"Disdainful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by emptying the prisons of Paris, certain agents of Marat made a notable effort in behalf of the 'moral unity of France.' To this effort the melodramatic historians of the French Revolution have done scant justice. Mr. Carlyle, for example, alludes to it only in a casual half-disdainful way, which would be almost comical were the theme less ghastly. 'At Reims,' he observes, 'about eight persons were killed—and two were afterwards hanged for doing it.' The contest of this curious passage plainly shows that he imagined these 'eight persons' (more or less) to have ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... affectionate leave-taking of Harry, who, growing rather soft-hearted, thought it needful to be disdainful, scolded Mary and Blanche for "lugging off his figure-head," and assured them they made as much work about it as if he was going to sea at once. Then, to put an end to any more embraces, he marched off to the station with Tom, and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the shallows of these little long-forgotten meannesses, memory drifted uncontrolled into deeper currents; and, disdainful, he made no effort to control it; and later, could not. And for the first time in his life he took the trouble to understand the reason of his unpopularity among men. He had cared ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... becoming the property of this gross animal, and in some sort the property of that hazel-eyed young girl. But it would need more than repugnance to save him from his destiny. A slave is a slave, and has no power to shape his fate. Peter Blood was sold to Colonel Bishop—a disdainful buyer—for the ignominious ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... a sociable fellow, and a very little of such treatment was sufficient to make him suffer keenly. Nevertheless he sought to hide the fact beneath a haughty and disdainful air, which was a course his disposition and temperament ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... god, first mover of that sphere Enchas'd with thousands ever-shining lamps, Will sooner burn the glorious frame of heaven Than it should [194] so conspire my overthrow. But, villain, thou that wishest this [195] to me, Fall prostrate on the low disdainful earth, And be the footstool of great Tamburlaine, That I may rise into ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... that she would let me know how she was getting on. I would have made my servant write to me but that he was unable to manage a pen. It struck me there was a kind of scorn in Miss Tita's silence (little disdainful as she had ever been), so that I was uncomfortable and sore. I had scruples about going back and yet I had others about not doing so, for I wanted to put myself on a better footing. The end of it was that I did return to Venice on the twelfth day; and ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... like 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
... is greatly changed, and for the better, by these late reverses of fortune. All the world notices it, says Valori. No longer that brief infallibility of manner; that lofty light air, that politely disdainful view of Valori and mankind: he has now need of men. Complains of nothing, is cheerful, quizzical;—ardently busy to "grind out the notches," as our proverb is; has a mild humane aspect, something of modesty, almost of piety in him. Help me, thou Supreme Power, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... professor and scientist of about 50, with quiet and pleasantly self-possessed manners, and quiet, deliberate, harmonious speech. Likes to talk. Is mildly disdainful of those who do not agree with him. Smokes ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... their ammunition, limiting themselves to a shot every half hour, and that only as a sort of salve to their self-respect, for none of their missiles reached the enemy; all were lost in the meadows opposite them. Hence the enemy's batteries, disdainful of such small game, contemptuously pitched a shell at them from time to time, out of charity, as ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... no harm in Dolly, though it is man's proud right to question it in exchange for his bitters. She was tall and willowy, and stretched her neck like a swan, and returned you your change with disdainful languor; to call such a haughty beauty Dolly was one of the minor triumphs for man, and Dolly they all called her, except the only one who could have given an artistic justification ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... means, but one in which the author has brought out the recent investigations of Edward Freeman, John Richard Green, Bishop Stubbs, Professor Gneist of Berlin, and others, who with consummate learning have gone to the roots of things,—some of whom, indeed, are dry writers, regardless of style, disdainful of any thing but facts, which they have treated with true scholastic minuteness. It appears from these historians, as quoted by Taylor, and from other authorities to which the earlier writers on English history had no access, that the germs ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... found myself in a large car, well filled with passengers. The seat next to me was about the only vacant one. At every stopping place we took in new passengers, all of whom, on reaching the seat next to me, cast a disdainful glance upon it, and passed to another car, leaving me in the full enjoyment of a hole form. For a time, I did not know but that my riding there was prejudicial to the interest of the railroad company. A circumstance occurred, however, which gave ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... sympathetic and kind. It seems to them an unconscious confession of weakness to be scornful, revengeful, inconsiderate. Courtesy, they say, is the mark of a great man, discourtesy of a little one. No one who feels his position secure will lose his temper, will persecute, will be disdainful. Their word for a fool and for a hasty-tempered man is the same. To them it is the same thing, one infers the other. And so their attitude towards animals is but an example of their attitude to each other. That an animal or a man should be lower and weaker than you is the strongest claim he ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... violins proclaim Their jealous pangs and desperation, Fury, frantic indignation, Depth of pains, and height of passion For the fair, disdainful dame. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... mountain mass of Kauai, about 6,000 feet high. Its summit, a cold, fog-swept wilderness of swamp and lake beset with dwarfish growths of lehua, is used as the symbol of a woman, impulsively kind, yet in turn passionate and disdainful. The physical attributes of the mountain are ascribed to her, its spells of frosty coldness, its gloom and distance, its fickleness of weather, the repellant hirsuteness of the stunted vegetation that fringes the central swamp—these things are described as symbols of her temper, character, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... the card with a disdainful fingernail and followed his wife into the drawing-room. She gave him some tea to keep him quiet; he drank it in passionate gulps. Then he felt better, and lay back in his chair ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... 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 ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... the temptations that come with riches, the white light that beats upon a throne, much better than do Eve's fair daughters. As a man becomes great, he respects more and more the cumulative wisdom of the world, becomes obedient; as a woman becomes great she grows disdainful and rebellious. Thus it is that while in the common walks of life woman is infinitely purer than man, as we ascend into the higher realms, whether in art, letters or statecraft, we discover a tendency to reverse this law until we ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the Metropolitan Museum. He wished to see with his own eyes some of those pictures Claribel Spring had described to him, among them Fortuny's "Spanish Lady." He stood for a dazzled interval before her, so disdainful, passionate, provocative, and so profoundly human. When he moved away, he sighed. He wasn't wondering if he himself should ever meet and love such a lady; but rather when he should be able so ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... a disdainful, careless twirl, and went on her way to her room. To her astonishment, a few moments later, she heard the front door slam. Willoughby ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... understand the aim, puerile practices, principles of conduct unworthy of the Monarch of Nature, offerings, sacrifices, expiations, useful, in fact, to the ministers of God, but very onerous to the rest of mankind. I find also, that they often have a tendency to render men unsocial, disdainful, intolerant, quarrelsome, unjust, inhuman toward all those who have not received either the same revelations as they, or the same ordinances, or the same ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... for the stockings and undergarments was easier because she wanted the least expensive, but when she stated that she only wanted to purchase two pairs of stockings and two chemises, Mlle. Virginie became just as disdainful as her employer, and it was as though she was conferring a favor that she condescended to try some shoes on Perrine, and the black straw hat which completed the wardrobe of ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... him a 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
... word with disdainful incredulity. She did not see how Faith could be tired after a day of such ease. She herself was as fresh and wide awake ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... no room for chairs, nor for half that desired admittance. In the very front stood the only woman whose superb physique carried her through that trying day without smelling-salts or a friendly shoulder. She was a woman with the eyes of an angel, disdainful of men, the mouth of insatiety, the hair and skin of a Lorelei, and a patrician profile. Her figure was long, slender, and voluptuous. Every man within the bar offered her his chair, but she refused to sit while other women ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... boy only threw her another disdainful glance and darted off into the thick of the crowd. A moment later Pollyanna heard his strident call of "paper, ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... to say, our little friend, who was so ready with words among her compeers, was completely silenced by these disdainful beauties, and, instead of replying, and holding, or rather maintaining, her position there, she shrank, as it were, abashed and ashamed of her ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... of heaven. He can hardly be said to have possessed the power of sublimity, in the high sense of that term, as the power of sympathising with the feeling of the Infinite. Often he gives us the impression of the picturesque, of the beautiful, of the heroic, of the nobly disdainful—but never (when writing, at least, entirely from his own mind) of that infinite and nameless grandeur which the imaginative soul feels shed on it from the multitudinous waves of ocean—from the cataract leaping from his rock, as if to consummate an act of prayer to God—from ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... her face, and then smiled one of those bitter disdainful smiles which it is always painful to see upon ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... major, referring to his guidebook. "I shall be very glad of the privilege of standing on the ground for once and looking up at an object; for I confess it afflicts my kindly-affectioned nature to be forever looking down upon this goodly earth, as if in disdainful contempt of its manifold beauties. So, to-morrow, ladies and gentlemen," added he, rising, "we are to pay our respects to this 'Old Man.' I hear music below. You young people would like to join the merry groups, I suppose. I'm going down to the office to enjoy a cigar, and ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... 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 most satisfying of all the pianists. Never any excess of emotional display; never silly sentimentalizings, but a lofty, detached style, impeccable technic, tone as beautiful as starlight—yes, Joseffy is the enchanter who wins me with his disdainful spells. I heard him play the Chopin E minor and the Liszt A major concertos; also a brace of encores. Perfection! The Liszt was not so brilliant as Reisenauer; but—again within its frame—perfection! The Chopin was as Chopin would have had it given in 1840. And there were refinements ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... referred to this, asking half jokingly if Margaret Elizabeth had ever discovered the identity of that person; putting a somewhat disdainful ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... now ceased roaring, and the fight was still going on close at hand—at the Tuileries doubtless. The townspeople were tranquil and the soldiery disdainful. A strange contrast; all these good citizens smiling and chatting, and the soldiers, who had come to save them at the peril of their lives, looking down upon them with the most careless indifference. My friend reached the Boulevard Haussmann; there the corpses were in large ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... warrior's slumbers last And bind his torpid senses fast; But now his deep repose he breaks, The best of all our champions wakes. I captured, Rama's heart to wring, This daughter of Videha's king. And brought her from that distant land(920) Where wandered many a Rakshas band. Disdainful still my love she spurns, Still from each prayer and offering turns, Yet in all lands beneath the sun No dame may rival Sita, none, Her dainty waist is round and slight, Her cheek like autumn's ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... as well as the Jew, the Protestant, and the freethinker. Here stands a pilgrim from far America, armed with a Baedeker, and there an Englishman with the inevitable Murray under his arm, too amazed or disdainful to search for a mass. Remarkable also are the steady habitues of the place, with Albert Duerer-like features which look as if hastily hewn out of ancient wood with two or three blows of a hatchet, or with smoke-dried physiognomies having a tint like that ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... divides the green, And distant sailors point where death has been. His like earth bears not on her spacious face: Alone in nature stands his dauntless race, For utter ignorance of fear renown'd, In wrath he rolls his baleful eye around: Makes every swoln, disdainful heart, subside, And holds dominion o'er the sons of pride. Then the Chaldaean eas'd his lab'ring breast, With full conviction of his crime opprest. "Thou canst accomplish all things, Lord of might: And every thought is naked to thy sight. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... she disappeared utterly in the final conflagration of that histrionic shrine. Well, there are smouldering remnants of the Old Park still left to us; veteran retainers of the conventional stride, the disdainful gesture, the Kemble elocution, and that accent which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... 'Disdainful dame, how didst thou dare, So reckless to depart the ground That is allotted to thy share?' And therewithal his godhead frown'd. 'I will,' quoth Nature, 'out of hand, Declare the cause I ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... 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. He was somewhat short, and broad-shouldered, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... notion that the commanders on the other side would come over; and accordingly, upon their first approach, they saluted them with the friendly title of fellow-soldiers. But the others returned the compliment with anger and disdainful words; which not only disheartened those that had given the salutation, but excited suspicions of their fidelity amongst the others on their side, who had not. This caused a confusion at the very first onset. And nothing else that followed was done upon ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... feels an unconquerable sense of lassitude. For the first time, her feet begin to fail her. For the first time, she, who traversed, with firm and equal footsteps, the moving lava of torrid deserts, while whole caravans were buried in drifts of fiery sand—who passed, with steady and disdainful tread, over the eternal snows of Arctic regions, over icy solitudes, in which no other human being could live—who had been spared by the devouring flames of conflagrations, and by the impetuous waters of torrents—she, in brief, who for centuries had had nothing in common with ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... conscientious objector from Tennessee, a big, scared Pole, and the disdainful Celt whom he had sat beside on the train—the two former spent the evenings in writing eternal letters home, while the Irishman sat in the tent door whistling over and over to himself half a dozen ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... succeeded in England; and still the powerless King and his disdainful Lords were always in contention. Some of the turbulent chiefs of Ireland made proposals to Bruce, to accept the rule of that country. He sent his brother Edward to them, who was crowned King of Ireland. He afterwards went ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... opposite 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! ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... discussed various matters pertaining to the village Welfare Club, while Roger preserved an impenetrable silence, and though Nan made a valiant pretence at eating, lest Lady Gertrude's gimlet eyes should observe her lack of appetite and her thin, disdainful voice comment on the fact, she felt all the time as though the next mouthful ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... lady at the West End lost one night, at a sitting, 3000 guineas at Loo.(100) Again, a lady having won a rubber of 20 guineas from a city merchant, the latter pulled out his pocket-book, and tendered L21 in bank notes. The fair gamestress, with a disdainful toss of the head, observed—'In the great houses which I frequent, sir, we always use gold.' 'That may be, madam,' said the gentleman, 'but, in the LITTLE houses which I frequent, we always ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... at nothing happening to Mrs. Scudder, whom I think as entirely unendurable a creature as ever defied poetical justice at the end of a novel meant to irritate people. And finally, I think you are too disdainful of what ordinary readers seek in a novel, under the name of 'interest,'—that gradually developing wonder, expectation, and curiosity which makes people who have no self-command sit up till three in the morning to get to the crisis, and people who ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... other beau comes in, we ceases this refrain. He pitches his rifle to the landlord over the bar, an' calls for a Baldface whiskey toddy. He takes four or five drinks, contemplatin' us meanwhile a heap disdainful. Then he arches his back, bends his elbows, begins a war-song, an' goes dancin' stiff-laig like a Injun, in front of the bar. This is how this extravagant party sings. It's what Colonel Sterett, yere, to whom I repeats it ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Lady Wilde's disdainful speeches seemed to persuade the populace, but had small effect on the jury, and still less ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... transports of passion at the very Council-table, to ruin him in his master's favour. The king himself, while steadily supporting him against his rivals, was utterly unable to understand his drift. Charles valued him as an administrator, disdainful of private ends, crushing great and small with the same haughty indifference to men's love or hate, and devoted to the one aim of building up the power of the Crown. But in his purpose of preparing for the great struggle with freedom which he saw before him, of building up by force ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude.' What an Apollo Belvidere the man would be, moulded by no sympathies, standing aloof from his race, and independent of it, disdainful, magnificent, a palace of ice, untenable by the summer heat of Love. The true cosmopolite is the man of his age, even if he has known no latitude but that of his birth, for he has won for himself the highest individuality, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... overcrowded and evil-smelling room, there was nothing very remarkable about her. Stalwart and resolute and self-possessed she looked; sometimes she was beautiful, but not now. She was a woman at whom most men would havel ooked twice. Her expression was not sullen nor disdainful; in that, perhaps, there was something fine, because there was life, of its own kind, in her eyes, and independence in ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... his household, he was determined if possible to retain it. Temporarily at least he had his wife scared almost to death and so submissive that he couldn't think of half enough indignities to heap upon her, no matter how hard he tried; and his disdainful daughters spoke in hushed voices, and got up every morning to start the kitchen fire, and carried in the wood, and waited on him first at meals, and allowed him to read The Banner before any one else claimed it, and fed the ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... had heard of children spoiled by schooling, of daughters educated away from their commonplace parents and rendered disdainful of them, but never for one instant did he fear that his girl was that sort. He just knew better. He could no more have doubted "Bob's" love for him than his for her, or-God's love for both of them. Such love is perfect, absolute. He took no thought, therefore, of the changes ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... whets 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 ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... diligences had long ceased to shake the streets; the heavy wagons had ceased to pass, and only open carriages were seen, in which indigenous and exotic beauties under beautiful hats, cast disdainful looks on ugly, and smiling ones on good- ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... A number of disdainful doctors met on October 16, 1846, in the amphitheater of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, to see a young medical student try to demonstrate that a patient upon whom a surgical operation was to be performed could be rendered ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... day to the Count of Bassompierre, pointing to Luynes surrounded by a numerous following: "he wants to play the king, but I shall know how to prevent it; I will make him disgorge what he has taken from me." Friends at court warned Luynes of this language; and Luynes replied with a somewhat disdainful impertinence, "It is good for me to cause the king a little vexation from time to time: it revives the affection he feels for me." Richelieu kept himself well informed of court-rumors, and was cautious not to treat them with indifference. He took great pains ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... proclaim Their jealous pangs and desperation, Fury, frantic indignation, Depth of pains, and height of passion For the fair disdainful dame. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... either physical or mental, is apt to affect the personality unfavorably. It does not necessarily produce humble behavior; far from that, it often leads to a nervous assertiveness. An apparently disdainful individual is often really shy and unsure of himself. Put a man where he can see he is equal to his job and at the same time is accomplishing something worth while, and you often see considerable improvement ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... poetry could only accentuate his success. There was a salvo of bravos, and the Opposition grumbled, foreseeing their defeat. Violent interruptions broke forth: furious voices recalled the orator's past life, and threw as insults his former professions in his face. He was unmoved, and stood with a disdainful air, which was very effective. Then the bravos redoubled, and he smiled vaguely, thinking, no doubt, of the proof-sheets of the Officiel, where he could by-and-by insert in the margin, without ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... 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. But for ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... his romantic qualities, lacked any perception of the noble and beautiful in life, and it could be positively asserted that his estimate of Mrs. Maldon was chiefly disdainful. But of Mrs. Maldon's secret opinion about John Batchgrew nothing could be affirmed with certainty. Nobody knew it or ever would know it. I doubt whether Mrs. Maldon had whispered it even to herself. In youth he had ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... height of his superiority a few of those disdainful words which brand as deeply as a ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... of the annoyances of army life that we have to be herded up with all sorts of cattle!" said Wainwright with a disdainful curl of his baby mustache. "But I didn't come here to talk about John Cameron. I came to tell you that I'm going to be married, Ruth. I'm going to be married before I go ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... at that blot upon the waters, breeding infectious disease; the waves flung the hated burden from one to the other, disdainful of her freight of sin; the winds had no commission for fair sailing, but whistled through the rigging crossways, howling in the ears of many in that ship, as if they carried ghosts along with them: the very rocks and reefs butted her ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... case," I said, picking up William Adolphus, who had been exploring the room with a disdainful air, "I won't disturb you any longer. I ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... object to me in modern literature is the man the women novelists have introduced as the leading character; the women who come in contact with him seem to be fascinated by his disdainful mien, his giant strength, and his brutal manner. He is broad across the shoulders, heavily moulded, yet as lithe as a cat; has an ugly scar across his right cheek; has been in the four quarters of the globe; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Disdainful of my mirth he merely muttered his basso-profundo thankfulness that we had not found her anywhere about there. Having grown extremely sensitive (an effect of irritation) to the tonalities, I may say, of this affair, I felt that it was only an imperfect, reserved, thankfulness, ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... formality of her address, her disdainful tone, the affront of her words, chilled me like a dash of ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... to the other damage, he had two wounds newly received in his own person), "Thou shalt not die, Betis, as thou dost intend; be sure thou shall suffer all the torments that can be inflicted on a captive." To which menace the other returning no other answer, but only a fierce and disdainful look; "What," says Alexander, observing his haughty and obstinate silence, "is he too stiff to bend a knee! Is he too proud to utter one suppliant word! Truly, I will conquer this silence; and if I cannot force a word from his mouth, I will, at least, extract a groan from his heart." And ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... mild and miniature Cerberus with a dainty piece of ham, but was rewarded only by a disdainful sniff and angrier snarl. The politic cat, however, with wary glances at the dog and the stranger, stole noiselessly to the meat, seized it, and retreated quickly to her recognized corner of the hearth; but when ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... they value themselves much too highly to expect depreciation. Why a proud man is often shy, as appears to be the case, is not so obvious, unless it be that, with all his self-reliance, he really thinks much about the opinion of others although in a disdainful spirit. Persons who are exceedingly shy are rarely shy in the presence of those with whom they are quite familiar, and of whose good opinion and sympathy they are perfectly assured;— for instance, a girl in the presence of her mother. I neglected to ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... 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
... Miss Randolph looked toward the door, and when next Persis saw her eyes they were appealing rather than disdainful. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... directed to me; wait till I see who it is from," and Dexie picked a tiny roll of paper from among the blossoms. One hasty glance over the written lines, and Dexie curled her lip in a disdainful smile. ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... and give the alarm. The huge battle-line is ready. Long rows of giant tuskers stand with swaying heads, each with his howdah beside him—towering brutes such as the old kings of Asia rode into battle, to the terror of their enemies. The herds of disdainful camels are kneeling in roaring protest against the camp loads. From all quarters scouts have reported the enemy. Our army, horse and foot, elephants and camels, will march in an hour—as strange a sight and as strange ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... discouraged by the disdainful demeanor and grudging disposition of the Supreme Council, and irritated by the arbitrariness of its decrees and the indefensible way in which it applied principles that were propounded as sacred. Before ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... ignorant of the iniquitous Act launched against him, embarked for Mexico, thinking to lend his sword on behalf of his native country if she were threatened by the Alliance. He was captured and illegally sentenced by the Congress of a petty Mexican province—Tamaulipas—and shot. Serene and disdainful, he fell, a figure which compels more respect than censure in the mind ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... sacred Cupola; old profesor as he was, he still went to school. When Clerambault was still unknown to the rest of the Immortals, except to one or two brother poets who mentioned him as little as possible with a disdainful smile, Perrotin had already discovered and placed him in his collection, struck by certain pictures, an original phraseology, the mechanism of his imagination, primitive yet complicated by simplicity. All this attracted him, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... beheld the Vicomte, and because she imagined that he would be, most probably, some elderly roue, as did so often fall to the lot of maidens in her station. But upon finding him so very handsome to behold, so very noble of bearing, so lofty and disdainful that as he walked he seemed to spurn the very earth, she fell enamoured of him out of very relief, as well as because he was the most superb specimen of the other sex that it had ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... consciousness of her own attractions, and was as imperious and overbearing as any American beauty, stamping her tiny foot in rage at our photographer's lack of haste in taking her picture, and once walking away from the camera with a disdainful toss of her head. When, after much persuasion, she was finally induced to return, it was only to scowl sullenly at everybody with the most bewitching ill temper, poised so lightly that the very wind seemed ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... and kepte well his fold, So that the wolf ne made it not miscarry. He was a shepherd, and no mercenary. And though he holy were, and virtuous, He was to sinful men not dispitous* *severe Nor of his speeche dangerous nor dign* *disdainful But in his teaching discreet and benign. To drawen folk to heaven, with fairness, By good ensample, was his business: *But it were* any person obstinate, *but if it were* What so he were of high or low estate, Him would he snibbe* sharply for the nones**. *reprove ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... an insulting gesture of surprise; he laughed with an air of disdainful confidence; and then drew from the casket a magnificent gold net-work for the hair, all encrusted with carbuncles. After making it sparkle in the lamp-light, he deposited the second trinket also at the feet of Meroe. Redoubling his ironical ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... some marvellous stories of a 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. ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... a disdainful and superior smile, but there was a feeling in the air that high words would soon follow, whereupon the Count interposed, and managed, not without difficulty, to quiet the infuriated young woman by asserting authoritatively that every sincere opinion was to be respected. Nevertheless ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... at me strangely. "Do you live here?" she asked at last, with a disdainful wave of her hand toward ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... own face expanding irresistibly, bent lower over Diego's small trousers. The picture of Ana, standing disdainful among the sorrowing caballeros and waving off their pleas with an imperious hand, was one to bring a smile to lips of deadliest gravity. Ana, with her hands on her broad hips, short and thick as a squat brown jug with its handles akimbo,—Ana, ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... fascinating and lofty in the hustler's direct, piercing gaze as, proudly disdainful, he looked ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the dominion of the world, sent legates or deputies to the Britons to demand of them hostages and tribute, which they received from all other countries and islands; but they, fierce, disdainful, and haughty, ...
— History Of The Britons (Historia Brittonum) • Nennius
... was not appeased, and gave a disdainful shrug as she answered with a look in her eyes that his lordship did not like, "Thank you. I don't want admirers or slaves, but friends and helpers. I've lived so long with a wise, good man that I am rather hard to suit, perhaps, but ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... head, strode to a chair, and sat down. He looked amusedly after the disappearing steward. The coronet of the old Earl, he thought, was a truly potent talisman. Even the disdainful stewards of castles bowed to its force. And, thought the impostor, so would his master—when ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... should be greatly disappointed in not 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 is proverbially slow to adopt improvements of any kind; and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it had on Satan, is exquisitely Graceful and Moral. Satan is afterwards led away to Gabriel, the chief of the Guardian Angels, who kept watch in Paradise. His disdainful Behaviour on this Occasion is so remarkable a Beauty, that the most ordinary Reader cannot but take Notice of it. Gabriel's discovering his Approach at a Distance, is drawn with great strength ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... shares"—two millions of dollars. I leaned back and laughed as I thought of this wary old fox, with the bruises and scars of the "System's" hopper thick all over his body, dutifully bringing his contribution to his old enemy, Rogers. And Rogers, disdainful and contemptuous of the man, found his $400,000 good. This, I said to myself, is a case of spider eat spider with a vengeance; and I wondered if experience is really as good a teacher as ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... pretty, so confidently negligent of convention—or perhaps disdainful of it—that he already was regretting that he had not met her at the beginning of the voyage instead of ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... such evils as the following, and avoid them, because they all carry scandal in their nature to your own and others' souls: as, 1. Proud, disdainful, and haughty words conduct, and conversation; for these are grievous and provoking evils, which will justly offend all the observers of them. 2. Sullen, sour, and churlish language and behavior, which is offensive unto all sorts of persons; ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... she who lightly scoffed was there, With jewels in her midnight hair, Her dark, disdainful eyes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... preserved a politely disdainful silence. But suddenly the Baron's imbecilities exasperated him, and, interrupting him adroitly, he recounted the life of a man of fashion from his rising to his going to rest, without omitting anything. All the details, cleverly described, made up an irresistibly amusing silhouette. ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... the banter of her son and daughter Mrs. Mason had sat in a disdainful silence, turning her strange eyes—the eyes of a fanatic, in a singularly shrewd and capable face—now on Laura, now on her children. Laura looked at her again, irresolute whether to go or stay. Then an impulse seized her which astonished herself. For it was an impulse of liking, an ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at last he hears steps in the anteroom. Here is the Commendatore, in his hat and overcoat. He closes the door behind him, gathers up the papers lying on the table, and says to Benedetto, with a disdainful air: ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... think of me, O Roman?' she seemed to ask through her disdainful eyes. 'Am I not more beautiful than all the women of Rome? Wouldst like to possess me? I care for none that proves not himself ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... gathered her wraps upon her arm in a disdainful silence, warding him off with a gesture. As he opened the door for her ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... spoke was galling to Bettina, but she made no answer, though no words which she could have spoken would have conveyed a greater resentment of his speech than did her disdainful silence. She made a motion to move away, but he deliberately placed himself in front of her, saying, ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... the two travelers arrived in a superb castle. The hermit entreated a hospitable reception for himself and the young man who accompanied him. The porter, whom one might have easily mistaken for a great lord, introduced them with a kind of disdainful civility. He presented them to a principal domestic, who showed them his master's magnificent apartments. They were admitted to the lower end of the table, without being honored with the least mark of regard by the lord ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... of whom we read in the Diary of Fanny Burney. We can conceive Lord Cromer leaning against the Committee Box in earnest conversation with Mr. Windham and Mr. Burke at Warren Hastings' trial. We can restore the half-disdainful gesture with which he would drop an epigram ("from the Greek") into the Bath Easton Vase. His politeness and precision, his classical quotations, his humour, his predilections in literature and art, were those of the inner circle of Whigs nearly a century and a half ago, and I imagine that their ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... man who composed such music, one knew, had been born on some sort of human height, in some cooler, brighter atmosphere than that of the crowded valleys. For in this music there beat a faster pulse, moved a lighter, fierier, prouder body, sounded a more ironic and disdainful laughter, breathed a rarer air than had beat and moved and sounded and breathed in music. It made drunken with pleasant sound, with full rich harmonies, with exuberant dance and waltz movements. It seemed to adumbrate the arrival of a new sort of men, men of saner, sounder, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Metellus leave of absence, that he might offer himself a candidate for the consulship. Metellus, though eminently distinguished by virtue, honor, and other qualities valued by the good, had yet a haughty and disdainful spirit, the common failing of the nobility. He was at first, therefore, astonished at so extraordinary an application, expressed surprise at Marius's views, and advised him, as if in friendship, "not to indulge such unreasonable expectations, or elevate his thoughts above his station; ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... humanity. A dry, anti-critical, barren, and petty orthodoxy, of the St. Sulpice type; a hollow and superficial imitation full of affectation and exaggeration, like Neo-Catholicism; and an arid and heartless philosophy, crabbed and disdainful, like the University, make up the sum of French culture. Jesus Christ is nowhere to be found. I have been inclined to think that He would come to us from Germany; not that I suppose He would be an individual, but a spirit. And when we use the word Jesus Christ ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Agatha, "I have been thinking about it." A sparkle of disdainful anger showed in her eyes. "Gregory seems to have ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... Peter 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
... 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
... without so much as a sliver to mar it. Nothing is so satisfactory as to have a task come out in perfect time and in good order. The little pieces of bark and sawdust I swept scrupulously into the fireplace, looking up from time to time to see how Harriet was taking it. Harriet was still disdainful. ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... palm upon the legend on his breast and clacked a disdainful digit off the pivot of his thumb. Tasper Britt, even in his hottest ire, had been restrained in the past by some influence from laying violent hands on this peculiar personage. It was evident that Starr was controlled ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... to rearrange the pupils' books and copies. A few heartsease gathered by the devoted Octavia Dean, neatly tied with a black thread and regularly left in the inkstand cavity of Rupert's desk, were still lying on the floor where they had been always hurled with equal regularity by that disdainful Adonis. Picking up a slate from under a bench, his attention was attracted by a forgotten cartoon on the reverse side. Mr. Ford at once recognized it as the work of that youthful but eminent caricaturist, Johnny Filgee. Broad in ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... greatly trusted to those reluctant pledges wrung from the chiefs, but because I felt that if properly handled in that open country our force was of sufficient fighting strength to repel any ordinary attack from ill-armed savages, my long border experience rendering me a bit disdainful of Indian courage and resourcefulness. So it was that my restless mind dwelt rather upon other matters more directly personal. I could not put away the thought of the half-seen girl flitting about amid the dusk of the Pottawattomie camp, especially as Captain Heald had declared her to ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... and more soap was used during her visits than at any other time, because the boys considered it the highest honor to be allowed to carry her highness, and the deepest disgrace to be repulsed with the disdainful ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... resembled Mme. Rey, who played 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. ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... 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 of my arm and said they couldn't have any scrap there, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... attaching itself to outstanding figures and fresh events without changing its essential spirit and character. The more formal Muses despised these rude and unlettered rhymes—when they noticed them at all it was in a disdainful or patronising spirit—and this holds true of the eighteenth century almost as much as of the sixteenth. It is not that ballad poetry was dumb, but that history was deaf and blind to ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... send you both thanks and reproof:—thanks for the brilliant education you have given her, and reproof for the faults which your acuteness must have noticed, but which your indulgence has passed over. She is good-tempered, but cold; well-informed, but disdainful; lively, but deficient in judgment. She pleases no one, and it gives her no pain. She fancies the renown of her uncle and the gallantry of her father are every thing. Teach her, but teach her plainly, without mincing, that in reality they ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott |
