"Sardonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for a moment upon the lean, bearded face of MacNair; and beside her chair, Lapierre noted the glance, and the thin lips twisted into a smile—a cynical, sardonic smile, that faded on the instant, as his eyes flashed toward the doorway. For there, silent and grim as he had seen her once before, stood Big Lena, whose china-blue eyes were fixed upon him, in that same ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... temples vowed to Serapis And granite splendours men name Pharaonic Are kept by Time in silence and sardonic Concealment—mummied in deep mystic tombs. And when the stars came out in quiet bliss, I heard Eternity with all its dooms, Past and to come, sound softly the mnemonic Of Death who waits ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... been connected with her resemblance to her father, and the latter's striking defect of personal beauty. He glanced at the doctor. But John Knott sat all hunched together, watching him with an expression rather sardonic ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... laid down his rod on the grassy bank and felt for his snuff-box. As he helped himself to a pinch he slyly regarded the faces of his companions; and his own, contracting its muscles to take the dose, seemed to twist itself in a sardonic smile. ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... returning. She was obliged to do some rapid and clever thinking. Fairfax was watching her with a sardonic smile on his lips. Ripton, the manager, peered over his shoulder ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... his son's return, in the old character of the "bad shilling"; and closed again without uttering a word. There was a portentous composure in Frank's manner which showed that he had other news to communicate than the news of his dismissal. He answered his father's sardonic look of inquiry by at once explaining that a very important proposal for his future benefit had been made to him, that morning, at the office. His first idea had been to communicate the details in writing; but the partners had, on reflection, thought that the necessary decision might be more ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... How would Sir Knight set to work to slay or expel the obnoxious dragon? Harrington felt mildly curious despite his sardonic emotions, and while he took mental note of what was taking place around him he contrived to keep an eye on his censors. He had observed that the young man's face while she talked to him had worn a worried expression, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... in plaster of one of the most sardonic of Notre Dame's gargoyles seemed to preside over everything—a terrible figure in such ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... by Herresford!" cried Swinton, hotly. "This is some sardonic jest, in keeping with his donation of a thousand dollars to the Mission Hall, given with one hand and taken away with the other. It nearly landed me ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... the story the narrator had become transfigured. The comic, or rather, the sardonic element was all out of him, and as he painted that strange scene it was with difficulty that I kept my composure. And this consummate actor had somehow so managed me that the sympathy due to his dramatis persone was given to himself. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... under a sable wing, while to them our sail must have been a vision of white and dazzling radiance. Without altering the course a hair's breadth we slipped by each other within an oar's length. A drawling, sardonic hail came out of her. Instantly, as if by magic, our dozing pilots got on their feet in a body. An incredible babel of bantering shouts burst out, a jocular, passionate, voluble chatter, which lasted till the boats were stern to stern, theirs all ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... was watching for an opportunity of speaking to the Countess, hastened to dismiss her Ambassador; for in comparison with a lover's quarrel every interest pales, even with an old woman. To engage battle, Madame de Lansac shot at the younger lady a sardonic glance which made the Countess fear lest her fate was in the dowager's hands. There are looks between woman and woman which are like the torches brought on at the climax of a tragedy. No one who had not known that Duchess could appreciate the terror which the ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... sigh of content as I broke the seal of the packet and brought out the enclosure. Somewhere in the garden a little sardonic laugh was clipt to silence. It came from groom or maid, no doubt; yet it thrilled me with an odd feeling of ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... but he spends it so fast that he never has any; and as for the opinions expressed on his books, he cares little for what he hears. There was always present to him a feeling of black care seated behind the horseman,—and would have been equally so had there been no real care present to him. A sardonic melancholy was the characteristic most common to him,—which, however, was relieved by an always present capacity for instant frolic. It was these attributes combined which made him of all satirists the most humorous, and of all humorists the most satirical. It was these that ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... have thought so," said Baumgartner, with his sardonic smile; "but the yellow pressman knows better ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... when the sailors would be seated inconsolable as the Babylonish captives, Jackson would sit cross-legged in his bunk, which was an upper one, and enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke, would look down upon the mourners below, with a sardonic grin at ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... have believed that any girl who had any of my blood in her veins could be guilty of such black treachery as to break faith with her betrothed husband, and wish to marry another, just for the snobbish ambition to be a duchess and be called 'her grace'!" said the Iron King, with all the sardonic scorn and hatred of any form of falsehood that was the one redeeming trait in his ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... moods of melancholy, calm and seemingly causeless as they were, perpetually galled and blistered that writhing, preternatural susceptibility which is formed by the consciousness of infamy, the dreary egotism of one cut off from the charities of the world, with whom all mirth is sardonic convulsion, all sadness rayless and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... more moving, more beautiful, than this close. This piece is just one long, soulful, sardonic laugh at human life. Its title might properly be 'Is Life a Failure?' and leave the five acts to play with the answer. I am not at all sure that the author meant to laugh at life. I only notice that he has done it. Without putting into words any ungracious ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... no more Bible classing," said his father, with a mild but slightly sardonic smile, as who should say: "I'm ready to make all allowances for youth; but I must get you to understand, as gently as I can, that you can't keep on going to Bible classes ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... unkindness, against which she did not strive because investigating the less admirable traits of human beings amused her. She was infinitely amused by her nephew and her niece, but often spiteful to them, merely because they were young. To sum up, she was a cynic, a rake, an excellent literary critic, a sardonic and brilliant novelist, and she had a passionate, adoring and protecting affection for Neville, who was the only person who had always been told what she called the ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... carpenter in person suddenly appeared upon the scene. He stood before the amazed pair with his brown coat thrown over his shoulders, as usual, and his broad-brimmed gray hat pulled down over his ears, gazing at them with his deep, ugly eyes and a sardonic ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... thing"—He stopped. He met her quick look of interrogation, however, with a lowering silence that, nevertheless, changed again as he surveyed her erect figure by the faint light of the window with a sardonic smile. "He favors you, I think, and in all but one ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... aside. "You are very kind, Monsieur Gaubert," said he, and his manner now was one of frozen calm—a manner that betrayed none of the frenzy of seething passion underneath. "I think, sir," said he to the stranger, adopting something of that gentleman's sardonic manner, "that it will be a more peaceful world without you. It is that consideration restrains me from apologizing. And yet, if monsieur will express regret for having sought, and with such lack of manners, to ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... a swarthy individual with sardonic black eyes who, on noticing Crain's captain-insignia, came toward him with outstretched hand. His followers seemed to be cargo-men or deck-men, looking hardly intelligent enough to Kent's ...
— The Sargasso of Space • Edmond Hamilton
... stood up again, and his face was sardonic, for the moment almost grim. "Yes, quite sure of that, my dear. Moreover,—it will amuse me to meet the virtuous Jake on his own ground for once. A new sensation, Nonette! Will you help me to face him? Or do you prefer the more early-Victorian role of the lady who retires ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... walked the way he proposed. Every time he would be near the garden, he would cough in such a noisy and sardonic way that the Heir, who was sitting with Derevenko on the bench would turn his long, pensive face, and his old sailor guardian would look with hatred on ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... inquiries, the Fairy made reply with a sardonic smile. "This perfume," she said, "is not to be found in the world, and how could you discern what it is? This is made of the essence of the first sprouts of rare herbs, growing on all hills of fame and places of superior ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the Tavern Knight laughed an evil laugh—such a laugh as might fall from the lips of Satan in a sardonic moment. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... sardonic Quick, after taking note of these demonstrations, "Heavens! what a hero I feel myself to be. And to think that when I got back from the war with them Boers, after being left for dead on Spion Kop with a bullet through my lung and mentioned in a ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... as part of the heritage of a race of beings apart form his own, and he hid his timidity under a brusque manner which gave him credit for a keener penetration than he actually possessed. And, strangely enough, Fate, with sardonic humor, had given him a knack, which so few painters possess, of catching on canvas the elusive charm of his feminine sitters, of investing with grace those characteristics he professed so much to despise. He had told Hermia Challoner that he did not paint "pretty" portraits, ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... the dancer, with whom Emile allowed her a slight acquaintance. He neither approved of women in general nor of their friendships. Estelle was the bonne amie of the sardonic Manager, who occasionally beat her, after which ceremony it was her custom to drink absinthe. Sometimes, for this reason, she was unable to appear on the stage. She would come into Arithelli's dressing ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... his pocket, and when I returned the lens to him he acknowledged it with a grave inclination of the head. As I looked into his sunken eyes, in which I thought lay a sort of sardonic merriment, the fantastic idea flashed through my mind that I had fallen into the clutches of an expert hypnotist who was amusing himself at my expense, that the miniature rose was a mere hallucination produced by the same means as the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... precise—in the small and delicate mouth. There was humour in the face; but the curious watcher might wonder whether it was humour of a very pleasant kind; might ask himself, even as he heard the laughter and marked the jokes with which she cheered the spirits of her patients, what sort of sardonic merriment this same lady might not give vent to, in the privacy of her chamber. As for her voice, it was true of it, even more than of her countenance, that it 'had that in it one must fain call master'. Those clear tones ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... violation of all poetic justice? From beginning to end it is the story of disillusion, for it sorts all humanity into two great classes, fools who are cheated and knaves who cheat. Some people think that Shakespeare wrote it in a gloomy, pessimistic mood, with the sardonic laughter of a disappointed, world-wearied man. Others, on rather doubtful grounds, believe it a covert satire on some of Shakespeare's ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... cigar-cases and toilet bottles; but these traces of his passage had made no mark on the featureless dulness of the room, its look of being the makeshift setting of innumerable transient collocations. There was something sardonic, almost sinister, in its appearance of having deliberately "made up" for its anonymous part, all in noncommittal drabs and browns, with a carpet and paper that nobody would remember, and chairs and tables as ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... preconcerted attitude towards the "Northern hireling," she had been met with official brusqueness, contemptuous silence, or aggrieved indignation,—but nothing so exasperating as this. She even fancied that this elegant but sardonic-looking soldier was mocking her. She bit her red lip, but, with a scornful ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... Heine as a sardonic smile on the face of the Zeitgeist. Let us say that these modern stories in the heroic vein are a mere heightening of color on the cheeks of that interesting young lady, the Genius of the modern novel—a heightening of color on the cheeks, for the color ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... to time through the day he regarded that poster with a sardonic eye. He had pitilessly resolved not to repeat the folly of the previous month. To say that this moral victory cost him nothing would be to deprive it of merit. It cost him many internal struggles. It is a fine thing to see a man seizing his temptation by the ...
— Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... calmly, "nothing could be further from my thoughts than to insult you, or to treat you in any way with disrespect. And I will not acknowledge that anything you can say can convey an insult to myself." Lira smiled in a sardonic fashion. "But," added Nino, "if it would give you any pleasure to fight, and if you have weapons, I shall be happy to oblige you. It is a quiet spot, as you say, and it shall never be said that an Italian artist refused ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... Havana cigar smote his nostrils like the odor of battle. He was in great boots stained with the red shale, for the roads outside Banbridge were heavy from a recent rain. He was collarless, his greasy coat hung loosely over his dingy flannel shirt. He was unshaven, and his face was at once grim and sardonic, bitter and raging. It was the face of an impotent revolutionist, who cursed his impotence, his lack of weapons, his wrong environments for his fierce spirit. He belonged in a country at war. He had the misfortune ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "She's young and beautiful and sole heiress of an estate twice as big as our whole family can muster. She's uncultivated, the diamond in the rough, and all that sort of thing, you understand, but she'll polish easily." He put all this down in the sardonic wish to procure some sort of settlement from his brother. He ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Bostil saw Cordts across the gulch. He was not fifty yards distant, plainly recognizable, tall, gaunt, sardonic. He held the half-leveled gun ready as if waiting. He had waited there in ambush. The clouds of smoke rolled up ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... again, and, what is worse, you are misunderstanding your case. Thatcher is pleased with her because he has probably seen no one else. Wait till he comes to Washington and has an opportunity for comparison;" and she cast a frank glance at her mirror, where Wiles, with a sardonic ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... professionally, he was supposed to see and converse with on familiar terms. As Zalu Zako disappeared he continued to listen intently. Above the slight rustle of the bushes as the Son-of-the-Snake moved through the undergrowth rose a feminine laugh. Bakahenzie's liver was squeezed by that sardonic chuckle; for, as is well known, female demons are much more malignant than the male. For the space of a chant he remained crouching there, curiosity and the dread of revealing his terror to his fellows tugging at his feet and fear of the demons clutching him around the waist. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... general of ARTAXOMINOUS Was far less terrible than—well, thrasonic. To tear a thing to tatters, shout and "cuss," In an assembly callous and sardonic, Savours a bit too much of sheer burlesque, Scarce to the level of fine acting rises. The unexpected's piquant, picturesque, But a sound drama is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... the mettle for that!"—and Lysia smiled darkly, while the great eye on her breast flashed forth a sardonic lustre— "Strong as ye all are, and young, ye lack the bravery of the weak old man who, mad as he may be, has at least the courage of his opinions! Who is there here that believes in the Sun as a god, or in Nagaya as a mediator? Not one, . . but ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... asthma; and quinia, that shakes its victims like the cold hand of the miasma of the Pontine marshes. The essence of poppies, ten times sublimated, a few grains of which bring on the stupor of apoplexy; and the sardonic plant, that kills its victim with the frightful laughter of madness ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... extravagance there was mingled much that was dull and tiresome; and it was in a special degree irritating to me that, as often as I turned the conversation upon music, and particularly upon singing, he was sure to interrupt me, with that sardonic smile upon his face and those repulsive singing tones of his, by some remark of a quite opposite tendency, very often of a commonplace character. From the great distress which at such times Antonia's glances ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... finding that the doctor's directions occasionally escaped my memory, devoted herself to the duty of administering the remedies at the prescribed intervals of time. When she left the room, having performed her duties as usual, I saw Rothsay's eyes follow her to the door with an expression of sardonic curiosity. He put a strange question to me as soon as we ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... the Senator would indeed pursue a course so patriotic, a grateful country would, at the next election, place him in the Presidential chair. But scarcely had the acts advocated by Mr. Webster been consummated, than the Herald, with sardonic malice, announces,—"The predictions of Mr. Clay, that the Compromise Bill would speedily conciliate all parties, and restore the era of good feeling, were exactly the reverse of the actual consequences. Mr. Webster has been cast overboard in Massachusetts. ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... weakness of his race. 40 What powers he had he hardly cared to know, But sauntered through the world as through a show; A critic fine in his haphazard way, A sort of mild La Bruyere on half-pay. For comic weaknesses he had an eye Keen as an acid for an alkali, Yet you could feel, through his sardonic tone, He loved them all, unless they were his own. You might have called him, with his humorous twist, A kind of human entomologist; 50 As these bring home, from every walk they take, Their hat-crowns stuck with bugs of curious make, So he ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... that might have made for laughter had there been spectators to appreciate. But of whatever amusement was to be had one of the victims seemed to hold a monopoly. Collins, his arm around the English children by way of comfort, offered a sardonic smile at the consternation his announcement and its fulfillment had created, but none of his fellow passengers were in the humor ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... always dynamic, and he emerges betimes, as if from Goya's tomb, and etches with sardonic finger Nada in dust. But this spirit of denial is not an abiding mood; Chopin throws a net of tone over souls wearied with rancors and revolts, bridges "salty, estranged seas" of misery and presently we are viewing a mirrored, a fabulous universe wherein ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... mortal; she will get all necessary advice from her two friends," replied Blackana with a sardonic grin. ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... presents, and the great desirability that its progress and developments should be observed and its history written; also of C. N——, who, it appears, is passing through a new moral phasis. He is silent, inexpressive, talks little or none, and listens without response, except a sardonic laugh; and some of his friends think that he is passing into permanent eclipse. Various other matters were considered or glanced at, and finally, between five and six o'clock, Mr. Emerson took his leave. I then went out to chop wood, my allotted space for which had been very much abridged ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... before which nothing can stay.... Summum jus, summa injuria—to drive an abstract right to excess is to commit injustice.... Extreme anarchy and extreme despotism lead to one another. Pride comes before a fall. Too much wit outwits itself. Joy brings tears, melancholy a sardonic smile.'[5] To which one well might add that most human institutions, by the purely technical and professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by becoming obstacles to the very purposes which their founders had ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... was on the train with his thin, sardonic friend, and with the old woman Lady Sellingworth had seen ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... and fixed, from beneath their wrinkled brows, on the table, as if their everlasting weal or woe depended there upon the turning of the dice; while others—the finished blacklegs—assumed an indifferent and careless look, though a kind of sardonic smile playing round their lips, but too plainly revealed a sort of habitual desperation. Three of the players looked the very counterparts of each other, not only in face, but expression; both the physical and moral likeness was indeed striking. The other player ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... a Punch and Judy if I'm near it," said Telford. "I enjoy the sardonic humor with which Punch hustles off his victims. His light-heartedness when doing bloody deeds ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... hat and come away, while you receive Lou's cheery "See you again," and the sardonic, sweet smile of Nancy that seems, somehow, to miss you and go fluttering like a white moth up over ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... quick in taking on another man, it strikes me. But that's not my business. You say you found out?" She shows her admirably preserved teeth in a little grin of sardonic contempt—"nearly a year after your marriage. Don't tell me your husband let you go on burning joss-sticks to Beau's angelic memory when he might have made you spit on it by telling ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... earnestly at the brig from the distance, gripping hard the brass rail in front of him, till, the two ships closing, he lost all confidence in himself, and retreating to the chartroom, pulled the door to with a crash. There, his brows knitted, his mouth drawn on one side in sardonic meditation, he sat through many still hours—a sort of Prometheus in the bonds of unholy desire, having his very vitals torn by the beak and claws of ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Cheng could open his month to pass any further remarks, "Young gentleman," he heard the senior officer interpose with a sardonic smile: "you shouldn't conceal anything! if he be either hidden in your home, or if you know his whereabouts, divulge the truth at once; so that less trouble should fall to our lot than otherwise would. And will we not then bear in mind ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Chateauroy crushed a blasphemous oath through his clinched teeth, and laughed a certain short, stern, sardonic laugh, which his men dreaded more than ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... of Mr. Livingston's countenance; a more sardonic smile I have never seen—a smile which said as plainly as words, "You are lying." He spoke with ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... Stanchells—friends o' mine," silenced all disposition to inquiries. We now descended into the lower vestibule, and hallooed more than once for Dougal, to which summons no answer was returned; when Campbell observed with a sardonic smile, "That if Dougal was the lad he kent him, he would scarce wait to get thanks for his ain share of the night's wark, but was in all probability on the full trot ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... glass in the hand of one of the men! He could not take his eyes from it—except as his eyes were drawn magnetically to that FULL glass in the hand of one of the others. What height of sardonic irony! He was to drink that other glass, to die because he refused to answer questions that for years, with every resource at his command, risking his liberty, his wealth, his name, his life, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Animals), should be able to tell us much about the Badger. Therewith he would be able, in his own favourite fashion, to "point a moral" (against the Demogorgon Democracy), and "adorn a tale" (of laboured waggery). He might find the subject as suggestive of sardonic chaff as American women and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... that he could never have been anywhere but in the clouds. I explained that when the weather is foggy I walk in clouds, and that when the cloud is condensed it rains. At all such reasoning, being above his comprehension, he only laughed with a sardonic smile. Still less was he satisfied with my explanation how watery bubbles may be lifted into the air. He insisted that the clouds were solid bodies, reinforced his assertion with a text of Scripture, silenced me by authority, and laughed ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... at the outer edge of the crowd of overdressed females and overfed men, and, with a sardonic smile, listened to Flagg telling his assembled friends and sycophants how glad he was they were there to see him give ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... humiliated him at Hericourt, prepared to invade Switzerland. But Louis, the diabolus ex machina, who had secretly fostered the discord between Burgundy and the Confederates, hastily signed a nine-years' truce with Charles, and remarking with his usual sardonic smile that his "fair cousin did not know his foes," left him and his sister to the tender mercies of the enemies he had arrayed against them. A clause in the treaty which preserved Louis from all participation in the impending conflict, stipulated that Savoy and the ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... from that farthest point aft to hold in review the appliances, the fabric, the actions, yes, even the very thoughts, of the entire ship. From them he selected that on which he should comment or with which he should play, always with a sardonic, half-serious, quite wearied and indifferent manner. His inner knowledge, viewed by the light of this manner or mannerism, was sometimes uncanny, though perhaps the sources of his information were commonplace enough, after all. Certainly he always ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... her going with a sardonic smile, but when his wife, after waiting for her to be quite gone, came out to him, ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... enemies a fresh handle for ridicule. After the loss of the lawsuit, the Revue de Paris, raging with indignation, answered him with "Un dernier mot a M. de Balzac," an article which the writer, after a reflection full of venom, must have dashed off with set teeth and a sardonic smile, and in which there is a most scathing paragraph on the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... fifteen feet removed from him, and Larry was a dead shot. But this time he made a scandalous miss, for the shot knocked a little white dust from the stone wall a full yard at one side; and the fellow never shifted his negligent posture or qualified his sardonic smile ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of sardonic pleasure in watching her as she viewed with cold disapproval the drowsy maids and her daughter, who although as immaculate and fresh and cool and altogether delightful as the morning promised to be, persisted in yawning from time to time with the utmost abandon. Armitage had never seen a woman ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... the sardonic answer of the whites of Tullahoma County to those who deal fluently with questions of which they know but little, was fain to take Bill's sincere advice. Behind the shelter of the first clump of trees, he folded his arms into a posture as near resembling that of Napoleon ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... undoubted kingliness, that every one succumbed and rested gladly on so firm a precedent. Mr. St. George in this brief time had accepted much hospitality, had won a thousand friends, and by Christmas had made himself, through his genial strength to-day and his sardonic sarcasm to-morrow, as thoroughly the autocrat of all the region as ever Mr. Erne had been. For all that men want is a master; give them somebody that will lead, and glad enough are they to follow. But Mr. Erne's supremacy had merely been a matter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... humourist, of the sardonic variety. The constant clash of wits over the wires, and the necessity of framing words quickly, sharpens his faculties and acidulates his tongue. Incidentally, he is an awkward person to quarrel with. One black night, Bobby Little, making his second round of the trenches about an hour before ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... over the paving-stones and stopped at my hotel. The driver lifted his hat obsequiously. I, with sardonic smile, entered the hotel, where I was not unknown. No doubt was made as to the character ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... past, turned assiduously by Agnes, who took a sardonic delight in these performances, and every countenance in the room seemed to take a look of sharpened anxiety as to how the duet was to end, and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bell swung, the church bell rang. Riding beneath the squat tower, all our people pouring forth from our poor houses upon the returned and his captive, the latter had eyes, it seemed to me, but for that bell. A curious, sardonic look of recognition, appraisal, relinquishment, sat in the Indian's face. From wrist to wrist of Caonabo went a bright, short chain. The sun glittered upon the bracelets and the links. I do not know—there was for a moment—something in the sound of the bell, something in the gleam ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... we see a trace of this same expression in what is called a derisive or sardonic smile. The lips are then kept joined or almost joined, but one corner of the mouth is retracted on the side towards the derided person; and this drawing back of the corner is part of a true sneer. Although some persons smile more on one side of their face than on the other, it ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... passed over Yuba Bill's face. "Where is your wife?" he echoed, pressing the old man back against the garden wall, and holding him there as in a vice. "Where is your wife?" he repeated, thrusting his grim sardonic jaw and savage eyes into the old man's frightened face. "Where is Jack Adam's wife? Where is MY wife? Where is the she-devil that drove one man mad, that sent another to hell by his own hand, that eternally broke and ruined me? Where! ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... observed the sardonic disposition of Mr. Greville to stare around him at the whole company in curious silence, she felt a defiance against his aristocracy beat in every pulse; for, however grandly he might look back to the long ancestry of the Brookes ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... sense of our recovered superiority, of our revenge being gratified and of an act of justice having been performed. But it depends on the mode in which the mask is struck off whether the laugh shall be in turn light or loud, suppressed or unbridled, now amiable and cheerful, or now bitter and sardonic. Humor (la plaisanterie) comports with all aspects, from buffoonery to indignation; no literary seasoning affords such a variety, or so many mixtures, nor one that so well enters into combination with that above-mentioned. The two ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... splendid forehead, furrowed by the strong median line which great schemes, great thoughts, deep meditations stamp on a great man's brow; an olive complexion marbled with red, a square nose, eyes of flame, hollow cheeks, with two long lines, betraying much suffering, a mouth with a sardonic smile, and a small chin, narrow, and too short; crow's feet on his temples; deep-set eyes, moving in their sockets like burning balls; but, in spite of all these indications of a violently passionate ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... rather breathless, or, better said, blank, and each looked at the other for some initiative; then we united in looking at Wanhope; that is, Rulledge and I did. Minver rose and stretched himself with what I must describe as a sardonic yawn; Halson had stolen away before the end, as one to whom the end was known. Wanhope seemed by no means averse to the inquiry delegated to him, but only to be formulating its ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... wanted me still he could have me. And he did. And then I went out to live with my uncle, and this man lives in that town too, and I've seen him ever since, all the time. I know him now. And—" Out of the dimness the clergyman felt, rather than saw, a smile widen—child-like, sardonic—a curious, contagious smile, which bewildered him, almost made him smile back. "You'll think me a pitiful person," she went on, "and I am. But I—almost—hate him. I've promised to marry him and I can't bear to have his ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... little pen we wield! What could that have been out of the sardonic Dean? what other child of that age would have used "beloved" as she does? This power of affection, this faculty of beloving, and wild hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She periled her all upon it, and it may have been ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... studying with strained acuteness the big lymphatic mask of the Director, with sundry sharp glances aside at the Chairman. The nervous changes on his alert, meagre old face showed how intently he followed every phase of their talk. A certain sardonic perception of evil in the air curled on his lip when he saw the Marquis accede with a bow and wave of the hand to Thorpe's proposition. Then he made his bow in turn, and put the best ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... you, Miss Cara Nome?" he asked in a deep, controlled voice, a rather sardonic smile ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... when the stewardess' voice authorized the action. With sardonic docility he unfastened his safety-belt and stepped out into the spiral, descending aisle. It seemed strange to have weight again, even as little as this. Cochrane weighed, on the moon, just one-sixth of what he would weigh on Earth. Here he would tip a spring-scale at just about ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... jubilation, heyday, flush, revelling; merrymaking &c (amusement) 840; jubilee &c (celebration) 883; paean, Te Deum &c (thanksgiving) 990 [Lat.]; congratulation &c 896. smile, simper, smirk, grin; broad grin, sardonic grin. laughter (amusement) 840. risibility; derision &c 856. Momus; Democritus the Abderite^; rollicker^. V. rejoice, thank one's stars, bless one's stars; congratulate oneself, hug oneself; rub one's hands, clap one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... they are not mine,—I am far too modest to utter any such high-sounding phrase on my own responsibility,—but they are the exact terms used by a high municipal dignitary in characterising the result of what he was pleased to term my "chivalrous conduct." My sardonic chum, on the contrary,—an individual wholly abandoned to the ignoble vice of punning,—asserts that my conduct was simply "barbarous." It will be ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Italian, who came just behind me. I am certain of this; he almost told me so himself, not in words, but the mistakable leer he gave her in reply. It was wicked, sardonic, devilish, and proved beyond doubt that there was some secret, some guilty secret ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... their mark—albeit now that the proa was near, it was strange that they could not pick off the pirate leader, who, as the proa sheered up alongside the Silver Queen, looked up at us astern and grinned a horrible sardonic grin, drawing the while his solitary left hand across his bare tawny throat ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Blacksmith.' My dear one had a great favour for this honest Darwin always; many a road to shops, and the like, he drove her in his cab, in those early days when even the charge of omnibuses was a consideration, and his sparse utterances, sardonic often, were a great amusement to her. 'A perfect gentleman,' she at once discerned him to be, and of sound worth and kindliness, in the most unaffected form." He died in 1881, aged 77, leaving no memorial ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Estate's sardonic suggestion, Martin Dyke had settled down to van life in a private alleyway next to Number 37. Anne Leffingwell deemed this criminally extravagant since the rental of a van must be prodigious. ("Tell her not to worry; my family own the storage ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Calhoun. "The story is that they want to spread contagion here, eh? Doesn't anybody"—his tone was sardonic—"doesn't anybody urge that they be massacred as ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... cry, But found it hard to tell you why, Till his own worth and wit supplied Sufficient matter to deride: "'Tis envy's safest, surest rule, To hide her rage in ridicule: The vulgar eye she best beguiles, When all her snakes are deck'd with smiles: Sardonic smiles, by rancour raised! Tormented most when seeming pleased!" Their spite had more than half expired, Had he not wrote what all admired; What morsels had their malice wanted, But that he built, and plann'd, and planted! How had his sense and learning grieved them, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Cuckfield, has been for many years in the possession of the Burrell family, one of whom, Timothy Burrell, an ancestor of the antiquary, left some interesting account books, which contain in addition to figures many curious and sardonic entries and some ingenious hieroglyphics. I quote here and there, from the Sussex Archaeological Society's extracts, by way of illustrating the life of a Sussex squire ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... ready for something extraordinary, but now, when it came, she was taken aback by it. It gave her a start, that toss of black hair, that long, irregular, pale face whose scintillant, sardonic smile was mercilessly upon the poor, inadequate picture-face fronting him. His stoop above the rail was so abrupt that his long, lean back was almost horizontal, yet even thus there was something elegant in the swing of him—in the careless twist of his head, around, to speak to the woman behind ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... one or two remote instances. They must have been included in order to make one more room in the gigantic mansion which the author had planned. His seventh sense of subdivision saw here fresh material to classify. And so these grim, almost sardonic essays were placed where ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... evil genius in the person of the landlord, who took me out to the woodshed. "Dutchy, I have decided to adopt you as my only son; have you ever bucked a wood saw?" said he, and a sardonic leer distorted his evil features. After I recovered sufficiently from the shock, I answered indignantly, "Sir, know ye not that I have pledged my service to the vestal virgins of yon temple?" "Ha! Ha!" laughed the villain, "get busy now, son, and if by ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... geniuses, he had his weaknesses and his failings; like many, if not most, geniuses, he was ill. He died of tuberculosis, tragically young. But what a comrade he must have been, with his extraordinary vision, his keen, sardonic comment, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... king, helps him to his marriage, and knowing that he is doomed to die in early life, descends to hell and begs the Fates to give him longer life. That is a motive, holding in it strange thoughts of life and death and fate, which pleased Browning, and he treats it separately, and with sardonic humour, in the Prologue to one of his later volumes. The Fates refuse to lengthen Admetos' life, unless some one love him well enough to die for him. They must have their due at ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... death should on me helpless play A satire of the bitter kind. For much I fear that o'er my corpse The scalding tears of friends shall flow, And that, too late, they should with zeal Fresh flowers upon my body throw. That fate sardonic should recall The ones I loved to my cold side, And make me lying in the ground, The object of love once denied. That all my aching heart's desires, So vainly sought for from my birth, Should crowd unbidden, smiling kind Above my body's ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... the commander, demanding the reason of his anchoring in the harbor without obtaining previous permission so to do. This letter was couched in the most dignified and courteous terms, though I have it from undoubted authority that his teeth were clinched, and he had a bitter sardonic grin upon his visage all the while he wrote. Having despatched his letter, the grim Peter stumped to and fro about the town, with a most war-betokening countenance, his hands thrust into his breeches pockets, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... was heaped with scorn, and, as I looked into the burning eyes fixed upon mine and watched the sardonic smile hovering about his lips, I wondered whether he were some Mephistopheles—some fiend incarnate—sent to torture me, or whether he were ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... even ran. I must have been seen running! And now I'm like Charley's Aunt," he went on with his sardonic laugh, "and bound to stick to it until they catch me by the leg. Now you know what Mackenzie was doing down there! The old hound may be on my track already. There's no going ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... satisfaction of restoring her in a few minutes to her friends, who did all they could, by crowding round her with ill-timed condolements, to prevent her recovery. By this time the rest of the ladies took warning from these little misadventures to retire. Caustic, in his sardonic way, would insist upon it, that they retired to avoid that exposure of defects in beauty, which the first ray of morning produces. I took my conge among the rest, and found the hubbub which attended my entrance, increased to a tenfold degree of violence at ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... doctors!" the Professor retorted, with his sardonic smile. "They think they understand the human body from top to toe, when, in reality—well, they ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... introduce any new theme. The scene which had promised to be so dramatic was actually dragging with uncomfortable silences. She waited long enough for him to speak, but when he remained silent—it was a sardonic silence to her—she rose from the chair with the manner of one who has determined to bring an ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... in the world like it. Indeed, I have a distinct recollection of being told that the child's father had painted in the extraordinary features and had himself decorated the original flaxen locks with singular stripes of red and white and blue, a sardonic tribute to the home land ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... brother and sister mount their horses. Colomba's eyes shone with a malignant joy which she had never remarked in them before. The sight of this tall strong creature, with her fanatical ideas of savage honour, pride written on her forehead, and curled in a sardonic smile upon her lips, carrying off the young man with his weapons, as though on some death-dealing errand, recalled Orso's fears to her, and she fancied she beheld his evil genius dragging him to his ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... turned to his angel guide, and found himself alone on the tower. He ran to the top of the ladder and looked down. At the bottom stood Tinker regarding him with an excellent sardonic smile: "Ha! ha!" he cried in a gruff, triumphant voice, "Trapped—trapped!" And ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... There is something of sardonic humor in the fact that it is the greatest war of history which is illustrating the fact that even the most powerful of the European nations must co-operate with foreigners for its security. For no one of the nine or ten combatants ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... yet he took the one offered, fumbling painfully with thick fingers, blushing to the roots of his hair. Then he looked with his warm blue eyes at the almost sardonic, lidded eyes of the foreigner. The latter sat down beside him, and they began ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the applause with sardonic appreciation, whereupon his chief allowed a severe eye to dwell on him, though his glance traveled instantly to the egg-shell dome of Otto Schmidt, whose aid had been invaluable in stilling certain qualms in ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... throne, a magnificent, but a sardonic figure for all that. As he rose, soft, weird music came from an angle where a screen of palm-ferns was placed. Though mechanical, the music was of an ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... then asked if he would give me some advice about my painting, remembering Turner's kindly invitation and manner when I saw him. This proposition was met by the same decided negative, accompanied by the fixed and sardonic stare which the girl had put on at the coming of the new influence. This disconcerted me, and I then explained to my brother what had been going on, as, the questions being mental, he had no clue to the pantomime. I said that ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... bitter, sardonic laugh which he had acquired of late years. "Oh, well, she will get used to it," he replied. "Don't you worry, Maria. She will get used to it. The smell of the poor is the smell of the world. Heaven itself must be full ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... word? As to the bull-dog, I say little. He at least is a good water-dog, and, when he is taught, he will retrieve birds through the heaviest sea as long as his master cares to shoot. But his appearance is sardonic, to say the least of it; he puts me in mind of a prize-fighter coming up for the tenth round when he has got matters all his own way. Happily he is not often kept as a pet; he is usually taken out by fast young men in riverside places, for his company ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... laugh at this, and with that laugh Peter knew that all hope of more fighting was gone. He bade them a sardonic good-night, hooked his arm through the orator's (who actually showed signs of an intention to resume his speech), and bore him off ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... armchair, looking up at him with a horrible sardonic grin, was his uncle James Cunningham. His wrists were tied with ropes to the arms of the chair. A towel, passed round his throat, fastened the body to the back of the chair and propped up the head. A bloody clot of hair hung tangled just above the temple. The ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... him had not changed. She was still attracted to him and she still admired him. But the admiration she had felt for his sharp, sardonic handling of his opponents in a court of law seemed a little shallow and a little immature in comparison to the sudden onrush of what she ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... translation of his Commentaries. It appeared in James the Second's reign, and is the work of Sir Paul Rycaut, Knight. It was printed at London in 1688, in folio, with considerable pretension in its outward dress, well garnished with wood-cuts, and a frontispiece displaying the gaunt and rather sardonic features, not of the author, but his translator. The version keeps pace with the march of the original, corresponding precisely in books and chapters, and seldom, though sometimes, using the freedom, so common in these ancient versions, of abridgment ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... think of her in a ridiculous nervous manner as an evil design on his peace and security. She seemed unnatural with her shrunken face bowed opposite him at the table. His feeling for her shifted subconsciously to hatred. It broke out publicly in sardonic or angry periods under which she would shrink away, incredibly timid, from his scorn. This quality of utter helplessness gave the menace he divined in her its illusive air of unreality. She seemed—she was—entirely helpless; a prematurely ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... been sardonic, were it not for a few lines around the corners of his eyes which belied any sinister suspicion, spread grimly across the big man's face as he stood looking down on Harry King in the dusk of the unlighted shed. The younger man rose quickly from ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... patronizingly to reassure him; but he would have none of it. He rose in the Assembly and demanded the impeachment of the unworthy judge. With perfect candor and the naked vigor that in the years to come was to become known the world around he said precisely what he meant. Under the genial sardonic advice of the veteran Republican leader, who "wished to give young Mr. Roosevelt time to think about the wisdom of his course," the Assembly voted not to take up his "loose charges." It looked like ignominious defeat. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... of our marriage. By and by I heard the sound of violent hysterical sobbing, accompanied by the noise of hurrying footsteps and the rapid whisking about of female garments. In a few moments the doctor entered with an expression of sardonic amusement on his face. "Yes!" he said in reply to my look of inquiry, "hysterics, lace handkerchiefs, eau-de-Cologne, and attempts at fainting. All very well done! I have assured the lady there is ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... on 'The Little Minister' in symmetry of construction, reality of matter, tragic power, and insight, but its tone is very different. Though as rich in humor, the humor is largely of a grim, bitter, and sardonic sort. The light, gay, buoyant fun of 'The Little Minister,' which makes it a perpetual enjoyment, has mostly vanished; in its stead we feel that the writer's sensitive nature is wrung by the swarming catastrophes he cannot avert, the endless wrecks on the ocean of life he cannot ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner |
