"Disdainful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... despair, is knocking off an article against the Opera. Well now, my dear fellow, you can do this play; listen to it and think it over, and I will go to the manager's office and think out three columns about your man and your disdainful fair one. They will be in ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... who received no honour or respect; so that even the Tartars appointed to attend them, however low their condition, always went before them, and took the upper places, and even often obliged them to sit behind their backs. They are irritable and disdainful to other men, and beyond belief deceitful; speaking always fair at first, but afterwards stinging like scorpions. They are crafty and fraudulent, and cheat all men if they can. Whatever mischief they intend they carefully conceal, that no one may provide or find a remedy for their wickedness. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... itself, however, is not of much importance, for I believe he really likes you. But, after that, he told me of his love for me. Perhaps I was a little too insolent, too disdainful. I do not know exactly how far I went; but I found myself in such a perplexing, such a painful, such an extraordinary situation, that I dared everything ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... for you to atone, my dear girl,' replied the poet, in a soft tone under which a disdainful anger could be felt, 'my family has not achieved its illustrious name through the intercession of any actor. From this day henceforth I gladly renounce the theater and all that is connected with it. Accordingly,—I wish you good-day.' And, unclasping the arms that imprisoned ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... Inn, which he had been sadly neglecting. If she knew everything! it appeared to Dick that Chatty's clear dove's eyes (to which he all at once had attributed an insight and perception altogether above them) would slay him with the disdainful dart which pierces through and through subterfuge and falsehood. That he should have ventured, knowing what he knew, to approach her at all with the semblance of love: that he should have dared,—oh, he knew, well he knew, how, once the light of clear truth was let ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... minutes too early, and it was impossible that she should be there. Yet there she was, in her white dress, leaning up against the wooden railing, as if swept and then left there in her detachment, so inaccessible, so isolated was she, so unaware or so disdainful of the couples, the young devotees of passion, who had made the elm tree their meeting-place. She was there too soon, yet about her there was no air of haste, but rather of brooding and delay. You would have said of her ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... Oh, let him not approach me. Why have you brought me back to this loathed being; The abode of falsehood, violated vows, And injured love? For pity, let me go; For, if there be a place of long repose, I'm sure I want it. My disdainful lord Can never break that quiet; nor awake The sleeping soul, with hollowing in my tomb Such words as fright her ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... honourable reluctance always withheld him from seeking any such sign in the short intervals when he could have tried to go beneath the surface. On the other hand, this apparent indifference piqued her pride, and made her stiff, cold, and almost disdainful whenever there was any approach between them. Her vanity might be flattered by the knowledge that she was beyond his reach; but it would have been still more gratified could she have discovered any symptoms of ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... finding this phenomenon even partially comprehended by the powers that be. It is truly a melancholy thing to meet in the highest quarters so little sympathy with the noblest efforts of the popular mind, and to witness the cold neglect and even disdainful suspicion with which the most useful and valuable devices are often received, or rather, we should say, haughtily disregarded and rejected. Seldom or never do we find these inventions appreciated according to their merits. The Government ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... unexpected tenderness of a sentimental time. The characters of the great Texan and Californian drama are like our hackneyed friends, the Vikings, with a touch, if we may use the term, of spooniness. Their humour is often nothing more than a disdainful trifling with death; they seize the comic side of manslaughter very promptly, and enjoy all the mirth that can be got out of revolvers and grizzly bears. In Mr. Bret Harte's poems of "The Spelling Bee" and of "The Break-up of the Society upon the Stanislaw," the fun is of this practical sort. The ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... to Beauchamp. Her desire was to see Roland, and open her heart to her brother; for now it had to be opened. Not a minute must be lost to prevent further mischief. And who was guilty? she. Her heart clamoured of her guilt to waken a cry of innocence. A disdainful pity for the superb young savage just made ludicrous, relieved him of blame, implacable though he was. He was nothing; an accident—a fool. But he might become a terrible instrument of punishment. The thought of that possibility gave it an aspect of retribution, under which her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her gloves a disdainful, careless twirl, and went on her way to her room. To her astonishment, a few moments later, she heard the front door ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... erect in her carriage, staring at the mob with naming and disdainful eyes. Not a tear moistened her eyes; not a word, not a cry issued from her firmly-compressed lips. Even when her carriage, turning around the corner, gained at last a free field and sped away with thundering noise, there was no change whatever ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... the sixth form or other study boys would particularly sympathise with his late associates. Since the previous evening he had been cool with Duncan, and the rest had long rather despised him as a boy who'd do anything to be popular; so he sat there silent, looking as disdainful as he could, and not touching the tea, for which he felt disinclined after the recent potations. But the contemptuous exterior hid a self-reproving heart, and he felt how far more noble Owen and Montagu ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... her voice quivered with indignation and anger, "was the Abbess of the Ursulines. Your suspicions are base, worthy of you and unworthy of me, M. le Vidame! Diane!" she continued sharply, taking her sister's arm, and casting a disdainful glance at Bezers, "let us go. I want to be with my husband. I am stifled in ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... had finished this declaration, Cagatinta whispered some words in the ear of the alcalde; but the latter only replied by a shake of the shoulders, and an expression of disdainful incredulity. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... a measure after he had spoken with Ingigerd Hahlstroem in the club-house. The girl listened unsympathetically, if not ironically, to his account of his new occupation. Ritter, Willy and Lobkowitz were secretly outraged at her disdainful remarks, especially since they observed that Frederick was still entangled in the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... threw her another disdainful glance and darted off into the thick of the crowd. A moment later Pollyanna heard his strident call of "paper, paper! Herald, ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... portraits. Chaucer's face is round, good-humoured, constitutionally pensive, and thoughtful. You see in it that he has often been amused, and that he may easily be amused again. Spenser's is of sharper and keener feature, disdainful, and breathing that severity which appertains to so many of the Elizabethan men. A fourteenth-century child, with delicate prescience, would have asked Chaucer to assist her in a strait, and would not have been disappointed. A sixteenth-century child in like ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... daughter of Madame Misard (Aunt Phasie). After illness rendered her mother unfit for work, Flore replaced her as gatekeeper at the railway crossing at Croix-de-Maufras. She was a tall and strong girl of eighteen, with a magnificent head of fair hair; disdainful of the male, she had thrashed at least one would-be lover. When she was quite little she had loved Jacques Lantier, and now it was to him alone she would have given herself. Jacques did not care for her, however, and ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... had risen to devote The mystic wafer, from the band that stood About the altar came a sudden note Of sweetness over my disdainful mood; A voice that, speaking from the brazen throat Of warlike trumpets, came like the subdued Moan of a people bound in sore distress, And thinking on lost ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... then, and with the pride and majesty habitual to her, entered the adjoining room, and, having taken three steps, stopped with a disdainful air, waiting for George ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... subjects; and the Greek sculptor as a workman almost exclusively intellectual, having only a sort of accidental connexion with the material in which his thought was expressed. He is fancied to have been disdainful of such matters as the mere tone, the fibre or texture, of his marble or cedar-wood, of that just perceptible yellowness, for instance, in the ivory-like surface of the Venus of Melos; as being occupied only with forms as abstract almost ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... rebuff from Sebastian of Portugal, to whom they had offered Margaret of Valois in marriage. The young king had replied, through Malicorne, "that they were both young, and that therefore about eight years hence that matter might be better talked of," "which disdainful answer," the English ambassador wrote from the French court, "is accepted here in very ill part, and is thought not to be done without ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... genteel: Ambitious at any rate to be esteemed a wit; and with that view always affecting to keep company with wits; a great reader, and a violent admirer of poetry; happy in the thoughts of being reputed Swift's concubine; but still aiming to be his wife. By nature haughty and disdainful, looking with contempt upon her inferiors; and with the smiles of self-approbation upon her equals; but upon Dr. Swift, with the eyes of love: Her love was no doubt ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... Claggett," he went on, in too quiet a voice to be otherwise than poisonous, "until you are more yourself. Your conduct and tone are unbecoming to a gentleman," Osterbridge said, with his head held high in disdainful dignity. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... at him, and laughed; a cold laugh, disdainful, yet not bitter. "You wanted that before, my lord; yet you neglected the opportunity my folly gave you. I thank you—you, after God—for ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... satisfied him had he observed, instead of meditated, that the truth with regard to the author of the anonymous letters might have become clear to him, as clear as the courage of Madame Steno in meeting danger—as the blind confidence of Madame Gorka—as the disdainful imperturbability of Maitland before his rival and the suppressed rage of that rival—as the finesse of Hafner in sustaining the general conversation—as the assiduous attentions of Ardea to Fanny—as the emotion of the latter—as clear as Alba's ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... all three, first at one, then at another. He floundered, stupefied. Here was this loving girl, clinging to him as though he might vanish, and he had left her that morning a disdainful beauty. Then here was this Meagre Shanks with his mysterious ten minutes, and here was this dumfounding product of those ten minutes. Driscoll put forth an ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... shall be hung before the sun, so God hath assured me." When Mr. David delivered this message, the captain seemed to be much moved, but after a little conference with Lethington, he returned to Mr. Lindsay, and dismissed him with a disdainful countenance and answer. When he reported this to Mr. Knox, he said, "Well, I have been earnest with my God anent that man, I am sorry that it should so befal his body, yet God assureth me, there is mercy for his soul. ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... terra dura, amongst the rocks that dip down to the water's edge. Having executed one or two throws, there comes me a voracious fish, and makes a startling dash at 'Meg with the muckle mouth.'[10] Sharply did I strike the caitiff; whereat he rolled round disdainful, making a whirl in the water of prodigious circumference; it was not exactly Charybdis, or the Maelstrom, but rather more like the wave occasioned by the sudden turning of a man-of-war's boat. Being hooked, and having by this time set his nose peremptorily down the stream, he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... that more or less inevitably accompanied it. The ancients admired strength more than the moderns have, at least until lately. But no one can refuse to admire such strength as Milton's, so continuous, so triumphant over exceptional obstacles, so disdainful of all petty or personal ends. There is a majesty about it to which one scarcely knows any real parallel. Strength implies purpose and art implies unity of conception; the instinct of art was only less strong in Milton than the resolute will; so that it {88} ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... at her for a moment, shrugged his shoulders indifferently and his pale lips traced a smile of disdainful mockery. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... instant Danny O'Flannigan's eyebrows and shoulders rose in an expressive gesture, and his hands made a disdainful sweep; ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... at pictures, and saw the state dining room where they feed 50 diplomats at a time on mud turtle and champagne, and a boy about my size looked sort of disdainful at me, and I told him it he would come outside I would mash his jaw, and he said I could try it right there if I was in a hurry to go, and I was starting to give him a swift punch when a detective took hold ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... those that shall bear them aright. What made he ready for? it was for sufferings; and why made he ready for them but because he saw they wrought out for him a 'far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory?' (2 Cor 4:17). This made Moses also spurn at a crown and a kingdom; to look with a disdainful eye upon all the glory of Egypt. He saw the reward that was laid up in heaven for those that suffered for Christ. Therefore, 'he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... treasures. She threw herself listlessly into the chair and began to pull over the things. Broken games and animals, dolls' dresses painfully tailored by unskilled fingers, disjointed members,—sorry relics of past pleasures,—one by one Miss Terry seized them between disdainful thumb and finger and tossed them into the fire. Her face showed not a qualm at parting with these childhood treasures; only the stern sense of a good housekeeper's duty fulfilled. With queer contortions the bits writhed on the coals, and finally flared into dissolution, vanishing up chimney in a ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... by the silliness of her birdlike brain, inflated and empty as any cracknel, he held his tongue, and silently resigned himself to let her go on to the bitter end. But this determined silence exasperated Madame, seemed to her more insulting, more disdainful than anything. Her sharp voice became discordant, and growing higher and shriller, stung and buzzed, like the ceaseless teasing of a fly, till at last her enraged husband in his turn, burst out ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... and try to correct some of his inaccuracies, but he never attempted it again. Old Russell listened attentively and respectfully, but when the lecture was over he dismissed the subject with a superior shake of the head and the disdainful remark, "Well, sir, I have heerd tell of people who think with you." Never a bit though did he make any change in his own peculiar rendering of the Bible and Book ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Limouth, which, if thou comest in May, will be in all their pride of woods and waterfalls, not to speak of its august cliffs, and the green ocean, and the vast Valley of Stones, all which live disdainful of the seasons, or accept new honours only from the winter's snow. At all events come down, and cease not to believe me much and ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... him, Brent did not miss the suppressed fury in her eyes or the disdainful tilt of her chin. Her bearing was that of a barbaric princess, and a princess of meteorically vivid beauty. There had been a deliberate purpose in the clear carrying tones with which she had repulsed Jase Mallows. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... wood. Meantime, the women from the fountain came, Whom soon the swine-herd follow'd, driving three His fattest brawns; them in the spacious court He feeding left, and to Ulysses' side Approaching, courteously bespake the Chief. Guest! look the Greecians on thee with respect At length, or still disdainful as before? Then, answer thus Ulysses wise return'd. 200 Yes—and I would that vengeance from the Gods Might pay their insolence, who in a house Not theirs, dominion exercise, and plan Unseemly projects, shameless as they are! Thus they conferr'd; ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... thou, Edwy, with disdainful mien The little Naiad of the Downton Wave? High 'mid the rocks, where her clear waters lave The circling, gloomy basin.—In such scene, Silent, sequester'd, few demand, I ween, That last perfection ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... swept away, leaving the monkish messenger alone, the king's disdainful laugh still in his ears. With William were his brother Henry, long at odds with him, now reconciled, William de Breteuil, and several other nobles. Quickly they vanished among the thickly clustering trees, and soon broke up into small groups, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... her tusks to bite; While he who sits to judge the fight Treads on the palm with foot so white, Disdainful, And sweetly floating in the air Wanton he spreads his fragrant hair, Like Ganymede or Nireus ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... bearing, nor (least of all) the utter indifference with which he treated me. Often, when conversing, I burned to contradict him, to punish his pride by confuting him, to show him that I was clever in spite of his disdainful neglect of my presence. But I was invariably prevented from doing so ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... A disdainful shoulder gave him his answer. The door was unlocked, after immemorial Western custom, and Judith opened it. Lee heard her little ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... or imaginary advantages which in his opinion his country possesses. If he grants nothing to other nations, neither does he solicit anything for his own. The censure of foreigners does not affect him, and their praise hardly flatters him; his position with regard to the rest of the world is one of disdainful and ignorant reserve: his pride requires no sustenance, it nourishes itself. It is remarkable that two nations, so recently sprung from the same stock, should be so opposite to one another in their manner ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... pretty Grand Duchess, as he had mentally nicknamed Rita. In the afternoon she had appeared, he could not imagine why, to regard him as a portion of the scum of the earth. He thought her extremely pretty, and full of charm, yet he could not help feeling provoked, in spite of his amusement, at the disdainful curl at the corners of her mouth when she addressed him. Now, he was equally at a loss to understand why or how the Grand Duchess was replaced by a gentle and tender-voiced maiden, who looked up at him from under her long curved lashes ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... man, dressed in a suit of gray, and with a spy glass hanging at his side, suspended by a strap from his shoulder, and with a young and pretty, but rather disdainful looking lady on his arm, ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... from the circle at this lese-majeste. The disdainful condescension of a new girl was more than they ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... set in town next winter. The memories and the methods of one season were tided over to another. Gertrude was still "gay"—perhaps gayer—and a little more openly impatient with her husband, and a little more openly disdainful of him. Young men swarmed and fluttered, and those who had "never tried it on" before seemed inclined ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... bulwark, called out to him, "Surrender! surrender to the King of Heaven! Ah, Glacidas, you have foully wronged me with your words, but I have great pity on your soul and the souls of your men." The Englishman, disdainful of her summons, was striding on across the drawbridge, when a cannon-shot from the town carried it away, and Gladsdale perished in the water that ran beneath. After his fall, the remnant of the English abandoned all further resistance. Three hundred of them ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... personal appearance, says: 'Studied at full face, she was seen to have an ample brow, something higher, and receding less abruptly, than the average brow of her princely kindred; a pair of noble blue eyes, and a delicately curved upper lip, that was more attractive for being at times slightly disdainful, and even petulant in its expression. No woman was ever more fortunate than our young Queen in the purity and delicate pinkiness of her glowing complexion.... Her Majesty's countenance was strangely eloquent of tenderness, refinement, and unobtrusive ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... at him with a disdainful curve of the lips that could scarcely have been described as a smile of welcome. "I imagine it would take a good deal of that sort of thing to make much impression upon you, Mr. ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... which, as you may perhaps be aware, is one of the most peculiar features of Welsh poetry. In the ode to which I allude the poet complains of the barbarity of his mistress, Morfydd, and what an unthankful task it is to be the poet of a beauty so proud and disdainful, which sentiment I have ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... and acted upon by sedition, were but an appearance of force. The cries of Vive la nation, the friendly gestures of the insurgents, the appearance of the women extending their arms towards the soldiers through the palisades, and the presence of the municipal officers, who displayed a disdainful neutrality towards the king, shook the feeling of resistance amongst the troops, who beheld on either side the uniform of the national guard; and between the population of Paris, in whose sentiments they participated, and the chateau, which ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... let any cause remove her from Northwold, until after an event which it was hoped would render James less disdainful of his inheritance. But—'Was there ever anything more contrary?' exclaimed Jane, as she prepared to set out the table for a grand tea. 'There's Master James as pleased and proud of that there little brown girl, as if she was as fine a boy as Master Henry himself. I do believe, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the intruder, with a disdainful grunt, turned and went out, disgust in every feature,—plain, unmistakable, downright disgust, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... and the fix they were in, she did not jump up instantly and open the door, overjoyed to be able to help them. There were just four seats in the carriage, but she never moved. Beth had looked up confidently into her face, expecting sympathy and help, but was repelled by a disdainful glance. It was Beth's first experience of the wealthy world that does not care, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... they led the way through the long hall to the drawing-room. James followed, and en route he observed at the extremity of a side-hall two young people sitting with their hands together in a dusky corner. "Male and female created He them!" reflected James, with all the tolerant, disdainful wisdom of ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... his growing audience of guests, clerks and bell-hops could answer his questions, Mr. Congdon swept the whole company with a fierce, disdainful glare and began mobilizing the entire day watch of porters and bell-boys to convey his luggage to his room. One of the young gentlemen was engaged at the moment in winking at the girl attendant at the cigar counter when the agitated traveler thrust the point of an enormous umbrella into his ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... jeered, sneered, flouted, Sniffed, nonsensed, infideled, fudged, with his face Looked scorn too nicely shaded to be shouted, And, with each inch of person and of vesture, Contrived to hint some most disdainful gesture. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... they saw Mrs. Bryce come out on the terrace, where the butler was arranging the tea-table and chairs. She wore a soft pink gown, and a broad, rose-laden hat. She looked very young and lovely. She sauntered to meet them with her slightly disdainful smile. ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... under the its guidance of the celebrated John Gilpin, the disdainful steed now in the management of Sir Felix, "wondered what thing he'd got upon his back," we are not competent to decide; but he certainly in his progress "o'er the stones" manifested frequent impatience of restraint. These symptoms of contumaciousness were nevertheless borne ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... that they might have one or two to direct them, which by no means was granted, but bid us doe as the rest. We kept still our resolution, & knowing more tricks then they, would not goe back, which should be but disdainful & prejudiciall. We told them so plainly that we would finish that voyage or die by the way. Besides that the wildmen did not complaine of us att all, but incouraged us. After a long arguing, every one had the ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... the Queen in "Ruy Blas" in 1840; it was this one who represented Venus. She was admirably shaped. Another was more than pretty: she was handsome and superb. Nothing more magnificent could be seen than her black, sad eyes, her disdainful mouth, her smile at once bewitching and haughty. She was called Maria, I believe. In a tableau which represented "A Slave Market," she displayed the imperial despair and the stoical dejection of a nude queen offered for sale to the first bidder. Her tights, which were torn at the ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... the charmed flower; and while Oberon was to streak Titania's eyes with some of the juice thereof, Puck was to anoint the eyes of the disdainful youth with another quantity of it, that he might be compelled to adore a sweet Athenian lady in love with him. Puck was then dismissed with instructions to meet Oberon before the first cock-crow. Titania, in another part of the wood, distributed her ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the milestones are grave-stones;" "He had gone but a little way before he espied a foul fiend coming;" "When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance." ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... resting lazily after a generous dinner, amused themselves by disputing about their good looks. The Leopard was very proud of his glossy, spotted coat and made disdainful remarks about the Fox, whose appearance he declared ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... look half friendly, half disdainful. "I like living," she said. "In the country in what you call the quiet, it is only to be half alive: we are always living here. But you never come to see us ride, to be among the crowd. You are never at the opera. You don't talk as ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... I had conceived. The next morning, being up earlier than usual and wandering about on strange, inclosed decks unfamiliar to my feet, I beheld astonishing unsuspected populations of men and women—crowds of them—a healthy, powerful, prosperous, independent, somewhat stern and disdainful multitude, it seemed to me. Those muscular, striding girls in caps and shawls would not yield an inch to me in their promenade; they brushed strongly and carelessly past me; had I been a ghost they would have walked through me. They were, and had been, all living—eating ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... but a disgraceful memory. They would no longer have to plead for freight from port to port as though begging alms. Now they were on the point of achieving importance, and were going to find themselves solicited by consignors and disdainful merchants. The Mare Nostrum was going to be worth its weight ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sunshine with his noble companies of amorous and happy people, these Shadow-lovers, these Leut-lovers, these Fleshly Sentimentalists, writhe in shame, and seek refuge in a deeper darkness. How strained and inhuman, too; and one might add, how mad and irrelevant—that high, cold, disdainful translunar scorn with which the "moral-immoralism" of Nietzsche scourges our poor flesh and blood. One turns with relief to Zarathustra after associating with pious people. But, after Rabelais, even that terrific psychologist seems ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... of the young newly married leaning upon the offered arm; eyes without fever, desire without appetite, voluptuousness without desire, audacious gestures regulated like the ballet for a spectacle, and tranquil defences disdainful of haste through their security; the romance of the body and the mind, soothed, pacified, resuscitated, happy; an idleness of passion at which the stone satyrs lurking in the green coulisses laugh with their goat-laughter. Adieu to the bacchanales led by Gillot, that last ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... Pennington referred to this, asking half jokingly if Margaret Elizabeth had ever discovered the identity of that person; putting a somewhat disdainful emphasis upon "person." ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... account for the variety of passions excited within him by the mere difference of the spacing, time, or rhythm of music? In my new condition of living I notice that the soul throws out with most disdainful impatience music that was formerly beautiful to my mind and heart (or my creature); and certain types of flowing cadences (very rarely to be found), sustained in high, flowing, delicate, and soaring continuity will produce in her conditions ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... it. He did not like persiflage; it seemed an assault upon dignity, and in those early days in Washington he was full of dignity and of determination to create a dignified impression. He reared haughtily and looked about with arrogant, disdainful eyes. ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... nineteenth century, officers of the Armada, with short whiskers, curls over their foreheads, high collars with anchors embroidered in gold, and black stocks, men who had fought off Cape Saint Vincent and Trafalgar; and after them Jaime's great grandfather, an old man with large eyes and disdainful mouth, who, when Ferdinand VII returned from his captivity in France, had sailed for Valencia to prostrate himself at his feet, beseeching, along with other great hidalgos, that he reestablish the ancient customs and crush the growing ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... with dame Fortune. Their occupants are at the same time objects of envy and admiration, and one calls every latent cerebral resource to his aid, in order to guess where on earth they were to be found empty. And how consoling is the disdainful glance of the chauffeur who, having a fare, is hailed by the unfortunate, desperate pedestrian that has a pressing engagement at the ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... my mistress, and presented to her a paper with more respect than that of a counsellor when he delivers a petition to a judge, saying, "Be so good, madam, as to accept of this part, which I take the liberty to offer." She received it in a cold and disdainful manner, with out even deigning to answer his compliments.'-Gil Blas, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... Suzette Beauvais," Felice replied, absently. She was not thinking of Suzette. She had forgotten even the stranger, whose disdainful eyes, fixed upon herself, had moved her sweet nature to something like a rebellious anger. Her thoughts were on the beautiful young mother of alien race, whose name, for some reason, she was forbidden to speak. She saw her glide, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... relish of the situation, the homage commanded and the sensation created by this inopportune and unheralded arrival: deliberately Number One mounted the dais and posed himself in the throne-like chair. Then, as his look read face after face, he smiled with twitching and disdainful nostrils. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... disdainful pity for me shone out of her dim smile; then she exclaimed in a voice that I hear at this moment: "It's my life!" As I stood at the door ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... disappointment and sorrow. Not that we are to have no cherished and chosen friends, or that we should despise the needs and gifts, the privileges and blessings of friendship, which in truth our nature requires; nor again that we are to regard with skeptical, disdainful eyes the world and human nature; but we must not deceive ourselves by trying to find in any created being that which it does not possess. We must not endeavor to get from any creature that perfect satisfaction which we need, and which the Creator alone can give. Neither must we seek ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... to pardon you, nothing to command you," she said with an air more wearied than stern, humiliating, and disdainful. "I only ask you to leave me in peace, and never appear again in ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... deceptions of society, for the sufferings of the obscure. If the successful adventurer, Lesable, and the handsome Maze are the objects of his veiled irony, he maintains, or feels a sorrowful, though somewhat disdainful tenderness, for poor old Savon, the old copying clerk of the Ministry of Marine, who is the drudge of the office and whose colleagues laugh at him because his wife deceived him, sans ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... companions evidently expected to find her, her spirits rose, and for the first time in her existence a sense of ambition awoke within her. It would be something to conquer Lucy Merriman—the proud, the disdainful, the unpleasant Lucy. After what Professor Merriman had said, Irene made up her mind to say nothing more in public against Lucy; but her real feelings of dislike toward her ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... struggles that sometimes take place between the self-willed artist and his rebellious art. Nothing is more moving than these fits of rage alternating with invocation, in turn supplicating or imperative, addressed to a disdainful or fugitive muse. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... was, that though this spectacle filled me with horror, the sultan my uncle, instead of testifying his sorrow to see the prince his son in such a condition, spat on his face, and exclaimed, with a disdainful air, "This is the punishment of this world, but that of the other will last to eternity;" and not content with this, he pulled off his sandal, and gave the corpse of his son ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... called to see his niece. Severe in taste, he cast long, disdainful looks at the tapestries and the artistic trifles that adorned the house. In his opinion, it was rubbish and the luxury of a decaying age. He never changed his tune, always riding the hobby-horse ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... sympathies. She uttered a disdainful sniff. "To be sure he takes his army with him, otherwise the Constitutionalistas would kill him. Wait until Pancho Gomez meets this army of Longorio's. Ha! You ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... description of them. His silence respecting the Atomists might lead us to suppose that here we have a trace of them. But the Atomists were not Materialists in the grosser sense of the term, nor were they incapable of reasoning; and Plato would hardly have described a great genius like Democritus in the disdainful terms which he uses of the Materialists. Upon the whole, we must infer that the persons here spoken of are unknown to us, like the many other writers and talkers at Athens and elsewhere, of whose endless activity ...
— Sophist • Plato
... grandeur of courage to return to life for the consideration of another, as many excellent persons have done: and 'tis a mark of singular good nature to preserve old age (of which the greatest convenience is the indifference as to its duration, and a more stout and disdainful use of life), when a man perceives that this office is pleasing, agreeable, and useful to some person by whom he is very much beloved. And a man reaps by it a very pleasing reward; for what can be more delightful than to be so dear to his wife, as upon her account ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... sedan-chairs passed them. And many times by the roadside Mackay saw something that reminded him forcibly of why he had come to Formosa—a heathen shrine. The whole countryside seemed dotted with them. And as he watched the worshipers coming and going, and heard the disdainful words from the priests cast at the hated foreigners, he realized that he was face to face with an awful opposing force. It was the great stone of heathenism he had come to break, and the question was, would he be as successful ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... could induce that wild heart to accept more than one master—more than one friend. For Satan there was in the animal world Black Bart, and in the world of men, Dan Barry. These were enough. For all the rest he kept the disdainful speed of his slender legs or the terror of his teeth and trampling hoofs. Even if she could have induced the stallion to eat from her hand she could never have made him willing to trust himself to her guidance. Some ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... goat, with restless eye, has just stretched her head over the edge of the precipice, and for an instant fixes on him her astonished glance. Then, as if re-assured, defying his powerlessness, with a disdainful lip she quietly crops some tufts of grass growing on ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... spokes again with disdainful obedience, and the red-faced man was moving forward grunting to himself, when through the open skylight the hail "On deck there!" arrested him short, attentive, and with a sudden change to amiability in the expression ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... explanation irrelevant to the spirit and power of Dickens. Very delicate, slender, and bizarre talents are indeed incapable of being used for an outside purpose, whether of public good or of private gain. But about very great and rich talent there goes a certain disdainful generosity which can turn its hand to anything. Minor poets cannot write to order; but very great poets can write to order. The larger the man's mind, the wider his scope of vision, the more likely it will be that anything suggested to him will seem significant ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... stranger's wiping the sweat off his brow and going away. Fyodor Timofeyitch gave a disdainful sniff, lay down on his mattress, and closed his eyes; Ivan Ivanitch went to the trough, and the pig was taken away by the old woman. Thanks to the number of her new impressions, Kashranka hardly noticed how the day passed, and in the evening she was installed with ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of intellect. But his heavy jaw, his long fang-like teeth, and his thick lips express the grossest appetites. He gives you the idea of a minister grafted on a savage. When he assists the Pope in the ceremonies of the Holy Week he is magnificently disdainful and impertinent. He turns from time to time in the direction of the diplomatic tribune, and looks without a smile at the poor ambassadors, whom he cajoles from morning to night. You admire the actor who bullies his public. But when ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... quite happily inspired in his conception of the face of the charming old man I knew of old in his haunts of the Boulevard Saint-Michel. It is too strong a face, too disdainful, with too much character. Verlaine was sympathetic, simple, childlike, humble; when he put on an air of pride it was with a deliberate yet delightful pose, a child's pose. There is an air of almost military rigidity about the pride of this ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... decked in Royal attire, her shining limbs were veiled in broidered silk; about her shoulders was a purple robe, and round her neck and arms were rings of well-wrought gold. She was stately and splendid to see, with pale brows and beautiful disdainful eyes where dreams seemed to sleep beneath the shadow of her eyelashes. On she swept in all her state and pride of beauty, and behind her came the Pharaoh. He was a tall man, but ill-made and heavy-browed, and to the Wanderer it seemed that he was heavy-hearted too, and that care ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... are enrolled among the sons of my blood!" she said, "So are you bound to me and mine!" She moved to the further end of the table and stood there looking round upon them all. Again the slow, sweet, half-disdainful smile irradiated her features. "Well, children!—what else remains to do? What next? What next can there be but drink—smoke —talk! Man's three ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... is, about the year of Christ 1334—says, speaking of Cimabue, precisely these words: "Cimabue was a painter of Florence in the time of the author, very noble beyond the knowledge of man, and withal so arrogant and so disdainful that if there were found by anyone any failing or defect in his work, or if he himself had seen one (even as it comes to pass many times that the craftsman errs, through a defect in the material whereon he works, or through some lack in the instrument wherewith he labours), ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... certain English traveller who had been here [near Grosswardein] and of his influence over the Gypsies. One of them said that he was walking out with him one day, when they met a poor gypsy woman. The Englishman addressed her in Hungarian, and she answered in the usual disdainful way. He changed his language, however, and spoke a word or two in an unknown tongue. The woman's face lighted up in an instant, and she replied in the most passionate, eager way, and after some conversation dragged him away almost with her. After ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... thought, in all the arrogance of disdainful youth, that a woman of her age should have learnt to care for her appearance thus; or to wear becoming gowns, and arrange her hair like a ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... was not wanted. Corder, for a fellow of his make and inexperience, exhibited good form, and persistently walked his man round the ring, dodging his blows and getting in a knock for himself every now and then. Brinkman soon dropped the disdainful style in which he commenced proceedings, and became ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... is surely now-a-days too disdainful of all information that does not reach her signed and countersigned. In biography, at least, it must be a mistake to accept none but documentary evidence, since tradition, if it does not give us truth of fact, gives us what is often at least as ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... him over the ferry, and on his road he had lit upon the suit and its rejection. Rosalind, her spirit chafed with what had passed, returned his gaze haughtily. But he maintained his steadfast look as though he had been hewn out of stone; and presently, impatient and disdainful, she turned away. Then, and instantly, Harding pursued his way in silence. And Rosalind grew somehow aware that he had determined to stand at gaze until her eyes were lowered. Thereupon she classed his ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... romance—subjects exactly suited to the worthy Pedro's tastes. They were strangely battered, and stained as with salt water. How he had obtained them Lawrence would not say. The priest saw the books, but turned away from them with a disdainful glance, as if he could take no interest in subjects of a character so trivial. The contrast between the two strangers was very great. Pedro Alvarez was in figure more like an English sailor than a Spaniard. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston |
