"Cynic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whom the sincerity of friendship fully warrants me in expecting every possible assistance: of these Dr. Wight is already well known, and others are rising rapidly to fill, I hope, the highest Botanical stations when these shall have been vacated by the leviathans who now occupy them. Let not the cynic accuse me of partiality when I mention the names of William Valentine, of Decaisne, and C. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... Barker, with a perfect placidity. "Suppose he is a tyrant—he is still a check on a hundred tyrants. Suppose he is a cynic, it is to his interest to govern well. Suppose he is a criminal—by removing poverty and substituting power, we put a check on his criminality. In short, by substituting despotism we have put a total check on one criminal and a partial ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... A cynic, considering the fact that women was the last thing made by God, asserts that the product shows both His experience and ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... as I returned from a long walk, Mrs. Purblind ran over to see me, and soon afterward, Mrs. Cynic dropped in. I never could bear this latter woman; something malevolent seems to emanate from her; something that is more or less unhealthful to the moral nature of all who come in contact with it, just as the miasma from a swamp is poisonous to ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... attained a certain cleanliness. Nevertheless, in the disorder of his toilet and his hatred of everything that passed the bounds of the strictest necessity (though he could not have been charged with immodesty, which had always been odious to him), the cynic of the old days was still apparent. His beard was shining like silver. His bald skull was so polished that the moon was reflected in it as in water. He walked slowly, with his hands behind his back and his head raised, like a man who is surveying his empire. But most frequently his glances ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... Anderson, "we must get on. You rest if you like though; there isn't anybody waiting for you; but Mabel, she 's waiting for me and I must try and get back. She would be disappointed else. Grieve! of course she'll grieve if I'm lost. All the world isn't a cynic ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... that either Epicurus, or that libertine school of Cyrene, or what the Cynic impudence uttered, was ever questioned by the laws. Neither is it recorded that the writings of those old comedians were suppressed, though the acting of them were forbid; and that Plato commended the reading of Aristophanes, the loosest of them all, to his royal scholar Dionysius, ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... the tenor of thought, the following definition is quoted from "The Cynic's Word Book" (1906 A.D.), written by one Ambrose Bierce, an avowed and confirmed misanthrope of the period: "Grapeshot, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... deduced the doctrine which became the characteristic of the Cyrenian school, affirming that pleasure was the ultimate end of life and the higher good; while Antisthenes (fl. 396 B.C.) constructed the Cynic philosophy, which placed the ideal of virtue in the absence of every need, and hence in the disregarding of every interest, wealth, honor, and enjoyment, and in the independence of any restraints of life and society. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... "Ah! what a cynic you are!" cried the old lady, pushing back her chair, and nodding to Lady Ruxton. "You must come and dine with me soon again. You are really an admirable tonic, much better than what Sir Andrew prescribes for me. You must tell me what people ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... I had before me to spend in Paris. Madame H—— was not only a beauty, but a woman of wit and learning, and had accordingly admitted Voltaire amongst the number of her household gods; the arch old cynic, with his deathlike sarcastic face, admirably represented, by a small whole length porcelain statue, occupied the centre of her chimney piece. Upon finding that I was disposed to remain in town, she recommended me to a restaurateur, in the ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... suspicious alacrity. "Oh, love, love, love!" crooned Peter. "Oh, love, love, love!" Oliver flushed. "Don't swipe all my butter, you simple cynic!" He knew what ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... lives of his fellow creatures, below the platitudes and conventionalities. He is richly endowed with the divine gift of sympathy, the supreme art of discrimination, yet occasionally reveals the witty spirits of the cynic, ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... have thought," said Pleydell, "that very respectable quadruped, which is just now limping out of the room upon three of his four legs, was rather of the Cynic school." ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... There is very little intelligent design in the majority of marriages; but they are none the worse for that. Intelligence leads people astray as far as passion sometimes. I know you are not a cynic." ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... ourselves and scoff at our own pretensions. The first person of our dual consciousness has been smirking and rubbing his hands and felicitating himself on his innumerable superiorities, until we have grown a little tired of him. Then, when the other fellow, the critic, the cynic, the Shimei, who has been quiet, letting self-love and self-glorification have their perfect work, opens fire upon the first half of our personality and overwhelms it with that wonderful vocabulary of abuse of which he is the unrivalled master, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... without hope, while the cynic is sure you'll always be able to get a drink if you have ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... tell you that I am not pleased with the bitterness of your letters—a bitterness unworthy of my philosophic tutor of the happy bygone days at Vevay. I wish my true love to see all things clearly, and to be the just and honest man I have always deemed him—not a cynic who seeks a sorry comfort in misfortune by carping at the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... he was permitted to devote to this struggle with slavery were not many, but the seeds were sown which will bring forth a rich harvest in the future. In that noble crusade, which he undertook single-handed against tyranny and oppression, he supplied the best possible answer to the cynic's question whether or not ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... misery rife, So with sin, and woe, and strife, I thought I'd have a lark. With pessimistic pick I pottered round Pottered round, A new "funny" trick I quickly found, Smart and sound, Life's cares in hedonistic chuckles drowned, You be bound! The cynic lay I found would pay, In a young ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... particularly to the native soldiers, who heard with pride and exultation that their deeds and dangers were not unnoticed by that august Sovereign before whom they know all their princes bow, and to whom the Sirkar itself is but a servant. The cynic and the socialist may sneer after their kind; yet the patriot, who examines with anxious care those forces which tend to the cohesion or disruption of great communities, will observe how much the influence of a loyal sentiment promotes ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... destined to remain so throughout his life; for he would never become, on the one hand, the coldly critical man who dissects motives—his own and those of others—to the last fibre, nor yet the superficial cynic who professes, and half-believes, that he can explain the universe by means of a few maxims of cheap pessimism. So he took, and continued to take, Beatrice's utterances without any grain of scepticism, and consequently held it for certain ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... attitude of mind which a critic or a cynic might be justified in assuming, for it is the attitude of one who desires rather to observe the world than to shoulder any of its burdens; but it is a posture of exceeding danger to anyone who lacks tenderness ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... habits; one day he would be a boon companion, without compunction, with those destined for slaughter on the day following. He was always "broke" financially. In 1829, 1830, Bixiou, Lousteau, Nathan and he were frequenters of Esther's house, rue Saint-Georges. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] A cynic was Blondet, with little regard for glory undefiled. He won a wager that he could upset the poet Canalis, though the latter was full of assurance. He did this by staring fixedly at the poet's curls, his boots, or his coat-tails, while he recited poetry or gesticulated with proper emphasis, fixed ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... take just the opposite form. We may be just as proud of our bad looks, as of our good looks. This is the trick of the Cynic. This is the reason why almost every town has its old codger who seems to delight in wearing the shabbiest coat, and driving the poorest horse, and living in the most dilapidated shanty of anyone in town. These persons take as much pride in ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... stand still with terror at his cool deliberation. But he was never known to fumble nor to funk, and somehow he always got us out safe enough. Then there was Rattray—'Rat' for short—who, from a swell, had developed into a cynic with a sneer, awfully clever and a good enough fellow at heart. Little 'Wig' Martin, the sharpest quarter ever seen, and big Barney Lundy, centre scrimmage, whose terrific roar and rush had often struck terror to the enemy's heart, and ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... Rastignac, as she accompanied her to the door, "for having broken a lance with that cynic; Monsieur de Rastignac's past life has left him ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... nom de plume that is known and loved by almost every boy of intelligence in the land. We have seen a highly intellectual and world-weary man, a cynic whose heart was somewhat embittered by its large experience of human nature, take up one of OLIVER OPTIC'S books, and read it at a sitting, neglecting his work in yielding to the fascination of the pages. When a mature ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... one's taste should become too fastidious, or that natural feeling should be refined away. And a cynical young man is bad, but a cynical old one is a great deal worse. The cynical young man is probably shamming; he is a humbug, not a cynic. But the old man probably is a cynic, as heartless as he seems. And without thinking of cynicism, real or affected, let us remember, that, though the taste ought to be refined, and daily refining, it ought not to be refined beyond ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... fun as a cynic could ask, To see how this cockney-bred setter of rabbits Takes gravely the lord of the forest to task, And judges ...
— English Satires • Various
... vivacity of his dialogue—Addison, whose fame as a poet greatly exceeded his genius, which was cold and enervate; though he yielded to none in the character of an essayist, either for style or matter—Swift, whose muse seems to have been mere misanthropy; he was a cynic rather than a poet, and his natural dryness and sarcastic severity would have been unpleasing, had not he qualified them, by adopting the extravagant humour of Lueian and Rabelais—Prior, lively, familiar, and amusing—Rowe, solemn, florid, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... much better in the Middle Ages. For the Greeks and Romans contented themselves with mocking at rich people, and constructing merry dialogues between Charon and Diogenes or Menippus, in which the ferryman and the cynic rejoiced together as they saw kings and rich men coming down to the shore of Acheron, in lamenting and lamentable crowds, casting their crowns into the dark waters, and searching, sometimes in vain, for the last coin out of all their ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... sometimes to a cynic that there go two words to a bargain. In the convent of St. Sebastian all was gratitude; gratitude (as aforesaid) to the hidalgo from all the convent for his present, until at last the hidalgo began ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... with a more uncompromising sincerity for law and peace—but Hump Doane viewed life through the eyes of one who has suffered the afflictions and mortification of a cripple in a land that accepts life in physical aspects. His wisdom was darkened with the tinge and colour of the cynic's thought. He trusted that man only who proved his faith by his works, and believed all evil until it was disproven. Like a nervous shepherd who tends wild sheep he feared always for his flock and distrusted every pelt that might disguise and mask ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... agreeing with the cynic Geoffroy, who used to say that modern works were deficient in power because authors now drank ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... not easily brought to believe that he can be happy again in the love of a pure woman. He has lost confidence in his own romantic feelings, and in his power to satisfy the higher needs of a woman's delicate and exacting heart. Usually, as was once the case with Walcott, he is a cynic and a professed despiser of women, affecting to judge them all by the few whom he has met, in spite of the fact that he has put himself in the way of knowing only the weakest and giddiest of the sex. But ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... which quickly followed, is a dramatic adaptation of Lodge's romance, 'Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie' (1590), but Shakespeare added three new characters of first-rate interest—Jaques, the meditative cynic; Touchstone, the most carefully elaborated of all Shakespeare's fools; and the hoyden Audrey. Hints for the scene of Orlando's encounter with Charles the Wrestler, and for Touchstone's description of the diverse shapes of a lie, were clearly drawn from a book called 'Saviolo's Practise,' a manual ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... speak now of atheism, dogmatic, self-satisfied, insolent cynic. I speak especially to-night of a form of unbelief far more attractive, which is spreading, I believe, among people often of high intellect, often of virtuous life, often of great attainments in art, science, or literature. ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... finer than its fellows. The thin face, narrow white forehead, and high-bridged nose might have belonged to an Oxford don or fashionable preacher, but, apart from these features, Austin Turold had nothing in common with such earnest souls. By temperament he was a dilettante and cynic, who affected not to take life seriously. His axiom of faith was that a good liver was the one thing in life worth having, and a far more potent factor in human affairs than conscience. He had at one time regarded his brother Robert ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... and make a name instantly recognised which might otherwise be hidden under its rank, and remain unknown by its title? Our illustrious list of literary noblemen is far more glorious than the satirical "Catalogue of Noble Authors," drawn up by a polished and heartless cynic, who has pointed his brilliant shafts at all who were chivalrous in spirit, or related to the family of genius. One may presume on the existence of this intellectual nobility, from the extraordinary circumstance ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Taine is a cynic who charges Thackeray with cynicism, all in the choicest of biting phrase. It is a beautiful example of sinners calling the righteous to repentance—a thing that is often done, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... continued laughingly, 'you are a hypocrite of the other sort. You pretend to be cruel, and callous, and careless of all that's good—a cynic and a mocker. But I have found you out: you are really gentle ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... and jalap, administered in a table-spoonful of molasses, in which the sweet and the nauseous are so equally balanced, that the patient is in doubt whether to spit or to swallow. I was, however, exceedingly flattered with the notice bestowed upon me by this literary cynic, as he was never before known to speak well, even moderately, of any author, except natives of Boston, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... heaven,—not confined to the poor Indian, whose paradise consists of happy hunting-grounds, where, of course, he will need his faithful hound to keep him company. The main argument of white men is generally found to be the superiority of canine virtue over the human. Whether the word "cynic" originates from a similar source I will not undertake to say; but I have more than half a suspicion that such talk proceeds rather from a prejudice against men than a genuine enthusiasm for dogs. This was doubtless the feeling of the Frenchman who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... you are. I guess you've got pretty far along," said the frontier cynic. He tilted his chair back and smiled at the child whose primitive brain he had tampered with so easily. The child stood looking at him with intent black eyes. "Better wait, Cheschapah. Come again. Medicine heap better after ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... Might one not rather say that the perpetual misfortunes of our friends are the chief plague of existence? Goethe came nearer the truth when he wrote: "I am happy enough for myself. Joy comes streaming in upon me from every side. Only, for others, I am not happy." But Rochefoucauld had to play the cynic, and a dash of cynicism adds a fine ingredient to ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... Marquess of Lorne," he began, "rode with Prince Rupert of the Rhine. He was a notorious gambler, a loose liver, and a cynic. And he even threw the family Luck across ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... excellently said, inasmuch as he allows his friend to do as he pleased, and yet shows his indifference about anything of this kind. Diogenes was rougher, though of the same opinion; but in his character of a Cynic he expressed himself in a somewhat harsher manner; he ordered himself to be thrown anywhere without being buried. And when his friends replied, "What! to the birds and beasts?" "By no means," saith he; "place my staff near me, that I may drive them away." ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of the British army—it is amazing to think that there were only 45,000 men who had tried to stem the German avalanche—was developing into a run. Only some wild fluke of chance (the pious patriot sees God's hand at work, while the cynic sees only the inefficiency of the German Staff) saved it from becoming a bloody rout. It is too soon even now to write the details of it. Only when scores of officers have written their reminiscences shall we have the full story of those last days of August, when ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... them; it called out in them the sense of unity, order, discipline, and a lofty and unselfish affection. And I thank God, as an Englishman, for any event, however exquisitely painful, which may call out those true graces in us, their descendants. And, therefore, my good friends, if any cynic shall sneer, as he may, after the present danger is past, at this sudden outburst of loyalty, and speak of it as unreasoning and childish, answer not him. "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Alas, who knows, except that Bismarck had his great German enterprise well under way. It was said, at the time, that Disraeli was "the only man in Europe who really understood the Holstein question," but Disraeli was a British cynic on all things German, and his explanations must be taken with a grain of salt. However, Disraeli used Bismarck as "Count ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... A cynic might say that the people can't go far wrong in politics because they can't be very right. Our so-called representative system is unrepresentative in a deeper way than the reformers who talk about the money power imagine. It is empty and ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... he mean by that? Oswald. I couldn't understand, either—and I asked him for a clearer explanation, And then the old cynic said—(clenching ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... Monsieur; a cynic philosopher" (and I looked at his paletot, of which he straightway brushed the dim sleeve with his hand), "despising the foibles of humanity—above its luxuries— ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... I think, will strike. The fashion, you know, now, is to do away with old prejudices, and to rescue certain characters from the illiberal odium with which custom has marked them. Thus we have a generous Israelite, an amiable cynic, and so on. Now, Sir, I call ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... intellectual culture with physical beauty. It tells us of Artemisia, who erected to her husband a mausoleum which was one of the wonders of the world; of Telesilla, the poetess, who saved Argos by her courage; of Hipparchia, who married a deformed and ugly cynic, in order that she might make attainments in learning and philosophy; of Phantasia, who wrote a poem on the Trojan war, which Homer himself did not disdain to utilize; of Sappho, who invented a new measure in lyric poetry, and who was so highly esteemed that her countrymen stamped ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... most noble cynic, is a prodigious personage. Shall birth-days and coronations be recorded in immortal odes, and Montem not have its minstrel 1 He, sir, is Herbertus Stockhore; who first called upon his muse in the good old ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... which more than any other has caused La Rochefoucauld to be criticized severely as a cynic, if not a misanthrope, appeared only in the first two editions of the book. In the others, published in the author's lifetime, it was supprest. In defense of the author, it has been maintained that what he meant by the saying was that the pleasure derived from a friend's ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... invalid. He lives at a cove called Black Harbor, and all his truck goes through to him over the company's road. We receive it here, and send a pack-mule through once a month. I've met him; he's a bad-tempered hypochondriac, a cynic at heart, and a man whose word is never doubted. If he says he has a great auk, you may be satisfied ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... the open bankruptcy of the Olympian religion and the collapse of the city-state. Both had failed, and each tried vainly to supply the place of the other. Greece responded by the creation of two great permanent types of philosophy which have influenced human ethics ever since, the Cynic and Stoic schools on the one hand, and the Epicurean on the other. These schools belong properly, I think, to the history of religion. The successors of Aristotle produced rather a school of progressive science, those of Plato a school of refined scepticism. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... a cynic and pessimist, his behaviour had been remarkable. When I returned to Fanny she was admiring her pretty, new, dove-coloured frock in the fly-blown mirror of our sitting-room. Poor child, her experience of new frocks ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... or less when seen near and at a distance. The testimony of Xenophon is thus confirmed by that of Plato, and we are therefore justified in calling Socrates the first utilitarian; as indeed there is no side or aspect of philosophy which may not with reason be ascribed to him—he is Cynic and Cyrenaic, Platonist and Aristotelian in one. But in the Phaedo the Socratic has already passed into a more ideal point of view; and he, or rather Plato speaking in his person, expressly repudiates the notion that the exchange of a less ...
— Philebus • Plato
... cynic, "may soon be brought to a conclusion, and your adventures close in Bridewell, provided you meet with some determined constable, who will seize your worship as a vagrant, according to the statute." "Heaven ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... dairy, which Hareton seized and commenced drinking and spilling from the expansive lip. I expostulated, and desired that he should have his in a mug; affirming that I could not taste the liquid treated so dirtily. The old cynic chose to be vastly offended at this nicety; assuring me, repeatedly, that 'the barn was every bit as good' as I, 'and every bit as wollsome,' and wondering how I could fashion to be so conceited. Meanwhile, the infant ruffian continued ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... Thackeray's morality is that of a highly respectable British cynic; his intelligence is largely one of trifles; he is wise over trivial and trumpery things. He delights in reminding us—with an air!—that everybody is a humbug; that we are all rank snobs; that to misuse ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... and I have remained "bitten" ever since in the matter of dogs. I remember that little dog, and can at this moment not only recall my pain and terror—I have no doubt I was to blame—but also her face; and were I allowed to search among the shades in the cynic Elysian fields, I could pick her out still. All my life I have been familiar with these faithful creatures, making friends of them, and speaking to them; and the only time I ever addressed the public, about a year after being bitten, was at the farm of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... "is a deep-dyed sensualist. All his life he's thought about nothing but gratifying his appetites. That's simple enough—there are plenty of that type everywhere. But unfortunately for him he's a very clever man, and like every Russian both a cynic and an idealist—a cynic in facts because he's an idealist. He got everything so easily all through his life that his cynicism grew and grew. He had wealth and women and position. He was as strong ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... Christ's teaching. But as Christ conceived them they were not passive qualities, but intensely active energies of the soul. It has been well remarked that[14] there was a poverty of spirit in the creed of the cynic centuries before Christianity. There was a meekness in the doctrine of the Stoic long before the advent of Jesus. But these tenets were very far from being anticipations of Christ's morality. Cynic poverty of spirit ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... Club did not see very much of Billy during the next three months, but the captain, who prided himself upon his playing of the role of smoking-room cynic—though he would have been better in the part had he occasionally displayed a little originality—was of opinion that our loss would be more than made up to us after the marriage. Once in the twilight I caught sight of a figure that reminded me of Billy's, accompanied by a figure that might ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... From "Menippus: A Necromantic Experiment." Translated by H. W. and F. G. Fowler. Menippus was a Cynic philosopher, originally a slave, born in Syria. He lived about 60 B.C., and wrote much, but all ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... may be puzzled to understand why Dr. Wyville Thomson, not being a cynic, should relegate the "Land of Promise" to the bottom of the deep sea, they may still more wonder what manner of "milk and honey" the Challenger expects to find; and their perplexity may well rise to its maximum, when they seek to divine the manner in which that milk and honey ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... They stood in their rooms at night and thought about it alone. The sight of big business compelling its desires the while the people went begging was destructive. Many a romantic, illusioned, idealistic young country editor, lawyer, or statesman was here made over into a minor cynic or bribe-taker. Men were robbed of every vestige of faith or even of charity; they came to feel, perforce, that there was nothing outside the capacity for taking and keeping. The surface might appear commonplace—ordinary ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... not be thought that this young man would play the cynic. He is superbly the optimist, though now again he struck a note of almost cynic whimsicality. 'Of course our art is in its infancy—' He waited for my nod of agreement, then dryly added, 'We must, I think, consider it the Peter ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... any great encouragement, yet in spite of that—the cynic might say because of that—it has made amazing progress during the past half-century. Mr. Chesterton somewhere notes that "a time may easily come when we shall see the great outburst of science in the Nineteenth Century as something quite ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... and sure faith. Would he not betray himself an alien cynic who should otherwise portray Main Street, or distress the citizens by speculating whether there may ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... and unpleasant to pass through life burdened with the reflection that it would have been better not to have been born, albeit such sentiments are not altogether inconsistent with the power of deriving a certain amount of enjoyment from living. It was that pleasure-loving old cynic, Madame du Deffand, who said: "Il n'y a qu'un seul malheur, celui d'etre ne." Nevertheless, the avowed joyousness bred by the laughing tides and purple skies of Greece is certainly more conducive to human happiness, though at times even Greeks, such as Theognis and Palladas, lapsed ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... great bitterness filled his soul once more at this harsh, cynic turn of fate. But most of all he yearned toward Beatrice. That he should die mattered nothing; but the thought of this girl perishing at their hands there in the lost Abyss was dreadful as the pangs of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... well to prepare myself against another inevitable ancient calamity called "Cornutation," or by other less learned names. How Philosophy taught that after all it was but a pain founded on conceit, a blow that hurt not; the reply of the Cynic philosopher to one who reproached him, "Is it my fault or hers?"; how Nevisanus advises the sufferer to ask himself if he have not offended; Jerome declares it impossible to prevent; how few or none are safe, and the inhabitants of some countries, especially ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... feeling, he soon joined her and the group that was with her. He had expected to find her sad and comparatively silent, but he had never seen her in a more lively mood, full of light talk and jest and a gay good-humor that could not have failed to infect the most hardened cynic. Certainly he did not escape its influence, nor did he seek to do so, but as he watched her he thought there was a slight touch of feverishness to her high spirits, as if she had just escaped from ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... overrun and outraged into a chronic state of secret ever-ready hatred. Here are innocent, small countries, defenceless through their position and size. Here is France rich, careless, super-modern and cynic. Here is England comfortable to stolidity, prosperous and secure to dullness in her own half belief in a world civilization, which no longer argues in terms of blood and steel. And here—in a well-entrenched position in the midst of it all—within but a few hundreds of miles of weakness, complicity, ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Christmas pudding as a disc? And why should any reasonable person ever wish to make such an accurate division?" asked the cynic. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... the cynic sneers, "The remnant of a shrine?" Alas for him who never hears Or heeds the world divine And in this fragment fails to see A ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... again and again, till they finally trampled it under their feet, and so appear, prima facie, as offenders to be judged at its bar; but the conception itself is one which takes the very same view of nature as that cynic conception of which we spoke above. Man, with the Romish divines, is, ipso facto, the same being as the man of Voltaire, Le Sage, or Beaumarchais; he is an insane and degraded being, who is to be kept in order, and, ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... noise of a brawl.—There was that in the Admiral that would have when it could outward no less than inward magnificence. He could go like a Spartan or Diogenes the Cynic, but when the chance came—magnificence! With him from Spain traveled a Viceroy's household. He had no less than thirty personal servants and retainers. Hidalgos here at Isabella had also servants, but ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... Sense leaves that to callow youth And callous age; plain picturing of the truth Seems cynical,—to folly. Friend, the true cynic is the shallow mime Who paints humanity devoid of crime, And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... men are speaking to-day of the value of peace and honor," said the subtle emperor—a sceptic in religion, a cynic in philosophy, a rake in private life, and a conqueror who commanded "peace" with a trained army of four ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... lady who expects the Hindoos to accept her view of politics has herself accepted their view of religion. She wants first to steal their earth, and then to share their heaven. The same Imperial cynic who wishes the Turks to submit to English science has himself submitted to Turkish philosophy, to a wholly Turkish view of despotism ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... very rare intervals, Nature seems to select a favoured man and woman to uphold the torch of the ideal, lest it be reduced to sparks and smoke, to refute the cynic and the pessimist; to hearten a world nauseated and discouraged by the eternal tragi-comedy of marriage, with the spectacle of a human relationship of unsullied beauty: a relationship that passes, by imperceptible degrees, from the first antiphony of ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... Upton, severely. "Remember this: I didn't marry you because I thought you were a cynic. Now Walter as a young physician ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... of humour the extrovert is a success; what amuses him amuses the crowds. But the introvert laughs alone, and in some cases he decides that the crowd has no sense of humour, and he becomes a cynic. ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... age is a crime against the hopes of the world, and nothing ages like cynicism. This is the beginning of senile decay. And what is a man to do who has lavished his heart, and has always found that the woman has played counters of affectation against the sincere gold of his soul? Obviously he turns cynic, despising himself and his too cheap emotions; and to cheapen one's own emotions is to play the very devil. It was written from of old that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and a man who has learned to loathe one half of his own nature is not stable. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the cynic; "without it, few pursue successfully, and fewer are themselves pursued.—Stop!" he said to Miss Vere, as her companions moved off, "With you I have more to say. You have what your companions would wish to have, or be thought to ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... appeared the translation of Heine's poems and ballads, which was generally accepted as the best version of that untranslatable poet. Very curious is the link between that bitter, mocking, cynic spirit and the refined, gentle spirit of Emma Lazarus. Charmed by the magic of his verse, the iridescent play of his fancy, and the sudden cry of the heart piercing through it all, she is as yet unaware or only vaguely conscious of the of the real bond between ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... out the eighth dance in fitful silence, he began to experience the strangest antipathy for Miss Dolly Travers, who but an hour before had been the rapturous ending of all his day dreams. Let no cynic here exclaim, with facile wit, that romance ends thus in the compulsory quality of marriage. We make no such allusions. We only state that Skippy, in his inexperience, began morally to disintegrate. The more he was forced to sit, chained by convention, the ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... and satire are never of the destructive kind; what he does in that way is suggestive only,—not breaking bubbles with Thor's hammer, but puffing them away with the breath of a Clown, or shivering them with the light laugh of a genial cynic. Men go about to prove the existence of a God! Was it a bit of phosphorus, that brain whose creations are so real, that, mixing with them, we feel as if we ourselves were but ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... son, the tender father, the true friend, the man of large humanity and lofty honesty he really was, without stepping too far within the sacred circle of his domestic life. To me, there was no inconsistency in his nature. Where the careless reader may see only the cynic and the relentless satirist, I recognize his unquenchable scorn of human meanness and duplicity,—the impatient wrath of a soul too frequently disappointed in its search for good. I have heard him lash the faults of others with an indignant sorrow which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... and Job have best spoken of the misery of man, the former the most fortunate, the latter the most unfortunate of creatures. And yet it seems strange to me that John Benham, the millionaire, Jerry's father, cynic and misogynist, and Roger Canby, bookworm and pauper, should each have arrived, through different mental processes, at the same ideal and philosophy of life. We both disliked women, not only disliked but feared and distrusted them, seeing in the changed social ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... possibly startling. Yes, he must be "about forty." And his origin? "Meyer" suggested Germany. As to "Isaacson," it allowed the ardent imagination free play over denationalized Israel. Someone said that he "looked as if he came from the East," to which a cynic made answer, "The East End." There was, perhaps, a hint of both in the Doctor of Cleveland Square. Certain it is that in the course of a walk down Brick Lane, or the adjacent thoroughfares, one will encounter men ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Grey, in his note on these lines, quotes the proverbial saying 'As wise as the Waltham calf that went nine times to suck a bull.' He quotes also from The Spectator, No. 138, the passage where the Cynic said of two disputants, 'One of these fellows is milking a ram, and the other ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... They argue that this feeling of satisfaction with yourself which comes from generosity is such a desirable thing in your eyes that you want it for yourself—consequently when you show kindness and sympathy for others you are obeying the same motive as the cynic, himself, who having small sympathy for others, prefers the frank gratification of his own ego. This, of course, is pure sophistry. But if any mind is so kinked that it must reason that way, there is a simple answer which will suffice to bring it through ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... COLONEL. You old cynic! D' you mean to say Joy wouldn't do anything on earth for her Mother, or Molly for Joy? You don't know human nature. What a wonderful night! Have n't seen such a moon for years, she's like a great, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Begin with foul falsehood? No. I would not have you burdened, madame, with the shadow of a conventional untruth on our account. And when it would be bad policy? . . . Oh, no, worse than the sin! as the honest cynic says. We will go down to Madame von Rudiger, and she shall make acquaintance with the man who claims her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tribute, as he passed Along the highway—paused and, turning, cast A lingering, last look—as though to take A vivid print of it, for memory's sake, To lighten all the empty, aching miles Beyond with brighter fancies, hopes and smiles. The cynic put aside his biting wit And tacitly declared in praise of it; And even the apprentice-poet of the town Rose to impassioned heights, and then sat down And penned a panegyric scroll of rhyme That made the Snow-Man famous for ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... call the miser miserable? as I said before: the frugal life is his, Which in a saint or cynic ever was The theme of praise: a hermit would not miss Canonization for the self-same cause, And wherefore blame gaunt Wealth's austerities? Because, you 'll say, nought calls for such a trial;— Then there's more merit ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... a cynic," remarked Dr. Theophilus, smiling, "and I don't doubt that she has her excellent reasons, as usual; most cynics have. A woman, however, has got to believe in love to the point of lunacy or become a scoffer. What I contend, now, is that love isn't moonshine, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... you," said he, with his cynic, repellent smile. "But you do wrong to feel for my loss. I feel for it; but no one who cares for me should ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and cunning few Cynic favors I will strew; I will stuff their maw with overplus until their spirit dies; From the patient and the low I will take the joys they know; They shall hunger after vanities and still an-hungered go. Madness shall be on the ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... As for Langham, the cynic within him was on the point of uncontrollable laughter. Madame Desforets complaining of calumny to this little Westmoreland maiden! But his eyes involuntarily met Catherine's, and the expression ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Curiose," the gondoliers sing their barcarolle and compel even the cynic of the drama to break out into an enthusiastic exclamation: "Oh, beautiful Venice!" The world has heard more of the natural beauties of Naples than of the artificial ones of Venice, but when Naples is made the scene of a drama of any kind it seems that its ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch, and the sinner ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... languor of the friends whose partiality had given him three benefit nights to which he had no claim. He complained of the injustice of the spectators, when, in truth, he ought to have been grateful for their unexampled patience. He lost his temper and spirits, and became a cynic and a hater of mankind. From London he retired to Hampton, and from Hampton to a solitary and long-deserted mansion, built on a common in one of the wildest tracts of Surrey. No road, not even a sheep walk, connected his lonely dwelling with the abodes of men. The place of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... years ago. He was suffering very much at the time through a woman. Now he will tell you he has become a cynic." ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... dogs. What does it matter whether they were the victims of bodily disease or mental irritation? The life of the most humble human being is of more value than all the dogs in the world—dare the most brutal cynic ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... seen that a contradiction in terms is sometimes the best expression of a truth higher than either (compare Soph.). But his ideal theory is not based on antinomies. The correlation of Ideas was the metaphysical difficulty of the age in which he lived; and the Megarian and Cynic philosophy was a 'reductio ad absurdum' of their isolation. To restore them to their natural connexion and to detect the negative element in them is the aim of Plato in the Sophist. But his view of their connexion falls very far short of the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being. The ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... remarkably calm—quite the calmest man within the radius of a mile; for the insignificant little street was in an uproar. There was a barricade at each end of it. Such a barricade as Parisians love. It was composed of a few overturned omnibuses; for the true Parisian is a cynic. He likes overturned things, and he loves to see objects of peace converted to purposes of war. He is not content that ploughshares be beaten into swords. He prefers altar-rails. And so this little street was blocked at either end by a barricade of overturned omnibuses, of old hampers and empty ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman |
