"Scoff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eager eyes, listening to the exhortations of the priests, and ready, as might be seen from their earnest gaze, to suffer martyrdom in the cause. More, however, stood indifferently round, or, after listening to a few words, walked on with a laugh or a scoff; indeed, preaching had already done all that lay in its power. All those who could be moved by exhortations of this kind were there, and upon the rest the discourses and sermons were ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... dead, Flick-Flack, if it had not been for you and me," said Cigarette, while she wetted his lips with more brandy. "Ah, bah! and he would be more grateful, Flick-Flack, for a scornful scoff from Milady!" ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... imagination—scoff at the idea that love can be born in a moment, but such is often the case, for all their ill-advised jibes. A man may be brought into contact with the loveliest and most brilliant of women, yet remain ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... antiquated that parents reject almost every sentence of it for themselves; true, the man of today understands its language only with difficulty—what of it, the children must gulp down the moldy, musty food. How we would scoff and jeer if a similar report were made about the school system of China! To this Lutheran Catechism, which I would best like to see in state libraries only, are added many antiquated hymns of mystical turgidity, which a simple youth, even with the best will does not know how ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... seemed to the eye more peaceful than on a certain November evening in the year 1591: and this although many a one within its walls resented the fineness of the night as a mockery, as a scoff alike at the pain of some ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... many of the band shook their heads, and said to themselves, "Now the Sheriff will think that we are cowards, and folk will scoff throughout the countryside, saying that we fear to meet these men." But they said nothing aloud, swallowing their words and doing ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... virtue's side; But in his duty prompt, at every call, He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all; At church, with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorn'd the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray. The service past, around the pious man, With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran; Ev'n children followed with endearing wile, And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile. His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest; Their welfare pleased him, and their cares ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... tell you that the Chancellor gave it to me, gave it to me with his own hands, willingly,—pressed it upon me. No, don't scoff!" he went on quickly. "Listen! This is a genuine thing. The Chancellor's mad. He was lying in a fit when I left the Palace. It will be in all the evening papers. You will hear the boys shouting it in the streets within a few minutes. Don't interrupt and I'll tell you ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... only of emotional intuition, but established scientific fact: and no modern sociologist, no psychologist who realizes how unknown in origin and how intimate in interpenetration are the forces that control our destiny, can afford to scoff at her. She had longed inexpressibly for outward martyrdom. This was not for her, yet none the less really did she lay down her life on the Altar of Sacrifice. The evils of the time, and above all of the Church, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... arms, as a little, clinging, prattling child. They think of what they have done and suffered for his sake and how the cord of love has been silently woven through the years. My love to you is my greatest bond, and, though some may grow cold, some may scoff, and some repudiate, never let the lips of any say that your rector, your old grey-headed pastor, now in his fourth and last watch, ever ceased in his love ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... hands behind her back and stood facing me, somewhat defiantly, in all her magnificence. I smiled. Women, much as they scoff at the blindness of our sex, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Gentiles, and among their mighty men; and it shall come to pass that Darsie Latimer shall be delivered, even if it were at the expense of half my substance." And I said, "Nay, my brother, go not, for they will but scoff at and revile thee; but hire with thy silver one of the scribes, who are eager as hunters in pursuing their prey, and he shall free Darsie Latimer from the men of violence by his cunning, and thy soul shall be guiltless of evil towards ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... praises till we turn against it as we used to do in the Fourth Reader Class, when we all with one accord turned against "Teacher's Pet." Teacher's Pet might be dowered with all the virtues, but we of the commonality would have none of them. We chose to scoff at an excellence ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... radical sentiments concerning Life and its obligations. They were often startling, particularly as she made no secret of the fact that she and her husband never "got on." Between puffs of cigarette smoke she would scoff at the laws of marriage and speak with much leniency of divorce. Her sympathies were invariably with offenders, and Joyce thought her rather too fond of the society of men. Meredith feared and disliked her. The fear was on his wife's account, lest she should be contaminated. ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... time; but of what use to bewail it? She was not yet conquered. The bitterness of spirit which she carried about with her took the form of a scoffing pessimism. A hard laugh at the things which made other people shake their heads and uplift their hands; a ready scoff at all tenderness; a sneer at anything which could by any stretch of imagination be called good; a determined running up of what was hard, sordid, and worldly, and a persistent and utter skepticism as to the existence of the reverse of those things; such was now the yea, yea, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... the vintner 'gan to think How he was fooled out of his chink; Said, 'When 'tis found how I came off, My neighbours will me game and scoff.' ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... mask, Mr Slick," he said, "I use no disguises, and it does not become a professing man like you to jeer and scoff because I reprove the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... neglected and insulted, so generally ignored, as this very Deity to whom you ascribe unlimited power, and from whom you say you receive life and everything. An eastern despot would take off the heads of those who treated him in such a style; and a republican politician would scoff at the idea of giving office to such lukewarm followers. Why, here in Christian Chicago the will of God is no more heeded by the majority than that of the Emperor of China, and the Bible might as well be the Koran. Looking at these ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... neighbours scoff, and her menace, But saddened friends grieve at her sore disgrace, Love, through their heart, in fervour rills, Each one respects this plaintivest of girls; And many a pitying soul a prayer said, That some great miracle might yet be made In favour ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... interposed the chaplain, coldly; "the food and wine are of the best; and we should never scoff at good victual. If you have so proud a stomach, why are you here? It embarrasses you to answer the question. Let me, then, shape the reply. 'I have a sense of my own dignity,' you would say, 'far keener than that of my father's flatterers ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... hypocrites went out with the Bourbons. Those who remain pious in that country (or, rather, we should say, in the capital, for of that we speak,) are unaffectedly so, for they have no worldly benefit to hope for from their piety; the great majority have no religion at all, and do not scoff at the few, for scoffing is the minority's weapon, and is passed always to the weaker side, whatever that may be. Thus H. B. caricatures the Ministers: if by any accident that body of men should be dismissed ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... physicians scoff at the ancient authorities who dominated medical thinking for so many centuries. The seventeenth-century physician striving to reduce the frightful inroads that disease made into the colony at Jamestown may have been handicapped ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... "All right. Scoff as much as you like. Have your joke before it turns on you. There'll be a quarter of a million people here before you're dead, if you play fair with the ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... gatherings. For Mr. Pericles said: "If that they will go 'so,' I will be amused." He presented a top-like triangular appearance for one staggering second. The Tinleys did not go 'so' at all, and consequently they lost the satirical man, and were called 'the ballet-dancers' by Adela which thorny scoff her sisters permitted to pass about for a single day, and no more. The Tinleys were their match at epithets, and any low contention of this kind obscured for them the social summit they hoped to attain; the dream whereof was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... inclined to scoff at this apparition as a heretical innovation, there was still the story of Concepcion, the Demon Vaquero, whose terrible riata was fully as potent as the whaler's harpoon. Concepcion, when in the flesh, had been a celebrated herder of cattle and wild horses, and was reported to have ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... look'd so great and high,{C} So noble was his manly front, So calm his steadfast eye;— The rabble rout forbore to shout, And each man held his breath, For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shudder Through all the people crept, And some that came to scoff at him, Now ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... mass of his body. Any one else, however humble, would have had neither the will nor the power to ride a-horseback; but he, against the advice of all his friends, listened only to the voice of courage, braved the fiery suns of June and August, which were the dread of the youngest knights, and made a scoff of those who could not bear the heat, although many a time, during the passage of narrow and difficult swampy places, he was constrained to get himself held on by those about him." After an obstinate struggle, and at the intervention of William VII., Duke of Aquitaine, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Jean Bart had stirred up a number of enemies, for, when a man is successful in life, are there not always a hundred unsuccessful fellows who stand about and scoff? ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... unattended by any glare of colored lights or fanfare of music. A quiet, motherly looking woman, plainly dressed, with a Bible in her hand, she commanded almost immediately the respect of that large crowd—from the men in the orchestra stalls to the gallery gods. One half intoxicated fellow began to scoff at her, but was almost immediately hushed by the scarcely less drunken ones around him. It was a sight that hushed them all into respectful silence, for a respectable, earnest woman, with the Holy Book in her hand, will have a subduing effect upon almost ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... certain fashion. You have deceived us. It is much uglier, more dull, dirtier, sadder and harder, at least in our opinion and to our imagination: you judge us as overexcited and disordered; if so, it is your fault. For this reason, we curse and scoff at your world and reject your pretended truths which, for us, are lies, including those elementary and primordial verities which you declare are evident to common sense, and on which you base your laws, your institutions, your ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Caroline. Clever, affable, unprincipled, and cynical, he was a perfect type of the Georgian courtier to whom loyalty, patriotism, honesty, and honor were so many synonyms for folly. He was effeminate in habits and appearance, but notoriously licentious; he affected to scoff at learning but made some pretense to literature, and had written 'Four Epistles after the Manner of Ovid', and numerous political pamphlets. Pope, who had some slight personal acquaintance with him, disliked his political connections and probably despised his verses, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... no taste that I cannot get rid of at my pleasure, not a desire that I do not scoff at, not a hope that does not make me smile or laugh. I ask myself why I stir, why I go hither or thither, why I give myself the odious trouble of earning money, since it does not amuse me to ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... their flowing odes. Then, if those who were not English, and hated England, and all connected therewith, had yet much to say in thy praise, when thou wast far inferior to what thou art now, why should true-born Englishmen, or those who call themselves so, turn up their noses at thee, and scoff thee at the present day, as I believe they do? But, let others do as they will, I, at least, who am not only an Englishman, but an East Englishman, will not turn up my nose at thee, but will praise and extol thee, calling thee mart of the world—a place of wonder and astonishment!—and, ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... raps yourself, and then you got nearly beside yourself with fright and anger, and said it was the devil. And now for the third time the same sort of thing has happened. What is the good of telling you about it? You'd only scoff and jeer as you did before, although on this occasion it is your own life that has been ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... of the temple laid His desperate hands, and in its overthrow Destroyed himself, and with him those who made A cruel mockery of his sightless woe; The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all, Expired, and thousands perished in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... described in the Book of Wisdom who say: "Let unrighteousness be our law," 2, 11. Also in Psalms, 12, 4: "Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us?" Again in Psalm 73. "They scoff, and in wickedness utter oppression: they speak loftily," etc. Such were the giants who withstood the Holy Spirit to his face, who, through the mouth of Lamech, Noah and the sons of Noah, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... Sometimes I have spoken of these things to my mother, but she does not see as I do. I dare not tell my father all I think, and Juste is so much a creature of moods that I am never sure whether he will be sensible and kind, or scoff. One can not bear to be laughed at. And as for my sister, she never thinks; she only lives; and she looks it—looks beautiful. But there, dear Lucie, I must not tire you with my childish philosophy, though I feel no longer a child. You would ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... last, with strange gentleness, "insult me, scoff at me, overwhelm me with scorn! but come, come. Let us make haste. It is to be to-morrow, I tell you. The gibbet on the Greve, you know it? it stands always ready. It is horrible! to see you ride in that tumbrel! Oh mercy! Until ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... more than decorate the assembly with his good-tempered smile, was a most necessary feature of it, and Dick Tryon was more often than not to be found there also, though whether he came to scoff or bless, no one was quite certain. His position in the circle of Mrs. Hading's satellites had never been clearly defined. He was supposed by some people to be hopelessly in love with Gay Liscannon, and that supposition ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... butcher does all that sort of think. We just kills it, and cooks it, and eats it—and goes by guess. What won't keep we salts down in the cask. I reckon it weighs about a ton by the weight of it if yer wanter know. Mother thought that if she sent any more it would go bad before you could scoff it. ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... students in the parent college (Dr. Still's at Kirksville, Missouri,) and that there are about 2,000 graduates practicing in America. Dear me, there are not 30 in Europe. Europe is so sunk in superstitions and prejudices that it is an almost impossible thing to get her to do anything but scoff at a new thing—unless it come from abroad; as witness the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... face. A caitiff hound, A reptile fool, is he who fawns on men Before their faces, while his heart is black With malice, and, when they be gone, his tongue Backbites them. Openly Polydamas Flung back upon the prince his taunt and scoff: "O thou of living men most mischievous! Thy valour—quotha!—brings us misery! Thine heart endures, and will endure, that strife Should have no limit, save in utter ruin Of fatherland and people for thy ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... considerable deliberation. He had argued with himself and had made up his mind to find out for himself just what these people did. He was finding out, certainly. His motives were good and he had come with no desire to scoff, but, for the life of him, he could not help feeling like a criminal. Incidentally, it provoked ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... writer of The present poem—of—I know not what— A tendency to under-rate and scoff At human power and virtue, and all that; And this they say in language rather rough. Good God! I wonder what they would be at! I say no more than hath been said in Dante's Verse, and by Solomon ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the throne of the world, and scoff at the God of heaven, who seeks the poor and needy, and who would in love lift up every son and daughter of ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... looking for someone to talk to, or anything to relieve the tedium of my two hours on the lee side of the poop. I found Welsh John sitting on the main-hatch and disposed to yarn. He had been the most intimate with Duncan, harkening to his queer tales of the fairies in Knoidart when we others would scoff, and naturally the talk came ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... the pirates, fighting with the bravery of desperate men, were victorious, and the city fell into their hands. Then followed days of murder, plunder, and debauchery. Morgan saw his followers, maddened by liquor, scoff at the idea of discipline and obedience. Fearing that while his men were helplessly drunk the Spaniards would rally and cut them to pieces, he set fire to the city, that the stores of rum might be destroyed. After sacking the town, the vandals ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... too—red-lipped girls in sunbonnets, that'll look good after the splay-footed crows you see out here. Tell you what: We'll pick up the Orient boat at Port Said—no P. and O. for me; I'm a passenger aboard ship, not a horrible example!— and make a wake for the Bull's Kid. Murder! Won't the scoff taste good! ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... of Our Magazine was ready on New Year's Day, and we read it that evening in the kitchen. All our staff had worked nobly and we were enormously proud of the result, although Dan still continued to scoff at a paper that wasn't printed. The Story Girl and I read it turnabout while the others, except Felix, ate apples. It opened ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of course. Menu written in pencil on a porcelain card, with the formula in gilt and a coronet. Indeed, the very cans that came up to my bedroom with hot water were marked with coronet and cipher. I was inclined to scoff at this, at first, as ostentatious; but after all, as the things were to be marked, how could it ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... of every class—young women, old women, mothers with married sons and daughters; women of society as it is exploited in the Sunday supplements; school girls, shop girls, factory girls—all had told her their troubles; and men of every condition had come to scoff and had remained to express, more or less offensively, their admiration. Some of the younger of these, after a first visit, returned the day following, and each begged the beautiful priestess of the occult to fly with him, to live with him, to marry him. When this happened Vera would ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... her aunt, whose head was bent over her writing, the smooth bands of her silky, brown hair shining brightly in the lamp-light. No doubt some, perhaps most, grown-ups would scoff at her tale if she told it, Mollie thought. Grown-up people as a rule love best to jog along on well-trodden, safe, commonplace paths, and avoid adventurous by-ways, but Aunt Mary, Mollie felt sure, was an anti-jogger, so to ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... it, of course they will. You surely cannot suppose I should, in cold blood, sit down to write a story in which nobody was to fall in love or be in love! Sir, scoff as you may, love is the one vital principle in all romance. Not only does your cheek flush and your eye sparkle, till "heart, brain, and soul are all on fire," over the burning words of some Brontean Pythoness, but when you open the last thrilling work ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... before, Was prepared for mistrust) To believe her reasons just; Quite destroy'd that comfort glad, Which in Mary late she had; Made her, in experience' spite, Think her friend a hypocrite, And resolve, with cruel scoff, To renounce and cast ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... be hampered by mere connoisseurship in the perpetration of his duty—therefore, passe, for the execution—but he should not compromise his master's reputation for brilliancy, and print things that he who runs may scoff at. ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... cast at him a glance of pity for his ignorance. He felt a desire to scoff at her, to injure her, thus ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... not this any ways to upbraid, or scoff at, or misuse poor men, but rather to condole and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the glee of the cup They felt themselves tangled and caught, as when the net cometh up Before the folk of the firth, and the main sea lieth far off; And the laughter of lips they hearkened, and that hall-abider's scoff, As his face and his mocking eyes anigh to their faces drew, And their godhead was caught in the net, and no shift of creation they knew To escape from their man-like bodies; so great that ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... sincerity we recognize and respect, but occasionally I find young men who think it smart to be skeptical; they talk as if it were an evidence of larger intelligence to scoff at creeds and to refuse to connect themselves with churches. They call themselves "Liberal," as if a Christian were narrow minded. Some go so far as to assert that the "advanced thought of the world" has discarded the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... been one of those That danced for bread in flesh-color'd hose, With Rosina's pastora bevy, The jeers it had met,—the shouts! the scoff! The cutting advice to "take itself off" For ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... made the election, he argued, depend upon New York, and since Douglas would start without the hope of getting a single vote, it became the duty of every national Democrat to insist that the Illinoisan be withdrawn. People might scoff at this movement as "a cloud no bigger than a man's hand," he said, but it would grow in size and send forth a deluge that would refresh and purify the arid soil of politics. The applause that greeted this prophecy indicated faith in a principle that ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the administration of affairs. And when these giovinastri, other people's boys, the scum of the gay world, flung their unsavory jests in the face of the old man who had no son to come after him, the silly insults so lightly uttered, so little thought of, the natural scoff of youth at old age, stung ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armory, Petrie. But a woman is a two-edged sword, and treacherous. To our great good fortune, she has formed a sudden predilection, characteristically Oriental, for yourself. Oh, you may scoff, but it is evident. She was employed to get this letter placed in my hands. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... scoff at me; shield yourself from me, if you can," said Zoroaster. "Lift one hand, if you are able—make one step from me, if you have the strength. You cannot; you are altogether in my power. If I would, I could kill you as you stand, and there would be no mark of violence upon you, that ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... were painted"?—Faith, no word of black was said; The lightest touch was human blood, and that, ye know, runs red. It's sticking to your fist today for all your sneer and scoff, And by the Judge's well-weighed word you cannot wipe ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... to turn aside this appeal which I now make to you with a laugh or a sneer. This is the Lord's word, and the word of the Lord is not to be put aside with a sneer. Do not scoff at this as a water of salvation. You certainly will not scoff at ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... you prefer to take the risks, and remain chief of the guard yourself?" she said with an angry scoff. "Truly there did not seem to be many thrusting forward to strip you of the office. I shall have a fine sorting up of places in payment for this night's work. But for the present, Tarca, do ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... coming out of the Argonne fight on September 30, said: "I have never been a professed Christian. I have always considered the testimony of so-called Christians as the imagination of religious fanatics. But I saw Christ up there, and I shall never scoff again." A private standing near turned to me and said: "We all felt the same way about it. It was mighty ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... chink, no drink? That's your motto, is it? Well, that's sense. Now, look here, ma'am, I ain't beautiful like you; but I'm good, and I'll give you warrant for it. Get me a noggin of rum, and suthin' to scoff, and a penny pipe, and a half-a-foot of baccy; and there's a guinea for the reckoning. There's plenty more in the locker; so bear a hand, and be smart. I don't like waiting; it ain't my way. (Exit MRS. DRAKE, R. PEW sits at the table, R. The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... persuade mankind to live and die without religion. Suppose he had proved to the world's satisfaction that all religion is a hoax, and all men professing it are liars, how does that comfort me in my hour of sorrow? Scoffing will not sustain a man in his solitude, when he has nobody to scoff at; and disbelief is only a bottomless tub, which will not float me across the dark river. If Infidels intend to convert the world, they must give us some positive system of truth which we can believe, and venerate, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... was very angry and altogether thrown out of her usually calm humour. Her first impulse was to go to her husband, and in the strength of her innocence to show him the letter. Then she laughed bitterly as she thought how the selfish old dandy would scoff at her sensitiveness, and how utterly incapable he would be of discovering the offender or of punishing the offence. Then again her face was grave, and she asked herself whether it was true that she was innocent; whether she were ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... lieutenant, taking turns. The thing was in its way a little triumph. A few of the visitors were deaf, and hugged the belief that they were the victims of a new kind of fancy-fair swindle. Of the others, many who came to scoff remained to take raffle tickets; and one of the phonographs was finally disposed of in this way, falling, by a happy freak of the ballot-box, into the hands of Sir William Thomson.' The other remained in Fleeming's hands, and was a source ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... us, neither shall we be persuaded though one rose from the dead. It is sometimes the fashion in these days to sneer at the preacher, or to listen with a polite contempt. God grant that those "who come to scoff, may remain to pray." ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... Mercury, nor Jupiter we beg For a devouring despot, lank of leg, Of prying eye, and frog-transfixing beak; Though singly we seem weak, United we are strong to smite or scoff. Off, would-be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... I could indeed imagine it were true. Because, perchance, you've lightly won some hearts, Thus you must be severe and scoff at all, As if you had good reason!—It is proof Of an ungenerous mind ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... to provide and take care for the Childs and Child-bed linnen. Then you need not fear the turning of the tide, or that a mischance will happen; wherewith all people, seeing no other issue, laugh and scoff unmeasurably; and think that the Midwife hath been greased in the fist (as it oftentimes happens) because she should say, that it was a full created child, and no collection of ill humors, ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... now comes Suffering. They must hear the curse pronounced, and then depart into the world which has begun to grow thorns for them. Yes, sufferings after death. What is history but the story of punishment? When men scoff at what is called eternal punishment they forget, or, perhaps, have never given it a thought, that the punishment of the first crime is going on at the present moment. Thorns and briars are but parables. They are real, it is true. Man must wrestle with his mother earth for every ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... sir, remember that the ass can kick, And that when kicking, asses never bray, So gird your armor on and lop each head Who hath at your dilemma dared to scoff. ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... the gyves that bind mankind And strives to strike them off Shall gain the hissing hate of fools, Thorns, and the ingrate's scoff. ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... day of the Lord was at hand; and this message was as a heavy yoke upon me, so that I wept bitterly at the thought of what I should have to pass through. While I wept, I heard a voice say, "weep not, some will laugh at thee, some will scoff at thee, and the dogs will bark at thee, but while thou doest my will, I will be with thee to the ends of ...
— Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman • Anonymous
... since the beginnin' of time," I scoff. "They laughed at Leonardo da Vinci, Columbus, Edison, a guy named Durante. Even the guy who first sat down at a pianer. We will take what we can git, pal, and then come ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... ma'am, be not afraid;—my father! how shall I meet him? how go back to Lyons? the scoff of the whole city! Cruel, cruel, Claude [in great agitation]. Sir, you ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... quantity of rational enjoyment within the reach of general society, England is wholly superior in civilization to the shivering splendours of the Continent. Foreigners are beginning to learn this; and those who are most disposed to scoff at our taste, are the readiest to follow ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... received congratulations on your joining the church, by those belonging to it; soon will it be known to those who will scoff at it. But Christians and worldlings will look for consistency; and if it be wanting, the last will be the first to mark it. A decided character will soon deliver you from all solicitations to what may be even unseemly, and dignified ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... men turn the water off, Or folk be cutting weed, While he doth at misfortune scoff, From every trouble freed. Or else he waiteth for a rise, And ne'er a rise may see; For why, there are not any flies ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... saucy Jade; Sure the Wench is tipsy! How can you see me made [To him. The Scoff of such a Gipsy? ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... like the fleshless face of fear-painted death! Is that Voltaire? He who, with wit, thought to shear the Son of God of all His beams?—with wit, to loosen the dreadful fastenings of the Cross?—with wit, to scoff at Him who hung thereon, while the blood and water came from the wound in His blessed side?—with wit, to drive away those Shadows of Angels, that were said to have rolled off the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre of the resurrection?—with wit, to deride the ineffable glory ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... scoff, and the pessimist may croak, but even they must take hope at the picture presented in the simple and touching incident of eight Grand Army veterans, with their silvery heads bowed in sympathy, escorting the lifeless body of the Daughter of the Confederacy ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... to scoff at the "bubble" of Savings Banks, alleging that it was an insult to people to tell them that they had anything to save. Yet the extent to which savings banks have been used, even by the humblest classes, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... 1898, however, was fought for an idea, and, despite the imperialistic impulse that followed it, marks a transition, an advance, in international ethics. Imperialistic cynics were not lacking to scoff at our protestation that we were fighting Spain in order to liberate Cuba; and yet this, for the American people at large, was undoubtedly the inspiration of the war. We kept our promise, we did not annex Cuba, we introduced into international ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... To Tisipherne the damsel turning right, "And what say you, my noble lord ?" quoth she. He taunting said, "I that am slow to fight Will follow far behind, the worth to see Of this your terrible and puissant knight," In scornful words this bitter scoff gave he. "Good reason," quoth the king, "thou come behind, Nor e'er compare thee with the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... may rail against money, Spurn its beneficent power; Bears spurn impossible honey, Foxes the grapes that are sour. Men, who can never be funny, Scoff at the funny man's dower; Lands where it seldom is sunny Find little praise ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... king who used to say I instead of we. In a word, a journal, with two or three hundred thousand francs, good, at the back of it, has just been started, with a view to making an opposition paper to content the discontented, without prejudice to the national government of the citizen-king. We scoff at liberty as at despotism now, and at religion or incredulity quite impartially. And since, for us, 'our country' means a capital where ideas circulate and are sold at so much a line, a succulent dinner every day, and the play at frequent intervals, where profligate women swarm, where suppers ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... their secret. I confess I was alarmed; but there was something in the thought of showing my good master how much I was attached to his interests, that continually prevailed over my fears; and my spirits rose with the reflection that I, a poor insignificant lad; I, that was often the scoff and laughing-stock of the miners; I, that went by the name of Lame Jervas; I, who they thought could be bullied to any thing by their threats, might do a nobler action than any man amongst them would have the courage to do in my place. Then the kindness of my master, and the words he said about ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... it that you scoff? Verily, you do an unconsidered deed. When one remembers all the liquids, medicinal, soporific, insipid, poisonous, which flood the throat of humanity, one may deem himself a favorite of Fortune to be placed so high in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Yourselves devilishly greedy for profits, yet you scoff at us because we go chasing after business. You fetch heaps of money across the sea, and then turn up your sublimely snuffing noses as ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... man scoff; lest he drives away the means of real information.—And let all men watch, for the increase ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... such communication appears, upon every principle of sound philosophy, to be one of harmony, consistency, and truth. The subject, therefore, leads our attention to that inward change, so often the scoff of the profane, but to which so prominent a place is assigned in the sacred writings, in which a man is said to be created anew by a power from Heaven, and elevated in his whole views and feelings as a moral being. Sound philosophy teaches us, that there is a state ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... to notice how men are invading our precincts now-a-days. They used to scoff at such a meal as afternoon tea, and now most of them take it as regularly as they stream out of the trains on Saturday afternoons with pink papers under their arms—such elevating literature! Indeed there is quite a fuss if they have ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the policy of the State. The government had just ability enough to deceive and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch; and England propitiated these obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... fearful consequences," with lightness and ribaldry, was declared by worldly men to be "not merely to sport with the feelings of its propagators and advocates," but "to make a jest of the day of judgment, to scoff at the Deity Himself, and contemn the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... of knowledge in use: the knowledge of arms, and the knowledge of books. The first is the scoff if the wise, whilst ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... "I must see to this; although my poor feet have no skin below them. I will teach this heathen miscreant how to scoff at Glastonbury." ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of our allies the affair may appear a trifle, father; and such white planters as cannot refuse to hear the tidings may scoff at them; but Jean Francais, a negro and a slave—is it possible that he makes ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... to the time of his canonization (1189), but from that time forward ambition, avarice, and luxury made such inroads upon the solitude of Grammont that its monks became the byword and scoff of the Christian world.[8] ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... man that 's been bred to the plough, Might be deaved wi' its clamorous clapper; Yet there 's few but would suffer the sough After kenning what 's said by the happer. I whiles thought it scoff'd me to scorn, Saying, Shame, is your conscience no checkit? But when I grew dry for a horn, It changed aye to Tak it, man, tak it. Hey for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... remarkable dog-fight; to a village church struck by lightning. It will be said, more or less causally, by everybody in America who has seen Prince Henry do anything, or try to. The man who was absent and didn't see him to anything, will scoff. It is his privilege; and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem, even to himself, to be different from other Americans, and better. As his opinion of his superior Americanism grows, and swells, and concentrates and coagulates, he will go further and try to belittle ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... would every man I have ever known; but none of us dares to venture it. If I should appear on Fifth Avenue on a Sunday morning clothed as I would like to be clothed the churches would all be vacant and the congregation would come tagging after me. They would scoff, of course, but they would envy me, too. When I put on black it reminds me of my funerals. I could be satisfied with white all the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... On the way they kept asking me if I was willing to do all the Prophet required. I said I was sure of it, thinking they meant to be good and worshipful. Then they would ask if I was ready to take counsel, and they said, 'Many things are revealed unto us in these last days that the world would scoff at,' but that it had been given to them to know all the mysteries of the Kingdom. Then they said, 'You will see Joseph and he will tell you ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... girdle's folds. The Duke shall hear me. Patience. Trust in me." Somewhat the authoritative voice abashed, Even hoarse and changed, the miscreants, who feared Some strong curse lurked in this mysterious tongue, Armed with this evil eye. But brief the spell. With gibe and scoff they dragged their victims forth, The abused old man, the proud, insulted youth, O'er the late path of his triumphal march, Befouled with mud, with raiment torn, wild hair And ragged beard, to Vladislaw. He sat Expectant in his cabinet. On one side His ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... thine own: Thou and thy Stars have cast me down: 870 My laurels are transplanted now, And flourish on thy conqu'ring brow: My loss of honour's great enough, Thou need'st not brand it with a scoff: Sarcasms may eclipse thine own, 875 But cannot blur my lost renown. I am not now in Fortune's power; He that is down can fall no lower. The ancient heroes were illustrious For being benign, and not blustrous, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... as men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another only to scoff, I conclude, in accordance with what has gone before, that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits; each would then obey God freely with his whole heart, ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... love, first foolish, widening scope, Knows suddenly, with music high and soft, The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope; Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft Together, within hopeless sight ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... is one which will never be eradicated as long as feeling and affection are denizens of the heart. It is a love which is most easily excited in the best and kindliest natures, and which few are callous enough to scoff at. Who would not treasure the lock of hair that once adorned the brow of the faithful wife, now cold in death, or that hung down the neck of a beloved infant, now sleeping under the sward? Not one. They are home-relics, whose sacred worth is intelligible to all; spoils rescued from the devouring ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... What right have I to judge others severely, do you suppose, when I must ask for indulgency myself? Or have you forgotten that I am a laughing stock to everyone, who is not too indifferent even to scoff?... By the way," he added, "did you keep ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... gave the public works of merit, Written with vigour, fraught with spirit, Applause crowned all my labours; But thy delusive pages speak My palsied powers, exhausted, weak, The scoff of friends and neighbours. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... so idiotic as these guessers put forth in the name of science, scientists would have a great time ridiculing the sacred pages, but men who scoff at the recorded interpretation of dreams by Joseph and Daniel seem to be able to swallow the amusing interpretations offered by ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... and ceased to scoff. Money is a great dignifier, and Jim and 'Lias were making money. There had been some sniffs when the latter had hinged the front gate and whitewashed his mother's cabin, but even that had been accepted now as a ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... never seeks the houses of the Busnees but for the purpose of prey; for the wild animals of the sierra do not more abhor the sight of man than she abhors the countenances of the Busnees. She now comes to prey upon you and to scoff at you. Will you believe her words? Fools! do you think that the being before ye has any sympathy ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... Many who scoff at a book of etiquette would be shocked to hear the least expression of levity touching the Ten Commandments. But the Commandments do not always prevent such virtuous scoffers from dealings with their neighbor of which no gentleman could be capable and retain his claim to the title. Though ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Never scoff at people because they fall. A first-class runner is supposed to be able to run at high speed, using turns without falling. So he will, probably, if he intends to, but no first-class runner worth ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... through!" "Your head's level!" and "Bully for you!" Called him "Daddy,"—begged he'd disclose The name of the tailor who made his clothes, And what was the value he set on those; While Burns, unmindful of jeer and scoff, Stood there picking the rebels off,— With his long brown rifle and bell-crown hat, And the swallow-tails ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... from heaven has said, There lies beyond that dreary bourn A region where the faithful dead Eternally forget to mourn, Welcome the scoff, the sword, the chain, The burning waste, the black abyss:— I shrink not from the path of pain, Which leads me to that world ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... obtained the sobriquet of 'dinner-bell?' And why? Not as one who invited men to a banquet by his gorgeous eloquence, but as one that gave a signal to shoals in the House of Commons, for seeking refuge in a literal dinner from the oppression of his philosophy. This was, perhaps, in part a scoff of his opponents. Yet there must have been some foundation for the scoff, since, at an earlier stage of Burke's career, Goldsmith had independently ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... witnessed their parents' deep concern, and earned cries to God in their behalf can forget them—they must, they do, at times, affect them. While any thing of this nature remains, there is hope. Some, who in early life, scoff at warning and counsel, are afterwards brought to repentance: And such often testify, that impressions made by parental faithfulness in their tender years, were the means of their awakening and amendment. This should encourage those whose ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... engaged in active duties. All was done with religious gravity and decorum. If we went out, the make-believe continued even in the street; the two hermits would say the Rosary, using their fingers to count on, so as not to display their devotion before those who might scoff. One day, however, the hermit Therese forgot herself—before eating a cake, given her for lunch, she made a large Sign of the Cross, and some worldly folk did not repress ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... o' yer wages; she 's dreadful close," chuckled Captain Pharo, as we tucked the bag of meal away on the carriage floor. "See when ye'll scoff in my sails, and block up the ship's channel ag'in! Now then; touch and go is a good pilot," and we struck off on a divergent road at ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... jus' was mad enough To tink he got to hold review Widout his best Dutch ruff. Ma'am said she 'lowed it was de calf Dat had done chawed it off; But when de General heard dat ar, He answered with a scoff; He said de marks warn't don' of teef, But plainly dose ob shears; An' den he showed her to de do' And cuffed me on ye years. And when my ma'am arribed at home She stretched me 'cross her lap, Den took de lace away from me An' sewed it on her cap. And when I ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... his voice mastered by emotion, "how dare I say such words to you? In the sphere in which you live they would be considered a dastardly insult—one must not dare to move one step from the beaten track of custom. The world would scoff at the idea that my love for you is more sacred and reverent than that of a man who, inspired by a momentary passion for a woman and desiring her, obtains his end by a simple and speedy means, without reflection as to the possible misery of both in the future. And yet," his ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... emphatically as possible, that they must provide for themselves. Another Spanish statesman expressed his doubt to them whether they were able to do so: he really thought England would one day become an apple of discord between Spain and France, as Milan then was. It was almost a scoff, to compare the Island that had the power of the sea with an Italian duchy. But from this very moment she was to take a new upward flight. England was again to take her place as a third Power between the two great Powers; the opportunity presented itself to her to ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Duty, "began to taunt and to scoff. 'Holloa!' he shouted across the stream, 'will a genius like you stoop to be directed by a woman! Duty is for slaves, and Patience for donkeys. Kick aside that miserable plank, and clear the brook with a bound, as you've often cleared ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... praise, scoff. Day after day still dipping in my trough, And scribbling pages after ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... words. It is the first meeting in two long years. The area is deserted save by the smiling pair watching from under the dripping umbrella with eyes nearly as moist as the skies. There is no one to comment or to scoff. In the father's heart, mingling with the deep joy at this reunion with his son, there wells up sudden, irrepressible sorrow. "Ah, God!" he thinks. "Could his mother but have lived to see him now!" Perhaps Philip reads it all in the strong yet tremulous clasp ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things remain as from the beginning of creation. Yet are men swayed hither and thither by a book concerning Antichrist, wherein it is written that the people before the last day shall fall into such error that they shall say, there is no God, and shall scoff at all that is preached of Christ and the last day. That is true, whencesoever it has been taken. But we are not so to understand it as that the whole world shall say and hold such things, but the greater part. For that time is even now at hand, and shall prevail yet more when the Gospel ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... made us new roads,—but also new roads to destruction, as is now plainly evident in the misfortunes of many. True, you have lessened our taxes to the public; but, too, you have increased those to ourselves;—prosecutions, protests, and failures are no blessing to a community. And you dare scoff at the man in his grave whom the whole parish blesses! You dare say he lies in our way,—yes, very likely he lies in your way. This is plainly to be seen; but over this grave you shall fall! The spirit which has reigned over you, and at ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... Palomydes, helmet off, He fought, his face brush'd by his hair, Red heavy swinging hair; he fear'd a scoff So overmuch, though what ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... with a scoff. "Failing nothing! You're a pair of young idiots. I'm good for twenty years more of hard work, but, as I told Harold, I would like to quit and travel, and I shall do so just as soon as I am convinced that he can take ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and separation destroy that greatness. Once disunited, we are no longer great. The nations of the earth who have looked upon you as a formidable Power, and rising to untold and immeasurable greatness in the future, will scoff at you. Your flag, that now claims the respect of the world, that protects American property in every port and harbor of the world, that protects the rights of your citizens everywhere, what will become of it? What becomes of its glorious influence? It is gone; ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... a shallow scoff to say that prayer is absurd, because it is not possible for us, by means of it, to persuade God to change His plans. He produces foreknown and foreintended effects, by the instrumentality of the forces of nature, all ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... great and high, So noble was his manly front, So calm his steadfast eye,— The rabble rout forbore to shout, And each man held his breath, For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shudder Through all the people crept, And some that came to scoff at him Now ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... arms! Kneel all! Caps off! Old "Blue Light's" going to pray. Strangle the fool that dares to scoff! Attention! it's his way! Appealing from his native sod In forma pauperis to God, "Lay bare thine arm! Stretch forth thy rod! ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... heard the very rude chipped and unpolished axes of the older drift men or cave men described as thunderbolts: they are too rough and shapeless ever to attract attention from any except professed archaeologists. Indeed, the wicked have been known to scoff at them freely as mere accidental lumps of broken flint, and to deride the notion of their being due in any way to deliberate human handicraft. These are the sort of people who would regard a grand piano as a fortuitous ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... every power of my soul, gasps to mock you—you Gracious Monster on High. I tell you, I would, if I could, breathe it into every human soul, every flower, every leaf, every dewdrop in the garden! I tell you, I would scoff you on the day of doom, and curse the teeth out of my mouth for the sake of your Deity's boundless miserableness! I tell you from this hour I renounce all thy works and all thy pomps! I will execrate my thought if it dwell ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... To the Dean's Scoff, that this Argument, &c. was worth its weight in Gold, tho the Dean fears it will not much enrich the Buyer, the Doctor replies[127], "What is that to him? Let him mind his own Markets, who never writes ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... what is now too absurd to reason upon, what right have we to hope that with the same natures, the same passions, the same understandings, no better proof against deception, we, like they, are not entangled in what, at the close of another era, shall seem again ridiculous? The scoff of Cicero at the divinity of Liber and Ceres (bread and wine) may be translated literally by the modern Protestant; and the sarcasms which Clement and Tertullian flung at the Pagan creed, the modern sceptic returns upon their own. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... moody, doleful, downcast, dreary, woeful, somber, unhappy, woebegone, mournful, depressed, despondent, gloomy, melancholy, heavy-spirited, sorrowful, dismal, dejected, disconsolate, miserable, lugubrious. Satiate, sate, surfeit, cloy, glut, gorge. Scoff, jeer, gibe, fleer, sneer, mock, taunt. Secret, covert, surreptitious, furtive, clandestine, underhand, stealthy. Seep, ooze, infiltrate, percolate, transude, exude. Sell, barter, vend, trade. Shape, form, figure, outline, conformation, configuration, contour, profile. Share, partake, participate, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the Power which brought ye here Hath made you mine. Slaves, scoff not at my will! The Mind—the Spirit—the Promethean spark,[at] The lightning of my being, is as bright, Pervading, and far darting as your own, And shall not yield to yours, though cooped in clay! Answer, or I will teach you what ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... truly desperate to Miles, as he and his comrades passed through the narrow streets, for no pitying eye, but many a frown, was cast on them by the crowds who stopped to gaze and scoff. ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... worshipp'd her of old As she had been a goddess from above, Gazed at her now with lustful eyes and bold, As she were naught but Paris' light-o'-love; And though in truth they still were proud enough, Of that fair gem in their old city set, Yet well she knew that wanton word and scoff Went round the ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... infallible Tokens they have received of the Divine Mercy. If a grave Divine, of good Repute, acts this, as he should do, with an artful Innocence and Chearfulness in his Countenance, it is incredible what an Effect it may have upon the greater part of a Multitude, amongst whom Christianity is not scoff'd at, and Pretences to Purity are in Fashion. Those who were any ways devout on that Day, which he points at, or can but remember that they wish'd to be Godly, will swallow with Greediness whatever ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... directors that presided over Bostock's. It was a record Christmas for Bostock's. The electric cars were thundering over the frozen streets of all the Five Towns to bring customers to Bostock's. Children dreamt of Bostock's. Fathers went to scoff and remained to pay. Brunt's was not exactly alarmed, for nothing could alarm Brunt's; but there was just a sort of suspicion of something in the air at Brunt's that did not make for odious self-conceit. People seemed to become intoxicated when they went ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... what am I? The victim of infidelity and you, the bearer of a cursed existence, the scoff and scorn of the world, the monument of a broken vow and a guilty life, a being scourged by the scorpion lash of conscience, blasted by periodical insanity, pelted by the winter's storm, scorched by the summer's heat, withered by starvation, hated by ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... o' mony a merry dint, My funny toil is now a' tint, Sin' thou came to the warl' asklent, Which fools may scoff at; In my last plack thy part's be in't ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns |
