"Sneering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... drew his brows together with an attempt at pious frowning and indignation; but there was a cold, sneering smile now turned upon him, and it changed the frown to anxiety, and made his lips twitch, and the food he had eaten ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hatchway, followed sharply by Jim's revolver, but at the foot of the ladder he turned his contemptuous, sneering face ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... one to drive with or talk with, no one to visit or play cards with—to go to the theatre and the opera and have no one to speak to! Worse than that, to be stared at and smiled at! To live in this huge palace, and know that all the horde of servants, underneath their cringing deference, were sneering at you! To face that—to live in the presence of it day after day! And then, outside of your home, the ever widening circles of ridicule and contempt—Society, with all its hangers-on and parasites, ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... dissipation he allowed himself—-she had thought the butler supercilious, and the maid who came to help her off with her wraps, snippy. She had suspected the woman of turning her little coat inside out after it was confided to her care, and sneering ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... and felt the ground rise up and collide with his shoulder blades. He got up and sat on the steps of the store shivering from outraged nerves, hugging his knees and sneering. Taylor lifted out a case of tobacco and wrenched off its top. Six cigarettes began to glow, bringing peace ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... promised by special message to be neutral; and you know neutrality means sneering at freedom, and sending arms to tyrants. England promised neutrality, and the black looked out and saw the whole civilized world marshaled against him. America, full of slaves, was of course hostile. Only the Yankee sold him poor muskets at a very high price. Mounting his horse, and riding ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... have gone very wrong indeed with the atmosphere for Clive to start sneering. In truth some jangling element unnatural to the sweet accord of Ho-la-le-la had been introduced, and did not ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... sneering laugh, Del Norte removed and flung aside his coat, saying his pistol was in it. He produced a knife, the blade of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... the young ruffian, now using that half-whining, half-sneering form of discourse peculiar alike to the vicious chevalier of Paris and his confrere of the provincial centres. Accent and slang alone distinguish between them; the argot, however, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... that he was partly bald, his red hair having died away from the fore part of his crown; his forehead was high, his eyebrows scanty, his eyes, grey and sly, with a downward tendency, his nose was slightly aquiline, his mouth rather large—a kind of sneering smile played continually on his lips, his complexion ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... Edie,' cried Harry demonstratively, 'that's an infinitesimal fraction of Pi; that's a minute decimal of this great, sneering, ugly aggregate "society" that we have to deal with whether we will or no, and that rends us and grinds us to powder if only it can once get in the thin end of a chance. Take shaky bitter old Miss Catherine for your unit, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... whose personal existence I strongly believe, and even in this age am confirmed in that belief by a Fell, nay, by a Hurd, has more power than some choose to allow. BOSWELL. Horace Walpole writing on June 10, 1778, after censuring Robertson for sneering at Las Casas, continues:—'Could Archbishop Markham in a Sermon before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel by fire and sword paint charity in more contemptuous terms? It is a Christian age.' Letters, vii.81. It was ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... great many prejudices which we cannot comprehend. They are very sensitive, and are very likely to misinterpret the expression and the actions of a stranger; your laugh might be offensive, leading them to believe you were sneering, or making fun of them, as we ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... shuddered at Vard, revelling in his genial villany, and enjoying in his death that succumbing to divine wrath which, as a spectacle, is next best to its successful defiance—even the public felt itself defrauded. What had the painter done with their hero? Where was the big sneering domineering face that figured so convincingly in political cartoons and patent-medicine advertisements, on cigar-boxes and electioneering posters? They had admired the man for looking his part so boldly; for showing the undisguised blackguard ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... say that?" exclaimed Norman, jumping up, "you are sneering at me; you will go and tell them I daresay that I threw ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... . I quitted the "Rose Cottage Hotel" at Richmond, one of the comfortablest, quietest, cheapest, neatest little inns in England, and a thousand times preferable, in my opinion, to the "Star and Garter," whither, if you go alone, a sneering waiter, with his hair curled, frightens you off the premises; and where, if you are bold enough to brave the sneering waiter, you have to pay ten shillings for a bottle of claret; and whence, if you ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Mr. William Power, in a stern voice. "I thought I should find you out at last. Come up, whoever you are!" Hardy obeyed without reply.—"Hardy!" exclaimed Mr. Power, starting back with astonishment; "is it you, Mr. Hardy?" repeated he, holding the light to his face. "Why, sir," said he, in a sneering tone, "I'm sure if Mr. Trueman was here he wouldn't believe his own eyes; but for my part I saw through you long since; I never liked saints, for my share. Will you please to do me the favour, sir, if it is not too much trouble, to empty your pockets." Hardy ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... Daisy Watson, 'what a very unpleasant girl Leucha is becoming! I 'd leave her this blessed minute and go over to Hollyhock, only perhaps Lady Crossways might be angry. Leucha gets more like her mother each day—a kind of sneering look about her face, which really gives her a most disagreeable expression. But friendship is friendship, and I won't forsake her if I can ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... of government was displeasing to the Persian nobles, whose liberty of action it was designed to curtail, and they took their revenge in sneering at the obedience they could not refuse to render. Cyrus, they said, had been a father, Cambyses a master, but Darius was only a pedler greedy of gain. The chief reason for this division of the empire into provinces was, indeed, fiscal rather than political: to arrange ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... you that I heard the captain say over and over again that these people are not savages? But what we do want is a breeze, so that we can work off the land—for how are a few men going to tow a heavy ship like this against a two-knot current? We could not move her." Then he called out, with a sneering inflection in his tones, "Come aft, comrades, and we shall drink to our ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... clerk, with a sneering smile. "But if it isn't important to him I shall catch it for letting you ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Clarke's tone was sneering. "You people don't try to understand them; you can't come down to it. Standing firm on your colour prejudice and official traditions, you expect the others to agree with you. It's an indefensible policy." He turned to ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... the exasperating, sneering words from the bandit. "Take it easy or it will be all the worse for you. Now where do you keep ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... know little of any internal response in many of the emotions, we almost always find some characteristic external movement, such as smiling, scowling, pouting, sneering, sobbing, screaming, shouting or dancing. By aid of such "expressive movements" we are sometimes able to judge the emotional state of another person. But what is the sense of these movements? At first thought, the question ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... to make but my liege service the earnest of my faith and word. I ride for Roxford this instant," and with a graceful salute to the King, and a sneering smile at De Lacy ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... of Gussie's sneering remarks filled her with the needed courage, and when Lancy sat down and passed his fingers over the keys her heart ceased to throb; the very chords had a soothing power, and when Lancy lifted his eyes to her face she replied with a look that ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... digged, I think, out of the bowels of the surely not harmless earth. And the man himself! He was primly and precisely dressed, but he had an indefinable resemblance to a goat; his hair curled like horns; and he had the thin, restless, sneering lips, the impudent, inexpressive eyes of the goat. I found myself curiously oppressed by him. I hated his slow, deliberate movements; the idea that the air he breathed should mingle with the air of the carriage, and be transferred to my own lungs and blood, was horrible ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... just contrary to the literal sense in the character of Lord Oxford; while he is in truth sneering at the splendour of Houghton, and the supposed wealth ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... finally baffled him as he had baffled him before. How he regarded Diane it was impossible to say. Sometimes he could have sworn that the man's devotion to her was that of one who, helpless, clings to a support which never fails him; at others, he treated her to a sneering intolerance, which roused the young man's ire; and, again, he would change his tone, till the undercurrent of absolute hatred drowned the studied courtesy which veneered it. And when he finally rose to leave the verandah and seek out the foreman and report himself for duty, ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... anything censurable in the curiosity which led an editor to ascertain whether a novel like "Evelina" was written by a girl of eighteen or a woman of twenty-six? But Lord Macaulay sneered at the inquiry[1], and his worshippers must go on sneering like their model—vitiis imitabile. The certificate of the London marriage (now before me) shews that it was solemnised on the 23rd July, by a clergyman named Richard Smith, in the presence of three attesting witnesses. This, and the ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the police of Kenton City cannot or will not assist him, to summon the militia to his aid. In that way only can the honor of Alleghenia be saved. And that is what Elijah Abbott will never do. There is anarchy open and flagrant in the streets of Kenton City—there is anarchy silent and sneering in the Governor's chair. God ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... truth, are apt to be regarded as of the order of topics which have dwindled into insignificance, worn out by being repeated just because they have often been repeated before; a sort of exhausted quarries and dried-up wells. There is a certain class of vain and sneering mortals, in whose conceit nothing is such proof of superior sense as discarding the greatest number of topics and arguments as obsolete or impertinent. It is to be reckoned on that some of these, on hearing again the old maxims, that a people ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... and I looked up and down the board, but saw only sneering faces. Yes, there was one, away down at the farther end, which did not sneer, but looked at me I thought pityingly, which was infinitely worse. And then, of course, there was Pennington, who sat next to me, and who looked immeasurably shamed ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... were at times members of the club, Mr. Dickie was the ripest scholar, but my predecessor at the school-house had a way of sneering at him that was as good as sarcasm. When they were on their legs at the same time, asking each other passionately to be calm, and rolling out lines from Homer, that made the inn-keeper look fearfully ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... the full liquid orbs of the Hon. Blanche Fitzroy Sackville, youngest daughter of the Lord Lieutenant. She blushed deeply. I turned pale and almost fainted. But the cold, sneering tones of a masculine voice sent the blood back again into my ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... certain gentlemen of the gown, whose awkward, spruce, prim, sneering, and smirking countenances, the very tone of their voices, and an ungainly strut in their walk, without one single talent for any one office, have contrived to get good preferment by the mere force of flattery ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... daily work the faculty he had called together. The students also greatly interested me. When it was first noised abroad that Senator Stanford was to found a new university in California, sundry Eastern men took a sneering tone and said, "What will it find to do? The young men on the Pacific coast who are as yet fit to receive the advantages of a university are very few; the State University of California at Berkeley is already ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Cressingham, for all his suave, gentlemanly shore manners, was an adept at "hazing," and was proud of the distinction of making every ship he commanded a hell to the fo'c's'le hands. Sometimes, with sneering, mocking tongue, he would compliment Challoner upon the courteous manner in which he "addressed the gentlemen for'ard." As for the other two mates, they were equally as brutal as their captain, but ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... are a good deal interested in Jack Delancy," said Henderson, in a sneering tone. The remark was a mistake, for it gave Carmen the advantage, and he did not believe it was just. He knew that Carmen was as passionless as a diamond, whatever even she ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... practical experience, is to spend itself in cynical criticism, in futile efforts to tear down without feeling the higher obligation to build up. For it is the essence of this form of Pessimism to feel that there is nothing on earth worth the trouble of building. The real is only a "sneering comment" on the ideal, and man's life is too short to ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... you're sneering at me, but I tell you if you had been there and had begun to say, 'He'll preach in our kirk no more,' I would hae struck you. And I'm chief ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... you like to call it, is your armour; and your thought, fettered and frightened, dare not leap over the fence you have put round it; and when you jeer at ideas which you pretend to know all about, you are like the deserter fleeing from the field of battle, and, to stifle his shame, sneering at war and at valour. Cynicism stifles pain. In some novel of Dostoevsky's an old man tramples underfoot the portrait of his dearly loved daughter because he had been unjust to her, and you vent your foul and vulgar jeers upon the ideas of goodness and truth because you have not the ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... The summer heat was unrelenting as bedclothes drawn over the head and lashed down. Flies in sneering circles mocked the listless hand she flipped at them. Too hot to wear many clothes, yet hating the disorder of a flimsy negligee, she panted by a window, while the venomous sun glared on tin roofs, and a few feet away snarled the ceaseless trrrrrr of a steam-riveter that was erecting ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... He sat back sneering disdainfully, as the other three merrily sat down to compose his letter, replying only by a contemptuous silence when Simpson asked him whether he wanted any kisses put in. When the letter was handed over for his inspection he only made ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... raillery, etc., have the falling circumflex, and all negative assertions of doubled meaning will have the rising. Doubt, pity, contrast, grief, supposition, comparison, irony, implication, sneering, raillery, scorn, reproach, and contempt, are all expressed by the use of the wave of the circumflex. Be sure and get the right feeling and thought, and you will find no difficulty in expressing them properly, if you have mastered the ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... be misunderstood at this point. We are not sneering at the heterogeneous collections of instruments that are gathered together under the name of orchestra in many of the public schools throughout the country. On the contrary, we regard this rapidly increasing interest in ensemble playing as one of the most significant tendencies that ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... inhabitants flying in consternation to the mountains, driving their cattle before them; the press of vehicles, laden with household effects, streaming cityward and surrounded by bands of weeping women and children, the soldiers waxed wroth and gave way to bitter, sneering denunciation of ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... youth you cherish wrathful scorn for the English boy who makes another boy his fag, and you express a sneering pity for the boy who consents to fag. You have read Dr. Birch and His Young Friends, and you would like to break the head of Master Hewlett, who shies his shoe at the poor shivering, craven Nightingale, and you ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... same. You take three thousand dollars of my money the work o' my hands and my wife's." He broke down at this point. He was not a strong man mentally. He could face hardship, ceaseless toil, but he could not face the cold and sneering face of ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... he was called among his acquaintance, had leisurely run his eye from window to window of the many lighted apartments of the house, and scanned, as he did, with many a sneering smile, the appearances within, as long as suited his pleasure, he boldly walked in, and, with all the assurance of the most favored, proceeded to ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... some instances when our soldiers are complained of, that they have been insulted by sneering remarks about "Yankees," "Northern barbarians," "Lincoln's hirelings," etc. People who use such language must seek redress through some one else, for I will not tolerate insults to our country or cause. When people forget their obligations to a Government that made ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... gladly have said nothing further. But Dr. Knott's expression was curiously intent and compelling, as he sat fingering the stem of his wine-glass. All the ideality of Julius's nature rose in protest against the half-sneering rationalism he seemed to read in that expression. Mrs. Ormiston, who had an hereditary racial appreciation of anything approaching a fight, turned her round eyes first on one speaker and then on the other provokingly, inciting them to more declared hostilities, while she ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... a sure sign that Luca's "white sneering old reproachful face" was ever in their thoughts. Yes; they must even quarrel ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... he was twenty-four hours older. Petion, Buzot, Roland, on the contrary, said that this flight of the king's was his abdication, that it was necessary to profit by it in order to prepare men's minds for the republic. Robespierre, sneering and biting his nails, as usual, asked what ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... nothing in the world less romantic than my position in the midst of a circle of sneering footmen; and, as if to put romance for ever out of the question, I was relieved from my plumed and mantled encumbrance only by the assistance of Townshend, then the prince of Bow Street officers; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... ran high. The "soreheads" and their sympathizers were known, by this time, to all the other young men of the student body. During the rest of the day's session many a "sorehead" found himself being regarded with black or sneering looks. ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... in her shameless attire, and supplies its defects with subterfuges, falser in heart even than in aspect,—she, about whom cluster men old and young, applauding with brays of laughter and coarser jeers the rancor of her wit, as it drops its laughing venom or its sneering sophisms of worldly wisdom,—even she, when the lights are fled, when the music has ceased from its own desecration, when the frenzy of wine and laughter mock her in their dead dregs, when the men who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... that was not nice to hear, and then he waved his hand. Dorothy was halfway across the room when suddenly a wall of glass rose before her and stopped her progress. Through the glass she could see the magician sneering at her because she was a weak little girl, and this provoked her. Although the glass wall obliged her to halt she instantly pressed both hands to her Magic Belt and cried ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... echoed a malicious, sneering voice. "You are a very conceited little chap! Pray, what do you want?" and out came, from a cave in the mountain, a little man with one eye in the middle of his face, and two ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... British troops march past on the day of the surrender, looking down the ranks of Americans, some trim and soldierly, as were the Continentals, and others clad in homespun or the skins of the forest. And in the ranks filing past in dejection Rodney saw the sneering face of Mogridge. The flower of the British aristocracy, sons of nobility and members of Parliament, had been subalterns under Burgoyne. Mogridge, as ever, had followed in the wake of those having money so that he might ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... entered the office Howard looked appealingly and apologetically at the boy on guard at the railing and braced himself to receive the sneering frown of the City Editor and to bear the covert smiles of his fellow reporters. But he soon saw that no one had observed his mighty spring for a foothold and his ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... a strange, sneering voice, close to my ear, with a slightly foreign accent. "Can you say where you have seen ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... on this marriage. Can't you understand that as the wife of a man in Mr. Palmer's position, nothing that has ever been connected with my previous history will be liable to touch me. Mrs. Richmond Montague," with a sneering laugh, "will have vanished, or become a myth, and Mrs. Palmer will be unassailable by any ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... waits upon the times, and utters only what he thinks the world will like to hear, who sails with the stream, admiring everything which it is "correct taste" to admire, despising everything which has not yet received that Hall-mark, sneering at the thoughts of a great thinker not yet accepted as such, and slavishly repeating the small phrases of a thinker who has gained renown, flippant and contemptuous towards opinions which he has not taken the trouble to understand, and never venturing ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... her with their engagement, objecting to her being alone with me, and she had denied nothing. Somehow this suddenly recurring memory left me hot and angry. I disliked Le Gaire; from the very first moment of gazing into his dark, sneering eyes I had felt antagonism, a disposition to quarrel; but now something more potent rose between us—the girl. I was not blind to the man's attractions; I could easily understand how he could find way to a girl's heart. But a man can judge a man best, and every instinct of my nature warned ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... seemed to pay no attention to the words, and swinging from the saddle, threw an arm over the horn, and surveyed the outfit with a sneering grin: "Saved up enough to start you an outfit of yer own, eh? You ought to done pretty good tendin' bar for six years, with what you got paid, an' what you could knock down. Go to it! I'm for you. The better you do, the ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... tore up that old paper long ago. It warn't no good to me," said Pepper. "I wouldn't take the farm at that price for a gift," and he departed with a sneering smile upon ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... "the Duke," over his shoulder, and then he turned on Presson. "That bunch of mangy pups out there for me? Why, Luke, that's opposition. And it's nasty, sneering, insulting opposition. I ought to go out there and blow ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... opinion,' said the Puddin' cynically, 'them puddin'-thieves are too clever for you; and, what's more, they're better eaters than you. Why,' said the Puddin', sneering at Bill, 'I'll back one puddin'-thief to eat more in a given time than three Puddin'-owners ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... be denied, that his chief excellence lay more in diminishing, than in aggrandizing objects; in checking, not in encouraging our enthusiasm; in sneering at the extravagances of fancy or passion, instead of giving a loose to them; in describing a row of pins and needles, rather than the embattled spears of Greeks and Trojans; in penning a lampoon or a compliment, and in praising ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... enough to love the woman whom he had loved on earth. The death of Alresca, the unaccountable appearances in the cathedral, in the train, on the steamer—everything was explained. And before that coldly sneering, triumphant face, which bore the look of life, and which I yet knew to be impalpable, I shook with the ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... the stranger, in a sneering tone. "You got just the right idea. When I say 'Stick 'em up' I mean it. Never take ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... only right to be prepared. We find also the still more expressive evidence of this spirit of evil, in the general conduct of the agents of France in her colonies—a habit of sudden encroachment, a growing arrogance, and a full exhibition of that bitter and sneering petulance, which was supposed to have been scourged out of the French by their desperate defeats towards the close of the war. All this insolence may, by possibility, pass away; but it also may go on to further inflammation, and it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... to make, or would have proved so, had these sneering politicians been provoking men to claim their constitutional rights: bloodshed would almost certainly have followed. But the leaders of the militant women ordered (and were obeyed) that no attacks on life should be part ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Guerchard, with a snarl. "But this time I see my way clearly. No more tricks—no more secret paths ... We're fighting in the light of day." He paused, and said in a clear, sneering voice, "Lupin has pluck, perhaps, ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... authorities at home an exclusive power of settling it. For this purpose he set himself down in the very midst of the territory, without another human habitation within fifty miles of him, and commenced his arduous undertaking by cutting out roads, amidst much head-shaking from the sage, and sneering from the ignorant. He however never was a man who held as a part of his creed the wise aphorism, so often quoted in the present day, 'Vox populi vox Dei;' but held steadily on in the teeth of opposition, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... flippancy, of the "great influence which the ladies are capable of exerting upon society;" and for the qualified good which the orators graciously concede that women have accomplished, or may be capable of accomplishing, they bespatter them with a sort of sneering praise that is absolutely insulting to a woman of common sense. This style of fulsome flattery, with some degree of soft attention, graciously bestowed upon women, these men deem adequate compensation for all the indignities put upon their so-called inferiors. With what ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... myriad moods of mind That through the soul come thronging, Which one was e'er so dear, so kind, So beautiful as Longing? The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment Before the Present poor and bare Can make its sneering comment. ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... me the other day, and it was in a lofty, sneering tone, too: "I doubt if these women are ever coerced or ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... Jean here, and to have a race through the woods, and then a good, jolly romp, and perhaps a "spat," before they settled down to the business of strawberry-picking! She could have spats enough with that horrid, spiteful Cuban girl, but there was no fun in those; just cold, sneering hatefulness. Thinking of her cousin Rita, Peggy gave her hat a twist and a fling, and sent it flying across the green meadow on which she ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... definition of the place he might have held but for the impediment of indolence. Mr. Will Ladislaw's sense of the ludicrous lit up his features very agreeably: it was the pure enjoyment of comicality, and had no mixture of sneering and self-exaltation. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... struck me like a blow in the face. Allan Morris had spoken of a mocking person who jeered and smiled. And that described this man exactly. There was mockery in every glance of his dull eyes; every twitch of his mouth was a fleer; with each gesture he seemed making game of one; sneering incredulity was stamped all ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... the world. She is always giving little pinpricks to the Government over here, either about maritime law or one thing or another. Then all those articles in the papers about America being too proud to fight, the sneering tone of some, even, of the leading reviews, did a lot of harm. Uncle Theodore is going to stand for what they call the true neutrality. That is to say, no munitions, no help for ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... commended himself to his Maker, and went about his own proper business. Every Sabbath, after the sermon, often also before the service, Fergus Teeman was on hand to say his word of reproof to the young minister, to interject the sneering word which, like the poison of asps, turned sweet to bitter. Had Duncan Stewart been older or wiser, he would have showed him to the door. Unfortunately he was just a simple, honest, well-meaning lad from college, trying to do his duty ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... room, "I was pretty well a castaway, without friends, without home, without any one to care for me, or show me the right course to sail on. I had got hold of some books, all about the rights of man, sneering at religion, and everything that was right, and noble, and holy; and in my ignorance I thought it all very fine, and had become a perfect infidel. All that sort of books writ by the devil's devices ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... of the Inauguration passed, and Washington was itself again—an old-fashioned Southern town of sixty thousand inhabitants, no longer asleep perhaps, but still aristocratic, skeptical, sneering in its attitude toward the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... these favours, been set again on high, having honours shown you and a Court appointed round you, you shall gladly play the part of a princess royal to these realms, never gibing, nor sneering upon this King your father, nor calling upon the memory of the wronged Queen ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... and less-respectable cafe. These young men are all free-thinkers, great dancers, singers, players of the guitar. They are immoral and slightly cynical. Their leader is the young shopkeeper, who has lived in Vienna, who is a bit of a bounder, with a veneer of sneering irony on an original good nature. He is well-to-do, and gives dances to which only the looser women go, with these reckless young men. He also gets up parties of pleasure, and is chiefly responsible for the coming of the players to the theatre this carnival. These young men are disliked, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... cares, my hero, for your impotent rage?" My uncle seized me by my thick curling hair, and turned round my face, hot with passion and streaming with tears of rage, to the gaze of my sneering enemies. "I will make you know, that you are in my house and in my power—and you shall submit to my authority, and the authority of those I ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... also, with Sir Walter Scott, the haughty nobles of the English court sneering covertly at the awkward, shambling James, pedant and bookworm. Nevertheless, his diplomacy was almost as good as that of Elizabeth herself; and, though he did some foolish things, he was very far from being ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... so?" The quack's voice had taken on a sneering intonation. "You come back here with your job not half done, with the guilty fellers loose an' runnin', an' you expect me to pay over, the five thousand dollars to ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... a cabaret. She could lead him thither, but she could not make him dance. She was one-stepping unwillingly with a young cad who insulted her subtly in everything he said and looked. She could not resent his familiarity beyond sneering at him and calling him a foolish cub. She left him and returned to the table where Peter Cheever smoked a bitter cigar. It is astonishing how sad these notorious revelers look in repose. They ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... giving him a kick, while he lay thus powerless, and sneering in his face because ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... is the use of sneering?' began the dull voice again. 'I am horribly tired, Sheila. And try how you will, you can't convince me that you believe for a moment that I am not myself, that you are as hard as you pretend. An acquaintance, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... man, and a gentleman, every inch of him—ventured to preach a sermon on the Duties of Royalty. The "Quarterly," "so savage and tartly," came down upon him in the most contemptuous style, as "a joker of jokes," a "diner-out of the first water" in one of his own phrases; sneering at him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a court, sneaking behind the anonymous, would ever have been mean enough to do to a man of his position and genius, or to any decent person even.—If I were giving advice to a young fellow of talent, with two or three facets to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... my young friend," said Minor in a sneering tone; "but the question that more nearly concerns you is how you are all going to live, granting even that there may be enough to pay the debts. Of course this great house cannot be kept afloat. You had better discharge ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... far from it. This new aspect of her exasperated him mightily. "She needs a master," he thought. The idea of taming her was delicious, seductive. "I could do it," he told himself, sneering at the obsequiousness ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... Markham's suggestion—because we love each other. That made the difference." He drew Annette's head closer on his shoulder. "I'm going to take her away to-night. She's done with all this." He turned to Mrs. Markham. Her hand still rested on the keyboard. Her face was pale, but her lips wore a sneering smile. "It is your turn, ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... turned his eyes on him now and then with sneering contempt, but said nothing. When the men had made a hasty end of their breakfast three of them started to the corral. The young man who had humorously enumerated the virtues of the All-in-One, whom the others called Spence, was of ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... little of what he had not known, "hounds are only for run-aways," this with a sneering look at odd ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... with us, to evince Imperial sympathy unfailing; And pleasant to our genial PRINCE This proof that all seems now plainsailing; With his great purpose. Some sneered, "Whim!" But general shouts now drown their sneering. A special salvo's due to him Amidst to-day's exuberant cheering. Hail the Imperial Institute! And hail the patient Prince promoter! The man who's neither cynic brute, Nor phrase-led sycophantic doter, May echo that. Our patriot tap Is old, well-kept and genuine stingo; Not the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... Gravois," answered Jan, drawing his lips until his teeth gleamed in a sneering smile. "My ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... Marshall so this morning,' I returned, pleased to find myself talking with such ease to Mr. Hamilton; but he seemed quite different to-night; evidently his brusquerie was a mere mannerism that he laid aside at times; he had lost that sneering manner that I so much disliked. I remembered Uncle Max said that he was ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... so much!" said Maggie in a sneering tone. "When I require you for my best friend it will be time enough for you to offer me that enviable position." Then she added, speaking in a low tone of intense dislike, "Is it likely that any girl would wish to make a best friend of another girl ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... he had talked himself into good humor again. "I dare say I talked a deal of nonsense; and, when I come to think it over, a good deal of what some of them said had something in it. I should like to hear it again quietly; but there were others sneering and giving themselves airs, but that puts ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Victory, in a glass case with an enclosed concealed light, was a statue, greenish gray, a few inches tall, with a sneering placidity of expression as notable as the sweep of the other white fragment. "That's Chinese," her companion decided; "it looks as old as lust." There was the stir of new arrivals—a towering heavy ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Captain Cook, meanwhile, had considerable difficulty in keeping his seat upon the rotten scaffolding. They then descended, and as Koah passed the images he snapped his fingers at them, and said something in a sneering tone. He, however, prostrated himself before the centre figure, and kissed it, and induced the captain to do the same. The captain and Mr King were then led to another division of the morai, where, in a sunk space, three or four feet deep, they took their seats between two wooden idols, Koah ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... raucous and sneering, interrupted his enthusiasm. "Just stick around, Mr. Camera Man, and you'll get a chance to do another bit of real life that ain't faked. I'm goin' to hammer ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer." Pope {Essay On Man, (1733), ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... that the heart he most cared for applauded and sympathized with his hopes and his failures Adam could be silent and be calm. To Jerrem alone the cause of this alteration was apparent, and with all the lynx-eyed sharpness of vexed and wounded vanity he tried to thwart and irritate Adam by sneering remarks and covert suggestions that all must now give way to him: it was nothing but "follow my leader" and do and say what he chose—words which were as pitch upon tow to natures so readily inflamed, so headstrong against government and impatient of everything which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... prick up his ears. The next minute Mr. Ludlow turned the corner. He was immaculately dressed, as usual, and his iron-grey moustache seemed to stand out just a little more pompously than ever. There was a sneering look in his eyes as he stepped into the car. It seemed to be saying: "They thought they could beat me, did they? ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... air, and the black, in a cool, sneering tone, replied: "Say your prayers 'fore you come nigher, for, so help me God, you'm ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... leaning back in his chair and sneering. "Behave yourselves! This is no country for ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... impossible not to feel the sneering accusation under the words. It was as impossible to answer. Again Dan's face flushed as he said, "No, we do not ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... fancy that a line of soldiers, or the more civic array of paltry policemen, or of doited special constables, protecting a couple of judges who flounder in awkward gowns and wigs through ill-paved streets, followed by a few sneering advocates and preceded by two or three sheriffs or their substitutes, with their swords, which trip them, and a provost and some bailie-bodies trying to look grand, the whole defended by a poor iron mace, and advancing each with a different step, to the sound ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... himself. He strove as best he might to couple together the prevailing cant of office-holders against "the destructive spirit of abolitionism" and a comparatively mild rebuke of the Missouri usurpation. [Footnote: Its phraseology was adroit enough to call forth a sneering compliment from Speaker Stringfellow, who wrote to the "Squatter Sovereign": "On Tuesday the Governor sent in his message, which you will find is very well calculated to have its effect with the Pennsylvania Democracy. If ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... most grotesque expression of interest or pleasure—(Tunc immensa cavi spirant mendacia folles!)—and you had a famous display of grimace and deferential civility, in bad French or worse Italian. We have seen him sneering and leering as he made his way round a drawing-room at an evening party, and bowing like a French perruquier to some absurd fool of a foreigner; and we have seen him, a minute after, holding up his head and cocking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... them also. There were times when I could not but think less of the boy, seeing him rock convulsed over antics of Irene that have been known to every nursemaid since the year One. While I stood by, sneering, he would give me the ecstatic look that meant, "Irene is really very entertaining, ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... to strike Dave Carson a blow in the face. It was as though he had suddenly plunged into cold water, and, for the moment, he could not get his breath. The sneering words of Len Molick rang in ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... tottered, then his eye rapidly sought for Schahabarim. But the priest of Tanith had alone remained in his place; and Hamilcar could see only his lofty cap in the distance. All were sneering in his face. In proportion as his anguish increased their joy redoubled, and those who were behind shouted amid ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... generous judgment passed by Goethe on the "Faustus" of his English predecessor in tragic treatment of the same subject is somewhat more than sufficient to counterbalance the slighting or the sneering references to that magnificent poem which might have been expected from the ignorance of Byron or the incompetence of Hallam. And the particular note of merit observed, the special point of the praise conferred, by the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to obviate any such sneering remarks as: "What could be, pray, the size of the mouth of a child in his mother's womb, and how could it grasp such a large ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... seemed especially to resent her music lessons, alluding to them with a sort of sneering impatience. She felt that he despised them as amateurish, and secretly resented it. He was often impatient, too, of the time she gave to the baby. His own conduct with the little creature was like all the rest of him. He would go to the nursery, much to Betty's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... but are morally even worse, than the labor men who are guilty of the second type of wrongdoing, because less is to be pardoned those who have no such excuse as is furnished either by ignorance or by dire need. When the Department of Agriculture was founded there was much sneering as to its usefulness. No Department of the Government, however, has more emphatically vindicated its usefulness, and none save the Post-Office Department comes so continually and intimately into touch with the people. The two citizens ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and I daresay you do," he said, with a sneering laugh that made me long to haul off and hit the fellow between the eyes; "she's a nuisance, and if I ever again see her prowling about my house and practising her infernal fooleries on my wife, I'll put a bullet through her. But the man I ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... glittering eye deceived many as to the suffering she endured. Her gaze restlessly sought the figure that had caused her emotion, and as she met the person's glance, a shudder passed over her. At first her voice trembled with weakness, but meeting the mocking, sneering triumph in that sarcastic face, the blood boiled in her veins, and trembling with indignation, she startled the audience with the wild burst of scorn she threw into the part she was representing. The stranger at first turned pale with anger and surprise at the ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... little lady," said the sneering voice. "You are not going to get away from us this time until we get what we want. Just a little document or two is all we want. Quick now—hand ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... Thou wert of sneering, cynical Voltaire, The only friend; thy power urged Balzac's mind To glorious effort; surely Heaven designed Thy devotees superior ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of the camel, until they possess one themselves. These unemotional animals watch the horses' play with lips turned up in derision, and hardly deign to move their heads from the bush or branch on which they are feeding. Many of the prospectors, though openly sneering at the camels as slow and unmanageable beasts, secretly envied us our ability to travel in hot weather, whilst they had nothing to do but to kick their heels and be thankful they had feed and water for their ponies. And they envied ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... desert-prince will not succumb even in his worst extremity, and he lashes his tormentors with wild but strong bursts of withering satire. But Job was down, and his cool friends went on imperturbably, probing his weakness, sneering at his excuses, and, I suspect, rejoicing not a little in his wild outbreaks of pain and despair. The book is one of the world's monuments, and it has been placed there to remind all people that dwell on earth of their ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... eligible?" he asked, quickly; and then his brave young face grew fiery red under his mother's slow, sneering smile. "I do not mean that; of course I am not free or eligible in that sense of the word, yet I think I am quite as well able to entertain young and pretty girls as ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... His ugly sneering face was close above mine. Then he put out his hands and gripped my shoulders as he had ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... from the girl's unresisting hands. "H'm! Barrie. I don't go much on him. He's too sissy for me. But I could have guessed the other Ned Bannister would be reading something like that," he concluded, a flicker of sneering contempt ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... Downes stepped nearer and his sneering look would have enraged me at another time. But I felt that I had the whip-hand ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... loving, and being loved by, a woman, is the true vision—and the more likely to be the true one, that, when he gives way to selfishness, he loses faith in the vision, and sinks back into the commonplace unfaith of the beggarly world—a disappointed, sneering worshipper of power and money—with this remnant of the light yet in him, that he grumbles at the gloom its departure has left behind. He confesses by his soreness that the illusion ought to have been true; he seldom confesses that he ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... the air, and the black, in a cool, sneering tone, replied: 'Say your prayers 'fore you come ony nigher, for, so help me God, you're ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... an ax and bloodstained sheets. Those jurists! Very well, I'll prove it to you! You will stop sneering at the psychological side of the affair! To Siberia with your Maria Ivanovna! I will prove it! If philosophy is not enough for you, I have something substantial for you. It will show you how correct my philosophy is. Just give ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... the center of a ray of moonlight, as he spoke, and it lighted up his red sneering face. Lucy and Paul could see him plainly and each felt a little shiver of aversion. But neither said anything and, in truth, standing in the dark by themselves they were ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... thought of seeing her injured mother made her start back, and run half wild into the fatal castle. Rozella used frequently to throw herself in her way; and on hearing her sighs, and seeing her tears, would burst into a sneering laugh at her folly; to avoid which laugh, the poor princess first suffered herself to throw off all her principles of goodness and obedience, and was now fallen into the very contempt she ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... presently this conversation ended, and we were summoned in to coffee. After which the Captain sang songs with Miss Brough; Tidd looked at her and said nothing; I looked at prints, and Mrs. Brough sat knitting stockings for the poor. The Captain was sneering openly at Miss Brough and her affected ways and talk; but in spite of his bullying contemptuous way I thought she seemed to have a great regard for him, and to bear ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... drew; But a sudden deep repugnance to his presence thrilled me through; Then I saw his face was cruel, by the look that o'er it stole, Then I felt his breath was poison, by the shuddering of my soul, Then I guessed his purpose evil, by his lip in sneering curled, And I knew he slandered mankind, by my knowledge of ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson |
