] in a manner unexceptionally accordant with the law and with the Canon. 'Ye are bidden to pray,' ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... disaster broke his wife's heart; but he lived on to a vague and colorless old age, supported by his son in a total disoccupation. The elder Northwick used sometimes to speak of his son and his success in the world; not boastfully, but with a certain sarcasm for the source of his bounty, as a boy who had always disappointed him by a narrowness of ambition. He called him Milt, and he said he supposed now Milt was the most self-satisfied man in Massachusetts; he implied that there were better things than material success. He did not ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... sense—as it was not by the many Cowleyan imitators—it results merely in metrical license and amorphousness. "That for which I think this inequality of number is chiefly to be preferred," said Dr. Sprat, the first historian of the Royal Society, intending no sarcasm, "is its affinity with prose." But this argument, which is in part also that of the modern free-versifiers, is simply a confusion of two functions, the verse function ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... those who believe that not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Creator's consent," he said, with icy sarcasm; "and this is a specimen of Christian resignation—hey? You charge his act upon a poor fellow like me, simply that you may cheat the devil, and rave and rebel against the decrees of heaven, under pretence of abusing me. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... morning we had parted not the best of friends; I remember he looked at me with disagreeable sarcasm once or twice; and this same look I observed in his eyes now—which was the cause of the annoyance ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... childhood land of ignorant innocence to the kingdom of Christ: by way of deserts of negation; mountains of assumption; rivers of irony, sarcasm and conceit; bays of contention; gulfs of liberalism; and oceans of infidelity, doubt and confusion—swept by undercurrents of selfish passion, tempests of blind sentiment, maelstroms of fear and despair; covered with black clouds of prejudice and preconceived ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... veteran, Legardeur de St. Pierre, the commander of Fort Le Boeuf, asked Washington, in rich diplomatic sarcasm, to descend to the particularization of facts, and the lithe figure disappeared behind the snows of the mountains only to come again across the mountains in the springtime with sterner questioning. ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... It is needless to say that such a prepossession required a strong curb. Pouchet repeated the experiments of Schulze and Schwann with results diametrically opposed to theirs. He heaped experiment upon experiment and argument upon argument, spicing with the sarcasm of the advocate the logic of the man of science. In view of the multitudes required to produce the observed results, he ridiculed the assumption of atmospheric germs. This was one of his strongest points. 'Si les Proto-organismes que nous voyons pulluler partout ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... grass that prodded Tom to envious sarcasm. And then, with a whoop, he clattered to the rear and brought back Uncle Ike, a battered colored retainer of the family, with his banjo, and strewed sand on the porch and danced "Chicken in the Bread Tray" and did buck-and-wing ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... its subtle refinements, ceased to satisfy the wants of the human mind, now craving light and absolute knowledge in all departments of science and philosophy. Like feudalism, it had once been useful; but like that institution, it had also become corrupted, and an object of sarcasm and mockery. It had trained the European mind for the discoveries of the sixteenth century; it had raised up an inquisitive spirit, and had led to profound reflections on the existence of God, on his attributes and will, on the nature of the soul, on the faculties of the mind and ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... But the sarcasm was no longer needed. Already poor Richard was very humble, his make-believe spirit all snuffed out. He observed at last how pale and set was his sister's face, and he realized something of the sacrifice she had made. Never in all his life was Richard so ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... as to his dancing and card-playing, but I dare venture a wager he does both," I replied, not liking her tone of sarcasm. She had yet to learn ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... picket-line in front looked like a Yankee line, it was yet possible that it was ours, and that I thought I could get nearer to it than I had been before, and speak to the men without great danger. Truth is, that I had begun to fear sarcasm. What if, to-morrow morning, we should see a line of gray pickets in our front? Should I ever hear ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... not reply again; that is to say, he did not publish his reply. It was a capable bomb which he prepared, well furnished with amusing instance, sarcasm, and ridicule, but he did not use it. Perhaps he was afraid it would destroy his opponent, which would not do. In his heart he loved Matthews. He laid the deadly thing away and maintained ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... jest is intelligible enough, stinging, and witty. As if the young men of the Flavian family could fancy no wives but such as they had won by violence from other men, he affects in a bitter sarcasm to take for granted that Titus, as the first step towards marrying, counselled his friends to marry as the natural means for creating a fund of eligible wives. The primal qualification of any lady as a consort being, in their eyes, that she had been torn away violently from a friend, it became ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... disliked any innovation or change in the established order of things. The antagonism which existed between Galileo and his opponents, who were both numerous and influential, was intensified by the bitterness and sarcasm which he imparted into his controversies, and the attitude assumed by his enemies at last became so threatening that he deemed it prudent to resign the Chair of Mathematics in ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... Scotch invasion of 1745. Since that time the Scotch had been regarded with general disfavor; Scotch poverty and Scotch greediness for the good things of England had furnished constant topics for raillery and sarcasm; and more than one demagogue and political writer had sought popularity by pandering to the prevailing taste for attacks on the whole nation. Foremost among these was Mr. John Wilkes, member for Aylesbury, a man of broken fortunes and still ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... and set against each other's views, I have no question. There has been far too much of this. Ridicule and sarcasm are Satan's favorite weapons. Good people ought not to use them against each other, whatever be the temptation. Perhaps, as human nature chooses variety, and we are differently affected by different presentations of truth, men must be divided ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... Manorbier his brothers built castles but he always built churches. He received an elementary education from the chaplains of his uncle, the Bishop of St. David's; he seems to have been slow at learning when a child, and his tutors goaded him on not by the birch rod, but by sarcasm—by declining "Stultus, stultior, stultissimus." His higher education was not obtained in Wales, and it is singular that he does not notice any place of learning in Wales in all his writings. He studied at Gloucester, ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... career of Sir Alexander Boswell was brought to a sudden termination. Prone to indulge a strong natural tendency for sarcasm, especially against his political opponents, he published, in a Glasgow newspaper, a severe poetical pasquinade against Mr James Stuart, younger of Dunearn, a leading member of the Liberal party in Edinburgh. The discovery of the authorship was followed by ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the Marney Union; but then he would add that there was no district except their union in which it was properly observed. He was tremendously fierce against allotments and analysed the system with merciless sarcasm, Indeed he had no inconsiderable acquaintance with the doctrines of the economists, and was rather inclined to carry them into practice in every instance, except that of the landed proprietary, which he clearly proved "stood upon ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... Dick Hunt, mebbe you know more'n I do about it," retorted Jimmy, with withering sarcasm, little suspecting how much more his brother did know. "Mebbe you heard what Nan said to ma ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... the way from his hand to his face with a glass of booze, either," retorted the offended one, with elaborate sarcasm. "Everybody in the trade knows me. Sure you won't have ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... broke in Mrs. Aylett's triumphant sarcasm. "The reward of your maiden attempt at congugal confidence is reproof. What have I warned you ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... "No sarcasm, Jack. I shall marry the first good honest fellow that loves me and has a steady business, and who will not take me ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... take that unprofessional liberty, sir. Hearing that I was your professional adviser, he declined to interpose before my very limited function was performed. Happily,' said Mr Rugg, with sarcasm, 'I did not so far travel out of the record as to ask the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... satirize. The satirist must raise a laugh. Donne and Hall abused men in classes: priests were worldly, lawyers greedy, courtiers obsequious, etc. But the easy scorn of Dryden and the delightful malice of Pope gave a pungent personal interest to their sarcasm, infinitely more effective than these commonplaces of satire. Dryden was as happy in controversy as in satire, and is unexcelled in the power to reason in verse. His Religio Laici, 1682, was a poem in defense ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... intercourse of familiar life, he indulged his disposition to petulance and sarcasm, and thought himself injured if the licentiousness of his raillery, the freedom of his censures, or the petulance of his frolicks was resented or repressed. He predominated over his companions with very high ascendency, and, probably, would bear none over whom he could ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... deeply from the man's throat, smashing the question that was intended to carry the sting of sarcasm. "Except that it is for no good—though you doubtless think it ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... frankness, Rosa,' said Mrs. Steerforth quickly—for there was always some effect of sarcasm in what Rosa Dartle said, though it was said, as this was, in the most unconscious manner in the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... doubtless an innocent diversion to which she resorted, in order to pass away the time during her lover's absence," Archie remarked, with a fine touch of sarcasm in his tone, for at this moment Lydia, who is wearing some forget-me-nots that were beside her plate this morning, is having a very animated conversation with M. ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... teaches that human progress is possible only because the benevolent instincts of the heart are permanent, while the reasonings of the head are shifting. "When God," says Montesquieu, "endowed human beings with brains, he did not intend to guaranty them." And the sarcasm of the French philosopher is fully justified, when we reflect that nothing mean, base, or cruel has ever been done in this world, which has not been supported by arguments. To the mere head every historical event, whether it be infamous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... This sarcasm did not touch me; for I knew that these women had it not in them to understand the nature of the cause of my devotion. I was then wrapped in the protecting armour of the exaltation of sacrifice, through which such shafts were powerless to reach and ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... Such sarcasm was too much for Meg. She promised hastily and unconditionally to be on the spot at the time mentioned, and fled away up the path to obey the summons of ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... Indwelling Lord to subdue the iniquities of His people, to hallow their inmost spirits, to set before their lips the watch and ward of His blessed Presence, to drive utterly away from their pastoral souls the wretched spirit of sarcasm, to enable them for an unselfish faithfulness when no eye ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... say. I thought you'd a-done it on purpose," returned the other with ponderous sarcasm. "Now you stop here; I'm goin' to that sap—an' ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... Templar with bitter sarcasm, "you saved Saladin's life, did you? I can well believe it. You, being Christians, who above everything should desire the death of Saladin, saved his life! Now, Sir Knights, answer me ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... dollars a day, which has been roughly put down as the average cost of the war, has always been mentioned by Northern men in a tone of triumph. This feeling is, I think, intelligible; and although we cannot allude to it without a certain amount of inward sarcasm, a little gentle laughing in the sleeve, at the nature of this national joy, I am not prepared to say that it is altogether ridiculous. If the country be found able and willing to pay the bill, this triumph in the amount of the ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... mounted to his face, his chin went up, and there came to his lips bitter words of sarcasm. With an effort, however, he held his tongue, and, turning his back upon the king, his broad shoulders proclaiming the contempt he felt, he walked slowly out ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with sarcasm. "You girls are wonders—just as smart as little Hen Rogers was last term when Miss Haley asked him if he could name any ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... with a sarcasm meant only for himself, feeling that he had described his handling of the past ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... since I made an entry in my Libellus, as that my motto, Nulla dies sine linea, hath somewhat of sarcasm in it. In father's prolonged absence I have toiled at my Opus (the Index Bibliorum), but 'twas not to purpose, and then came that payn in my head. Father discovered my Opus, and with alle swete gentlenesse told me firmly that there are some things a woman cannot, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... whole species as 'made in the likeness of God,'" by deserting the hall in a body, or using some more emphatic form of protest against the corruption of youth by "the vilest and beastliest paradox ever vented in ancient or modern times amongst Pagans or Christians." In his finest vein of sarcasm, the writer expresses his surprise that the meeting did not instantly resolve itself into a "Gorilla Emancipation Society," or propose to hear a lecture from an apostle of Mormonism; "even this would be a less offensive, mischievous, and inexcusable exhibition than was ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... true, what Aunt Jane said about Malbone. He had changed his habits a good deal. While the girls were desperately busy about the dresses, he beguiled Harry to the club, and sat on the piazza, talking sentiment and sarcasm, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... and, if the Titanic master-builder of rhythm who composed Bhagavat and the Levrier de Magnus speaks not falsely, then, by Apollo, you may taste, even you, my master, the ambrosial joys of Olympus." It was in an ostensible vein of sarcasm that he had asked me to call him, and that he himself called me, "my master." But, as a matter of fact, we each derived a certain amount of satisfaction from the mannerism, being still at the age in which one believes that one gives a thing real ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... with scorn, and pride he pitted against pride. As a regiment bristles with bayonets, so bristled his speech with facts, which thrust through and through with the merciless truth of history the arrogance and pretentions of the South. His sarcasm was terrific. His invective had the ferocity of a panther. He upon whom it sprang had his quivering flesh torn away. It was not in human nature to suffer such lacerations of the feelings and forgive and forget the author of them. The slave leaders did not ...
— Charles Sumner Centenary - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 14 • Archibald H. Grimke
... them opinionated, all articulate, and not a few vociferous, was a work of the utmost difficulty, and Lord Rosebery engineered it to perfection. He was suave and courteous; smoothed acrid dissensions with judicious humour; used sarcasm sparingly, but with effect; and maintained a certain dignity of bearing which profoundly impressed the representatives of the Great Middle Class. "By Jove, how these chaps funk Rosebery!" was the candid exclamation ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... met with considerable success as a lawyer, though he always relied rather upon his eloquence than his law, and there were few juries which could resist the force and fury of his speech, and not many lawyers could keep their equanimity in the face of his witty persiflage and savage sarcasm. When to all this is added a genuine love of every species of combat, physical and moral, we may understand the name Charles Sumner—paraphrasing a well-known epigram—applied to him in the Senate, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... order of things, as he would leave to every true Hollander. "For what," said he, "is a town without canals?—it is like a body without veins and arteries, and must perish for want of a free circulation of the vital fluid."—Ten Breeches, on the contrary, retorted with a sarcasm upon his antagonist, who was somewhat of an arid, dry-boded habit; he remarked, that as to the circulation of the blood being necessary to existence, Mynheer Tough Breeches was a living contradiction to his own ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... dignity of loving. The great barrier to all real greatness in this present age of ours is the fear of ridicule, and the low and shallow love of jest and jeer, so that if there be in any noble work a flaw or failing, or unclipped vulnerable part where sarcasm may stick or stay, it is caught at, pointed at, buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung into, as a recent wound is by flies, and nothing is ever taken seriously or as it was meant, but always perverted and misunderstood. While this spirit ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... balefully silent, emptied first one pocket and then the other into Kenner's cupped palm. With heavy sarcasm he felt in his watch pocket and produced a nickel slipped there after paying street-car fare. He held it out to young Kenner between his finger and thumb, ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... the gentlemen, though amiable and well bred, were not young. But she also complains that the king's tastes do not resemble hers, that he cares for nothing but hunting and mechanical employments; and, indulging in an unwonted bit of sarcasm, she proceeds: "You will allow that I should not look well beside a forge. I could never become a Vulcan; and the part of Venus would displease him more than my real tastes, which he does not disapprove." In ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... hasn't any name at all. 'Miss Montgomery' is on her cards, but that is only what she calls herself. Who she really is! It would shake the foundations of European society if known. We sit and talk about the aristocracy; we don't seem to know anybody else. I tried on one occasion a little sarcasm as a corrective—recounted conversations between myself and the Prince of Wales, in which I invariably addressed him as 'Teddy.' It sounds tall, I know, but those people took it in. I was too astonished to undeceive them at the time, the consequence ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome |
