"Leer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of early powers to try; Sudden a look of languor he descries, And well-feigned apprehension in her eyes; Train'd but yet savage in her speaking face, He mark'd the features of her vagrant race; When a light laugh and roguish leer express'd The vice implanted in her youthful breast: Forth from the tent her elder brother came, Who seem'd offended, yet forbore to blame The young designer, but could only trace The looks of pity in the Trav'ller's face: Within, the Father, who from fences nigh Had brought the ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... thing is fitted and fitting—women of plaster and parchment—to cut one's character by; who are to be spoken of, not to; who can make no excuse for people's failings, because they think they are themselves exempt from fault; who study devout looks, and leer at their lovers from under their hoods—hole-and-corner flirts, yet held up as pattern-women, bless the term! to innocent and laughter-loving maidens like myself, who having no evil to conceal, speak openly, and love ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... here assumed an actual corporeal shape. In the uncertain light shed by the lantern, I seemed to see the face of this embodied curse with an ever-changing mockery of expression; at one moment wearing the features of my father; at another those of Tom Wynne; at another the leer of the old woman I had ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... such a willing—" added Schliemann, sidling up to him with a dreadful leer on his face. He made ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the grotesque roots of trees will leer magically from the wayside to meet the uncouth gestures of the labourer and his trull; while in the smoke-thick air of mellow tavern-corners the shameless mirth of honest revellers philosophising upon the world will have a smack of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... bay two hundred angry Italians who were trying to mob a Chinese laundryman. The evening papers said that I had stopped a runaway coach-and-four on Fifth Avenue, that morning, by lassoing the leader. On the coach were Mrs. Aster, Mrs. Fitch, Reggie Vanderbuilt, George Goold, Harry Leer and a passel of other "Among those presents." That night I went to a music-hall—according to the next morning's papers—and broke up the show by throwing a pocketful of solitaires to the chorus girls. The next ...
— Colonel Crockett's Co-operative Christmas • Rupert Hughes
... Pallats after they be boyled tender in the Beefe Kettle, or Pot among some other meat, blanch and serve them cleane, then cut each Pallat in two, and set them a stewing between two Dishes with a piece of leer Bacon, an handful of Champignions, five or six sweetbreads of Veale, a Ladle-full or two of strong broth, and as much gravy of Mutton, an Onion or two, five or six Cloves, and a blade or two of Mace, and a piece of Orange ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... faithful discharge, but with the highest honours and honourable emoluments of an established profession. The translation the reader will find in a note below [45]. "Am sorgfaeltigsten, meiden sie die Autorschaft. Zu frueh oder unmaessig gebraucht, macht sie den Kopf wueste and das Herz leer; wenn sie auch sonst keine ueble Folgen gaebe. Ein Mensch, der nur lieset um zu druecken, lieset wahrscheinlich uebel; und wer jeden Gedanken, der ihm aufstosst, durch Feder and Presse versendet, hat sie in kurzer Zeit alle versandt, und wird bald ein blosser Diener der Druckerey, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and, untrammeled by old traditions, have sought and are seeking milder means of mitigating our bodily ills. All honor to them. They have driven away the old doctor of our childhood, whose most pleasant smile resembled the amiable leer that a cannibal might be supposed to bestow upon a plump missionary. The old curmudgeon, with his huge bottles of mixtures and his immense boulders—I beg pardon, I should say, boluses of nastiness—has vanished ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... the Cheel house was about to be produced in public. It was stopped by Jonas, who rose to his feet, and with a leer and chuckle round, he said, "Neighbors and friends and all. Very much obliged for the complerment. But don't think it is all about a baby. Nothin' of the kind. It is becos I wanted all, neighbors and ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... converse, and live with ease; Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne: View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to praise or to commend, A timorous foe and a suspicious friend; Dreading ev'n fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging that he ne'er ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... frontispiece to Catalogue, 1886) Wilkes squints more than "a gentleman should squint." The costume—long coat, waistcoat buttoned to the neck, knee-breeches, and stockings—is not unpleasing, but the expression of the face is something between a leer and a sneer. Walpole (Letters, 1858, vii. 274) describes another portrait (by Zoffani) as "a delightful piece of Wilkes looking—no, squinting tenderly at his daughter. It is a caricature of the Devil ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... ground floor room. And yet, why then had the Wolf, deliberately in that case, sent his pack off on a false scent? In the mirror he could see that huge jaw outthrust, the black eyes narrowed, an ugly leer on the working face—and a revolver in the Wolf's hand that held a bead on ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... burlesque of your Maxim's and your Catelans? Do we, when the week's work of your humbler people is done, see the laughter in dancing eyes in the Rue Mouffetard or, in the revel of your Saturday night, do we see only the belladonna'd leer of the drabs in the Place Pigalle? Do we hear the romance of your concertinas setting thousands of hobnailed boots a-clatter with Terpsichore in the Boulevard de la Chapelle, in Polonceau and Myrrha, or do we hear only your ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... further than Steen did the art of flattening noses, twisting mouths, shortening necks, making wrinkles, rendering faces stupid, putting on humps, and making his puppets seem as if they were roaring with laughter, vomiting, reeling, or falling. By the leer of a half-closed eye he expressed idiocy and sensuality; by a sneer or a gesture he revealed the brutality of a man. He makes one smell the odor of a pipe, hear the coarse laughter, guess at the stupid or foul discourses—to understand, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... in the middle of the street, with a cunning leer on his face. The change of purpose supported his belief that a May-day ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... whose choice he was, seated aloft upon men's shoulders, with a purple robe thrown on his shoulders, there sat a brawny, grinning, bloated, jibbering thing, with curled lips and savage eyes, and satyr's leer: the creature of greed, of lust, of obscenity, of brutality, of avarice, of desire. This thing the people followed, rejoicing exceedingly, content in the guide whom they had chosen, victorious in the fiend for whom they spurned a deity; crying, with wide open throats ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... keeping anythin' up, my dear,' said Mr. Weller; 'I never see such a sensible sort of man as he is, or such a reg'lar gen'l'm'n.' 'Oh, that he is!' said the fat boy, joining in the conversation; 'don't he breed nice pork!' The fat youth gave a semi-cannibalic leer at Mr. Weller, as he thought of the roast ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... with an intensity that almost paralyzed his senses. He had looked into her bloodshot eyes, noted the hard lines drawn around the corners of her mouth, the coarse, painted lips, dry hair, and sunken cheeks. He had heard her harsh laugh and caught the glint of her drunken leer. A cold shiver swept through him. It was as if he had stepped on a flat stone covering a grave which had tilted beneath his feet, revealing a corpse but a few months buried. Had he been anywhere else he would have sunk to the floor—not ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... vaudeville, with stare and leer. He comes with megaphone and specious cheer. His troupe, too fat or short or long or lean, Step from the pages of the magazine With slapstick or sombrero or with cane: The rube, the cowboy or the masher vain. They over-act each part. But at the height Of banter and of canter and delight The ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... sch—sch—schooner go against the wind." Old Koogah dropped an open leer to Opee-Kwan, and, the laughter growing around him, continued: "The wind blows from the south and blows the schooner south. The wind blows against the wind. The wind blows one way and the other at the same time. It is very simple. We understand, Nam-Bok. ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... caress, and was going to shut the door, when the drunken old man turned round once more, and inquired with a cunning leer, "So you expect some one, my child? Whom do you expect, little Itzig? Is it a lad or ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... stern face. There was not a shade of consciousness in its expression. He bent down and touched him. Still no movement. He shook him gently, then more roughly. He was like a log. Victor grinned with a fiendish leer. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... little, noiselessly, just beyond the patch of light that streamed through the door. They waited, heavy-breathed, while Harrigan began to recover from the disconcertment into which O'Mara's coming had flung him. Slowly the former's lips twisted into a mocking leer; mockery rose and swam with the hatred in his inflamed eyes. He would have spoken, sparring for time, when Steve's hand leapt in and made of the joking effort only a rattle in his throat. Beneath the stiff red stubble the flesh was livid where those fingers had been, when ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... were ready did Bucky utter a word. The terrific beating he had received had stunned him for a few minutes; but now he jumped to his feet, not waiting for the command from Walker, and strode up close to Billy. There was a vengeful leer on his bloody face and his eyes blazed almost white, but his voice was so low that Conway and Walker could only hear the murmur of it. His words were meant ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... him, half frightened and much surprised, but the boy showed no symptoms of astonishment. His face relaxed into a ghastly leer, which showed the whole range of his glittering ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... reception-room a mob was struggling at a window, beneath a blaze of electric light. A soldier was standing there like a statue, his face fixed with a leer of horror. In his hands was a rifle, with a blood-stained bayonet, dripping upon the hardwood floor at the edge of the rug. Upon the rug itself a stream of blood was spouting ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... these boys will have it in for you,—if they ever get their hands on you," said Sid Jeffers, with a wicked leer. ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... "Never did have one. Some class, too," he added with a leer that won Bulger's complete respect. He breathed freely again and was humming, "Love Me and the World Is Mine," ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... She slept with his letters under her pillow. Since he went away he had done much to blot out all that had gone before. And yet sometimes the memory of that past unhappiness, of its disagreements and quarrels and petty unkindnesses would raise its ugly head and look at her with a sort of leer as if daring her to ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... He's under examination. A cross-eyed Q.C. with an odious leer. Southminster's chosen the biggest bully at the Bar to ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... after story without getting sight of the madman. Finally he reached the roof. It was waving like swells on a lake before a breeze. He caught sight of the Mad Musician standing on the street wall, thirty stories from the street, a leer on his devilish visage. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... said Kearney, with a knowing leer; 'he's afraid I'll roast him about that unlucky despatch he wrote. He thinks I'll give him no peace about that bit of stupidity; for you see, major, it was stupid, and nothing less. Of all the things we despise in Ireland, take my word for it, there is nothing we think ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... observed, with a leer, half cunning half insolent, "if I have hid my rifle near the Sandusky swamp, the last ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... initiated, after years of wading through the mire, will recognize instantly the significant difference between filthy filth and funny "filth." Dirt for dirt's sake is something else again. Pornography, an eminent American jurist has pointed out, is distinguished by the "leer of the sensualist." ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... and fraud, unabashed, unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain; Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain: Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that blasted the ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... her to see how she'd stare, and then I drugged her so she can't blab, out of that bottle I've seen you use, sir (with a cunning leer), more nor once. She wants to come with us, sir, she's so ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... are, too,—just as good as cut, to my mind," continued Cicerone, poking with his stick at one of the batch that was now being placed in the leer. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... to call, this school-mistress could be brave, and she offered to give Elspeth her schooling free of charge. Like the other two hers was a "mixed" school, but she did not want Tommy, because she had seen him in the square one day, and there was a leer on his face that ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... hand and then at Mr Cripps's face. There was the same ugly leer about the latter, into which a spark of anger was infused as the boy still held ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... so short, Jones, mayhap thou 'lt spare it, and tell thine errand at once," interposed Standish sharply, and Jones turned upon him with a leer. ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... sage Piraeus sped the seer, His honour'd host, a welcome inmate there. O'er the protracted feast the suitors sit, And aim to wound the prince with pointless wit: Cries one, with scornful leer and mimic voice, "Thy charity we praise, but not thy choice; Why such profusion of indulgence shown To this poor, timorous, toil-detesting drone? That others feeds on planetary schemes, And pays his host with hideous ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... hypocrisy which is the object of my censure. It was a reverend and dignified pillar of the church, as demure as a saint, turning up his eyes, and professing and preaching morality, which I had more than once or twice before heard him do, while, with a sanctified leer, he expressed great horror at my breach of conjugal chastity, or violation of the marriage vow. The reader will easily imagine the manner in which I eyed him, while he was uttering these truly religious and moral doctrines, when I inform him that, only a few hours before, an old neighbouring ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: the Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. "Ah, master," says the gipsy, "that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache; you ha'n't that simper about the mouth for nothing—" The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left the money with her that he had crossed her ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... the man, with a leer, "sitting in sackcloth and ashes, more ashes than sackcloth. Have you got some ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... I am going to Bremen; but we shall travel together as far as—you go by Amsterdam, I suppose?—as far as Leer, then. That will be very pleasant.' I fancied there was a ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... fell back to the Metaurus, and Rome was saved. Two thousand years later, Prince Frederick Charles, divided by a few marches and two Austrian army corps from the Crown Prince, lingered so long upon the leer that the supremacy of Prussia trembled in the balance. But the character of the Virginian soldier was of loftier type. It has been remarked that after Jackson's death Lee never again attempted those great turning movements which had achieved his most brilliant victories. Never again ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise, Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And with our sneering teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike, Alike reserved to blame or to commend, A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... commanded I become thy fere, * O shining like full moon when clearest clear! All beauty dost embrace, all eloquence; * Brighter than aught within our worldly sphere: Content am I my torturer thou be: * Haply shalt alms me with one lovely leer! Happy her death who dieth for thy love! * No good in her who ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... After two hours' dodging and maneuvering the fox came out at the very end of Bellman's Coppice, with nothing near him but Richard Bassett. Pug gave him the white of his eye in an ugly leer, and headed straight as a crow for ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... But Peace would listen to no refusal, however decided its tone. Dyson threw over the card into Peace's garden. This only served to aggravate his determination to possess himself of the wife. He would listen at keyholes, leer in at the window, and follow Mrs. Dyson wherever she went. When she was photographed at the fair, she found that Peace had stood behind her chair and by that means got himself included in the picture. At times he had threatened her with a revolver. ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... hall, give up my place with my fighting men. Yea, upon my father's sword I swore, recking light of an oath, and the old man, dying, would have it so. That oath torments me now. The evil demons of the air haunt my bed; fiends leer at me through the day and whisper all the night. I see my father's soul writhing in the fires of Hell, and there he lays and beckons me to him. But no, by the heart of Mars I'll be no craven fool to give up my castle and my name. Perhaps my son may, I'll make him ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... words a foyn[128] On height; Over your heads my hand I lift, Out go your eyes, fore to do your sight, But yet I must make better shift, And it be right. What, Lord? they sleep hard! that may ye all hear; Was I never a shepherd, but now will I leer[129] If the flock be scared, yet shall I nap near, Who draws hitherward, now mends our cheer, From sorrow: A fat sheep I dare say, A good fleece dare I lay, Eft white when I may, ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... married, eh?" said Mr. Wurley, with another leer and oath. "You're right; that's a deal safer kind of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... ball for this Cho[u]bei. You, at least, know not the pinch of hunger.... Ah! She still possesses some of that beauty and charm for which Iemon has brought ruin upon all." Before the horrible lascivious leer of this object O'Hana fled. Left alone Iemon spoke. He had been thinking—"Cho[u]bei has spoken well. From Iemon he is entitled to relief. Cho[u]bei shall die on his mat. But in such shape nothing can be done. Get you hence. Buy clothing ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... wretch looked up at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was dressed like a broken-down clergyman, in rusty black, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... had been on board the yacht. The hesitation caused her to linger, as the cold air had caused her to think. It was as though she feared that when he was found the man would be impudent to her, and leer, behaving familiarly as he might have done to a common woman. Because she was alone and unprotected. It was terrible. Her secret filled her with the sense of irremediable guilt. Already she was staled with ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... looking at me with his small, dark eyes. He had an expression on his face that looked as if it were trying to sneer and leer at the same time but couldn't get much beyond ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Shirley! Harry of Shirley! Methinks I could help you to the man, if so be as you will deem him worth the finding," he added, suddenly turning upside down, and looking at them standing on the palms of his hands, with an indescribable leer of drollery, which in a moment dashed all the hopes with which they had turned to him. "Should you know this minks ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... glass, and I snatched at it. Great God! as I did so, another arm was thrust forth—not mine, I swear, if I live a thousand years; and as I recoiled, I saw in that glass a fiend step back. Not me, not me!—but a fiend with bloody hands, and a foul leer upon its face, and a fierce, cruel laugh in its glittering eyes. It was he, it was he! It was the devil that had possessed me before, come back again. And as I shuddered and gasped, and turned away, and then looked again into those eyes that pierced me through, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... man who looked like a Lascar, who wore an ill-fitting slop-shop suit of blue, soaked and stained and clinging hideously to his body. His dank black hair was streaked upon his low brow; and his face, although it was notable for a sort of evil leer, had assumed in death ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... door as best they could, the men left the apartment and when they were again alone Metak turned toward the girl. As he approached her, his face distorted by a hideous leer, his features worked rapidly in spasmodic twitches. The girl, who was standing at the entrance of the alcove, shrank back, her horror reflected in her face. Step by step she backed across the room, while ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... world on a raft! A Duke is here At sight of whose lank jaw the muses leer. Journeyman-printer, lamb with ferret eyes, In life's skullduggery he takes the prize— Yet stands at twilight wrapped in Hamlet dreams. Into his eyes the Mississippi gleams. The sandbar sings in moonlit veils ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... Lucille more clearly, and the large, hazy outlines of Tode's features were beginning to assume the proper proportions. There was a diabolical leer upon Tode's face, unchanged during the five years since Jim had seen him last, except that it had become more evil, more powerful. The enormous and distorted face that Jim had seen had been simply due to the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... you were, the moment you came in, sir," said he, with a very knowing leer out of ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... of fashion. Her swain moved a stick with a ragged bit of string dangling from the end, reproducing with strange fidelity the circular flourish of Swithin's whip, and rolled his head at his lady with a leer that had a weird likeness to Swithin's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his shoulders Driscoll forced him down the trail to his caravan. Most of the animals were lying down, dozing under their packs. Murguia's eyes grew watery when he saw them, but he was still dazed and his delusion was obstinate. The leer shot exultant gleams. "A rich man can enter heaven," he chuckled with ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... admitted into the jail by Ratcliffe. This fellow, as void of shame as of honesty, as he opened the now trebly secured door, asked her, with a leer which made her ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... not be informed of your whereabouts at present," said Boris, shortly. "Because," he continued, with a villainous leer, "I am only cruel to be kind. I want to have all the details of our marriage settled as soon as possible. A night of waiting will soften your dear brother's heart, and he will probably listen to ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... green spot—sit linguae fides— 'Tis Suidas tells it—where Alcides Secure, as fearing no ill neighbour, Lay fast asleep after a "Labour." His trusty oaken plant was near— The prowling rogues look round, and leer, And each his wicked wits 'gan rub, How to bear off the famous Club; Thinking that they sans price or hire wou'd Carry 't strait home, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a red fox," said Lincoln Lang long after, "for, besides having a marked carroty complexion, there was a cunning leer in his face which seemed, as it were, to show indistinctly through the transparency of the manufactured grin with which he sought to cover it. When he got mad over something or other and swept the grin aside, I do not think that an uglier countenance ever existed on earth or in hell. He was ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... fine dark eyes, and was young, bold-looking, and handsome; but when she came nearer, the moist pallor of her skin, the slackness of her lower lip and jaw, and an eager and worn expression in her fine eyes, gave her a thirsty, reckless leer that filled Marian with loathing. Her aspect conveyed the same painful suggestion as her voice had done before, but more definitely; for it struck Marian, with a shock, that Conolly, in the grotesque metamorphosis of a nightmare, might appear in some such likeness. ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... man with the inscrutable smile that at moments was wont to curl upon his lips. Ernest had once likened it to the smile of Mona Lisa, but now he detected in it the suavity of the hypocrite and the leer ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... woman," she answered, with a devilish leer. "You hate me, and you are afraid of me without any reason. If not, tell me, good sir, why you were so frightened the first time ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... you won't be as much surprised at what we are going to do as the manner in which we are going to do it," replied Duval, with an evil leer. ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... said the jockey, or whatever he was, turning to me with an arch leer, "I suppose I may consider myself as the purchaser of this here animal, for the use and behoof of this young gentleman," making a sign with his head towards the tall young man by his side. "By no means," said I; "I am utterly unacquainted with either of you, and before parting with the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... backs and gooseflesh of his nudes! What lurking cynicism there is in some of his interiors! Voila l'animale! he exclaims as he shows us the far from enchanting antics of some girl. How Schopenhauer would laugh at the feminine "truths" of Degas! Without the leer of Rops, Degas is thrice as unpleasant. He is a douche for the romantic humbug painter, the painter of sleek bayaderes ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... see Josiah fussing and accompanying her to the stairs and on to her room. She hardly said the word good-night to him, and her very lips were white. Wensleydown's face, as he stood with Mildred, drove him mad with its mocking leer, and if he had heard their conversation ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... back to the suller," Jase remarked, his defiance weakening as he climbed the bank. "You come and lock the door agin, Billy Louise, and Marthy won't know I ain't been there all the time. She'll think you caught the fish." He looked at her with a weak leer of conscious cunning. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... distant, lurid moat, Where sighs and groans upon a flood Ascend to heights of a grey ghaut— Satellites to Destiny's crypt! And Vespers that the Twilight brought— More dooms that prayers nor sighs can break— Leer at each thought to Fancy's flight; And to the dais whereunder sit A demon-quire that Circe taught, Songs that echo to the isles in lake And valley deep, ravage the night Until Idols pall at the scene. And stationed Mounts toward the West Whose bones portray a ghastly lust; And ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... the naval crew called his fellows, and they approached their white prisoners with ropes—vegetable vines. And with the leer of a devil, the officer leaned down and flung Barry over ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... room alone; the rector remained below in the library. She found her father well propped up with pillows, and his skull-cap, with the long white tassel, was drawn down over one eye, giving him a curious leer. The rakish angle of the cap, with the piercing eyes beneath, the hawk-like beak, and the shriveled old mouth, puckered into a sardonic smile, made him an almost comic figure. Trimmer stood at attention by the head of the ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... my place, but how about my principles, my conscience?" said Europe, cocking her crafty little nose and giving the Baron a serio-comic leer. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... spiteful, avenging himself for his incapacity on those whose competency makes him sensible of his incompetence; he denounces them as Moderates, and, at last, succeeds in having a warrant of arrest issued against his four chief clerks; on the morning of Thermidor 9, with a wicked leer, he himself carries the news to one of them, M. Miot. Unfortunately for him, after Thermidor, he is turned out and M. Miot is put in his place. With diplomatic politeness, the latter calls on his predecessor and "expresses to him ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the book-stall. That be Mr. Waffles,' continued he, giving his master a touch in the ribs as he jerked his portmanteau into a fly, 'that be Mr. Waffles,' repeated he, with a knowing leer. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... him I have heard much good! I grant," he said, "with you to wend, My brethren all in-fere: My purpose was to have dined to-day At Blyth or Doncaster." Forth then went that gentle Knight, With a careful cheer; The tears out of his eyen ran, And fell down by his leer. They brought him unto the lodge door: When ROBIN 'gan him see, Full courteously did off his hood, And set him on his knee. "Welcome, Sir Knight!" then said ROBIN, "Welcome thou art to me; I have abide you fasting, Sir, All these hours three!" ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... his valet by to tell him how the dice came up. On the walls hung the works of Vandyke and Correggio and Raphael and Rubens; but the pure faces of art's creation looked down on statesmen bending low to the beck of adventuresses, old men pawning a noble name for the leer of a Portsmouth, and women vying for the glance ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... departing with his order. Tunis was conscious of a hoarse voice at his elbow. He glanced aside. His neighbor in the next chair was a little, common man, with a little, common face, on which was a little, common leer. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... ye maiden vile, And rob me of my mate?' And on her child the mother scowled 80 A deadly leer of hate. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and crunched our hardtack. Throughout the morning My Lady had ridden upon the seat of Daniel's wagon, with him sometimes trudging beside, in pride of new ownership, cracking his whip, and again planted sidewise upon one of the wheel animals, facing backward to leer ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... be seen at a glance. Somehow, he seemed to be laughing all the time—a fact that was afterward recalled with some surprise and no little horror. At the time, the loungers thought his smile was a merry one, but afterward they stoutly maintained there was downright villainy in the leer. His coat was very dusty, proving that he had driven far and swiftly. Three or four of the loungers followed him into the store. He was standing before the counter over which Mr. Lamson served his soda-water. In ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... "About three weeks ago," said he, "when you passed up here, I saw three men on board. Where are the other two?" I answered him briefly that the same crew was still on board. "But," said he, "I see you are doing all the work," and with a leer he added, as he glanced at the mainsail, "hombre valiente." I explained that I did all the work in the day, while the rest of the crew slept, so that they would be fresh to watch for Indians at night. I was interested in the subtle cunning of this savage, knowing him, as I did, better perhaps ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... the child was the person who had called him so hurriedly but a few moments before. Her tottering body, clothed in bear-skins, was bent forward over a large triangular shield of polished brass, on which she leant her lank, shrivelled arms. Her head shook with a tremulous, palsied action; a leer, half smile, half grimace, distended her withered lips and lightened her sunken eyes. Sinister, cringing, repulsive; her face livid with the reflection from the weapon that was her support, and her figure scarcely human in the rugged garments that encompassed its gaunt proportions, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Botticelli. Now, Botticelli builded on Giorgione, while Burne-Jones builded on Botticelli. Aubrey Beardsley, dead at the age at which Keats died, builded on both, but he perverted their art and put a leer where Burne-Jones placed faith and abiding trust. Aubrey Beardsley got the cue for his hothouse art from one figure in Botticelli's "Spring," I need not state which figure: a glance at the picture ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... him with an appraising leer. "Don't have to say so," he drawled, "if you ain't, what have you-alls got them dinky little canoes for, an' if you were after 'gators you'd be packing big rifles 'stead of them fancy guns. You ain't got no call to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... you don't know much about lightin' a fire. Lemme show you. Let the White hunter learn the Injun somethin' about the woods," said he with a leer. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... young wench," he said with a leer. "What are you doing tonight, baby?" The guy was ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... something of a waggish leer, thou owest the lad for the venison, I suppose that thou killed, Cousin Duke! Marmaduke! Marmaduke! That was a marvellous tale of thine about the buck! Here, young man, are two dollars for the deer, and Judge Temple can do no less than ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Could the life beat again in the broken heart of Giorgione, He might tell us, I think, something pleasant of friendship with Titian." Suddenly over the shoulder of Titian peered an ironical visage, Smiling, malignly intent—the leer of the scurrilous poet: "You know—all the world knows—who dug the grave of Giorgione.[7] Titian and he were no friends—our Lady of Sorrows forgive 'em! But for all hurt that Titian did him he ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... housekeepers in search of stolen goods; the "widow who bounced" from one end of the room to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid disguised as a fine lady, who by "the toss of her head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong leer of the eye" proclaimed her real condition—these types are treated by Defoe in a blunt realistic manner entirely foreign to Eliza Haywood's vein. Some passages,[2] perhaps, by a sentiment too exalted or by a description ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... upstairs, you young jade, have you?" said old Mazey, looking up from his mug with a leer. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... sayth she, with an unpleasant leer, "that hath given that at first. In time he gets his hand in; and I've had a plenty o' practice—thanks ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... that my daughter is very irritable and passionate, and withal so fond of admiration, that nothing in the shape of a leer comes amiss to her. She likes a good squeeze above all things. Evil, and the Father of Evil though I be, I am not so very wicked as to wish thee to marry a woman of that description without thy knowing what kind ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... and takes away his breath, like the heavy, stifling folds of a hideous black mantle; darkness that the active imagination of the timid child peoples with phantom shapes, grotesque and horrible—forms made unnaturally visible by their own light, that mouth and leer, and stretch out distorted arms to seize him, whose appalling presence fills the room from floor to ceiling, and which eddy and circle around him in horrid demon dances, whirling gradually nearer and nearer, until myriads of hideous faces are thrust close to his ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... definitely into types; you will find that all through their youth they will persist annoyingly in jumping from class to class, and by pasting a supercilious label on every one you meet you are merely packing a Jack-in-the-box that will spring up and leer at you when you begin to come into really antagonistic contact with the world. An idealization of some such a man as Leonardo da Vinci would be a more valuable beacon ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... floating spar, she clung to the little column at the left of the window, clutching it with her hand; for the dreadful thing had happened-Caracalla's eye had met hers and had even rested on her for a while! And that gaze had nothing bloodthirsty in it, nor the vile leer which had sparkled in the eyes of the drunken rioters she had met last night in the streets; he only looked astonished as at some wonderful thing which he had not expected to see in this place. But presently ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cautiously by the side door, where a barman kept watch for the police. Presently the bricklayer came out, alone. He stood on the footpath, slightly fuddled, his giddiness increased by the fresh air. Immediately Chook lurched forward to meet him, with a drunken leer. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... of these basement brothels invite the pencil of a Hogarth. Their bloated forms, pimpled features and bloodshot eyes are suggestive of an Inferno, while their tawdry dresses, brazen leer, and disgusting assumption of an air of gay abandon, emphasizes their hideousness and renders it more repulsive. Most of them have passed through the successive grades of immorality. Some of them have been the queenly mistress of the spendthrift, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... level with many of the least reputable elective Chambers in the world; and beneath the imposing mask of an assembly of notables backed by the prescription and traditions of centuries we discern the leer of the artful dodger, who has got the straight tip from ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... all probability, the gratitude of the clergy is like their charity, which shuns the light — Mr Barton was immediately accosted by a person well stricken in years, tall, and raw-boned, with a hook-nose, and an arch leer, that indicated, at least, as much cunning as sagacity. Our conductor saluted him, by the name of captain C—, and afterwards informed us he was a man of shrewd parts, whom the government occasionally employed in secret ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... help it? It was an amiable weakness! At this time the profanation of the word "love" rose to its height; the muse of science condescended to seek admission at the saloons of fashion and frivolity, rouged like a harlot and with the harlot's wanton leer. I know not how the annals of guilt could be better forced into the service of virtue than by such a comment on the present paragraph as would be afforded by sentimental correspondence produced in courts of justice, fairly translated into ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... broken table. He received us, however, with a free, open, poor devil air, that was irresistible. It is true he did at first appear slightly confused; buttoned up his waistcoat a little higher and tucked in a stray frill of linen. But he recollected himself in an instant; gave a half swagger, half leer, as he stepped forth to receive us; drew a three-legged stool for Mr. Buckthorne; pointed me to a lumbering old damask chair that looked like a dethroned monarch in exile, and bade us welcome ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving |
